joking expression vanished. ‘Dio, he did, didn’t he? Santiago tried to pay you off?’
‘He … sort of,’ she admitted, feeling reluctant to tell tales.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Ramon breathed, looking stunned.
‘I understand your brother wanted to protect you. It’s only natural.’ She stopped and thought, Why am I defending the man who is clearly a total control freak?
‘Will you do me a favour, Lucy?’
Lucy quashed her instinct to say anything out of sympathy. ‘That depends,’ she responded warily.
‘Go through with your plan to teach my big brother a lesson.’
For the first time Lucy heard anger in his voice and realised that it was aimed, not at her, but his brother. ‘I’m sure he thought he was doing the right thing …’
‘You’re still defending him?’
‘No, of course I’m not,’ she replied indignantly. ‘I think your brother is the most …’ She became aware of Ramon’s expression and stopped.
‘He’s really got under your skin, hasn’t he?’ he observed.
Lucy adopted an amused expression and lied. ‘It takes more than your brother to get under my skin.’
‘You won’t deny that he needs teaching a lesson …?’ She nodded—how could she not? ‘So why not give him a night to remember? Why not? You’re all dressed up and nowhere to go. Please … for me?’ he coaxed. ‘Or if not, for good old-fashioned revenge? I’m tired of Santiago always thinking he knows what is best for me. For once, I’d like him to treat me like a man. I know he means it for the best and I know my mother gives him a hard time and blames him every time I mess up, but it’s humiliating and …’
‘You want to teach him a lesson.’
Ramon nodded. ‘He’s gone too far this time and he’s involved a friend. What’ll he do the next time—lock me in my room? I’d just like to be the one doing the manipulating for once, so he knows what it feels like.’
Lucy sighed. ‘I’m probably going to regret this …’
‘My God, it’s a castle.’ Lucy sat awestruck in her seat as Ramon stood by the open door. ‘Enormous!’ she breathed, staring at the intimidating edifice lit by strategically placed spotlights. ‘As in national monument enormous … is that tower Moorish?’
Ramon cast a negligent look over his shoulder. ‘I think … yeah, it’s big,’ he agreed.
She started to shake her head. ‘I can’t do this.’
Ramon grabbed her arm and hauled her out. ‘No, you’re not going to chicken out now. It was your idea, remember.’
The impetus of his tug made her stagger into his arms. ‘A terrible idea!’ she muttered in his ear, drawing a laugh from Ramon.
‘Are you not going to introduce me to your guest?’
The voice as smooth as silk made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The only thing that prevented her jumping away from Ramon was the hand in the small of her back.
‘Of course.’
Ramon loosed her but as she pulled away grabbed her hand.
Lucy took a deep breath, the surface of her skin prickling in a weird response to the sound of his voice. ‘Good evening.’ She turned her head as Santiago Silva emerged fully from the shadows.
Her already rapid heart picked up tempo as she struggled to hide her reaction, not that he could be unaccustomed to attracting awed stares.
He was, she admitted, pretty awesome and she was staring.
She struggled to direct her gaze past him, but like a compass point returning north her eyes zeroed back to the tall, rampantly male figure dressed in a beautifully cut dark suit teamed with a white shirt he wore open at the neck. The informality went skin deep; he looked exclusively and every inch the autocratic patrician occupier of a castle.
He inclined his dark head, the courtesy of the gesture doing nothing to disguise the predatory gleam in his hooded eyes.
She was no adrenaline junkie but she imagined it might feel this way to jump out of a plane with nothing but a parachute. Actually maybe not even the parachute, she thought, moistening her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
The nervous action drew his dark gaze to her mouth.
Lucy swallowed and felt a flicker of apprehension. Harriet had warned her that this was not a man to be messed with and she was messing. Was she mad or just …? She swallowed, suddenly identifying the emotion mingled in with the trepidation as excitement … Yes, clearly she was mad!
Santiago recognised the surge of molten anger he felt as he watched them, but refused to acknowledge the accompanying emotion as being related in any way to jealousy. He was not jealous of his brother; he was furious! Furious that Ramon could be so stupid; frustrated that he could not think above waist level; that he could not see past the stunning beauty of the woman in his arms.
He, on the other hand, could compartmentalise, think past the painful level of his arousal. She really was the embodiment of sin, he decided, swallowing hard as his burning glance moved over the undulating curves of her body. She was sheathed in a tight red dress that would probably and legitimately in his opinion be illegal in several countries.
‘Lucy, this is my big brother, Santiago … Santiago, this is Lucy.’
Ramon pushed her forward with a pat on her bottom that under other circumstances Lucy would have objected to, and she found herself taking a stumbling step towards Santiago. Recovering her poise and covering her growing anxiety behind a plastic smile, she took a second, more graceful step, murmuring a good evening and ignoring the voice in her head that was counselling she run in the opposite direction.
Her half-extended hand fell away as Santiago met her midway. Bending down towards her—not something that happened a lot when you were five ten in your bare feet—he planted his hands on her shoulders.
The light touch concealed a strength that she felt as strongly as the brush of his breath on her cheek. Steeling herself for an air kiss, she stiffened, gasped faintly and closed her eyes as his mouth, his lips, lightly touched her skin.
Feeling the responsive quiver run through her body, he smiled and bent in closer.
‘Great work,’ he admired. ‘Though you might want to rethink the dress—it’s a bit obvious—but the husky sexy voice, nice touch, I like it …’
The blue eyes winked wider in protest. ‘What? Husky, sexy? I wasn’t …’
She stopped, remembering just in time her role of heartless courtesan, and produced a wide, brilliantly insincere smile as she whispered back, ‘In my experience—’
‘No doubt vast.’ His nostrils quivered in response to the fragrance she wore. It smelt of something light, floral and very feminine.
