by Kim Lawrence
‘Friend?’ Santiago angled his question towards his brother, not Lucy, pulling out a chair for Lucy at the table and ensuring that several feet of antique oak separated her from Ramon. Not that he would have been surprised if the woman had slithered across the surface to latch onto her prey.
An image flashed into his head of her lying across the table in a silvery pool of her own hair, the slinky red dress pulled up to reveal her long legs, one arm lifted in supplication. He froze the frame before it progressed and deleted it, but not before his temperature had risen by several degrees.
Three pairs of eyes swivelled his way as he cleared his throat; he turned his head sharply to block out the blue. ‘What friend?’
‘Harriet Harris,’ Ramon supplied.
His brother’s expression was openly sceptical as he turned to Lucy, looking at her accusingly from dark brows that had formed an interrogative straight line.
‘The Cambridge don …?’
She would have been amused by the proof of his snobbish prejudice had her normally lively sense of humour survived the trauma of the evening.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said, thinking, Sorry for stepping out of the box you’ve put me into. Her scorn increased. Presumably in his world she and women like Harriet occupied separate universes.
‘How do you come to know Harriet Harris?’
‘She was my personal tutor when I was at Cambridge.’
She had the satisfaction of seeing shock he could not conceal chase across his lean features. ‘You were a Cambridge student?’
She nodded, still smiling, counted to ten, but she was unable to hide the growing antagonism that revealed itself in the sparkle in her electric-blue eyes.
‘You graduated?’
He sounded as though discovering that Martians had landed was a lot more probable. At that moment Lucy, who habitually played down her intellect—bad enough being head and shoulders above your contemporaries at school without being a swot—would have happily shoved her certificates down his throat if she had them to hand.
Ramon saved her from replying to this continued interrogation. ‘She came to the rescue to help Harriet.’
‘To the rescue once again,’ he drawled, drawing a puzzled look from his brother. ‘From what does Harriet need rescuing?’ The local community had initially been wary of the Englishwoman who had moved here two years ago. She was still considered eccentric for her alarming multicoloured hair and her devotion to the donkeys she provided a sanctuary for, but she had endeared herself by learning the language and integrating with the local community.
‘She’s broken her leg.’
‘Dios!’ he exclaimed, displaying what, had it been anyone else, Lucy would have considered concern. In his case she attributed his reaction to a pathological need to be in charge. The man was a total control freak. ‘Why did I not know of this?’
Yes, a control freak of epic proportions!
‘And why did Anton not inform me?’
Lucy didn’t have a clue who Anton was but he had her sympathy. God, working for Santiago Silva would be like working for some feudal warlord … Of course, a very good-looking feudal warlord, she conceded, her eyes drifting over the length of his long greyhound-sleek, lean, hard body and one with very good hygiene—the scent of the cologne he used mingled with warm male showed a tendency to linger in her nostrils. She gave her head a tiny shake and looked away.
‘Is she in hospital?’
His manager dealt with the everyday burden of the estate but Santiago was not an anonymous landlord. He made it his business to know all his tenants and took an active interest in the village, just as his father had done. He took the responsibility that came with his role here seriously and he got a lot from it.
When you worked in finance it was easy to lose sight of the human face behind the columns of clinical figures, but here he saw firsthand how decisions made in a boardroom could affect people’s lives. This was not to say he didn’t get a buzz from what he did, but the estate and the people who lived and worked on it kept him grounded.
Duty might be an unfashionable word but it was deeply ingrained in Santiago. Even so, the early days had not been easy. When still grieving for his father he had found himself expected to step into his shoes—and they were big shoes to fill. He’d been living with Magdalena in the city when his father died. She had been really supportive and it had seemed natural to ask her to move with him to the castillo. He had not anticipated she would take the request for a marriage proposal but after the initial shock he had thought why not? It would happen eventually. Now he recognised that it might very well not have happened, that had things been different they would have eventually drifted apart.
‘Only for a day. She’s at home now. And don’t blame Anton—when he left for his cousin’s wedding I think maybe I told him I’d tell you when you got back,’ Ramon admitted with a rueful grin.
One sable brow lifted. ‘Maybe?’
‘All right, I said I would, but no harm done,’ he added cheerfully. ‘Lucy is helping Harriet until she gets back on her feet.’
Santiago’s glance slid from his brother to the woman sitting to his left. Was Ramon joking? Did his brother seriously think this woman would do anything that risked chipping her nail varnish? His glance slid automatically to the hand that held the goblet, though she appeared not to have touched the wine it held.
His sneer faded as he registered the fingers curved lightly around the stem. They were long and shapely but the pearly nails were neither long nor painted; they were trimmed short and unvarnished. With a tiny shake of his head he dismissed the incongruity. Short nails did not make her any the less useless when it came to manual labour, and donkeys might be appealing to look at, but they were high-maintenance animals, not to mention deserving of their stubborn reputation.
‘She couldn’t be in better hands,’ Ramon continued.
The words brought an image of his half-brother enjoying the ministrations of those hands, except it wasn’t his brother he was seeing … Santiago stiffened. ‘I doubt very much if Miss Fitzgerald—’
‘Oh, that’s so formal. Please call me Lucy.’ Maintaining the saccharine sweet smile was making her facial muscles ache.
Santiago, who could think of several things he’d like to call her, smiled back.
As their eyes connected black on bright cornflower-blue, clashed and remained sealed Lucy was seized by a determination not to be, on principle, the first one to look away. The effort of following through with her childish self-imposed endurance race brought a faint sheen of moisture to her skin. In the distance she was vaguely aware of Ramon and Carmella’s voices as they laughed and chatted, the sound softer than the sound of the blood that pounded in her ears.
On the other side of the table Ramon knocked over a glass. The sound as the crystal hit the floor was like a pistol shot. It was hard to say which one of them looked away first but all that mattered to Lucy was that the accident had splintered the growing tension. A silent sigh left her parted lips as Lucy squeezed her eyes closed, just glad that she had broken that nerve-shredding contact.
‘Speak English …’ She heard Santiago reproach the young couple who were exchanging laughing comments in Spanish. ‘Lucy will be feeling excluded.’
As if that wasn’t the idea, Lucy thought, opening her eyes and switching to her less than perfect Spanish as she said, ‘No problem. I need the practice.’
She saw a spasm of annoyance move across his face as he turned his accusing stare her way. ‘You speak Spanish?’
Assuming his irritation stemmed from the fact blonde trollops in his world were not allowed to speak any language but avarice, she chose to reply in English.
‘A little.’
‘More than a little. She also speaks French, Italian, German, and … Gaelic …?’ inserted Ramon from across the table.
Lucy nodded, impressed that he had remembered.
‘Not just a pretty face and perfect body …’ he added, with his
eyes trained on her bosom. ‘She has brains, too … Do I know how to pick them or do I know how to pick them?’ He smiled sunnily at his brother, inviting his admiration before rising from his chair to give access to the maid who had come to remove the broken glass.
‘Quite the linguist.’
‘My family is quite … cosmopolitan.’ A massive understatement—the Fitzgerald clan was spread across the globe. ‘Actually Ramon is being kind. My Spanish really is pretty basic,’ she admitted in a burst of honesty, forgetting for a moment that her character did not do self-deprecating or honest.
She almost immediately retrieved the situation and invited his anger by dropping her voice a sexy octave. ‘I’m hoping to improve my vocabulary considerably during my stay.’ She produced a close approximation of the look she had used to sell everything from shampoo to insurance as she looked at Ramon from under the sweep of her fluttering lashes, feeling just as silly now as she had back then when the photographers had asked her to smoulder.
‘And Ramon is such a good teacher.’
It wasn’t just the open provocation, it was the fact that he was not immune to the effects of her husky purr that fanned his smouldering anger into full-blown flames.
Her glance swivelled sideways in response to the sound of a cut-glass goblet coming down with a crash on the table. Catching the edge of Santiago’s thunderous glare, she thought, You haven’t lost it, Lucy.
‘So are you, querida.’ Across the table Ramon picked up the cue, fixed his eyes on her bosom and added throatily, ‘I’m learning a lot from you.’
For a moment Lucy was in danger of slipping out of character. She bit her quivering lower lip and brought her eyelids down to hide the laughter sparkling in her eyes. Ramon was getting into his role a little too enthusiastically. If he didn’t watch himself his brother was going to smell a rat. She somehow doubted he’d see the funny side.
Was there a funny side?
She reached for her glass and drained the contents. If anyone noticed her burning cheeks she could blame the alcohol, for heartless seductresses did not blush.
‘It’s always a pleasure to teach a willing pupil.’
Worried that this might be over the top, too, she slid a surreptitious glance towards the man sitting beside her. He was totally still … still as in ‘a volcano about to explode’ still. She needn’t have worried, he seemed only too happy to believe she was a total trollop.
‘So do you have a big family, Lucy?’
Lucy smiled. Carmella seemed blissfully ignorant of the undercurrents swirling around the table. ‘Vast. I have nine siblings—my father had three wives.’ Her own mother was his last.
‘Presumably not all at once.’
Lucy clenched her teeth and bridled at the amused contempt in Santiago’s voice. The man was the most smug, self-satisfied creep she had ever met. Plan or no plan, while she was willing to stomach his insults and digs when she was the target she would not tolerate him insulting her family, who had rallied around protectively when she’d needed them.
It was true that when he was alive Lucy had had her share of disagreements with her father, culminating in the massive argument that had ended with her leaving home rather than follow the course in life he had chosen for her.
Determined to show she could make it alone, Lucy had started modelling, her intention being to make enough to fund her degree. She hadn’t anticipated for one moment that she would have the sort of incredible success she had enjoyed … though actually the world of modelling had never been one she enjoyed, however much she’d loved the freedom making that sort of money gave her.
It still did. Her father had been right about one thing—she had inherited his financial acumen, though not the buzz he spoke of that came when you had nailed a deal. The investments she had made at the time had weathered the global downturn and enabled her to live comfortably off the income.
The thing that mattered was that when she had needed him her dad had been there, as had all her family, and she wasn’t about to sit by and let this man look down his nose at them.
‘And do you share your father’s attitude to marriage?’
‘According to my mother I’m very like him.’ She shrugged and, dropping her role of seductress, added with quiet dignity, ‘I can’t see it myself, but I really hope I share both my parents’ values.’
Did he look taken aback by her reply? It would seem she had imagined it because when he replied it was with that now familiar nasty smile that made her fingers itch with an uncharacteristic desire to slap his smug face.
‘I’m sure they are both proud of you.’
Clearly there was more to Lucy Fitzgerald than met the eye. He’d been so confident removing her from Ramon’s life would be easy that he hadn’t even bothered spending five minutes researching the details of the scandal—a fundamental error. His mistake was that he’d been treating this problem differently from those he encountered in his business dealings—he’d made the error of letting it become personal.
If she had weaknesses beyond greed, he would discover them, though of course it was inevitable that greed would be her downfall.
He suddenly saw the headline under a photo of her shielding her eyes from flashes as a man helped her into a blacked-out limo, and experienced a eureka moment.
‘Your father is Patrick Fitzgerald!’
The accusation drew a grunt of amazement from Ramon, who forgot his besotted act as he stared at his brother. ‘You didn’t know?’ He suddenly grinned and taunted, ‘I thought you knew everything.’
‘Who is Patrick Fitzgerald?’ Carmella asked.
Ramon laughed. ‘Melly doesn’t read books, do you, angel? Just celebrity magazines.’
The girl kicked him under the table and he laughed, snatching away her plate that held a bread roll, teasing, ‘Careful, you might put on an ounce looking at it. Seriously, Lucy’s dad had a finger in many pies—he was a bit of a legend actually—but he was about the most powerful publisher on the planet … He was—’ He glanced towards Lucy.
‘My dad died last year,’ she explained to Carmella. ‘He’d been retired for a while.’
Santiago continued to feel annoyed with himself for not making the connection sooner. He had not met the man, but Ramon was right—in financial circles he had been pretty much a legend, a man who had started the publishing house that had become the biggest and most successful in the world and still remained in the hands of the same family today.
He felt an unexpected stab of sympathy for Fitzgerald, who had been known to guard his privacy jealously. It must have been hell for him to see his daughter publicly humiliated and her sordid secrets shared with the world, and of course it was always the parents’ fault—a universally accepted premise that every parent was conscious of.
Santiago had lost count of the sleepless nights he had spent second-guessing his parenting decisions and Gabriella was not even in her teens yet. As a man who could afford to indulge his own child, Santiago knew only too well the pitfalls that were out there for a father who did not want his love of his child to ruin her.
If the results were anything to go by, Patrick Fitzgerald had fallen into every pitfall there was. If the man had still been around he might have rung him to ask him how he brought up his daughter so that he could do the exact opposite.
God knew what motivated a woman like Lucy Fitzgerald, but apparently it wasn’t money after all. His eyes drifted in her direction just as the maid who had been making a discreet exit with her dustpan paused by Lucy’s chair.
‘Oh, I am so sorry, miss … your lovely dress. I’ll …’
Lucy glanced without interest at the splash of blood stains on her dress and rose to her feet. ‘Forget the dress—your hand!’ She removed the dustpan from the girl’s hand, put it down on her seat and took the injured hand in her own. ‘Your poor hand.’
She grabbed a clean napkin from the table and pressed it to the small laceration still oozing a little blood on the girl’s palm.
‘You’re not fine …’
Santiago found himself the focus of an accusing icy blue stare that could not have been more condemning had he taken a knife and cut the girl himself.
‘It must have hurt like mad and she didn’t say a word.’ The girl’s silence was obviously a symptom of an atmosphere of oppression in the workplace, she decided.
She turned back to the girl, the frost in her eyes warming to concern. ‘Look … sorry, I don’t know your name?’
‘Sabina.’
‘Well, Sabina, I think your hand needs cleaning—there might be some shreds of glass in it—and it needs dressing.’
The girl looked confused and Lucy turned to her fellow diners with an expression of exasperation. ‘Will someone help me out here?’ Her Spanish did not stretch to a translation.
It was Santiago who reacted first. Pushing aside his chair, he moved across to the timid-looking maid and spoke to her in Spanish. Lucy listened, unable to follow the rapid flow of words, noticing how different his voice sounded when he spoke to the girl, how kind and gentle.
Whatever he said made the girl smile and look less terrified. Across the table Ramon added something that drew a weak laugh from her.
Lucy was still holding the napkin to the wound but the girl was staring with starry-eyed devotion up at Santiago. Lucy bit her lip and looked away. Was there a female on the planet who didn’t think he walked on water? She thought, Am I the only person who sees him for what he is?
‘You can let go now, Miss Fitzgerald.’
Lucy started as the sound of Santiago’s deep voice jolted her out of her brooding reverie.
‘Josef will take over from here.’
‘What? Oh, yes, of course.’ She nodded to the sober suited solemn-faced man standing at her side and removed her hand from the makeshift dressing. ‘You need to apply pressure.’
‘Josef is more than capable, Miss Fitzgerald.’ Santiago’s dismissive glance swept across her face before he turned back to the girl, his manner changing as he spoke to her softly before she was led from the room by the older man.