Don Joaquin's Pride

The Central American rancher dropped down into an athletic crouch and gripped the arms of her chair, making her feel cornered and trapped. Blistering green eyes glittered threat at her. ‘Don’t play stupid with me…I’m not a patient man. There has been no misunderstanding. Accept now that there will be no easy escape from your imprisonment—’

‘Imprisonment?’ Lucy yelped, already recoiling from his menacing proximity. ‘For goodness’ sake…are you threatening me?’

‘Until such time as you choose to sign a legally binding agreement to repay the money you virtually stole from Fidelio you will remain here,’ Joaquin Del Castillo decreed. ‘But you are in no danger of suffering any form of violence. I would not soil my hands with you!’

‘Is that supposed to be reassuring?’ Lucy asked in a very wobbly voice, while she wondered what was wrong with her malfunctioning brain. For on one level she was jerking back from him like some prudish Victorian maiden, and on another level she was staring into those extraordinary green eyes of his and marvelling at their beauty.

‘Do you dare to suggest that I would use physical force on a woman?’ Joaquin demanded in outrage. ‘I…a Del Castillo, stoop to so shameful an act?’

Dry-mouthed, Lucy simply gaped at him. Sizzling eyes the colour of jade were focused on her. All that passion, all that fire, concealed from her and rigorously suppressed throughout their journey. No wonder Joaquin Del Castillo hadn’t been able to manage much in the way of casual conversation! His efforts to conceal that incredibly volatile temperament from her must have been as constraining as a gag.

He sprang fluidly upright again. His bold sun-bronzed features were hard as iron. ‘Mateo remains outside, purely to ensure your safety. There is nothing around you here but mile after empty mile of cattle country. This is a most dangerous and inhospitable terrain for the inexperienced.’

‘You can’t make me stay here,’ Lucy told him dazedly.

He swept up a folded document from the table and extended it. ‘If you sign this, you may leave immediately. Without a signature, you remain.’

Lucy snatched the document from him. Mercifully it was written in English, but it was couched in long-winded legalese. Slowly and with a straining frown of effort she worked down the page, and then came to a sum of money that was so large it jolted her into even deeper shock. According to what she was reading, Cindy had received the most enormous sum of money from Fidelio Paez over the past five years. And the document was an agreement to repay the entire sum immediately.

Beads of perspiration formed on Lucy’s furrowed brow. Whether this monstrous man accepted it or not, there had been a ghastly misunderstanding. Cindy genuinely believed that her father-in-law was rich, and if she had written asking for money it had definitely been done in the mistaken conviction that Fidelio Paez could well afford to be generous.

Fidelio was almost seventy years old. On a foreman’s wages it must have taken him a lifetime to build up so healthy a savings account. Two lifetimes, Lucy adjusted, marvelling that a ranch foreman could ever have amassed such a sum. But now all that money was gone, and with it the old man’s security. How on earth was such a huge amount to be repaid?

The small flat which Cindy had bought for Lucy and their late mother was already up for sale, Lucy reminded herself in a rush of relief. But even if the property fetched its full asking price it would still only cover about half of the outstanding debt. Did Cindy own her expensive Docklands apartment? And how much of Cindy’s original inheritance at nineteen still remained intact? Any of it?

Her twin had joked that buying the flat for her sister and her mother had been a good way of preventing her from spending all her money. ‘I’m too extravagant…I know I am, but why shouldn’t I treat myself?’ Cindy had asked her twin defensively. ‘I just can’t resist nice things. Roger gets really angry with me, but he’s always had it easy. How could he understand what I went through living with Dad? Roger never had to go without food or decent clothes because his father had taken every last penny and blown it on booze!’

The memory of that revealing conversation still pierced Lucy like an accusing knife. When her twin had castigated Roger for his lack of understanding of what made her a spendthrift, she might as well have thrown in Lucy’s name too. Lucy had been protected when she was a vulnerable child. Cindy had been betrayed by an adult in the grip of an addiction out of his control. And without doubt her sister still bore those scars.

‘Will you sign, señora?’ Joaquin Del Castillo challenged softly.

Lucy trembled on the brink of speech. She stifled a craven desire to tell him that he had entrapped the wrong sister. Not yet, an inner voice screeched. Impulsive speech or action would be an act of insanity with a male who had gone to such frightening lengths to corner a woman he believed to be a heartless confidence trickster. Furthermore a confession of her true identity would at this moment make him even angrier. And Lucy was no longer labouring under the naive conviction that she was dealing with some straightforward rancher from the backwoods.

The repayment agreement still tightly gripped in her hands had been drawn up by a top-flight and no doubt very expensive legal firm in the City of London. Joaquin Del Castillo had also admitted to having had enquiries made about her sister in London. All that sort of thing cost a great deal of money. Joaquin Del Castillo was also wearing what looked very much like a Rolex watch. She had noticed it the night before but had assumed that it was a cheap fake. Now she was no longer so sure. The cowboys in that ramshackle bar the day before had been doing an extraordinary amount of respectful bowing and scraping around Joaquin Del Castillo.

‘Who are you?’ Lucy questioned tautly.

‘You know who I am, señora.’

‘I know nothing about you but your name,’ Lucy argued feverishly.

‘It is not necessary that you should know more,’ Joaquin fielded with supreme disdain. ‘Now…will you sign that document?’

Lucy tilted her chin and said shakily. ‘I’m not prepared to sign anything under duress.’

Shimmering green eyes raked over her pale frightened face. ‘So I will call with you next week and see how you feel then,’ Joaquin drawled silkily, and in one long fluid stride he turned on his heel.

‘Next week…?’ Lucy gasped incredulously, her head thumping so hard that she was beginning to feel slightly sick. ‘I assume that’s your idea of a joke—’

He swung back with innate grace. ‘Why would I be joking?’

‘You can’t possibly mean that you intend to leave me here until next week!’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not? Because I don’t want to be here and you’ve got no right to keep me here against my will…I could put the police on you for this!’ Lucy sliced back frantically as she forced herself upright again on wobbling knees.

‘And what crime would you then accuse me of committing, señora?’ Joaquin Del Castillo prompted with sardonic amusement. ‘You are not even on my land. You came here of your own volition and now you are taking up residence in your father-in-law’s home. What do either of those actions have to do with me?’

Aghast at that subtle and devious response, and the clear forethought and planning which must have preceded it, Lucy stared at him with increasing desperation. ‘I could never find my way back to San Angelita without your help!’

Joaquin shrugged without remorse. ‘And you won’t get it unless you sign that agreement. By the way,’ he murmured in casual aside as he paused in the open doorway, ‘don’t waste your time trying to suborn Mateo. He speaks no English, and in common with all Fidelio’s friends and well-wishers he is disgusted by what you have done!’

A cold sweat of panic breaking out on her skin, Lucy got up and hurtled dizzily through the door in his wake. ‘I can’t sign that agreement…I don’t have that kind of money.’ She stumbled clumsily over that driven admission as she gazed pleadingly up at him. ‘We need to talk about this. Surely there’s some other way of sorting this awful business out…’

Joaquin Del Castillo stared down at her, stunning eyes narrowed to a sliver of glinting light in his darkly handsome features. Her breath locked in her dry throat. Those spectacular eyes, scorching as the sun’s heat, beat down on her. All of a sudden she felt as if a hundred trapped butterflies were going crazy inside her. Her heart crashed against her breastbone, shock shrilling through her as she trembled, paralysed to the spot by the most extraordinary rising sense of excitement.

‘Some other way would naturally be the only way you know,’ Joaquin breathed huskily, a derisive slant to his hard, compelling mouth. ‘Sex is your currency and I can see that you would not find lying back under me a punishment.’

Lucy gave him an incredulous look, reeling under the onslaught of that insult.

He lowered his imperious dark head, sunlight gleaming over the glossy luxuriance of his blue-black hair. ‘That air of gauche uncertainty and fragile femininity is remarkably convincing…or at least it would be if I wasn’t aware that you have been the mistress of at least two wealthy married men!’

‘How…dare…you?’ Lucy gasped, cheeks aflame and incensed.

‘How very easy it must have been for you to fool Mario into believing that he had found the love of his life!’

Cindy had adored Mario Paez, and had been totally gutted by his death. Sheer outrage ripped through Lucy and she flew forward, swung her arm back like a champion golfer to gain momentum, and took a violent swing at another human being for the first time ever. Joaquin sidestepped her with such speed and dexterity that she almost lost her balance and fell flat on her face. A pair of large and very powerful hands snapped around her waist and the next minute she was airborne.

Out of her head with frustrated fury as Joaquin held her at extended arm’s length, with her feet dangling out of contact with solid ground, Lucy flailed her clenched fists about uselessly, because she couldn’t get close enough to hit him. ‘Put me down…put me down, you pig!’ she screeched at him full blast.

Savagely amused green eyes raked over her hectically flushed and outraged face. ‘There’s also a certain piquancy to your extreme lack of size. You look like a dainty doll but you have the temper of a shrew—’

‘Let go of me, you great hulking bully!’ Lucy spat at him.

‘Claro! I am seeing the real woman now,’ Joaquin Del Castillo purred as he surveyed her, lush inky black lashes low on smouldering eyes. Raw sexuality emanated from him in unashamed waves. ‘And what a tigress you must be between the sheets…all teeth and claws and hunger.’

About to launch another seething outburst at him, Lucy blinked in sheer bemusement, her soft full mouth falling open. Never before had any man addressed her in such terms. He wiped out her anger. She was more fascinated by that tantalising and false image of herself than insulted. Unwarily she clashed with those amazingly intense eyes of his and gulped. He looked like a mountain lion about to leap on a little fluffy lamb. ‘No…’

‘The word you use with me is sí…it means yes, and I like to hear it,’ Joaquin Del Castillo confided in a deep dark drawl that rasped down her spine like sandpaper on silk, and he drew her in to him and banded his arms round her narrow ribcage instead. ‘Say it for me…’

A strange all-pervasive ache stirred deep in Lucy’s pelvis, wiping out her ability to concentrate. ‘No—’

‘Sí…’ Joaquin instructed, slowly crushing her swelling breasts into the hard wall of his chest, one strong arm sliding down her back to curve round her hips and hold her fast as he studied her with flaming mesmeric intensity. ‘Dios…you will say it to please me.’

‘Please you…’ Lucy echoed, her entire body plastered to every vibrant masculine angle of his and assailed by a quivering seductive pliancy. Her heart was racing so fast it threatened cardiac arrest. Driven by a temptation stronger than she could resist, she raised her hand and traced the sculpted line of one slanting male cheekbone, smooth golden skin overlying a truly spectacular arrangement of bone.

His dark head lowered to capture her exploring forefinger between his lips. Lucy watched him in shaken fascination. A soft gasp was dragged from low in her convulsing throat. Every pulse in her treacherous body went crazy as he gently sucked, silken black lashes almost hitting his cheekbones. Like ice cream on a hot stove she could feel her flesh melting over her bones in a sweet, strong agony of need so new to her experience it overwhelmed her defences.