Kept At The Argentine's Command

Vaguely his name stirred a memory. She rather thought she ought to know it.

‘I have a little fame, Lulu.’

He must have read her frown.

‘Ah, oui.’

She tried not to look curious or impressed, or as if she cared. He was smiling to himself, and she wanted to tell him she didn’t care if he was famous, or who he knew. It wasn’t as if she was angling to spend any time with him when they reached the castle. She wasn’t interested in him. He was just transport.

She leaned forward and rummaged in her bag.

It was almost a relief to have her phone in her hand and something to concentrate on other than the magnetism of the man beside her.

He flicked on the sound system.

‘Is that necessary?’

Alejandro spared her a glance. ‘It passes the time.’

‘I’m trying to do some work.’

‘Games on your phone?’

‘Wedding plans. See.’ She held it up but he kept his eye on the wet road.

‘Isn’t that the bride and groom’s prerogative?’

‘I’m maid of honour,’ she said proudly. ‘I have responsibilities.’

Alejandro thumped the wheel with the heel of his hand.

‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded.

‘Santa Maria,’ he said under his breath, and after a moment began to chuckle.

‘What’s so funny?’

When he kept laughing her expression took on a look of bafflement, and for a moment she looked very young and decidedly adorable.

He didn’t want her to look adorable. He took another look. Definitely adorable. No wonder she had entitlement issues. He doubted there was a man alive who could resist those big brown eyes or her air of fragility.

It would bother him. If he was considering taking this anywhere. But since the day he had learned he’d inherited everything, in the form of the estancia and all the debts his father had collected, and gained nothing but his mother’s endless demands for more money, his wife’s desire for freedom and the everlasting dissatisfaction of his disinherited sisters he’d carried around the feeling that he’d let them all down.

Fragile women required a lot more than he was able to give.

‘I want to know why you’re laughing at me,’ she insisted.

‘I’m going to kill him.’

‘Kill who? What are you talking about?’

‘Fate. The universe. Khaled Kitaev.’

‘You’re not making any sense.’

‘I’m padrino de boda, querida.’

She had a blank look on her face that made him want to spin this out a little longer, because watching her lose a little of that tight composure was almost worth the hassle.

He relented and filled her in. ‘Best man.’

She dropped her device and it slithered through her satin skirt and thumped at her feet.

‘You can’t be!’

‘I am.’

‘But we don’t like each other.’ She clamped her mouth shut, as if she couldn’t believe that had just slipped out.

No, maybe not, but he’d just discovered he did like her. She might be spoiled and self-centred, but he lived in a world where most women fell at his feet.

Lulu Lachaille would fall, if he applied the right pressure here and there, but she wasn’t going to trip herself up.

She might just be what he was looking for this weekend after all.

Distraction from the spectacle that was a wedding, where everybody mouthed belief in fidelity and love ever after but nobody in his world practised it.

Although he had to admit Khaled and Gigi did seem to be that rarest of unions—a couple who genuinely liked one another.

And he liked Gigi’s little friend, with her pretty curls and her rosebud pout and her French girl’s way of looking as if she was bored and it was his job to entertain her.

‘I wouldn’t say I don’t like you,’ he said, checking out her pretty knees, just visible under the froth of her netted underskirt. Her hands went there immediately, smoothing it down.

‘Not in that way,’ she said crossly. ‘I don’t want you to like me that way at all. I mean in a platonic sense. In a maid of honour and best man duty sense.’

‘Now I’m a duty? Careful, querida, you’ll damage my ego.’

‘I doubt that,’ she said repressively.

He grinned.

She looked decidedly flummoxed.

‘You’ll need to make an effort, then,’ she blurted out almost defensively.

‘I intend to.’

Lulu tried to ignore the fact that she felt hot all over. Was he flirting with her?