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

‘Oh, Uncle Ramon was much worse than you.’

‘But he’s better now?’ Lucy was just relieved that Harriet, who she had cooked breakfast for before she went out to attend to the donkeys—six a.m. was not a time of the day that Lucy personally felt happy eating—had not shared the breakfast.

‘I don’t know. Ramon was really sick. He had to go to hospital.’

‘Hospital!’ Lucy exclaimed in alarm. She nodded. ‘Papá said it serves him right for raiding the pantry.’

Gabby took a seat on the brocade bed cover using the crewel-work curtains that draped the bed for leverage.

Lucy discovered that she was wearing a long white Victorian-style nightgown in a fine, exquisitely embroidered fabric. Her memory of how she came to be wearing this period-looking piece was sketchy, but she was sure—almost—that Santiago had not been involved.

Having delivered her, he had immediately made himself scarce and she didn’t blame him, though … Her brow furrowed. She did have a vague recollection of hearing a deep male voice and feeling cool fingers on her forehead at one point during the night, but that might have been part of a dream.

Running the flat of her hand down the gossamer-thin floaty sleeve of the nightdress, she lifted her gaze to find the child watching her. Santiago’s daughter was a pretty little thing with a roundish face, big dark eyes and a cupid’s bow mouth and dimpled cheeks—did she look like her dead mother?

‘That’s mine off Aunt Seraphina. Awful, isn’t it? She always buys me stuff that’s massive for me to grow into, but I never do.’ The little sigh made Lucy smile—clearly the size thing was an issue with her.

‘ Papá says it’s good to be petite but what does he know? He’s a man and ten feet tall …’ she grumbled, adding enviously, ‘Like you. Is your hair real … not extensions?’ She viewed the silken skein that framed Lucy’s face with a mixture of curiosity and envy. ‘I’d like to bleach my hair but Papá would kill me. It might be worth it, though,’ she added with a grin. ‘And who knows? It might be the final straw and they’ll expel me this time.’ She caught Lucy’s quizzical look and added, ‘I hate school.’

The description made Lucy think wistfully of the time when her own father had seemed the biggest thing in the world. She repressed a smile.

‘The hair is all my own,’ Lucy admitted, reaching for the water on the bedside table and taking a sip. Her throat felt dry and raw. ‘Well, your papá is right—there’s nothing wrong with being petite. I always wished I was.’ But it was never good to be different and at this girl’s age she had towered above her contemporaries.

‘ Papá is right …? Can I have that in writing?’

Lucy slopped water all down the front of the borrowed nightdress and turned to see Santiago standing framed in the doorway.

The sight of his tall dynamic figure sent a wild rush of energising adrenaline through her body. Dressed in a white tee shirt and jeans, his slicked wet hair suggesting he had just stepped out of the shower, he oozed a restless, edgy vitality.

He also looked sinfully gorgeous and Lucy didn’t have the energy or for once the inclination to go through the entire ‘sexy but not my type’ routine … She was hopelessly attracted to him. Just sex, she told herself, drawing back from deeper examination of the tight knot of emotions lying like a leaden weight behind her breastbone.

‘What are you doing here?’ she quivered accusingly.

He arched a brow and said mildly, ‘I live here.’

She flushed and heard the words king of the castle in her head as she followed the direction of his quizzical gaze. It led to the silk-covered pillow she was clutching to her chest like a shield.

Lucy had no recollection of grabbing it and equally she had no intention of letting it go, though as shields went it was about as effective as a feather in a storm against the illicit lust that hardened her nipples to thrusting prominence beneath thin, fine fabric.

‘I didn’t wake her, Papá, honest, did I?’

Santiago levered his tall lean frame off the wall, not ten feet but muscle packed, and very impressive.

‘No, I was awake,’ Lucy lied, and received a beam of gratitude in return.

‘What is this—a conspiracy?’ He appeared faintly amused as he turned to the child and added, ‘Run along, kiddo, you are already in enough trouble and Miss Fitzgerald is tired.’ He turned to Lucy and said, ‘The doctor is with the maid who was sick, too. I just called by to let you know he’ll be here when he’s finished with her.’

Tired … Miss Fitzgerald, he thought, his hooded glance skimming her paper-pale face, looked like some Hollywood version of a sexy vampire—fragile but deadly.

Once he started looking it was hard to stop. She was the most dramatically beautiful woman he had ever seen. A bare scrubbed face only emphasised the crystal purity of her perfectly symmetrical features; the skin, stretched tighter after her sleepless night, across the beautiful bones was satiny smooth; her sleepless pallor and the dark smudges made the colour of her eyes appear even more dramatic than usual.

It was a major improvement to the way she had looked the night before. Last night she had looked … Struggling to hold onto his train of thought, Santiago narrowed his eyes in concentration and broke contact with her sapphire stare.

The muscles along his angular jawline quivered as he recalled the attitude of the doctor, who turned out to be not the family friend but a locum who seemed barely shaving, standing in. The man, having already called an ambulance for Ramon, had seemed inclined to underplay the severity of Lucy’s condition.

To Santiago it had seemed logical to err on the side of caution and he had been far from convinced by the doctor’s assertion that staying where she was and reviewing the situation tomorrow was the best course of action in Lucy’s case.

He had been proved right and Santiago had been ready to admit as much this morning. The doctor deserved an apology and he respected the fact the other man had not rolled over and said yes sir—a response that Santiago encountered all too often.

The doctor’s response to his apology had been a good-natured shrug.

‘I’ve been called worse and threatened with worse,’ he’d said. ‘Though not from anyone who looked quite so capable of carrying through with the threats,’ he’d admitted with a rueful roll of his eyes. ‘It’s hard for people to be objective when they are emotionally involved.’

Santiago had been midway through assuring the man that he was not in any way emotionally involved with the patient, that in point of fact he barely knew the woman, when he had realised that, the more he protested, the more he sounded like someone in denial.

He had let the subject drop.

‘She’s been asleep for hours and hours.’ Gabby relinquished her perch on the bed but only took one step towards the door before her curiosity got the better of her. ‘And the doctor says that no one can catch anything. You’re not … contagious …?’ She glanced towards her father, who nodded. ‘And all we need to do is maintain …’ Again the glance. ‘Basic good hygiene.’

‘Basic good hygiene. Did you really ride Santana?’

Lucy’s eyes flew guiltily to Santiago and she discovered with a little shocking thrill that he was staring at her. Guilty heat poured into her face. ‘I … it was a … mistake.’

‘And you fell off?’

Take it like a man, Lucy, she told herself. ‘Yes, I fell off.’ Some people might call it bad luck and some, she thought, flashing a glance to the silent man before her, might call it what I deserved.

‘Did it hurt?’

‘Not much.’

‘But you didn’t die. I’m glad.’

Amused by the solemn little girl and her apparent fixation on the gruesome details of the accident, Lucy smiled and said, ‘It was nothing.’

‘People do die falling off horses,’ the girl replied matter-of-factly. ‘My mamá did.’

Lucy’s horrified intake of breath sounded loud in the silent room.

CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_2ef61fb6-a9e1-5aad-b29e-c7b7e38b91ad)

‘SHE was dead when Papá found her—’

This casual revelation drew another exclamation from an unprepared Lucy before Santiago, his deep voice calm and wiped of any hint of emotion, cut across his daughter.

‘Gabby, leave Miss Fitzgerald in peace. You can interrogate her later.’

Lucy’s eyes flew to his face. In profile his expression was veiled, nothing other than the suggestion of tension in the muscles along his firm jaw to suggest they were discussing a tragedy.