by Kim Lawrence
‘You all right?’
She shrugged off the hand on her shoulder and got to her feet, unable to meet his eyes. ‘Obviously I’m not all right.’ The nausea was much easier to cope with than the humiliation of the situation … God, she wanted to die; he had actually held her hair away from her face!
Santiago was the very last person in the world she would have expected a display of such thoughtfulness from, or, for that matter, expected to possess such a strong stomach.
‘Did you hit your head … lose consciousness?’ Her creamy complexion was tinged with a greenish hue and she was visibly swaying like a young sapling in a breeze … Sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, he suspected, was the only thing keeping her upright.
‘No, I … I was already …’ Losing track of her rebuttal, her voice faded to a whisper as her eyes half closed.
Convinced now he was dealing with a concussion at the very least, Santiago was moving in to catch her when she opened her eyes, directing her wide-eyed cerulean stare directly at his face.
‘It wasn’t the fall. I’ve been feeling … off most of the morning.’ Her brow furrowed; it was hard in retrospect to recall when it had started. Post smoked salmon, definitely.
The confession sparked his dormant anger into life. ‘Of all the selfish … stupid …!’ he blasted. ‘So let me get this right—not only did you steal a horse you could not handle simply to thumb your nose at me, you did so while unwell.’
Lucy, who had been on the point of offering a shamed apology, lost all urge to admit she’d been wrong.
‘I didn’t know I was going to be sick …’ Wincing at the unattractive whiney note in her voice, Lucy reached for the scarf she had wound around her neck that morning, intending to tie back her hair with it, and found it was gone …
‘What is it now?’ He watched cautiously as she bit her quivering lip and hoped she was not about to start throwing up again, though he conceded it was preferable to tears.
It was bizarre. He had always considered himself an even-tempered man, certainly not someone prone to mood swings, but with this woman he could feel a strong compulsion to throttle her and two seconds later an equally strong compulsion to offer her a shoulder to cry on.
‘I lost my scarf …’ She stopped as he looked at her as though she had gone mad and added, ‘And I wasn’t trying to thumb my …’ Her forceful declaration came to an abrupt halt, she swallowed and thought, My God, wasn’t that exactly what I was doing?
Something about this man made her want to score points: his aggressive sexuality, his self-righteous attitude, his smug conviction he was always right—no, actually, it was everything!
‘I shouldn’t have taken the horse … the biggest horse,’ she tacked on before she could stop herself.
And once she’d begun it was impossible to stem the flow of words that spilled from her.
‘The one that nobody else can handle, fastest, shiniest car … biggest bank balance … oh, and let’s not forget the Olympian-class smug superiority. Do you ever stop competing? It’s nothing short of a miracle that Ramon isn’t riddled with insecurities.’ She ran out of steam, dismay gradually seeping into her expression as she realised what she’d just said.
‘Shiniest car?’
Her eyes fell.
‘Is that how you see me—a boy with his toys …?’
She saw him with no clothes on, or she had in her erotic, shameful dreams. She closed her eyes and groaned. ‘Oh, just call the police. I’ll go quietly.’ Sitting in a police cell had to be preferable to enduring his company.
‘Don’t worry, I am not going to call the police.’
She choked on her relieved sigh when he tacked on, ‘I’ll sack the groom. It was his responsibility and rules are rules.’
Her horrified blue eyes flew to his face. ‘You wouldn’t …’ She stopped as she encountered an ironic look.
‘And with my word being law and my reputation as a despot being at stake I need to make an example of someone,’ he delivered straight-faced.
‘Very funny. Oh, God, I’m going to be ill again.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘THERE’S no point waiting.’
The decision made, Santiago slid an assessing glance towards the woman who was now sitting with her back propped against a tree trunk looking very much like a wilting exotic flower. The last bout of vomiting had left her very weak.
Admiration was something he had never imagined he would feel about Lucy, but, you had to hand it to her, she did not complain.
She might be putting on a brave front but, guts or not, there was no way in the world she could make it under her own steam … but with his support she could sit in the saddle in front of him and they could be back at the castillo in a matter of minutes. They would be now if he hadn’t assumed that help was on its way.
Santiago turned, clicking his fingers as he did so to bring the horse to him … only there wasn’t a horse to bring. Ramon’s gelding was nowhere in sight.
The expression on his face when he realised that the horse had wandered away would have made her laugh on any other occasion.
He swore softly under his breath.
‘We’ve both lost a horse.’
His withering gaze swung her way. ‘Thank you for pointing that out. It is most helpful.’
Head tilted to one side, he fixed her with a narrow-eyed assessing glance until Lucy, feeling increasingly self-conscious by his unblinking regard, snapped crankily. ‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘I was just considering the options …’
Presuming he was about to share the details, she was taken totally by surprise by the abruptness of the action that followed his terse explanation. Lucy was so shocked that she offered no resistance when he almost casually lifted her into his arms—just a scream.
A moment later she managed a breathless, indignant, ‘What are you doing?’ Other than displaying strength that Lucy—who was not by anyone’s standards a small woman—struggled hard not to find impressive. However, she had never had a single fantasy about being rescued and swept into the strong arms of a man—any man.
Especially not this man!
‘Not wasting further time hanging around.’ For assistance that seemed to be taking a long time coming.
Or asking permission before treating her like a sack of coal, she mused, giving a second shrill yelp as he moved, striding across the open ground towards the forest trail.
Lucy stared at his ear and held herself stiff, noticing the way his hair curled around it into the nape of his neck … strong neck. It was mid-morning but she could see the beginning of stubble on his jaw and cheek. It would feel … She paused mid-thought and gasped.
‘I don’t want to know!’
‘Know what?’
Lucy’s eyes fell away guiltily. ‘Know how long it will be before you drop me.’ Pleased with her quick recovery, she lifted her gaze just as he loosened his grip for a split second but enough to make her react instinctively out of self-preservation.
She grabbed him, one hand sliding under his unfastened jacket, the other around his neck.
‘Breathing would be nice.’
There was an embarrassing delay before her brain, busy processing details like the warmth and lithe hardness of the warm male body she was crushed up against, reacted to his dry comment.
‘Very funny,’ she drawled, loosening her grip but not all the way—he was almost jogging now and the next time it might not be a joke. ‘Will you put me down? This is ridiculous.’ Almost as ridiculous as her reaction to a bit of muscle.
‘Look, I’d love to argue the toss with you, but frankly I need all my breath. You’re a lot heavier than you look.’ Her weight was not the problem, but the soft yielding nature of the warm body that seemed to fit naturally into his was. Lucy Fitzgerald was not a woman who had sharp angles; she was not a woman that a man could be close to and not think about naked.
It was an image that Santiago, whose normal iron control when it came to suc
h matters was at that moment absent, struggled to erase. In fact, he was struggling to think beyond the surge of hormones that made him want to lay her down on the warm mossy ground and … The sound of his harsh inhalation was drowned out by Lucy’s indignant gasp.
‘Are you calling me fat?’
The growl of desire growing low in his throat turned into an amused snort as, appreciating the irony, he quirked his lips into a twisted smile. He had called her many things that were worse, but it was the suggestion that she was overweight that rattled her.
‘I may not be a skinny—’
A stone too heavy, according to the man from Hollywood who, at the height of her notoriety, had dangled the female lead in a new film with the proviso she lose that stone. It had clearly not even crossed his mind, or for that matter her jubilant agent’s, that Lucy would say thanks but no thanks to the chance of being the love interest to one of the industry’s most bankable stars.
‘Sorry, but I can’t act,’ she had said to soften her refusal.
This, it had turned out, was not an obstacle and her ability to look good in very little apparently more than compensated for this minor deficiency. The scandal attached to her name had apparently been deemed box-office gold.
‘But I’m not about to starve myself so men like you can feel macho hauling me around.’
‘Dios mio!’ He stopped dead and angled an astonished stare at her indignant face.
As their eyes connected the amused exasperation in his expression vanished, as did any temptation to defend himself against the accusation.
In his arms Lucy could feel his chest lifting as though standing there were putting more stress on his heart than jogging along had; her own heart was fluttering like a trapped bird in her chest cavity.
She told herself it was her weakened state that made her tremble, unable to admit even to herself it was being the focus of his febrile gaze that had sent her nervous system into shocked overload. As for the impression that the air around them was literally shimmering with a heat haze—that was obviously a result of dehydration or fever.
‘You have a perfect body and we both know it.’
Turning his attention abruptly back to the trail ahead, he picked up pace—not a cold shower but the next best thing—and wondered about the shock in her face. Such a reaction seemed bizarre considering she was a woman who traded on her looks and sensuality.
Silenced by the abrupt assessment, Lucy was almost glad when the nausea and stomach cramps took her mind off the molten stream of desire that had turned her into a breathless bundle of craving and reduced her brain function to zero.
When a short while later, or it might have been a long time, Lucy had lost track, he asked, ‘Are you sulking?’ Lucy thought it wise to warn him.
‘No, I don’t feel very well …’ Her eyes were closed as she spoke but she could feel his dark gaze on her face.
Presumably she looked terrible because he started jogging faster. There was no way, she thought dully, that he could keep up this pace for much longer even if he was incredibly fit.
‘Nearly there,’ he murmured close to her ear. ‘Hold on.’
‘God, don’t be nice to me,’ she begged, wondering what alternative universe she had slipped into where Santiago made her feel safe and cared for. ‘Or I’ll cry.’
Tears would have left him unmoved but the plea touched him. He could not think of another woman he knew who would prefer to be yelled at than give in to tears. ‘Shut up or I’ll drop you.’
Lucy sketched a weak smile and forgot to hate him. ‘Thank you. I suppose I am being very ungrateful.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll try not to throw up on you … it’s a beautiful suit,’ she heard herself say, and wondered if, despite the fact she felt freezing cold, she had a fever. ‘God, I’m never sick!’ she groaned, vowing to show more sympathy in future to people who were physically more fragile than she was.
She was now and the sight of her poor pale face made him complete the last leg of the journey in record time.
By the time they reached the stableyard there was no question of it being illicit lust that made Lucy cling to him; she wasn’t even aware that she was groaning softly into his shoulder.
He looked around the deserted yard, which normally at this time of the day was a hive of activity, and felt his frustration grow.
He cut between the buildings built around a quadrangle and across the lawn, ignoring the burning of his shoulder muscles, spurred on by the soft moans of the woman he carried.
He walked straight through the massive double doors of the front entrance and into the vaulted hallway. It was empty. He opened his mouth to yell when Josef appeared. Normally insouciant Josef’s eyes widened when he saw his boss with a semi-conscious woman in his arms.
‘Where is my brother?’
‘With the doctor. He’s rather unwell.’
‘Ramon is ill, too?’ Santiago closed his eyes. Two invalids on his hands, one literally, and an errant daughter to collect from the station. When they spoke of it never raining but pouring, his was presumably the day they were referring to.
‘Can I help with the young lady, sir?’
‘No, you can get Martha and the new girl … Sabina, and ask them to come to the west-wing suite … inform the doctor he is required there and have the helicopter ready to take off in thirty minutes. Gabby is coming home early.’
Josef waited as he reeled off the instructions and then, with a nod, vanished. A man of few words, Josef; Santiago liked that about him.
‘You’re so pretty.’
Lucy blinked and pushed her way free of the last layers of sleep. The figure standing by the window came into focus. To her relief, it was not a hallucination—unless hallucinations spoke and wore braces.
She blinked at the small elfin features of Gabby.
‘Thank you,’ Lucy replied, easing herself carefully up on one elbow and turning her curious gaze around the room. She had not been that interested in her surroundings the previous night when Santiago had brought her in here and relinquished her to the care of the doctor and the two women who had stayed with her during the night.
One of them had spoken perfect English, the other was the sweet girl who had cut her hand, both had been incredibly kind.
‘I thought you were in school.’
‘I ran away.’
Lucy was weak enough to feel a fleeting moment of sympathy for Santiago.
‘What time is it?’
The furniture in the room that was massive enough to lose the enormous four-poster she was lying in was dark and heavy and looked like museum pieces. The stone walls were covered with tapestries and portraits of severe-looking historical persons. The personal touch of an arrangement of garden flowers in the gleaming copper bowl set in the empty cavernous fireplace filled the room with their scent and lightened the general museum-style gloom.
‘It’s two o’clock.’
Lucy was startled. She had fallen asleep in the early hours. ‘Why didn’t someone wake me?’ She brushed her hair from her face and struggled to tear her eyes from the portrait of a hatchet-faced woman in a jewelled turban. The eyes looked spookily familiar, an ancestor presumably of the present incumbent. Clearly hauteur was not a new Silva characteristic, any more than the masterful nose.
‘They said to let you and Sara sleep.’
Lucy yawned and dragged her attention back to the girl. ‘Sara?’ Her brow crinkled. Was she meant to know the name? At that moment she was struggling with her own.
‘She’s one of the maids. She ate some of the bad salmon that was for the cook’s mother’s cat, too.’
Struggling to follow this information overload, Lucy moistened her lips with her tongue—they felt dry and cracked—and recalled the smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel that Ramon had produced when she had said she couldn’t possibly go riding until she had had her breakfast.
‘I haven’t eaten either but not to worry, I have it covered,’ he had said,
producing the breakfast treat wrapped in a linen napkin.
When she had laughed and conceded he had thought of everything she hadn’t known that had included food poisoning! Could he have escaped unscathed?
‘Ramon?’
‘Oh, Uncle Ramon was much worse than you.’
‘But he’s better now?’ Lucy was just relieved that Harriet, who she had cooked breakfast for before she went out to attend to the donkeys—six a.m. was not a time of the day that Lucy personally felt happy eating—had not shared the breakfast.
‘I don’t know. Ramon was really sick. He had to go to hospital.’
‘Hospital!’ Lucy exclaimed in alarm. She nodded. ‘Papá said it serves him right for raiding the pantry.’
Gabby took a seat on the brocade bed cover using the crewel-work curtains that draped the bed for leverage.
Lucy discovered that she was wearing a long white Victorian-style nightgown in a fine, exquisitely embroidered fabric. Her memory of how she came to be wearing this period-looking piece was sketchy, but she was sure—almost—that Santiago had not been involved.
Having delivered her, he had immediately made himself scarce and she didn’t blame him, though … Her brow furrowed. She did have a vague recollection of hearing a deep male voice and feeling cool fingers on her forehead at one point during the night, but that might have been part of a dream.
Running the flat of her hand down the gossamer-thin floaty sleeve of the nightdress, she lifted her gaze to find the child watching her. Santiago’s daughter was a pretty little thing with a roundish face, big dark eyes and a cupid’s bow mouth and dimpled cheeks—did she look like her dead mother?
‘That’s mine off Aunt Seraphina. Awful, isn’t it? She always buys me stuff that’s massive for me to grow into, but I never do.’ The little sigh made Lucy smile—clearly the size thing was an issue with her.
‘ Papá says it’s good to be petite but what does he know? He’s a man and ten feet tall …’ she grumbled, adding enviously, ‘Like you. Is your hair real … not extensions?’ She viewed the silken skein that framed Lucy’s face with a mixture of curiosity and envy. ‘I’d like to bleach my hair but Papá would kill me. It might be worth it, though,’ she added with a grin. ‘And who knows? It might be the final straw and they’ll expel me this time.’ She caught Lucy’s quizzical look and added, ‘I hate school.’