Santiago's Command

by Kim Lawrence

  He dismounted, leaving the animal to graze as he ran to where the still figure lay, dread clutching in his belly.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT WAS happening again.

  Not déjà vu, more a waking nightmare.

  His face was like carved granite as he made himself look at her. Her face was pale; she looked like an effigy carved from ice.

  She would be growing cold and there would be blood. He remembered the blood in his dreams; he saw it often. Saw the scarlet flecks on her mouth and knew it was his fault because Magdalena, sweet, gentle Magdalena had been trying to impress him.

  Lucy heard the crunch of footsteps on the hard ground getting closer as she lay there, her chest burning as she tried to replace the air the fall had knocked out of her lungs. It hurt, but it was nothing more than she deserved, she decided, furious with herself for making such an amateurish mistake. Anyone could fall, but to let go of the reins when you came off … now that was stupid!

  She waited for another of the painful stomach cramps to pass—this one was even more painful than the one that had hit her when the horse had stumbled—before she prised her eyelids apart and saw the shiny Italian leather shoes. She didn’t need to go any further up the leg of grey tailored trousers … She knew who was standing there.

  Of all the people who could have discovered her in this ignominious position, it had to be him.

  The surge of intense relief Santiago had felt when he saw her blue-veined eyelids flutter against her pale waxen cheek was submerged by the equally strong blast of white-hot fury that rapidly succeeded it. When she began to move his entire body shook with the effort of keeping his feelings in check, feelings that had been shaken loose by the sight of her seemingly lifeless body.

  ‘Keep still!’ he yelled, fighting his way through the memories that crowded in on him and forcing himself to think here and now … think potential spinal injuries?

  Ignoring the terse instruction—did the man have to make everything sound like an order?—Lucy, determined not to lie there like a stranded fish while he looked down at her with disdain from an Olympian height, pulled herself up into a sitting position.

  She clamped her teeth over the groan as the effort of the simple action caused a fine layer of cold perspiration to break out over the surface of her skin.

  The immediate problem was breathing.

  ‘Just winded …’ she rasped between gasps, her voice barely audible as she struggled with the fastener of the helmet, then, exhausted by the effort, she lay it in her lap.

  Santiago’s dark eyes moved from her pale trembling fingers to the cloud of silver-white hair that, released from the confines of the helmet, spilled down her back unbidden. The memory of feeling those glossy strands sliding through his fingers like silk surfaced … He pushed but the tactile memory lingered so inexplicably strong that his fingertips tingled.

  Lucy plucked a piece of grass from her once pristine white shirt, very conscious of the angry figure who towered over her. Why didn’t he say something …? Finally unable to stand the simmering silence any longer, she croaked, ‘I’ve got grass stains on my shirt.’

  With a snarl of disbelief, Santiago dropped down into a crouch beside her.

  ‘Grass stains!’ he ejaculated, taking the helmet from her trembling fingers and resisting the growing compulsion to press one of her slim white hands between his palms. This woman did not need comforting, she needed therapy.

  Needed kissing.

  ‘Por Dios! If you can’t say anything sensible, shut up!’

  Lucy, who could not have said anything even had she wanted to, swallowed past the aching emotional occlusion in her throat and clamped her teeth down on her trembling lower lip.

  ‘This thing …’ His voice faded as he laid the helmet to one side with exaggerated care. He inhaled and levelled a burning glare at the top of her blonde head as he fought for control. ‘This thing probably saved your life. You were lucky.’ It was not always the way … His heavy eyelids lowered partially, concealing the bleakness in the dark depths as the brutal inescapable images played in his head.

  For a moment the silence hung between them, broken when Lucy gave a strangled sob she turned into a cough before pressing her face into her cupped palms. ‘Don’t dramatise,’ she mumbled, unconsciously repeating the phrase her father had always said when she became overemotional as a child.

  That brought his head up with a jerk. ‘Dramatise!’ He swore in his native tongue and sucked in a wrathful breath as he dragged a hand over his ebony hair. ‘You want to see dramatic …?’

  She lifted her face, her slightly dazed electric-blue eyes connecting with his, and Santiago lost track of his train of thought. Despite the tough-guy act she looked as he felt, and the petulant rebuttal seemed to have exhausted her. All the fight was gone, leaving her looking defenceless and vulnerable and several million miles away from the seductress his brother needed saving from.

  With her defences stripped away her luminous beauty shone through: perfect bone structure, flawless skin … It was hard to look at such perfection and remain unmoved. As he stared he felt his anger drain away, leaving him feeling as if his armour had been stripped away … He felt suddenly exposed … He pushed away the thought. The only thing that was exposed was her inability to think beyond her own instant gratification.

  Lucy sat there, her breath coming in painful uneven rasps, chin on her chest, her eyes lifted to the man squatting casually on the balls of his feet beside her. As always, he gave off the impression of elegant good taste overlaid by an aura of raw sexual magnetism that always made the details of what he was wearing secondary. Today it was an outfit more appropriate to the office than riding—a pale grey suit, crisp white shirt and silk tie, all classic and tasteful.

  As their eyes connected the anger that was rolling off him hit like a physical force.

  ‘You shouldn’t be moving,’ Santiago snarled, thinking in the same breath he had to stop her before she caused permanent damage and it would serve her right if she did.

  Practically speaking, if she chose to ignore him, short of flattening her with a rugby tackle and pinning her to the ground—an image that his imagination tended to linger unhealthily over—Santiago recognised that all he could do was watch.

  ‘Just because I’m saying something doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing to do, Lucy.’

  Lucy blinked, horrified to feel the sting of hot tears behind her eyes. She was proof against his insults but the unexpected gruff gentleness she heard in his voice sliced through her defences like a hot knife through ice cream.

  She bit her quivering lip, held up a hand in mute appeal and husked a breathless plea. She couldn’t cry—her tears would be something else for him to curl his lip contemptuously at. ‘I just need a minute … to get my breath back.’

  Santiago opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again and tilted his head sharply in acquiescence before rising to his feet in one fluid motion. He walked away feeling an urgent need to put some distance between them.

  Running one hand over his jaw, he reached for his phone with the other. The woman, he decided, punching in a number with unwanted viciousness, was amazing. Considering the circumstances, he had been bloody restrained and yet with one look from her swimming blue eyes she managed to simultaneously look like some innocent virgin and make him feel like a bullying tyrant—it was quite a skill.

  In the periphery of her vision Lucy was conscious of him pacing a few feet away while speaking tersely into a mobile phone. When he dropped down beside her once more a few moments later her breathing was normal and more importantly she was no longer on the brink of a teary outburst.

  ‘Better?’

  She nodded in response to his abrupt enquiry and said in her head, Suck it up Lucy, keep it together.

  Santiago remained sceptical. The alarming rattle had gone, but her breath still seemed to be coming rather fast; she was almost hyperventilating.

  Aware that it might appear he was star
ing at the heaving contours of her full breasts, which he was, but with total clinical objectivity—not everyone might get the objectivity—Santiago dragged his gaze clear.

  ‘Your leg.’ For the first time he saw the damage done to the well-worn jodhpurs that clung to her hips and the long lines of her magnificent legs. Along the outside of the right leg the fabric was torn, from thigh to ankle it gaped, revealing a section of bare skin.

  His fingertips barely brushed her calf before she snatched her leg up. ‘It’s fine—a graze.’ With a dismissive shrug she tucked the limb underneath her and concentrated on the pain in her calf to stop herself thinking about how much she had wanted him to touch her.

  Perhaps she had had a knock on the head?

  Friday night it had been the glass of wine, or so she had told herself through the long, sleepless, guilt-racked night that had followed, and now it was a bang on the head—what excuse would she have the next time she found herself craving this man’s touch?

  There isn’t going to be a next time.

  He arched a sardonic brow and shrugged. ‘If you say so.’ The doctor might have other thoughts. The groove above his nose deepened as he glanced down the track—where was the doctor?

  ‘I do,’ she said firmly.

  As he replayed the phone conversation of moments before in his head the oddness of Ramon’s response to his request to call for a doctor struck Santiago for the first time.

  ‘Good idea,’ his half-brother had said without asking why or for whom medical assistance was required.

  Hand on the back of her neck, she angled a cautious look at Santiago’s face. She knew the lull in hostilities would not last; this reprieve was definitely only temporary. Even when she hadn’t ridden off on his favourite horse he couldn’t open his mouth without being snide and cutting.

  Now she actually was in the wrong the comfort of the moral high ground was a dim and distant memory … Oh, God. She took a deep breath and thought, Take it like a man, Lucy. Bite the bullet and when you run out of clichés, apologise. She closed her eyes and thought, What the hell was I thinking?

  She hated admitting she was wrong at the best of times, but admitting it to Santiago made it a hundred times worse. She could take his anger—it was the knowing she deserved it that she struggled with.

  Crazily, with all the legitimate things she had to stress about, it was the irrational one that was giving Lucy the most problems. She knew he couldn’t read her mind—he just liked to leave the impression he was all-seeing, all-knowing—yet she couldn’t shake the conviction that he was going to look at her and know she had spent the last few nights fantasising about him.

  ‘Did Santana run home?’ she asked in a small voice.

  Santiago’s head jerked towards her, his silent anger more articulate than a stream of abuse.

  Unable to take her eyes off the errant muscle that was clenching and unclenching spasmodically in his cheek, in the face of his fury she leapt to the obvious conclusion. She began to shake her head in denial.

  ‘Oh, no, he isn’t injured …!’ The thought of being responsible for an injury to that beautiful and expensive animal … God, no wonder he looked as if he wanted to throttle her. ‘He’s …’ Her blue eyes widened in her milk-pale face as she whispered fearfully, ‘He’s not dead, is he?’

  ‘Would you care if he was?’

  A sound close to a whimper emerged from her throat and Santiago, who never had been comfortable with kicking someone when they were down, took pity on her obvious distress.

  ‘I have no idea how Santana is,’ he admitted, before adding with a scowl, ‘But he was so spooked when I saw him that it will probably take a week for him to calm down and an army to catch him.’ He lied, well aware that the animal would have gone straight back to his stable.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘For stealing a valuable horse, for proving you can’t handle anything bigger than a donkey or for getting caught?’

  Her blue eyes flew wide. ‘I didn’t steal anything!’

  He arched a brow at the protest. ‘Tell that to the police.’

  She regarded him in horror. ‘You wouldn’t call the police.’

  He smiled and arched a sardonic brow. ‘You think?’

  Was he serious? Lucy refused to let him see that his threat had scared her. ‘I think you’re a total bastard.’

  ‘Not illegal last time I researched the subject.’ He gave a nasty smile. ‘Unlike horse stealing.’

  ‘I wasn’t stealing your horse, I was just … riding him.’

  ‘Why?’

  She blinked, struggling after the fact to explain even to herself the impulse that had made her take the horse out. ‘Why not?’ She shrugged.

  ‘So this is a case of anything Lucy sees and wants Lucy has to have even if it belongs to someone else?’ Didn’t she understand that a person could not have anything they wanted? There were rules, like the unwritten one that said a man did not muscle in on his brother’s girlfriend—did it count when you’d be saving your brother from a terrible fate? Did the unwritten rule stand when the brother in question didn’t possess your own ability to keep your sexual appetites and your emotions separate from a terrible fate?

  Lucy saw where he was going with this. ‘Ramon doesn’t belong to anyone else, even though you went out of your way to make it seem like he does.’

  Santiago’s scowl deepened. He had thrown Carmella, with her crush on Ramon, into the mix hoping she would offer a distraction with her youth and innocence. He was ready to admit that his plan had failed miserably and he felt guilty for using the kid.

  ‘But Denis Mulville did.’ What chance would any wife have if Lucy Fitzgerald decided she wanted a man?

  At the name Lucy’s face lost any colour it had regained. The condemnation on his face was nothing new. She had seen similar expressions on the faces of virtually everyone she met four years ago, and some of those faces had belonged to people she had considered friends.

  At the centre of a storm of ill will Lucy had felt every cruel word and jeer until she had taught herself not to care about the opinion of others. People could and would think what they liked, but so long as she knew the truth that was all that mattered … at least in theory.

  Reality meant that there had still been nights when she had cried herself to sleep and days when she had longed to put her side of the story, but she had maintained her dignified silence even after the gagging order was lifted.

  Not once had she yelled at one of her accusers—’I never slept with the man. He was a creep!’

  As she did now, ironically to someone whose good opinion meant nothing to her, someone who dismissed her words with a contemptuous shrug.

  There was a chance, Santiago thought, that she told the literal truth—a man who got her in bed would not be likely to fall asleep!

  ‘How did you justify breaking up a family?’ A hissing sound of disgust issued from between his clenched teeth as he dragged a hand through his ebony hair. ‘Do you tell yourself that he wouldn’t look at you if he had a happy marriage? That there wouldn’t have been an affair if the marriage hadn’t been in trouble to begin with—isn’t that what the other woman always says?’

  ‘You tell me! You seem the expert on the subject.’

  She broke off, wincing as she experienced a stomach cramp a lot sharper than any of the previous ones. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. If she threw up in front of this man the humiliation factor would be off the scale.

  Lucy lifted her head, breathing through the pain.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing!’ she snapped.

  The beads of perspiration that had broken out over the pale skin of her brow suggested otherwise.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t have taken the horse, but I was waiting for Ramon and Santana obviously needed exercise and you hadn’t bothered to exercise him …’

  ‘So this is my fault?’

  The note of fake comprehension caused the spots of dark colo
ur on her pale cheeks to deepen. ‘No, but—’

  ‘But you,’ he cut back in a hard voice, ‘saw an opportunity of scoring points because I warned you off—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then I can only assume you wanted my attention. You didn’t have to steal my valuable horse in order to get that—if you wanted to be kissed all you had to do was ask.’

  She looked at him with simmering dislike. ‘Not in this life!’ she pronounced with an emphatic shake of her head. She swallowed and pressed a hand to her mouth.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m feeling a bit nauseous,’ she admitted, thinking about Ramon’s abrupt departure and wondering if the two could be connected … They had shared that smoked salmon sandwich …?

  ‘Let me look in your eyes,’ he said, taking her chin in his fingers.

  ‘I don’t have a head injury.’

  His fingers fell away. ‘Do you remember what happened?’

  ‘Of course I remember what happened—I came off.’

  ‘Got thrown.’

  ‘All right, got thrown,’ she gritted, thinking, Go on, rub it in why don’t you? ‘That’s why I lost control when he got spooked by that little pig.’ Actually it had been quite a large pig.

  To hear one of the dangerous wild boar that lived in the woods dismissed with a disgusted grimace made him blink.

  ‘I’m a good rider. I’ve been riding all my life.’

  ‘And have you been falling off all your life?’

  Struggling to combat the rising nausea, Lucy wiped the rash of damp off her forehead, managing to lift her head and fix him with a glare. ‘I suppose you have never fallen off.’ She pressed her hand to her mouth and thought, Please do not let me throw up in front of him.

  The annoyance died from Santiago’s face as he studied her pale features. ‘You look terrible.’

  And she felt terrible.

  ‘Do you feel faint?’

  At that moment she would have accepted a graceful, aesthetically pleasing swoon, but it wasn’t an option. ‘No, I don’t feel faint, I feel …’ She clapped a hand to her mouth, jumped to her feet and sprinted across the clearing. A few yards away she fell to her knees.