analogy sent a shiver sliding down her spine as she watched him approach, the golden-toned skin of his throat and face very dark in contrast to the dazzling white of his shirt.
You didn’t have to like the man to be utterly riveted by the way he moved and nobody could fail to be aware—in an objective way—of the aura of raw, earthy sensuality he exuded.
Lucy bit her lip and felt her shaky composure develop a few more cracks as he paused, his hand on the rail, a few feet away from her. She looked at his fingers only inches away from her own and tightened her grip, easing her hand back surreptitiously. She had a nasty feeling that if he touched her even lightly those cracks she was aware of would split wide apart.
‘Do I make you nervous, Lucy?’ he asked, staring at the blue veined pulse point that was throbbing at the base of her throat.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
When he responded to the breathless accusation with a slow smile that said he knew exactly how his presence made her feel, her heart hammered against her ribs. She found herself hating him more than ever. It was weird but she had never felt this sort of violent animosity towards anyone, not even Denis Mulville, who had made her a hate figure out of sheer spite.
‘Do you always lurk like that?’ She pressed a hand to her breastbone, hating the fact she still sounded breathless because, yes, he made her nervous … not excited, because that would be stupid.
‘I’m not lurking. It is my habit to take a walk before I go to bed.’
‘Then don’t let me stop you.’
‘From walking or going to bed?’
‘You followed me, didn’t you …?’ Lucy felt pretty stupid for not seeing the obvious and smelling a set up. ‘You planned …’ she moved her hands in an expressive fluttering motion and fixed him with a blue accusing glare ‘… this.’
‘Such piercing insight,’ he drawled, drawing a hissing sound of rage from between her clenched teeth. ‘I did warn you what would happen if you came near my family.’
‘So how is Gabby?’
‘Back in school.’ Gabby had assumed the day-early return was part of her punishment and Santiago had seen no reason to disabuse her of this notion. At least she was safely out of reach, though he doubted that his daughter would have found the scent of this woman’s perfume quite so disturbing.
Sure, Santiago, you’re so ‘disturbed’ that you can’t think above the waist. Admit it like a man—you want her so bad you can taste it.
‘Lucy’s changed her mind—she’s coming!’ had been the words that had greeted him on his return that morning, making it pretty conclusive that his threats had backfired big time and Lucy Fitzgerald had lost no time calling his bluff—only he didn’t bluff, as she would find out.
‘I thought we could have a private little talk …’ Not this little talk—Santiago was annoyed with himself for losing focus.
‘We don’t have anything to talk about and, for the record, I don’t like being played. How did you know—’ She stopped, feeling stupid. ‘There wasn’t an important call, was there?’
‘Of course there was a call … and I imagine it will take a good thirty minutes.’
‘Imagine or know!’
He met her angry glare with a lazy, insolent smile. ‘What’s the problem, Lucy—you can dish it out but can’t take it?’
Her chin went up at the challenge. ‘Dish it out?’ she echoed, her blue gaze falling from his. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she denied, thinking, He knows … The realisation that he had seen through their act was, she realised, almost a relief. She expelled a long sigh—no more pouting! With all the sexy stuff she hadn’t felt like herself all evening—’herself’ being cool, blonde and in control.
This evening she’d been blonde and continually on the edge of losing any semblance of control. This man pressed all her buttons and made her feel the victim’s rage she had thought she had conquered long ago.
She felt a twang of guilt, which turned into pity for Ramon—she could not imagine his brother seeing this as a bit of harmless fun.
‘I am presuming that the overacting this evening was for my benefit?’ An image of her stroking his brother’s arm, a relatively innocent action if it had been anyone but this woman, drifted into his head and he snarled, ‘Ever heard of subtlety?’
Lucy’s head lifted and she read the contempt and anger etched in the sculpted lines of his hard-boned face.
‘I presume this was to drive up the price.’
Her eyes widened—so he didn’t know.
He saw her reaction and gave a thin smile. ‘Another language you speak fluently … money.’
It occurred to Lucy as she sucked in a breath that she had played her part a bit too well—he was looking at her with a level of loathing that she struggled to be objective about.
‘And did it work?’ she wondered, hiding the stab of irrational hurt that threatened to make her well up behind her amused smile. The opinion of a self-righteous jerk, she reminded herself, was no reason to feel bad. In fact the time to worry was when a man like him started approving of you.
‘No, there is no extra money on the table—there is no money.’
She pursed her lips into a pout and took what she hoped came across as a fearless step towards him. Thrusting one hip out, she planted her hands on her thighs and fixed him with a smile that deepened as she heard the distinct sound of his teeth grinding.
‘Pity … still, sometimes the satisfaction of a job well done is reward in itself.’
‘I have no idea if some bad experience turned you poisonous or if you were just born that way because, to be frank, the nature-nurture argument does not interest me.’
Inside seething, Lucy adopted an air of amused interest, watching the muscles along his strong jawline ripple.
‘And I can take anything you can throw at me.’ Brave words, or should that be reckless? Lucy just hoped they would not come back to bite her.
‘We’ll see, shall we …?’
Sheer stubbornness made her retain eye contact. It saved running the risk of not being able to look away. His black stare had a disturbingly hypnotic quality.
Her pounding heart drowned out the lonely cry of a hunting owl overhead. The atmosphere was suddenly thicker than the thick emerald-green moss that grew along the riverbank, the moss her heels had sunk into as she’d walked to the bridge … Lucy felt as though she were sinking now. She swallowed past the constriction in her throat and, doing her best to look amused, met his black stare. He probably got some sadistic kick from seeing people squirm. No, she thought, there was no ‘probably’ about it.
She was aware that anything she said now might be construed as a challenge … and he was obviously a man who could not resist any opportunity to prove himself superior. He
