The Gold Collection: Bedded By A Billionaire: Santiago's Command / The Thorn in His Side / Stranded, Seduced...Pregnant

‘Carmella is a ballet dancer,’ Ramon said, switching to English as the two broke off their conversation.

‘Back row of the corps de ballet,’ the girl corrected, looking embarrassed by the accolade.

The conversation had taken them through a hallway of epic cavernous proportions. This place was not what anyone would term cosy, but it was impressive. Had the circumstances been different she would have been bombarding her host with questions about the history of this fantastic building.

‘How interesting,’ she said, meaning it. She had had ballet classes herself until it became obvious that she was not built on the right scale.

Santiago, who had been speaking in a softly spoken aside to a dark-suited individual who had silently materialised, murmured, ‘Thank you, Josef,’ before turning back to them. ‘It appears our meal is ready. So, what do you do, Lucy?’

Caught off guard by the addition, Lucy blinked. It took her a second to recover her poise and resist the compulsion to say, ‘Live off impressionable boys.’ Lucy didn’t know how she managed to suppress the words hovering on the tip of her tongue.

‘I manage to keep busy.’

‘And you’re staying at the resort hotel? I just love the spa there,’ Carmella enthused.

‘Isn’t that where you usually get your dinner dates, Ramon?’ Lucy teased, forgetting for one moment her role. ‘Actually, I’m staying with a friend.’ She broke off and swallowed a gasp. The room they had entered had the dimensions of a baronial hall complete with tapestries that were probably priceless on the stone walls; all that was missing was someone playing a lute in the minstrels’ gallery. The candles on the table, heavy with silver and gleaming crystal, had been lit. A person would need a megaphone to speak to a person sitting at the far end of the table.

‘How … cosy,’ she murmured sarcastically.

‘Friend?’ Santiago angled his question towards his brother, not Lucy, pulling out a chair for Lucy at the table and ensuring that several feet of antique oak separated her from Ramon. Not that he would have been surprised if the woman had slithered across the surface to latch onto her prey.

An image flashed into his head of her lying across the table in a silvery pool of her own hair, the slinky red dress pulled up to reveal her long legs, one arm lifted in supplication. He froze the frame before it progressed and deleted it, but not before his temperature had risen by several degrees.

Three pairs of eyes swivelled his way as he cleared his throat; he turned his head sharply to block out the blue. ‘What friend?’

‘Harriet Harris,’ Ramon supplied.

His brother’s expression was openly sceptical as he turned to Lucy, looking at her accusingly from dark brows that had formed an interrogative straight line.

‘The Cambridge don …?’

She would have been amused by the proof of his snobbish prejudice had her normally lively sense of humour survived the trauma of the evening.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said, thinking, Sorry for stepping out of the box you’ve put me into. Her scorn increased. Presumably in his world she and women like Harriet occupied separate universes.

‘How do you come to know Harriet Harris?’

‘She was my personal tutor when I was at Cambridge.’

She had the satisfaction of seeing shock he could not conceal chase across his lean features. ‘You were a Cambridge student?’

She nodded, still smiling, counted to ten, but she was unable to hide the growing antagonism that revealed itself in the sparkle in her electric-blue eyes.

‘You graduated?’

He sounded as though discovering that Martians had landed was a lot more probable. At that moment Lucy, who habitually played down her intellect—bad enough being head and shoulders above your contemporaries at school without being a swot—would have happily shoved her certificates down his throat if she had them to hand.

Ramon saved her from replying to this continued interrogation. ‘She came to the rescue to help Harriet.’

‘To the rescue once again,’ he drawled, drawing a puzzled look from his brother. ‘From what does Harriet need rescuing?’ The local community had initially been wary of the Englishwoman who had moved here two years ago. She was still considered eccentric for her alarming multicoloured hair and her devotion to the donkeys she provided a sanctuary for, but she had endeared herself by learning the language and integrating with the local community.

‘She’s broken her leg.’

‘Dios!’ he exclaimed, displaying what, had it been anyone else, Lucy would have considered concern. In his case she attributed his reaction to a pathological need to be in charge. The man was a total control freak. ‘Why did I not know of this?’

Yes, a control freak of epic proportions!

‘And why did Anton not inform me?’

Lucy didn’t have a clue who Anton was but he had her sympathy. God, working for Santiago Silva would be like working for some feudal warlord … Of course, a very good-looking feudal warlord, she conceded, her eyes drifting over the length of his long greyhound-sleek, lean, hard body and one with very good hygiene—the scent of the cologne he used mingled with warm male showed a tendency to linger in her nostrils. She gave her head a tiny shake and looked away.

‘Is she in hospital?’

His manager dealt with the everyday burden of the estate but Santiago was not an anonymous landlord. He made it his business to know all his tenants and took an active interest in the village, just as his father had done. He took the responsibility that came with his role here seriously and he got a lot from it.

When you worked in finance it was easy to lose sight of the human face behind the columns of clinical figures, but here he saw firsthand how decisions made in a boardroom could affect people’s lives. This was not to say he didn’t get a buzz from what he did, but the estate and the people who lived and worked on it kept him grounded.

Duty might be an unfashionable word but it was deeply ingrained in Santiago. Even so, the early days had not been easy. When still grieving for his father he had found himself expected to step into his shoes—and they were big shoes to fill. He’d been living with Magdalena in the city when his father died. She had been really supportive and it had seemed natural to ask her to move with him to the castillo. He had not anticipated she would take the request for a marriage proposal but after the initial shock he had thought why not? It would happen eventually. Now he recognised that it might very well not have happened, that had things been different they would have eventually drifted apart.

‘Only for a day. She’s at home now. And don’t blame Anton—when he left for his cousin’s wedding I think maybe I told him I’d tell you when you got back,’ Ramon admitted with a rueful grin.

One sable brow lifted. ‘Maybe?’

‘All right, I said I would, but no harm done,’ he added cheerfully. ‘Lucy is helping Harriet until she gets back on her feet.’

Santiago’s glance slid from his brother to the woman sitting to his left. Was Ramon joking? Did his brother seriously think this woman would do anything that risked chipping her nail varnish? His glance slid automatically to the hand that held the goblet, though she appeared not to have touched the wine it held.

His sneer faded as he registered the fingers curved lightly around the stem. They were long and shapely but the pearly nails were neither long nor painted; they were trimmed short and unvarnished. With a tiny shake of his head he dismissed the incongruity. Short nails did not make her any the less useless when it came to manual labour, and donkeys might be appealing to look at, but they were high-maintenance animals, not to mention deserving of their stubborn reputation.

‘She couldn’t be in better hands,’ Ramon continued.

The words brought an image of his half-brother enjoying the ministrations of those hands, except it wasn’t his brother he was seeing … Santiago stiffened. ‘I doubt very much if Miss Fitzgerald—’

‘Oh, that’s so formal. Please call me Lucy.’ Maintaining the saccharine sweet smile was making her facial muscles ache.

Santiago, who could think of several things he’d like to call her, smiled back.

As their eyes connected black on bright cornflower-blue, clashed and remained sealed Lucy was seized by a determination not to be, on principle, the first one to look away. The effort of following through with her childish self-imposed endurance race brought a faint sheen of moisture to her skin. In the distance she was vaguely aware of Ramon and Carmella’s voices as they laughed and chatted, the sound softer than the sound of the blood that pounded in her ears.

On the other side of the table Ramon knocked over a glass. The sound as the crystal hit the floor was like a pistol shot. It was hard to say which one of them looked away first but all that mattered to Lucy was that the accident had splintered the growing tension. A silent sigh left her parted lips as Lucy squeezed her eyes closed, just glad that she had broken that nerve-shredding contact.

‘Speak English …’ She heard Santiago reproach the young couple who were exchanging laughing comments in Spanish. ‘Lucy will be feeling excluded.’

As if that wasn’t the idea, Lucy thought, opening her eyes and switching to her less than perfect Spanish as she said, ‘No problem. I need the practice.’

She saw a spasm of annoyance move across his face as he turned his accusing stare her way. ‘You speak Spanish?’

Assuming his irritation stemmed from the fact blonde trollops in his world were not allowed to speak any language but avarice, she chose to reply in English.