by Kim Lawrence
The description made Lucy think wistfully of the time when her own father had seemed the biggest thing in the world. She repressed a smile.
‘The hair is all my own,’ Lucy admitted, reaching for the water on the bedside table and taking a sip. Her throat felt dry and raw. ‘Well, your papá is right—there’s nothing wrong with being petite. I always wished I was.’ But it was never good to be different and at this girl’s age she had towered above her contemporaries.
‘ Papá is right …? Can I have that in writing?’
Lucy slopped water all down the front of the borrowed nightdress and turned to see Santiago standing framed in the doorway.
The sight of his tall dynamic figure sent a wild rush of energising adrenaline through her body. Dressed in a white tee shirt and jeans, his slicked wet hair suggesting he had just stepped out of the shower, he oozed a restless, edgy vitality.
He also looked sinfully gorgeous and Lucy didn’t have the energy or for once the inclination to go through the entire ‘sexy but not my type’ routine … She was hopelessly attracted to him. Just sex, she told herself, drawing back from deeper examination of the tight knot of emotions lying like a leaden weight behind her breastbone.
‘What are you doing here?’ she quivered accusingly.
He arched a brow and said mildly, ‘I live here.’
She flushed and heard the words king of the castle in her head as she followed the direction of his quizzical gaze. It led to the silk-covered pillow she was clutching to her chest like a shield.
Lucy had no recollection of grabbing it and equally she had no intention of letting it go, though as shields went it was about as effective as a feather in a storm against the illicit lust that hardened her nipples to thrusting prominence beneath thin, fine fabric.
‘I didn’t wake her, Papá, honest, did I?’
Santiago levered his tall lean frame off the wall, not ten feet but muscle packed, and very impressive.
‘No, I was awake,’ Lucy lied, and received a beam of gratitude in return.
‘What is this—a conspiracy?’ He appeared faintly amused as he turned to the child and added, ‘Run along, kiddo, you are already in enough trouble and Miss Fitzgerald is tired.’ He turned to Lucy and said, ‘The doctor is with the maid who was sick, too. I just called by to let you know he’ll be here when he’s finished with her.’
Tired … Miss Fitzgerald, he thought, his hooded glance skimming her paper-pale face, looked like some Hollywood version of a sexy vampire—fragile but deadly.
Once he started looking it was hard to stop. She was the most dramatically beautiful woman he had ever seen. A bare scrubbed face only emphasised the crystal purity of her perfectly symmetrical features; the skin, stretched tighter after her sleepless night, across the beautiful bones was satiny smooth; her sleepless pallor and the dark smudges made the colour of her eyes appear even more dramatic than usual.
It was a major improvement to the way she had looked the night before. Last night she had looked … Struggling to hold onto his train of thought, Santiago narrowed his eyes in concentration and broke contact with her sapphire stare.
The muscles along his angular jawline quivered as he recalled the attitude of the doctor, who turned out to be not the family friend but a locum who seemed barely shaving, standing in. The man, having already called an ambulance for Ramon, had seemed inclined to underplay the severity of Lucy’s condition.
To Santiago it had seemed logical to err on the side of caution and he had been far from convinced by the doctor’s assertion that staying where she was and reviewing the situation tomorrow was the best course of action in Lucy’s case.
He had been proved right and Santiago had been ready to admit as much this morning. The doctor deserved an apology and he respected the fact the other man had not rolled over and said yes sir—a response that Santiago encountered all too often.
The doctor’s response to his apology had been a good-natured shrug.
‘I’ve been called worse and threatened with worse,’ he’d said. ‘Though not from anyone who looked quite so capable of carrying through with the threats,’ he’d admitted with a rueful roll of his eyes. ‘It’s hard for people to be objective when they are emotionally involved.’
Santiago had been midway through assuring the man that he was not in any way emotionally involved with the patient, that in point of fact he barely knew the woman, when he had realised that, the more he protested, the more he sounded like someone in denial.
He had let the subject drop.
‘She’s been asleep for hours and hours.’ Gabby relinquished her perch on the bed but only took one step towards the door before her curiosity got the better of her. ‘And the doctor says that no one can catch anything. You’re not … contagious …?’ She glanced towards her father, who nodded. ‘And all we need to do is maintain …’ Again the glance. ‘Basic good hygiene.’
‘Basic good hygiene. Did you really ride Santana?’
Lucy’s eyes flew guiltily to Santiago and she discovered with a little shocking thrill that he was staring at her. Guilty heat poured into her face. ‘I … it was a … mistake.’
‘And you fell off?’
Take it like a man, Lucy, she told herself. ‘Yes, I fell off.’ Some people might call it bad luck and some, she thought, flashing a glance to the silent man before her, might call it what I deserved.
‘Did it hurt?’
‘Not much.’
‘But you didn’t die. I’m glad.’
Amused by the solemn little girl and her apparent fixation on the gruesome details of the accident, Lucy smiled and said, ‘It was nothing.’
‘People do die falling off horses,’ the girl replied matter-of-factly. ‘My mamá did.’
Lucy’s horrified intake of breath sounded loud in the silent room.
CHAPTER NINE
‘SHE was dead when Papá found her—’
This casual revelation drew another exclamation from an unprepared Lucy before Santiago, his deep voice calm and wiped of any hint of emotion, cut across his daughter.
‘Gabby, leave Miss Fitzgerald in peace. You can interrogate her later.’
Lucy’s eyes flew to his face. In profile his expression was veiled, nothing other than the suggestion of tension in the muscles along his firm jaw to suggest they were discussing a tragedy.
Tears started in her eyes as an empathic shudder ran through her body … to lose his wife in a senseless accident and to discover her body … A bone-deep chill settled on Lucy as she realised what he must have thought when he found her … Oh, God, to have it all brought back … and I thought he was overreacting!
He was a tough man, but even steel had weaknesses.
The horrid realisation that she had been the catalyst for bringing back heaven knew what sort of nightmarish memories made her feel like an utterly selfish … And it was her fault and why …?
She had known it was wrong and she had done it anyway.
‘But, Papá, I …’ The girl met her father’s eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘All right, but I was only—’
‘Say goodbye to Miss Fitzgerald, Gabriella.’
‘Goodbye, Miss Fitzgerald,’ she trotted out obediently.
‘Goodbye, Gabby.’ No mystery why Santiago’s parenting skills veered towards the overprotective!
The child threw a half smile at Lucy over her shoulder before she left the room, dragging her feet with exaggerated reluctance.
Lucy half expected him to follow his daughter out, but instead Santiago moved into the room, closing the door behind him.
‘Your wife died …’ Lucy began awkwardly. ‘The circumstances … I didn’t know …’
His shoulders lifted. ‘There is no reason you should know.’ Subtitles were not required to read the silent addition of back off!
‘So you are feeling better?’ His eyes touched the purple smudges beneath her eyes. ‘The lab results on Ramon have confirmed the strain of bug … You have been relatively
lucky. They have kept him in to rule out any complications.’
Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘Complications?’
‘Apparently there have been rare cases when the kidneys are affected. It is only a precaution. The doctor will be here to see you shortly. In the meantime just ring the bell.’ He nodded to the old-fashioned arrangement above the bed and Lucy visualised it ringing in the nether regions of the place—she had no intention of using it or of staying in bed.
‘In the meantime I am instructed to tell you to take plenty of fluids.’
It would be a brave person who instructed him to do anything. ‘That’s very … kind of you.’ Kind was not a word she had ever imagined using in relation to this autocratic man but he had been, and she had not exactly been grateful. ‘But totally not necessary. I’m fine. If someone could bring my clothes—’ holding back her hair with one hand, she pulled back the covers ‘—I’ll—’
‘You’re weak as a kitten,’ he said, placing a finger on her chest that sent her back against the pillows. Pulling back the bed covers, he leaned in to tuck them around her, affording Lucy a smell of the soap he had used mingled with the warm male smell of him.
‘You can’t keep me here against my will!’
He nodded his head. ‘True, I can’t, always assuming of course that I would want to.’ His amused glance travelled over her rigid figure, making Lucy painfully aware of how awful she must look … Several steps down from dragged through a hedge was clearly no temptation … not that she wanted to tempt him.
He took a step back and nodded towards the door. ‘Feel free to go back to the finca if you wish.’ Bowing his head, he made a sweeping gesture of invitation.
Suspicious of the easy victory—why the sudden climb down?—she viewed him through narrowed blue eyes and didn’t move.
‘I’m sure Harriet will drag herself out of her own sickbed to look after you.’
‘Harriet!’ In the act of tossing her hair back in defiance, Lucy froze, her beautiful features melting into a horrified mask of dismay. She had not given her friend a single thought.
Though tempted to torment her a little more, he soothed, ‘Do not worry.’ She looked ready to leap out of bed there and then, which would probably result in her collapsing. She looked, he decided, as weak as a day-old chick. ‘Harriet is being taken care of. A man is seeing to the animals and a girl from the village is helping out in the house.’
‘You did that?’
‘Harriet is my tenant. It is my responsibility … Had I known of her accident I would have arranged for help until she was on her feet.’
‘And I wouldn’t have come. We would never have met.’
Santiago contemplated the afternoon sun that was pooling on the dark wood beneath his feet and grunted. ‘In a perfect world,’ he agreed, thinking how much simpler his life had been a few short days ago.
He had said many worse things to her but strangely this hurt more than any of the others. It was not even a rebuke, it was just a rather obvious statement of fact—she had caused him nothing but trouble, had gone out of her way to do so.
‘You’re crying?’ Santiago had always had a cynical attitude to female tears. At best they were irritating, at worst manipulative. His usual response was to walk away or ignore them.
For some reason he found himself able to do neither.
‘No!’ she said, sounding insulted by the suggestion. ‘I’m fine.’ She sniffed, sticking out her chin and looking anything but. ‘And I’m sorry to have been a nuisance and put everyone to so much trouble.’
He shrugged. ‘I think that as my brother poisoned you it was the least we could do.’
Lucy’s eyes went wide as she blurted the question that she couldn’t get out of her head. ‘She wasn’t riding Santana, was she?’
Santiago tensed, his body stiffening before he vented a hard laugh. ‘Magdalena was afraid of horses.’ It turned out that she was more afraid of his bad opinion. ‘All horses. She would not have gone into the same stable as Santana. The mare she was on broke a leg in the fall and had to be put down.’
‘But if she was afraid—?’ She broke off, colouring. ‘Sorry, it’s none of my—’
‘You want to know why my wife was riding if she hated horses?’ His voice was harsh. ‘It is a fair question,’ he conceded with a tight nod of his dark head. ‘She went out riding because I said she should conquer her fears. I told her she should suck it up and stop being pathetic.’
His thoughts flew back to the incident that had preceded the tragedy; over the years he had replayed it innumerable times.
It had been Gabby’s birthday. The previous day he had cleared his calendar to be part of the celebrations, cancelled a series of important meetings and had been feeling pretty smug about taking his paternal responsibilities seriously. Apparently he took his husbandly ones, in light of the subsequent events, much less so.
Magdalena was a great organiser and the party had been a big hit for everyone except his daughter, who had spent the day watching wistfully as her friends clambered on the bouncy castle and sat on the back of the placid Shetland pony while it was led around the garden.
When he had asked her if she wanted a turn she had shook her head. ‘It’s very dangerous. Mamá says I might get hurt.’
When he had carried her onto the bouncy castle her terrified sobs had been so pathetic that he’d had to remove her. He had known then that situation could no longer be ignored.
That evening he had confronted Magdalena, too angry to be tactful or gentle, accusing her of infecting their once-fearless daughter with her own insecurities and fears … He had shouted her down when she had protested that it was her duty to protect her child from danger.
‘Danger! You think a lollipop represents danger,’ he had mocked angrily. ‘I will not have our daughter grow up to be a woman who is afraid of her own shadow.’
‘A woman like me?’
The silence had stretched—they had had this conversation before, or a version of it, many times, and it was at this point where he rushed in to comfort her, but this time he had held back. He had previously told her everything would be all right and the situation had not improved; if anything it had deteriorated.
So Santiago, still angry with himself as much as her for allowing the situation to continue, had hardened his heart to the appeal in her eyes, ignored her quivering lip and said angrily, ‘Yes.’
When they had married Santiago had been convinced that with his support and freed from her parents’ oppressive influence his timid wife would blossom. He had seen himself as the noble hero Magdalena had thought him.
His lip curled into a contemptuous smile. He had thought it would be easy but in those days he had imagined that love could conquer all, that he could mould Magdalena into the woman he had known she could be.
In reality the gentle timidity that had originally drawn him to her and aroused his strongly developed protective instincts had begun to irritate him.
In retrospect he could see that his disenchantment had begun after Gabby had been born. He had always believed that a mother should be a strong role model for a daughter, but it had seemed to him that the only things Magdalena was passing on to their child were a lack of confidence and a whole host of phobias.
‘She was doing what she thought I wanted,’ he told Lucy now. And you are having this conversation why, Santiago? And with the woman your brother is sleeping with, of all people. ‘Magdalena wanted to please me and it killed her—I killed her.’
And you, she thought, have been punishing yourself ever since … This was a side of Santiago Silva that she had never seen. Part of her way of coping with this man was listing him under the heading of inhuman—the suggestion he had normal vulnerabilities made her feel uneasy.
‘If that were true you would be in prison,’ she offered in a level voice. ‘It was a terrible tragic accident,’ she added, refusing to offer him the condemnation he appeared to be inviting.
‘Accidents cannot be predic
ted.’ And neither, it seemed, could her response—he’d thought he could have relied on her to take advantage of the chink in his armour.
The self-loathing in his voice made her wince. ‘What do you want me to say—that it was your fault?’
‘I do not wish you to say anything.’ She could have legitimately asked why he had introduced the subject, but she didn’t. After a quick glance at his face she reached for the crystal water jug, not anticipating the weight of it. Her wrist trembled, sending an ice cube skidding across the polished surface of the bedside table.
With a grunt Santiago took it from her hand, his fingers brushing hers. The contact was light but the response of her nerve endings was anything but … It zigzagged through her body like an internal lightning bolt.
‘Let me—you’ll have the place drenched.’
She watched from under her lashes, nursing her still-tingling fingers against her chest as he filled her glass with a steady hand.
‘You have a lovely daughter,’ she said, turning the conversation into a less painful topic. ‘She is back home?’
‘An extended summer break. My lovely daughter has been excluded from school … again. However I’m sure my daughter’s schooling is of no interest to you.’ Women who were ruled by self-interest were rarely interested in any subject that did not directly affect them.
Self-interest has her living in a primitive farmhouse, acting as unpaid labour and nursemaid?
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN the doctor called a few minutes later Lucy was feeling so wretched that she was not surprised when he said that the bug she had contracted was a particularly virulent strain. In fact, she almost retorted—yes, the Santini Strain!
Lucy, who had been hoping for permission to leave, was dismayed when he announced he wanted her to stay in bed until the next day and after that he would review the situation.