Kitabı oku: «The Gold Collection: Bedded By A Billionaire», sayfa 8

God knew what motivated a woman like Lucy Fitzgerald, but apparently it wasn’t money after all. His eyes drifted in her direction just as the maid who had been making a discreet exit with her dustpan paused by Lucy’s chair.

‘Oh, I am so sorry, miss … your lovely dress. I’ll …’

Lucy glanced without interest at the splash of blood stains on her dress and rose to her feet. ‘Forget the dress—your hand!’ She removed the dustpan from the girl’s hand, put it down on her seat and took the injured hand in her own. ‘Your poor hand.’

She grabbed a clean napkin from the table and pressed it to the small laceration still oozing a little blood on the girl’s palm.

‘No, miss, I’m fine, just clumsy.’

‘You’re not fine …’

Santiago found himself the focus of an accusing icy blue stare that could not have been more condemning had he taken a knife and cut the girl himself.

‘It must have hurt like mad and she didn’t say a word.’ The girl’s silence was obviously a symptom of an atmosphere of oppression in the workplace, she decided.

She turned back to the girl, the frost in her eyes warming to concern. ‘Look … sorry, I don’t know your name?’

‘Sabina.’

‘Well, Sabina, I think your hand needs cleaning—there might be some shreds of glass in it—and it needs dressing.’

The girl looked confused and Lucy turned to her fellow diners with an expression of exasperation. ‘Will someone help me out here?’ Her Spanish did not stretch to a translation.

It was Santiago who reacted first. Pushing aside his chair, he moved across to the timid-looking maid and spoke to her in Spanish. Lucy listened, unable to follow the rapid flow of words, noticing how different his voice sounded when he spoke to the girl, how kind and gentle.

Whatever he said made the girl smile and look less terrified. Across the table Ramon added something that drew a weak laugh from her.

Lucy was still holding the napkin to the wound but the girl was staring with starry-eyed devotion up at Santiago. Lucy bit her lip and looked away. Was there a female on the planet who didn’t think he walked on water? She thought, Am I the only person who sees him for what he is?

‘You can let go now, Miss Fitzgerald.’

Lucy started as the sound of Santiago’s deep voice jolted her out of her brooding reverie.

‘Josef will take over from here.’

‘What? Oh, yes, of course.’ She nodded to the sober suited solemn-faced man standing at her side and removed her hand from the makeshift dressing. ‘You need to apply pressure.’

‘Josef is more than capable, Miss Fitzgerald.’ Santiago’s dismissive glance swept across her face before he turned back to the girl, his manner changing as he spoke to her softly before she was led from the room by the older man.

‘Perhaps you would like to clean up, Miss Fitzgerald?’

She glanced down to hide her hot cheeks, mortified as her body reacted with dramatic tingling awareness to the critical clinical stare directed at the smears of blood on the upper slopes of her breasts.

She could see his point, a little blood could go a long way and the smears did look awful.

‘And obviously you will send me a bill for the cleaning.’

Actually he was just realising that nothing about this woman was obvious.

She had had an expensive dress ruined and, obviously, spoilt, self-absorbed materialist that she was, there should have been tantrums. But no, what did she do? Go all Mother Teresa on him! And he’d seen her face—her concern was either genuine or she was the best actress he had ever seen.

So maybe she was not all bad, but her redemption was not his business. Saving his brother was.

For Lucy the faint sneer in his voice was the last straw. She could almost hear the sound of her control snapping as she turned on him, eyes blazing, bosom heaving.

‘I can pay my own bills. Do you think I give a damn about the dress? I …’ She stopped, horrified to feel the prick of tears behind her eyelids. ‘I’ll go wash up!’ she blurted, making a dash for the door.

CHAPTER FIVE

OUTSIDE the room Lucy had composed herself enough to ask for directions to the bathroom when she was approached by a staff member in the bewildering baronial hallway.

In the decadently appointed bathroom she had been directed to, Lucy stood with her hands under the running water, waiting for the desire to cry her eyes out to subside.

Finally feeling marginally more composed, she looked at her reflection in the mirror above the marble washbasin. The lighting above it emphasised the waxy pallor of her oval face; she didn’t even have her bag with her to make running repairs to her make-up.

With a deep troubled sigh she set about sponging the smears of blood from her skin and clothes.

Reluctant to leave the marble lined sanctuary, Lucy stood with her back against the cool wall. She shook her head, still totally bewildered. She had no idea what had been going on in there, didn’t have a clue why she had blown up that way.

Her efforts to analyse what had happened and why were hindered by the fact that every time she felt an answer to the puzzle was in reach, the image of his dark face and sleek body rose in her head, effectively blanking everything else.

What is your problem Lucy? He was meant to think she cared more about dresses than people, that had been the idea, so why had she reacted that way?

She had no idea how long she had been standing there before there was a tentative tap on the door. It was followed by a voice calling her name.

‘I just wondered—are you all right, Lucy?’

Lucy straightened her shoulders, took a deep sustaining breath and opened the door. An anxious-looking Ramon, who was standing directly behind it, took a step back.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, forcing a smile as she emerged. ‘Sorry about that but I’ve never liked the sight of even a speck of blood.’ She stopped and shook her head and looked at him with eyes dark with emotion. ‘I’m fine with blood, Ramon, but not your brother. I can’t do this … over the years I’ve developed a thick skin but somehow he manages … I’m tired of being judged,’ she finished with a weary sigh.

Ramon shook his head and looked remorseful as he enfolded her in a comforting bear hug. ‘God, no, it’s me. I shouldn’t have asked you to do this. It’s my problem, not yours, and to be honest I wasn’t expecting Santiago to be quite so …’ His hands slid down her arms and stayed there.

Standing in the loose circle of his arms, Lucy gave a shrug. ‘And you thought I could take it? I thought so, too,’ she admitted. ‘I really don’t care what your brother thinks of me,’ she hastened to assure Ramon. ‘But this stopped being my idea of a fun evening when he started making snide remarks about my family.’

‘I understand,’ Ramon said.

Lucy was wondering a little uneasily about the inflection in his voice when he reached out and touched her forehead. ‘God, you’re going to have a bruise there,’ he said, touching the discoloured area that was developing on her forehead. ‘You really took a bang.’

Santiago stood in the minstrels’ gallery, his unblinking stare trained on the couple below, tension vibrating in every taut fibre of his lean body as he listened to the buzz of their soft voices, unable to make out the words, but you didn’t need words to see the intimacy in the way they stood close together.

When his brother touched her face tenderly he turned, biting back a harsh gasp as he felt something kick hard and low in his belly.

‘I’ll try and stay in character,’ Lucy promised Ramon. ‘But after tonight that’s it.’

She returned to the dining room with some trepidation, but the rest of meal passed relatively uneventfully. Their host showed little inclination to make conversation other than a few passing asides to Carmella, which should have been a good thing but turned out not to be.

Lucy was painfully conscious of his eyes following her and spent the entire meal waiting for him to pounce, so tense that every bone in her body ached with it.

And of course she did what she always did when she was nervous: she babbled like an idiot until the sound of her own bright chattering voice was giving even her a headache. Afterwards she didn’t have a clue what she had been talking about, which was probably a good thing.

Santiago excused himself before coffee was served and Lucy used his absence to make her own hurried exit. Outside, it was a beautiful night. She released a long sigh and breathed in the fresh night air almost dizzy with relief that the ordeal was over.

Just behind her she was conscious of Ramon pausing to speak to the man who had emerged from the house but the effort of translating what they were saying was beyond her.

She was struggling to think anything beyond the fact that she was escaping from this place and that hateful man; she wanted to forget the entire evening had ever happened.

And she would—tomorrow she would go back to doing what she had actually come here to do. God knew why she had ever got involved. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been insulted before, but she had never lowered herself to her persecutor’s level; she had always maintained her silence and the moral high ground.

Anyway this was not her battle, it was Ramon’s. If he had issues with his brother he could sort them out himself. ‘Wait in the car.’

Lucy automatically extended a hand to catch the keys he threw her. ‘What?’

‘Phone call. It’s urgent and no one can find Santiago. I’ll be back in a minute,’ Ramon promised, following the sober-suited man back indoors.

No one knows where he is. She glanced back at the building; golden light spilled from the windows making her think of eyes watching her.

‘Seriously paranoid, Lucy.’ Her laugh had a hollow sound as she turned her back on the building, unable to shake the feeling that the man they couldn’t find was in one of those windows watching her.

She shivered and told herself it was the chill in the evening air. Despite this she did not follow Ramon’s suggestion and take shelter in the car. Instead Lucy wandered away from the brooding presence of the sombre fortified house.

She had walked some way across the manicured lawn when she found herself drawn towards the sound of water and discovered, not the pond she had expected, but a river.

She walked out onto the wooden bridge and, leaning her arms on the rail, gazed down into the dark water. Her expression was pensive as her thoughts drifted, the memories of the evening revolving in her head. If not the worst night of her life, it had been right up there.

On the plus side—her brow puckered as she struggled to come up with one, other than the fact the night was over and if she ever saw Santiago Silva again she would leg it in the opposite direction. She was hanging up her scarlet-woman hat.

Trailing a hand towards the water, she leaned farther over the rail, following a leaf caught on the current, running to the opposite side as it disappeared from view to follow its progress.

Santiago, who had followed her from outside the house, watched as she leaned forward. The lust that lay coiled in his belly morphed into alarm as she leaned so far over the rail that she appeared in danger of toppling in. This woman seemed oddly drawn to water and bridges.

‘If you’re planning on jumping in don’t expect me to leap in and save you.’

Lucy started as if shot, took a hasty step backwards and found herself staring at Santiago. He was looking mean, moody and, if she was honest, totally magnificent in the moonlight.

She took a deep breath and lifted her chin as he stepped onto the bridge.

‘Relax, I don’t need saving. I’m not on the lookout for a white knight.’ Which was just as well as he definitely did not meet the criteria … all that dark brooding stuff made him far more likely to be the bad boy.

‘That wasn’t an offer.’

‘And it so happens I swim like a fish.’ She felt no guilt for playing up her ability.

‘Just as well, given your affinity for water. I keep finding you knee deep.’

She extended a leg, displaying a dry and slightly muddied shoe. ‘I wasn’t paddling, but I’m a Pisces so maybe that’s it, and I wasn’t going to jump.’

‘No …?’

‘You sound disappointed.’

His grin flashed and faded as his dark glance slid down her body. Lucy was disgusted with herself for being unable to control the flash of heat that engulfed her body. Dear God, all the man had to do was look at her and she started acting like some sort of hormonal teenager.

‘If I throw you into the water will you sprout a tail and swim away?’ It was true, she did look like a particularly sultry mermaid in that dress with the cloud of silvery hair, a siren capable of luring men to their deaths.