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

‘Abandoned,’ she said, burying her face in the filly’s neck.

She patted the gentle filly, who was tethered beside Ramon’s mount—a good-looking Arab—and, pushing up the sleeve of her shirt, glanced at her watch.

‘Great!’ She gave a hissing sound of frustration and stomped up the aisle between the stalls. What was Ramon doing?

At this rate she would miss out on her ride altogether. She had left Harriet some sandwiches for lunch, but if her bored friend was left alone too long she knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist starting the round of chores without her and probably put back her recovery several weeks in the process.

She was half tempted to take the pretty filly out alone and—The sound of hooves connecting with the wooden panel of a door interrupted her chain of thought.

‘Hello, boy,’ she said, walking to the stall where the stallion was pacing restlessly up and down. The animal pawed the ground and rolled his eyes. Lucy smiled and held out a hand fearlessly towards him, murmuring softly.

With a whinny the animal came forward, bending his head towards her as he pawed the floor.

‘My, you’re a handsome boy,’ she soothed, finding it easy to identify with the animal’s restless impatience. ‘You need a run, don’t you? So do I,’ she added with a sigh. ‘Have you been neglected? I wish I could …’ She stopped, a slow smile spreading over her face as she thought, Why not?

Despite any number of answers surfacing in response to her silent question, the reckless idea took hold until by the time she had saddled the animal she had rationalised her decision to the point where she was actually doing the horse’s true owner a favour—a beautiful creature like this needed exercise.

She did not doubt her ability to handle him: she had grown up around horses, she was a better than good rider and she had a natural affinity for all animals.

Her confidence seemed justified as she walked the animal around the exercise yard a couple of times before taking the path that Ramon had said led to a great gallop over open ground.

‘We are a school, not a prison. We do not chain our girls to their beds and I can assure you our security is more than adequate. However, if a girl wants to run away … well, it is hard to prevent her.’

Santiago was not impressed by the logic and even less by what the school deemed an appropriate punishment for the crime. He clenched his jaw and struggled to moderate his response, aware his own school days had coloured his views of the educational world.

At seven he had been sent away to a school where bullying was endemic and the teachers had turned a blind eye to the activities of a group of sadistic pupils.

‘Is not excluding someone who has tried to run away rather playing into her hands?’ It certainly seemed to Santiago that the only lesson his daughter had learnt was run away and they sent you home as a punishment, which was exactly where she’d been heading when they’d caught up with her at the bus station.

A bus station where she had rubbed shoulders with … His hand bunched into fists as he brought this line of thought to a screaming halt.

His blood ran cold when he thought of his eleven-year-old daughter wandering around alone in a city. Gabby might think of herself as very grown up, and in some ways she was, but in others his daughter was very young for her age, something he was glad of, but it made her vulnerable.

‘Gabby’s behaviour has been unacceptable—’

‘I find it unacceptable that you apparently have no idea why my daughter felt the need to run away.’

‘Teenage girls—’

‘My daughter is eleven.’

‘Of course and as you know I was not comfortable with her skipping a year … a bright girl, of course … but …’ Combating his growing irritation, Santiago tuned out the rest of a speech that when condensed read ‘not my fault’. His tone cold and clipped, he finally interrupted.

‘So Miss Murano will accompany her on the train.’

‘Yes, and you will arrange for her to be picked up at your end?’

Santiago, who intended to pick his errant daughter up himself, grunted an affirmative and put the phone down.

He was leaving his study when he almost collided with his head groom. The man was so incoherent that it took him several minutes to make sense of what he was saying. When he did he experienced a flash of blind fury.

‘So the English lady took out Santana and she headed which way?’

Santiago hit the ground running, no longer keeping his anger in check but releasing it to keep the nightmare images floating in his head at bay … This was not happening again.

It could not!

His brother’s horse was fortuitously saddled and waiting in the yard. Santiago loosed the rein from the post it was looped over and, vaulting into the saddle, dug in his heels. The animal responded to the urgency and leapt responsively forward.

As they galloped onto the trail Santiago planned the words that would annihilate her. He was visualising the humility he would see in her attitude before he eventually wrung her lovely neck when his own horse, his mouth flecked with white, his black mane flying, galloped past.

An icy fist clenched in his chest and the images of retribution evaporated. He soothed his own spooked mount, sternly checking the animal’s desire to follow the stallion, and rode on. The scene that met his eyes when he emerged from the forested strip was his worst nightmare.

He dismounted, leaving the animal to graze as he ran to where the still figure lay, dread clutching in his belly.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_909681ae-965f-5f75-9922-407b0d218c60)

IT WAS happening again.

Not déjà vu, more a waking nightmare.

His face was like carved granite as he made himself look at her. Her face was pale; she looked like an effigy carved from ice.

She would be growing cold and there would be blood. He remembered the blood in his dreams; he saw it often. Saw the scarlet flecks on her mouth and knew it was his fault because Magdalena, sweet, gentle Magdalena had been trying to impress him.

Lucy heard the crunch of footsteps on the hard ground getting closer as she lay there, her chest burning as she tried to replace the air the fall had knocked out of her lungs. It hurt, but it was nothing more than she deserved, she decided, furious with herself for making such an amateurish mistake. Anyone could fall, but to let go of the reins when you came off … now that was stupid!

She waited for another of the painful stomach cramps to pass—this one was even more painful than the one that had hit her when the horse had stumbled—before she prised her eyelids apart and saw the shiny Italian leather shoes. She didn’t need to go any further up the leg of grey tailored trousers … She knew who was standing there.

Of all the people who could have discovered her in this ignominious position, it had to be him.

The surge of intense relief Santiago had felt when he saw her blue-veined eyelids flutter against her pale waxen cheek was submerged by the equally strong blast of white-hot fury that rapidly succeeded it. When she began to move his entire body shook with the effort of keeping his feelings in check, feelings that had been shaken loose by the sight of her seemingly lifeless body.

‘Keep still!’ he yelled, fighting his way through the memories that crowded in on him and forcing himself to think here and now … think potential spinal injuries?

Ignoring the terse instruction—did the man have to make everything sound like an order?—Lucy, determined not to lie there like a stranded fish while he looked down at her with disdain from an Olympian height, pulled herself up into a sitting position.

She clamped her teeth over the groan as the effort of the simple action caused a fine layer of cold perspiration to break out over the surface of her skin.

The immediate problem was breathing.

‘Just winded …’ she rasped between gasps, her voice barely audible as she struggled with the fastener of the helmet, then, exhausted by the effort, she lay it in her lap.

Santiago’s dark eyes moved from her pale trembling fingers to the cloud of silver-white hair that, released from the confines of the helmet, spilled down her back unbidden. The memory of feeling those glossy strands sliding through his fingers like silk surfaced … He pushed but the tactile memory lingered so inexplicably strong that his fingertips tingled.

Lucy plucked a piece of grass from her once pristine white shirt, very conscious of the angry figure who towered over her. Why didn’t he say something …? Finally unable to stand the simmering silence any longer, she croaked, ‘I’ve got grass stains on my shirt.’

With a snarl of disbelief, Santiago dropped down into a crouch beside her.