Santiago's Command

CHAPTER TWO

A FAMILIAR cold, clammy fist tightened in the pit of Lucy’s stomach as she felt her expression freeze over. She cursed herself for being surprised that anyone would recognise her here in Spain; like they said, it was a small world and, with the advent of social networking, even smaller.

It didn’t matter how many times she told herself that what total strangers chose to think about her was their problem, not hers, it still hurt, and it made her angry that the stares and contemptuous comments had the power to make her want to crawl away into a corner and hide, which according to some was exactly what she had been doing for four years.

Pride enabled her to lift her chin and train her level stare at his face. She was not going to hide any more; she had done nothing wrong. The gagging injunction was long gone; there was no longer anything stopping her telling her side. Nothing but the stubborn conviction that as the innocent victim she shouldn’t have to explain to anyone; after all, the people that mattered had never believed any of the lies that had been printed about her.

‘If I’d known how warm, charming and welcoming the natives were I would have made it here sooner,’ she said, flashing him a smile of saccharine-sweet insincerity and having the satisfaction of seeing his jaw tighten in annoyance.

‘And how long are you thinking of staying?’

‘Why? Are you planning on running me out of town, sheriff?’ she mocked, adopting a mock-Western drawl.

He responded to her levity with another stony stare. On the receiving end, Lucy found the level of his relentless hostility frankly bewildering.

God, does this man need to get a life!

Her story was old news and even if he believed she was as bad as they had painted her, which in truth was pretty bad, it hardly explained an antipathy that seemed … personal?

‘I shouldn’t joke—you probably can.’

She had the impression that all this man had to do was snap his fingers and the locals would be lining up to be part of a run-her-out-of-town posse, less a form of mob mentality and more mass hypnotism.

She wasn’t seeing much evidence of it but it was clear the man exerted some sort of weird charismatic control locally … either that or there was something in the water. In the time she had been here Lucy had heard the name Santiago Silva with monotonous regularity in the area. You couldn’t buy a loaf of bread without hearing someone sing the praises of this paragon, which, considering he was a banker—a fairly universally despised animal these days—seemed pretty amazing to Lucy.

Their comments had built an image of someone very different from the man standing there looking down his autocratic nose at her. He did not look remotely like the warm, caring person she’d heard described, but he did look every inch the autocratic feudal throwback who expected people to bow and scrape.

‘You have met my brother.’ He arched an ebony brow.

A mystified Lucy began to shake her head, then the penny dropped.

Her eyes widened. ‘Ramon.’ Who had rung the finca just before she left that morning inviting her to dinner at the castillo. Wow, was she glad she’d said no to this opportunity to meet his brother … the sort of social event nightmares were made of if this taster was any indicator! Stiff and starchy now, imagine how he’d look in a tie—besides beautiful. Lucy gave her head a little shake to dispel this image.

It was not so surprising she hadn’t seen the connection straight off; Ramon had none of the autocratic arrogance of his unpleasant brother. He was actually a really sweet boy who had gone out of his way to help when they had been stranded in the clinic car park the day after she arrived. He’d been a hero, administering first aid to Harriet’s ancient car.

Since then he had called twice at the finca, the last time, she recalled with a smile, he had helped her catch one of the donkeys before the vet arrived, falling flat on his face in the dust and dirt at one point and ruining his lovely suit. It was hard to believe he was related to this man.

‘You will not meet him again.’ The comment was delivered in a soft, almost conversational tone that was in stark variance to the menace it conveyed.

Lucy shook her head, genuinely bewildered by the turn this conversation was taking. Was this about her refusing the invitation to dinner at the big house? Had she committed some sort of social faux pas?

The possibility bothered her for Harriet’s sake. Her friend had made a lot of effort to fit in so she felt her way cautiously. ‘I won’t?’

‘No, Miss Fitzgerald, you will not.’

‘Is Ramon going away?’

‘No, you are going away.’

Lucy’s patience snapped. ‘Will you stop being so damned enigmatic and spit it out? Just what are you trying to say?’

He cut across her in a voice that felt like an icy shower. ‘For someone who is clearly a clever woman you have not done your research. Until he is twenty-five, my brother has no access to his trust fund unless I approve it, and I will not. The lifestyle my brother enjoys now is totally at my discretion.’

‘Poor Ramon,’ she said, feeling sorry for Ramon but not totally sure why his brother should think the information was of interest to her.

‘So you will be wasting your time.’

‘My time to waste,’ she responded, still without the faintest idea what this discussion was about.

The flippancy brought his teeth together in a snarling white smile. ‘I suggest you cut your losses and move on to a more profitable … subject.’

Totally at sea now, Lucy shook her head. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ she was forced to admit.

Irritated by this display of innocence, Santiago twisted his expressive mouth in a grimace of fastidious distaste. Sensing his master’s mood, the animal at his side pawed the ground and snorted.

Without thinking Lucy responded, moving forward, her hand outstretched to soothe the animal, only to be blocked by the horse’s tall rider.

‘He does not like strangers.’ His concern was for his mount, not the stupid woman who clearly knew nothing about horses.

‘Just now I’m identifying with him.’

Santiago was tempted to respond to the challenge gleaming in her blue eyes—the colour was so extraordinary it amounted to an assault on the senses. Instead, he made a decision. ‘I want a quick resolution of this situation.’

The solution was not desirable—every cell in his body craved revenge and he was going to reward her but … He breathed a deep sigh, accepting that there were occasions when a man had to do what was necessary as opposed to what was right. He didn’t have to like it though.

‘If you leave immediately I will cover your expenses.’ The resort hotel in the locality was aimed at the high end of the market as it was the only accommodation in the area, barring a couple of rural bed-and-breakfast establishments. He could not imagine the likes of Lucy Fitzgerald roughing it in some rustic retreat—it seemed safe to assume she was a guest at the hotel.

Lucy nodded solemnly and drawled, ‘Generous …’ Then gave a little laugh and angled a quizzical look at his face. ‘But do you think you could give me a clue? I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

He clicked his tongue irritably. ‘Move on, Lucy, you’ve done innocent and you give a first-class performance, but it tends to pall.’

She pulled herself up to her full height. In most company, even without shoes, that gave her an advantage, but not over this man. Ramon’s brother was … Her narrowed glance moved up from his feet—the man was six four easy, possibly more and not an ounce of surplus fat on any of it. He was all hard bone and muscle and enough testosterone to light up the planet.

‘My friends call me Lucy.’

‘Of which you have many, I am sure,’ he cut back smoothly.

Lucy grated her teeth. She had never considered herself a violent person but this man was making her discover new things about herself.

‘Expenses and a one-off payment.’ His lips curled. What was the going rate for a woman like her these days? ‘But only,’ he warned, ‘if you leave immediately.’

‘You want to pay me to leave where exactly?’

‘The country and my brother.’

Lucy breathed in and played back the conversation in her head. She could almost hear the sound of the penny dropping. On the outward breath an explosive of anger dumped bucketloads of neat adrenaline into her bloodstream. Lucy saw red, quite literally, she blinked and, still seeing everything through a shimmering red heat haze, linked her badly shaking hands together.

‘Let me get this straight. You are offering to pay me to stay away from your brother? I’m curious just how much—no, don’t tell me, I might be tempted.’

He did and her eyes widened. ‘Wow, you must really think I’m dangerous!’

A nerve pumped beneath the golden-toned skin of his lean cheek but he didn’t react to her comment. ‘This sum is not negotiable,’ he emphasised. ‘You must walk away—’ He stopped, brows knitting into frustrated lines above his dark eyes. ‘What are you doing?’

She paused and threw a look over her shoulder, sticking out one hip to balance the bag she had slung over the other shoulder. ‘What am I doing?’ She gave a laugh and fixed him with a glittering smile. ‘I would have thought that was obvious, Mr Silva—this is me walking. I like walking but nobody has ever offered to pay me for it except for charity. Give me your number and I’ll give you a bell the next time I do the marathon.’

He looked so astonished that this time her laugh was genuine.

Santiago watched her make her way up the dusty track, an expression of baffled frustration etched on his handsome face. He had pitched his offer high deliberately; he had allowed for the possibility she might try and negotiate the figure up, but her outright refusal had been an option he had not even considered.

With a gritted oath he vaulted into the saddle and turned his horse in the opposite direction to that she had taken.

It was not until his temper had cooled and he had slowed to a canter that it occurred to him that he had no idea what she had been doing there in the middle of nowhere. The only inhabited building within a two-mile radius was the place he had leased to the English academic who had started up, of all things, a donkey sanctuary.

It would be difficult to imagine two women with less in common, so ruling out that left—what …? Could she have been waiting for someone? In that lonely spot … no … unless … she had been meeting someone and they had required privacy?

By the time the horse had reached the castillo gates the conviction that he had stumbled onto a lovers’ tryst, that she had been waiting for his half-brother, had become a firm conviction.

His brother was not behaving rationally. Santiago saw those electric-blue eyes in his head and he felt his anger towards his sibling subside. He doubted Ramon was the only man unable to act rationally around Lucy Fitzgerald, who was unable to see past her smouldering sexuality, the only man willing to ignore the truth in order to possess that body, but fortunately for Ramon he was not one of them.

Did she think she had won?

Beneath him Santana responded to the light kick of encouragement and broke into a gallop; to catch a thief one had to adopt the same ruthless methods they did.

Literally shaking with fury, Lucy made the last stage of her journey in record time. She paused at the finca door to compose herself. As satisfying as it would have been to vent her feelings on the subject of Santiago Silva, the last thing her friend needed right now was the news that her house guest had had a run in with him.

Harriet would feel obligated to defend her and she could not see that going down well with her feudal despot of a landlord, who would, she thought scornfully, quite likely feel perfectly justified evicting anyone who disagreed with him. He was just the type of small-minded bully who enjoyed wielding the power he had inherited!

No, the best thing all around, she realised, was not to mention the incident at all—and why should she? He had no idea that she was staying with Harriet and so long as she stayed out of his way and she didn’t darken his doorstep with her presence—a treat she felt happy to miss out on—unless fate was very unkind she would never have to set eyes on the wretched man again.

Taking comfort from the knowledge, she took a deep breath, pasted on a smile and patted her cheeks. Her eyes widened as she felt the dampness there. God, Santiago Silva had achieved what a media army had failed to do—he had made her cry.

Harriet, normally uncomfortably observant, had not noticed the tear stains, which suggested that her white-faced friend was suffering a lot more than the mild discomfort she claimed after literally hopping out to the stables during Lucy’s absence to check on an elderly donkey.

Lucy banned Harriet from attempting any more stunts and hustled her back to bed for a nap. The other woman looked so much better when she rose later that midway through the next morning Lucy suggested another nap and the older woman did not resist the idea.

Lucy decided to use the time to take hay to animals in the scrubby lower pasture. As she walked through the field buzzing with bees and chirruping crickets she became aware of a distant noise disturbing the quiet. As she distributed the feed to the animals who clustered around her the noise got perceptibly closer until … Lucy started and the animals ran at the sound of a loud crash followed by a silence that seemed horribly ominous.

Recovering her wits, Lucy dropped the hay she was holding and ran in the opposite direction to the agitated braying herd. Seconds later, panting, she reached the rise of the slight incline that hid the dirt track below from view and saw the cause of the explosive sound.

Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh, God!’

One of the modern four-wheel quad bikes was lying at an angle, the front end in a ditch and the back wheels hidden beneath a tangle of scrub that the vehicle had dragged up as it slid off the stony path.

A quick scan revealed no immediate sign of the driver. Had he been thrown clear?

There was no time to speculate. Lucy hit the ground running, scrambling down the rocky incline and raising a cloud of dust from the dry ground. She reached the accident in a matter of seconds, though it felt like a lifetime. There was still no sign of the driver and she couldn’t hear anything, but then it was difficult to hear anything above the thundering of her heart in her ears, even her own fearful cry of—

‘Is there anyone …? Are you all right?’

‘No, I’m not all right. I’m …’ A flood of tearful-sounding Spanish preceded a small grunt that was followed by a deep sigh before the young voice added in flawless, barely accented English, ‘I’m stuck. Give me a pull, will you?’

Lucy saw the small hand—a child’s—appear from beneath the upturned quad bike. She dropped to her knees, her hair brushing the ground as she bent her head to peer underneath. The driver appeared to be a dark-haired young girl.

‘It’s probably not a good idea to move until—’

‘I’ve already moved. I’m not hurt. It’s just my jacket is caught—’ The girl gave a small yelp followed by a heartfelt ‘Finally!’ as she dragged herself out from under the quad bike, emerging beside Lucy looking dusty, in one piece and with nothing but a bloody scrape on the cheek of her heart-shaped face to show for her experience—at least nothing else visible. Lucy remained cautious as the girl, who looked to be around ten or eleven, pulled herself into a sitting position and began to laugh.

‘Wow!’ Her eyes shone with exhilaration, a reaction that made Lucy think, God, I’m getting old. But then, though she’d had her share of her own youthful misadventures, they had had less to do with her being an adrenaline junkie and more to do with her need to please her father and compete with the legendary exploits of her elder siblings.

‘That was quite something.’

‘I’d call it a lucky escape.’ Lucy got to her feet and held out her hand. ‘Look, there’s no reception here but I really think you should see a doctor to get checked out.’

The girl sprang to her feet energetically, ignoring the extended hand. ‘No, I’m fine, I’m …’ She stopped, the animation draining from her face as the condition of the overturned vehicle seemed to hit her for the first time. ‘Is there any way we could get this back on the road, do you think?’

Lucy shook her head in response to the wistful question. ‘I doubt it. I think you should sit down …?’ Before you fall down, she thought, studying the young girl’s pale face.

‘Oh, I am in so much trouble. When my dad sees this he’ll hit the ceiling. I’m not really meant to ride on this thing … but then I’m not really meant to do anything that is any fun. Do you know what it feels like to have someone act as though you can’t even fasten your own shoelace?’

Lucy’s lips twitched. ‘No, I don’t.’ If she’d had a penny for every time her dad had said, ‘Don’t whinge, Lucy, just get on with it,’ she would have been able to retire before she hit ten.

‘That’s why I’m home now, because my dad dragged me away from school. Not that I care. I hate school—he’s the one who’s always saying how important education is.’

Lucy, who thought so, too, adopted a sympathetic expression as the girl paused for breath, but didn’t interrupt as the youthful driver continued in the same if-I-don’t-get-it-off-my-chest-now-I’ll-explode style.

‘And Amelie didn’t even have it!’

‘Have what?’ Lucy, struggling to keep up, asked.

‘Meningitis.’

Lucy’s brows went up. ‘Your school friend has meningitis?’

‘No, she doesn’t have it, I just said so, and she’s not my friend. I have no friends.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘It’s true, and with a father like mine is it any wonder? He wouldn’t let me go on the skiing trip and everyone was going and now, after the head told all the parents that there is no cause for concern, that Amelie didn’t have meningitis at all, it was just a virus, what does he do?’

Lucy shook her head, finding she was genuinely curious to know what this much-maligned but clearly caring parent had done.

‘Does he listen? No …’ she said, pausing in the flow of confidences to turn her bitter gaze on Lucy. ‘He lands his helicopter right there in the middle of the lunch break with everyone watching and whisks me off after giving the head an earful. Can you imagine?’

Lucy, who could, bit her quivering lip. ‘That must have been dramatic.’

‘It was mortifying and now he says I have to go back and there’s only two weeks to the end of term.’

‘What does your mother say?’

‘She’s dead.’ She stopped, her eyes going round as she turned to face the vehicle hurtling at speed down the hill towards them. It came to a halt with a squeal of brakes feet away from them.

I should have known, Lucy thought as the tall, unmistakeable figure of Santiago Silva exploded from the driver’s seat.

He had seen the overturned quad bike from the top of the hill seconds before he saw Gabby. In those seconds he had lived the nightmare that haunted his dreams. For a terrible moment he could feel the weight of his daughter’s lifeless body in his arms the same way he had felt her mother’s—it was his job to keep her safe and he had failed.

Then he saw her, recognised even at a distance the familiar defiant stance, and the guilt and grief were replaced by immense relief, which in its turn was seamlessly swallowed up by a wave of savage anger. An anger that quickly shifted focus when he identified the tall blonde-haired figure beside his daughter.

He should have known that she would be involved!

He approached with long angry strides, looking like some sort of avenging dark angel—the fallen variety. Lucy didn’t blame the kid for looking terrified. She gave the shaking child’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. Really, she should have guessed when the child had started talking casually about helicopters, but she hadn’t. For some reason she hadn’t thought about Santiago Silva as married, let alone a widow, or a father! It was still a struggle to think of him as any of these things, as was maintaining her smile as he approached.

Yesterday she had been conscious that where this man was concerned the veneer of civilisation was pretty thin; right now it was non-existent. He was scary but also, she admitted as she felt a little shiver trace a path down her rigid spine, pretty magnificent!

He swept straight past her, but not before Lucy had felt the icy blast of the glittering stare that dashed over her face.

She watched as he placed his hands on his daughter’s shoulders and squatted until he was at face level with her.

‘Gabby, you …’ Torn between a desire to throttle his wilful daughter and crush her in a bear hug, he took a deep breath. Feeling like a hopelessly inadequate parent, he searched her face and asked brusquely, ‘You are hurt?’

Even Lucy, who was extremely unwilling to assign any normal human emotions to this awful man, could not deny the rough concern in his deep voice was genuine.

‘I’m fine, Papá. She—’ the little girl cast a smile in Lucy’s direction ‘—helped me.’

‘Not really.’

For a moment his burning eyes met hers, then, a muscle along his clean shaven jaw clenching, he turned away, rising to his feet with a graceful fluidity that caused Lucy’s oversensitive stomach to flip.