by Kim Lawrence
Didn’t women tell each other everything? He had certainly always operated on this principle, never confiding in bed anything he did not want repeated, but it appeared Lucy was an exception.
He excused himself as quickly as he could politely do so and went back to retrieve his daughter.
Gabby was perched on the rail around the animal stall, watching with starry eyes the newborn foal and mother. Sometimes the overwhelming love he felt for his daughter hit him, rendering him speechless, like a bolt from the blue. This was one of those times—it made all the sleepless nights of worry worth it.
Lucy sensed his presence courtesy of the hairs on the back of her neck before Gabby did. The expression in his beautiful eyes as he watched his daughter brought a lump to Lucy’s throat … She felt almost an intruder on a private moment, but before she could look away he turned his head.
Their glances locked.
‘That’s what I want to be.’
The sound of Gabby’s happy voice broke the spell that had held Lucy mesmerised. She realised her hands were shaking and pushed them into her pockets, watching as Santiago ruffled his daughter’s hair and teased, ‘A donkey?’
Gabby rolled her eyes. ‘No, a vet, silly!’
‘I’m sure you can be anything you wish, but for now I think we should be getting back and leaving mother and baby in peace.’
‘Must we?’
‘We must.’
Gabby sighed. ‘All right.’ She ran to Lucy and hugged her.
Not sure what Santiago’s reaction to this spontaneous display of affection might be, she didn’t look at him as she hugged Gabby lightly back. Did her undefined role allow for such familiarities?
‘And you will come to dinner tonight, won’t you?’
This time Lucy did look at Santiago, hoping to convey with her helpless expression that this had not been at her instigation.
‘I invited Lucy to dinner,’ Gabby announced importantly. ‘So I see.’
Lucy could read nothing in his expression. ‘I think I’m—’ Santiago’s drawl cut across her. ‘Good idea.’
‘It is?’ she said, startled.
Santiago delivered one of his silky smooth smiles. ‘I wish it had been mine …’ His experience of relationships that involved anything more than sex was rusty, to put it mildly. ‘Then shall we say seven for half past?’
Her thoughts spinning in circles of speculation, Lucy nodded. ‘Fine.’
‘I really like Lucy,’ his daughter confided as they walked across the yard.
So do I … His forehead pleated in a frown. ‘You do know that Lucy has a life of her own—that she won’t be here for ever, Gabby.’ A life that did not involve him.
‘Why?’
‘Well, because …’ He stopped. ‘She just does.’ Beside him Gabby skipped. ‘But not for ages yet.’
‘No, not for ages yet.’
When she arrived for dinner at the appointed time it was Josef that showed her into the salon and poured her a glass of wine. She was nursing it when Gabby bounced in.
‘I need your help!’ she said dramatically.
‘So you had an ulterior motive for your invitation.’
‘This is serious—I’m talking about my future!’
‘Sorry,’ Lucy said with suitable gravity.
‘I hate my school.’
‘You mentioned.’
Gabby frowned at the interruption. ‘And I don’t want to go back next semester. I’ve been doing some research and I think this is the solution.’ She dropped a glossy brochure in Lucy’s lap. ‘It’s only a half-hour drive, five minutes by helicopter and I could be a weekday border.’
‘You seem to have it all sorted.’
‘They have an excellent academic record plus a brilliant art department, which is important because that’s what I’m going to be, if I’m not a vet … but we won’t tell Papá that bit yet. Just emphasise the academic stuff and tell him that I miss him like mad, ‘cos I do.’
‘We …?’
‘Well, you really, he won’t listen to me but he—’
‘Oh, no, Gabby, I’d love to help but I can’t. This is between your dad and you. He wouldn’t like it if I got involved.’
Gabby’s bottom lip began to quiver. ‘Please,’ she said, channelling beaten puppy.
‘I wish I could, Gabby, but you should talk to your dad.’
‘What should she talk to her dad about?’
Lucy closed her eyes and swore softly under her breath. This was getting to be a habit—she was going to put a damned bell around his neck!
His daughter snatched the brochure from Lucy’s lap and threw it at her father. ‘I know you’ll say no, but just so as you know my life is ruined!’ On this quivering note she ran from the room.
‘What was that about?’ Santiago asked, picking up the brochure. His frown deepened as he read the title page. ‘How did she find out about St Mary’s?’
‘Find out?’
‘St Mary’s is one of the two schools I’ve whittled it down to. Well, it was obvious the other place didn’t suit Gabby,’ he said in response to Lucy’s look of surprise, ‘so I’ve been looking at alternatives and this one is close enough for her to be a weekly border.’
‘Sounds perfect,’ said Lucy, biting her quivering lip. ‘How’s the art department?’
‘Exceptional as it happens. What,’ he asked, walking up to take Lucy by the shoulders, ‘was all that about?’
‘Girls that age have hormones.’
‘Dios!’ He gulped, looking horrified.
‘Nothing a little talk can’t smooth over.’
‘Later. You are looking very lovely this evening.’ His eyes were slow to rise from her cleavage. ‘And I, too, have hormones.’ His hormones were telling him to rip off her clothes and throw her down on the rug. His appetite for her remained unquenchable. ‘We’re not eating for a while …’ he murmured.
Lucy was already shaking with desire. ‘You have to go and talk to Gabby.’
He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair, casting one last wistful look at her mouth. ‘I know … I always seem to say the wrong thing.’
The rueful confidence made her lips twitch. ‘You’re a great dad, Santiago,’ she said, wondering how she could ever have thought otherwise.
‘I am?’
She nodded. ‘And Gabby is lovely, but she will make mistakes and it won’t automatically be your fault.’
Aware that he was watching her with an odd expression, and wondering if he was about to warn her she had stepped over the invisible line she was always conscious of when it came to Gabby, she was amazed when he said, ‘One day you’ll make a great mother.’
But not for your children! The strength of her sadness was almost incapacitating.
‘Wish me luck and remember where we were.’
‘Good luck.’ She managed to hold back the tears until he had left.
When he returned her smile was in place until he kissed it away.
Lucy emerged from the kiss feeling beautifully ravaged and breathless and, as it turned out, not at all hungry—for dinner at least.
Instead, she took his hand and without a word led him to the secret panel and her own personal stairway to heaven.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘GIANNI and Miranda. It’s a family wedding.’ Lucy regarded the top of his dark head with frustration. ‘Have you been listening to anything I have said?’
Santiago closed the lid of his laptop with slow deliberation and turned his narrow-eyed stare towards the figure by the window. Her attention was directed to the dog who had thrown himself down at her feet.
‘That animal should not be indoors. You encourage him.’
Lucy patted the animal and pulled a face. ‘Rules are made to be broken.’
‘Rules are there to make things function smoothly.’ She smiled and for a moment he forgot to breathe. She was backlit by the sun shining in through the window; the light picked out the silver highlights in her glorious ash-b
londe hair and he felt his chest tighten … She was the most beautiful and desirable woman he had ever seen.
‘So you are leaving this morning?’ he said slowly. For the past week he had been convinced that there was something she was hiding from him. Was it this trip, he speculated, and if so why?
His brows twitched into a dark line of disapproval. He was already not in the best of moods as a direct consequence of Lucy spending the previous night, not in his bed, but at the finca. This surprise she had dropped on him did not improve it, though it did reveal why she had refused to stay the night. Presumably she had been packing for her trip, a trip she had not even mentioned until it was imminent. His frown deepened in direct proportion to his suspicions.
‘I’ll be back on Friday before the big day.’
‘Big day?’
‘Harriet has the plaster off next Monday and we planned to celebrate.’ The bottle of champagne was on ice and after that there would be no reason for her to stay.
It was something that on a day-to-day basis she tried very hard not to think about. After all, why ruin the pretty near-perfect present? Since that day weeks ago now there had been no mention of the ‘review’. Lucy knew from something Ramon had let slip before he left that Santiago ended all his relationships with a gift … Was his review shorthand for some shiny piece of bling? If so she would, she decided, throw it back at him.
‘So soon?’
She couldn’t leave.
Half of him resented the pressure to face up to his feelings, yet half of him welcomed the push. He had spent the past weeks enjoying the present and dodging the issue of the future. A future he had never imagined sharing with a woman and now, forced by her shock announcement to do so, he was horrified to realise that he could not imagine a future that did not have Lucy in it.
Losing Lucy would be like losing a limb, losing a vital part of him … the better part!
‘So soon’ had been pretty much Lucy’s own reaction when she had seen the day circled on the calendar.
‘Not soon—it’s almost two months.’
Two months of going to sleep with her in his arms, hearing her voice every day and night. The thought of not … Santiago took a deep breath, every fibre of his being rejecting the idea utterly.
A silence followed her words.
What did you expect, Lucy? she mocked herself. That he’d suddenly discover that he couldn’t live without you …? That he’d beg you to stay with him?
She knew that for Santiago this had only ever been about sex. It had started out that way for her, too, but she could have sworn that over the past weeks it had changed, yet he never acknowledged the fact while she had foolishly allowed herself to dream and hope.
‘I think Harriet will be relieved. She’s resorted to throwing things on the floor to make it seem homely. She calls me a neat freak.’ Her laugh sounded almost realistic.
‘You are getting better,’ he murmured. ‘You no longer leap out of bed after we have made love to neatly fold your clothes.’
Do not read anything into it, cautioned the voice in her head, but he said made love, not had sex. ‘At what?’ she challenged.
He arched a brow and she blushed, drawing a husky laugh from him. ‘I sometimes forget that you were … still deep down I think you remain the blushing virgin.’
Her eyes fell from his as she tried to hide her disappointment. ‘I really should get going.’
‘You are back Friday?’ he repeated, thinking, That gives you two days to get your act together, Santiago. Two days of hell without Lucy.
She nodded.
‘Two days—it hardly seems worth it.’ Lucy stared—unbelievable!
This from the man who had flown to Australia the previous week, spent two hours at a meeting and had flown all the way back, according to him because he had a heavy schedule that week.
His heavy schedule had not stopped him spending all but one of those nights with her and he had not seemed tired. She pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling the deep muscles clench and quiver. The earthy memory of the afternoon he had returned still had the power to make her skin prickle with heat.
She had been standing in the stables at the finca, leaning on her broom, feeling a glow of satisfaction as she surveyed the results of her labours, when she heard the creak of the large double doors banging closed. Her first thought was, They need oiling. The next was less practical.
As she turned and saw the tall figure whose massive breadth of shoulder seemed to fill the doorway her broom fell with a clatter to the floor. Her hand extended in a fluttery gesture to the silent silhouette.
‘Santiago?’
‘You were expecting someone else?’
In a state of shock, she was incapable of hiding her delight in seeing him. With a cry she ran towards him. Santiago strode to meet her halfway, swinging her off her feet. As their bodies collided his ravening mouth crashed down to claim her lips.
‘Now that is what I call a satisfactory hello,’ he growled when they came up for air.
She searched his face. ‘You look tired.’ Tired but utterly perfect, she thought as her sweeping scan took in the lines of strain bracketing his mouth and radiating from the corners of his incredible eyes.
He lifted a hand to his jaw and grinned. ‘Now you know why I never let you see me without my make-up on.’
‘Funny …’ Lucy’s shriek was in the nature of a token protest as he carried her over to the bales of sweet-smelling hay stacked in an empty stall. Her heart was thudding with anticipation as he laid her down and knelt beside her.
‘This really isn’t appropriate, Santiago …’
‘The mouth … incidentally a delicious mouth,’ he husked, nipping the full pouting curve of her lower lip. ‘The delicious mouth is saying one thing, yet the eyes are saying another … Admit it—you want me here and now.’
If he ever knew how much she was in serious trouble. ‘I’m working—’
The rest of her protest was muffled by his mouth as it moved with sensuous silken pressure over her parted lips.
‘I thought you liked me being inappropriate …?’
The hand that lay on the juncture of her thighs rubbing her through the denim of her jeans was extremely inappropriate; it was also marvellous. ‘I do …’ she admitted with a throaty sigh. ‘I do, but someone might come in and …’
He had shrugged off the suggestion, looking amused. ‘What if they do?’ There was no amusement in his dark eyes as he held her eyes, just predatory intent that sent her pulse rate through the ceiling. Without a word he yanked her up into a sitting position, then, taking the hem of her light cotton sweater in one hand, peeled it over her head in one smooth motion. Slinging it over his shoulder, he continued to stare at her with that same soul-stripping, hot intensity as he unfastened the clip that held her hair at her nape and sank his long fingers into the shiny filaments, spreading the soft silky mesh around her face.
Lucy shivered, not because the air was cold on her skin, but because his eyes were hot.
‘Nice,’ he approved, transferring his scrutiny to the pink lace bra she wore. ‘But this is so much nicer,’ he added, clicking the front fastening and taking a sharp audible intake of breath as her full, firm breasts sprang free from their confinement.
He bent his head and with a groan took one tight pink nipple into his mouth, causing pleasure that bordered pain to rip through her body.
She sank her fingers into his hair and kept his head there against her breasts until they fell back together on the hay.
It had been barely thirty-six hours since they had had sex, yet as they tore at each other’s clothes, their mutual hunger amounted to ravening starvation. He took her as if she were the last drop of water in a desert and he were a man consumed by thirst, driven by it.
And Lucy wanted to be devoured. She wanted to give him what he wanted … to surrender to him and the need thundering through her veins.
Nobody had intruded during the frantic coupling and when later t
hat night she had pointed out his apparent immunity to jet lag he had slid her beneath him in the bed and growled thickly, ‘You are my cure for jet lag.’
‘Is this something you really need to attend?’
The sound of his cranky voice dragged Lucy back to the present. ‘I want to attend. Family is important to me.’
His jaw tightened. And I am not?
Shock rippled across Santiago’s lean face, drawing the skin tight across his perfect bones. He was jealous that she preferred to spend time with her family than him.
She watched, puzzled, as he began to slide the items he had just removed from his briefcase back into it, his expression abstracted. ‘I hope you enjoy yourself,’ he said, sounding strange to Lucy.
She nodded, struggling to sense his mood. ‘I hoped that you would sort out some help for—’
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. ‘Obviously.’ She had not even come to say goodbye; she had come to arrange Harriet’s care.
‘So you are close to this … Gianni?’
She smiled, her face softening. ‘Yes.’
‘Relative—so what is this Gianni? First cousin?’ Santiago had tuned into the affection in her voice and taken an instant dislike to this unknown man.
She was puzzled by the glint in his eyes when he said Gianni’s name. ‘No, actually he’s my nephew, though he’s older than me. His dad is my eldest brother. He’s marrying the girl who is house-sitting for me.’
When Gianni had spoken of Miranda, the stunning petite redhead she had left in charge of her menagerie, Lucy had heard the pride and love in his voice. Her good wishes had been genuine but tinged, if she was honest, with envy.
‘It turns out I’m a matchmaker.’ It was only her own love life she had problems with.
‘So this is something of a whirlwind romance, then?’
Previously Lucy might have agreed with him, but now she knew that when a person fell in love it was not about timing or intention or even desire for it to happen—it just happened. ‘That kind of depends on your definition of whirlwind.’ She picked up her bag, began to move towards the door and stopped, turning back. ‘Actually I was wondering … there are some seats on the flight and my invite is for “and friend” …?’