Santiago's Command

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?’