Santiago's Command

by Kim Lawrence

  No, the best thing all around, she realised, was not to mention the incident at all—and why should she? He had no idea that she was staying with Harriet and so long as she stayed out of his way and she didn’t darken his doorstep with her presence—a treat she felt happy to miss out on—unless fate was very unkind she would never have to set eyes on the wretched man again.

  Taking comfort from the knowledge, she took a deep breath, pasted on a smile and patted her cheeks. Her eyes widened as she felt the dampness there. God, Santiago Silva had achieved what a media army had failed to do—he had made her cry.

  Harriet, normally uncomfortably observant, had not noticed the tear stains, which suggested that her white-faced friend was suffering a lot more than the mild discomfort she claimed after literally hopping out to the stables during Lucy’s absence to check on an elderly donkey.

  Lucy banned Harriet from attempting any more stunts and hustled her back to bed for a nap. The other woman looked so much better when she rose later that midway through the next morning Lucy suggested another nap and the older woman did not resist the idea.

  Lucy decided to use the time to take hay to animals in the scrubby lower pasture. As she walked through the field buzzing with bees and chirruping crickets she became aware of a distant noise disturbing the quiet. As she distributed the feed to the animals who clustered around her the noise got perceptibly closer until … Lucy started and the animals ran at the sound of a loud crash followed by a silence that seemed horribly ominous.

  Recovering her wits, Lucy dropped the hay she was holding and ran in the opposite direction to the agitated braying herd. Seconds later, panting, she reached the rise of the slight incline that hid the dirt track below from view and saw the cause of the explosive sound.

  Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh, God!’

  One of the modern four-wheel quad bikes was lying at an angle, the front end in a ditch and the back wheels hidden beneath a tangle of scrub that the vehicle had dragged up as it slid off the stony path.

  A quick scan revealed no immediate sign of the driver. Had he been thrown clear?

  There was no time to speculate. Lucy hit the ground running, scrambling down the rocky incline and raising a cloud of dust from the dry ground. She reached the accident in a matter of seconds, though it felt like a lifetime. There was still no sign of the driver and she couldn’t hear anything, but then it was difficult to hear anything above the thundering of her heart in her ears, even her own fearful cry of—

  ‘Is there anyone …? Are you all right?’

  ‘No, I’m not all right. I’m …’ A flood of tearful-sounding Spanish preceded a small grunt that was followed by a deep sigh before the young voice added in flawless, barely accented English, ‘I’m stuck. Give me a pull, will you?’

  Lucy saw the small hand—a child’s—appear from beneath the upturned quad bike. She dropped to her knees, her hair brushing the ground as she bent her head to peer underneath. The driver appeared to be a dark-haired young girl.

  ‘It’s probably not a good idea to move until—’

  ‘I’ve already moved. I’m not hurt. It’s just my jacket is caught—’ The girl gave a small yelp followed by a heartfelt ‘Finally!’ as she dragged herself out from under the quad bike, emerging beside Lucy looking dusty, in one piece and with nothing but a bloody scrape on the cheek of her heart-shaped face to show for her experience—at least nothing else visible. Lucy remained cautious as the girl, who looked to be around ten or eleven, pulled herself into a sitting position and began to laugh.

  ‘Wow!’ Her eyes shone with exhilaration, a reaction that made Lucy think, God, I’m getting old. But then, though she’d had her share of her own youthful misadventures, they had had less to do with her being an adrenaline junkie and more to do with her need to please her father and compete with the legendary exploits of her elder siblings.

  ‘That was quite something.’

  ‘I’d call it a lucky escape.’ Lucy got to her feet and held out her hand. ‘Look, there’s no reception here but I really think you should see a doctor to get checked out.’

  The girl sprang to her feet energetically, ignoring the extended hand. ‘No, I’m fine, I’m …’ She stopped, the animation draining from her face as the condition of the overturned vehicle seemed to hit her for the first time. ‘Is there any way we could get this back on the road, do you think?’

  Lucy shook her head in response to the wistful question. ‘I doubt it. I think you should sit down …?’ Before you fall down, she thought, studying the young girl’s pale face.

  ‘Oh, I am in so much trouble. When my dad sees this he’ll hit the ceiling. I’m not really meant to ride on this thing … but then I’m not really meant to do anything that is any fun. Do you know what it feels like to have someone act as though you can’t even fasten your own shoelace?’

  Lucy’s lips twitched. ‘No, I don’t.’ If she’d had a penny for every time her dad had said, ‘Don’t whinge, Lucy, just get on with it,’ she would have been able to retire before she hit ten.

  ‘That’s why I’m home now, because my dad dragged me away from school. Not that I care. I hate school—he’s the one who’s always saying how important education is.’

  Lucy, who thought so, too, adopted a sympathetic expression as the girl paused for breath, but didn’t interrupt as the youthful driver continued in the same if-I-don’t-get-it-off-my-chest-now-I’ll-explode style.

  ‘And Amelie didn’t even have it!’

  ‘Have what?’ Lucy, struggling to keep up, asked.

  ‘Meningitis.’

  Lucy’s brows went up. ‘Your school friend has meningitis?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t have it, I just said so, and she’s not my friend. I have no friends.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

  ‘It’s true, and with a father like mine is it any wonder? He wouldn’t let me go on the skiing trip and everyone was going and now, after the head told all the parents that there is no cause for concern, that Amelie didn’t have meningitis at all, it was just a virus, what does he do?’

  Lucy shook her head, finding she was genuinely curious to know what this much-maligned but clearly caring parent had done.

  ‘Does he listen? No …’ she said, pausing in the flow of confidences to turn her bitter gaze on Lucy. ‘He lands his helicopter right there in the middle of the lunch break with everyone watching and whisks me off after giving the head an earful. Can you imagine?’

  Lucy, who could, bit her quivering lip. ‘That must have been dramatic.’

  ‘It was mortifying and now he says I have to go back and there’s only two weeks to the end of term.’

  ‘What does your mother say?’

  ‘She’s dead.’ She stopped, her eyes going round as she turned to face the vehicle hurtling at speed down the hill towards them. It came to a halt with a squeal of brakes feet away from them.

  I should have known, Lucy thought as the tall, unmistakeable figure of Santiago Silva exploded from the driver’s seat.

  He had seen the overturned quad bike from the top of the hill seconds before he saw Gabby. In those seconds he had lived the nightmare that haunted his dreams. For a terrible moment he could feel the weight of his daughter’s lifeless body in his arms the same way he had felt her mother’s—it was his job to keep her safe and he had failed.

  Then he saw her, recognised even at a distance the familiar defiant stance, and the guilt and grief were replaced by immense relief, which in its turn was seamlessly swallowed up by a wave of savage anger. An anger that quickly shifted focus when he identified the tall blonde-haired figure beside his daughter.

  He should have known that she would be involved!

  He approached with long angry strides, looking like some sort of avenging dark angel—the fallen variety. Lucy didn’t blame the kid for looking terrified. She gave the shaking child’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. Really, she should have guessed when the child had started talking casually about
helicopters, but she hadn’t. For some reason she hadn’t thought about Santiago Silva as married, let alone a widow, or a father! It was still a struggle to think of him as any of these things, as was maintaining her smile as he approached.

  Yesterday she had been conscious that where this man was concerned the veneer of civilisation was pretty thin; right now it was non-existent. He was scary but also, she admitted as she felt a little shiver trace a path down her rigid spine, pretty magnificent!

  He swept straight past her, but not before Lucy had felt the icy blast of the glittering stare that dashed over her face.

  She watched as he placed his hands on his daughter’s shoulders and squatted until he was at face level with her.

  ‘Gabby, you …’ Torn between a desire to throttle his wilful daughter and crush her in a bear hug, he took a deep breath. Feeling like a hopelessly inadequate parent, he searched her face and asked brusquely, ‘You are hurt?’

  Even Lucy, who was extremely unwilling to assign any normal human emotions to this awful man, could not deny the rough concern in his deep voice was genuine.

  ‘I’m fine, Papá. She—’ the little girl cast a smile in Lucy’s direction ‘—helped me.’

  ‘Not really.’

  For a moment his burning eyes met hers, then, a muscle along his clean shaven jaw clenching, he turned away, rising to his feet with a graceful fluidity that caused Lucy’s oversensitive stomach to flip.

  ‘Papá …’

  ‘Wait in the car, Gabriella.’

  With one last look over her shoulder at Lucy, she walked, head down, towards the car.

  Without looking to see if his daughter had obeyed, Santiago Silva began to speak into the phone he had pulled from the breast pocket of his open necked shirt.

  Lucy’s Spanish was good enough to make out that the conversation was with a doctor who was being requested to meet them at the castillo.

  He might be an awful man but he was also obviously a concerned father. ‘She wasn’t unconscious or anything.’

  Santiago closed the phone with a click and covered the space between them in two strides.

  As he bent his face close to her own Lucy felt the full force of his contempt as he responded in a lethally soft voice, ‘When I require your medical expertise I will ask for it. As for having any contact with my daughter …’ He swallowed, the muscles in his brown throat visibly rippling. ‘Do not attempt to make any contact or you will be sorry.’

  Lucy’s sympathy vanished and her anger rushed in to fill the vacuum it left. She didn’t bother asking if that had been a threat—it clearly was.

  Fighting the urge to step back, she lifted her chin to a pugnacious angle and enquired coolly, ‘So, the next time I find her trapped under a grown-up toy she is clearly not old enough to get behind the wheel of, I’ll walk by on the other side of the damned road, shall I, Mr Silva? That might be your style, but it isn’t mine.’

  ‘I know all about your style and I would prefer that members of my family are not contaminated by your toxic influence … but, yes, you did try and help my daughter, so thank you for that at least.’

  It was clear that every word of the apology hurt him. ‘Does it occur to you that your daughter wouldn’t feel the need to break the rules if you cut her a bit of slack?’

  He stared at her incredulously. ‘You are giving me advice on parenting? So, how many children do you have, Miss Fitzgerald?’

  She sucked in a furious breath. Where did this man get off being so superior? ‘Well, if I did have one I’d make damned sure I wasn’t too busy to notice she had driven off on a quad bike!’

  The expression that Lucy saw move at the back of his eyes—so bleak it was almost haunted—made her almost regret her taunt, but she stifled the stab of guilt. She’d save her pity for someone who deserved it. He was a bully, used to people sitting and taking what he dished out.

  Well, she wasn’t going to take it, not from him, not from anyone.

  ‘Stay away from my family or I will make you wish you’d never been born.’ Without waiting for her response, he turned and started walking towards the car.

  By the time she reached the finca Lucy was so mad she was shaking like someone with a fever.

  ‘Lucy, my dear, what’s wrong? What’s happened?’ Harriet studied the face of her ex-student with growing concern.

  ‘Nothing, I’m fine. Don’t get up,’ she added as the older woman struggled to rise from her chair. ‘You should have rested longer. You know what the doctor said about keeping your foot up to stop it swelling again.’

  Harriet subsided back into her seat with a frustrated grunt. ‘I’ll stay here if you tell me what’s wrong, Lucy.’

  In the middle of pacing agitatedly across the room, Lucy paused, her fists in tight balls at her sides, her face coloured by two bright spots of anger on her smooth cheeks, and gave a high little laugh. ‘Mr Smug Sanctimonious Creep Silva is wrong!’

  Harriet looked confused. ‘Ramon!’ she exclaimed. ‘But he seems a sweet boy, if a little full of himself … whatever has he done?’ She had never seen the student she considered one of the brightest young women she had ever taught lose her air of serene calm. Even during the awful press witch hunt she had remained cool and aloof.

  ‘Ramon …?’ Lucy shook her head impatiently and took up her pacing. ‘It’s not Ramon, it’s his brother,’ she gritted.

  ‘Santiago? You’ve met him … is he here?’

  Lucy gave a grim smile. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve had that pleasure twice now.’ She reached for the phone and punched in the number she had scribbled down on the pad beside it. ‘Ramon …?’ Lucy slowed her agitated breathing and took a deep breath. ‘Dinner tonight …?’

  When she told Harriet the full story her old tutor was sympathetic but, to her annoyance, inclined to make excuses for Santiago Silva. ‘He jumped to conclusions and that was wrong.’

  ‘He virtually called me a tart and now today he flings out his threats!’ Lucy raged. Even thinking about the man made her want to smash things. Nobody had ever got under her skin this way.

  ‘Why not let me explain the situation to him, Lucy?’

  Lucy’s lower lip jutted mutinously. ‘Why should I explain? He’s the one in the wrong.’

  ‘Gabby is the apple of his eye and very wilful. He’s also very protective of his younger brother. I understand their father died when Ramon was just a boy, and Santiago was very young when he inherited the estancia. Reading between the lines, I get the impression that given half the chance his stepmother fancied herself as the power behind the throne, so to speak, which from what I know of her would have been a disaster,’ Harriet confided. ‘Santiago had to establish his authority from day one. Not easy for a young man, which might have made him a little—’

  ‘Full of himself?’ Lucy suggested acidly. ‘The man needs teaching a lesson.’ And not, in her opinion, people to make excuses for him just because he was rich and lived in some sort of castle.

  ‘Oh, dear! You will be careful, won’t you, Lucy? I’ve heard reports that suggested Santiago can be ruthless. I’d not given much credence to them, since successful men tend to engender jealousy and his reputation here is … well, I’ve never heard anyone have a bad word to say. Yet given what you’ve said …?’

  Lucy smiled. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  DESPITE the fact she had been a successful model, Lucy had never been obsessed by fashion. This was not to say she didn’t like clothes. Her lifestyle now meant comfort was the order of the day; heels were not much good when you were mucking out the stables! However, there were occasions when she got tired of her androgynous work clothes and sensible shoes and then she’d open the wardrobe and spend an hour or so parading around her bedroom in some of the clothes she had kept from her previous life.

  It wasn’t so much that she missed being a clothes horse, because she didn’t; it was more she missed being, well … a woman!

  And now, feeling the silky swish of a dress t
hat had come from the designer in question’s famous ‘Marilyn Collection’—a gift, he’d said, because she had made him wish he were straight—Lucy had to admit the bright red dress really did do some amazing things for her figure, making her waist look tiny and her curves look lush.

  She brushed her hands down the bodice and glanced in the mirror. The figure-hugging cut made the fabric cling to the long lines of her thighs when she moved. The effect was sexy and provocative, which seemed appropriate when what she wanted to do was provoke! Her anger felt strange when she’d spent the last four years trying to play down her looks and blend in.

  An image of Santiago Silva’s autocratic dark features formed in her head and the beginnings of doubt faded. Pursing her lips, Lucy gave her reflection a nod. The look was exactly what she wanted. Now, she told herself, was not the time for doubts.

  ‘Wow, you look …’ Ramon swallowed ‘… different.’

  She arched a brow and, closing the door, followed him across the yard. ‘Different good or different bad?’ she teased.

  Ramon laughed and opened the door to his low-slung car. ‘Oh, definitely good, but it’s lucky you didn’t look like that the first time I saw you.’

  ‘Why?’ Lucy was curious.

  ‘Because I wouldn’t have dared approach you. You look way out of my league tonight, Lucy.’

  ‘I’m still me.’ Lucy felt uneasy, Ramon’s appreciation bordering on reverence.

  The sense of anticipation and righteous indignation she had begun the journey with began to fade by the time they reached the massive gates of the Silva estancia, replaced by a growing sense of unease and guilt.

  What the hell was she doing? This was a crazy idea! She glanced towards Ramon and thought, Not just crazy—cruel. In her determination to score points off the awful brother she had not paused to consider the consequences of her actions. Not for one second had she considered the hurt she might be inflicting on the nice brother.

  The sense of shame grew until she couldn’t bear it another second.

  ‘I can’t,’ she muttered under her breath as she reached for her seat belt. ‘Stop!’