Читать книгу The Gold Collection: Bedded By A Billionaire: Santiago's Command / The Thorn in His Side / Stranded, Seduced...Pregnant - Ким Лоренс, KIM LAWRENCE - Страница 14

‘THERE’S no point waiting.’

The decision made, Santiago slid an assessing glance towards the woman who was now sitting with her back propped against a tree trunk looking very much like a wilting exotic flower. The last bout of vomiting had left her very weak.

Admiration was something he had never imagined he would feel about Lucy, but, you had to hand it to her, she did not complain.

She might be putting on a brave front but, guts or not, there was no way in the world she could make it under her own steam … but with his support she could sit in the saddle in front of him and they could be back at the castillo in a matter of minutes. They would be now if he hadn’t assumed that help was on its way.

Santiago turned, clicking his fingers as he did so to bring the horse to him … only there wasn’t a horse to bring. Ramon’s gelding was nowhere in sight.

The expression on his face when he realised that the horse had wandered away would have made her laugh on any other occasion.

He swore softly under his breath.

‘We’ve both lost a horse.’

His withering gaze swung her way. ‘Thank you for pointing that out. It is most helpful.’

Head tilted to one side, he fixed her with a narrow-eyed assessing glance until Lucy, feeling increasingly self-conscious by his unblinking regard, snapped crankily. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘I was just considering the options …’

Presuming he was about to share the details, she was taken totally by surprise by the abruptness of the action that followed his terse explanation. Lucy was so shocked that she offered no resistance when he almost casually lifted her into his arms—just a scream.

A moment later she managed a breathless, indignant, ‘What are you doing?’ Other than displaying strength that Lucy—who was not by anyone’s standards a small woman—struggled hard not to find impressive. However, she had never had a single fantasy about being rescued and swept into the strong arms of a man—any man.

Especially not this man!

‘Not wasting further time hanging around.’ For assistance that seemed to be taking a long time coming.

Or asking permission before treating her like a sack of coal, she mused, giving a second shrill yelp as he moved, striding across the open ground towards the forest trail.

Lucy stared at his ear and held herself stiff, noticing the way his hair curled around it into the nape of his neck … strong neck. It was mid-morning but she could see the beginning of stubble on his jaw and cheek. It would feel … She paused mid-thought and gasped.

‘I don’t want to know!’

‘Know what?’

Lucy’s eyes fell away guiltily. ‘Know how long it will be before you drop me.’ Pleased with her quick recovery, she lifted her gaze just as he loosened his grip for a split second but enough to make her react instinctively out of self-preservation.

She grabbed him, one hand sliding under his unfastened jacket, the other around his neck.

‘Breathing would be nice.’

There was an embarrassing delay before her brain, busy processing details like the warmth and lithe hardness of the warm male body she was crushed up against, reacted to his dry comment.

‘Very funny,’ she drawled, loosening her grip but not all the way—he was almost jogging now and the next time it might not be a joke. ‘Will you put me down? This is ridiculous.’ Almost as ridiculous as her reaction to a bit of muscle.

‘Look, I’d love to argue the toss with you, but frankly I need all my breath. You’re a lot heavier than you look.’ Her weight was not the problem, but the soft yielding nature of the warm body that seemed to fit naturally into his was. Lucy Fitzgerald was not a woman who had sharp angles; she was not a woman that a man could be close to and not think about naked.

It was an image that Santiago, whose normal iron control when it came to such matters was at that moment absent, struggled to erase. In fact, he was struggling to think beyond the surge of hormones that made him want to lay her down on the warm mossy ground and … The sound of his harsh inhalation was drowned out by Lucy’s indignant gasp.

‘Are you calling me fat?’

The growl of desire growing low in his throat turned into an amused snort as, appreciating the irony, he quirked his lips into a twisted smile. He had called her many things that were worse, but it was the suggestion that she was overweight that rattled her.

‘I may not be a skinny—’

A stone too heavy, according to the man from Hollywood who, at the height of her notoriety, had dangled the female lead in a new film with the proviso she lose that stone. It had clearly not even crossed his mind, or for that matter her jubilant agent’s, that Lucy would say thanks but no thanks to the chance of being the love interest to one of the industry’s most bankable stars.

‘Sorry, but I can’t act,’ she had said to soften her refusal.

This, it had turned out, was not an obstacle and her ability to look good in very little apparently more than compensated for this minor deficiency. The scandal attached to her name had apparently been deemed box-office gold.

‘But I’m not about to starve myself so men like you can feel macho hauling me around.’

‘Dios mio!’ He stopped dead and angled an astonished stare at her indignant face.

As their eyes connected the amused exasperation in his expression vanished, as did any temptation to defend himself against the accusation.

In his arms Lucy could feel his chest lifting as though standing there were putting more stress on his heart than jogging along had; her own heart was fluttering like a trapped bird in her chest cavity.

She told herself it was her weakened state that made her tremble, unable to admit even to herself it was being the focus of his febrile gaze that had sent her nervous system into shocked overload. As for the impression that the air around them was literally shimmering with a heat haze—that was obviously a result of dehydration or fever.

‘You have a perfect body and we both know it.’

Turning his attention abruptly back to the trail ahead, he picked up pace—not a cold shower but the next best thing—and wondered about the shock in her face. Such a reaction seemed bizarre considering she was a woman who traded on her looks and sensuality.

Silenced by the abrupt assessment, Lucy was almost glad when the nausea and stomach cramps took her mind off the molten stream of desire that had turned her into a breathless bundle of craving and reduced her brain function to zero.

When a short while later, or it might have been a long time, Lucy had lost track, he asked, ‘Are you sulking?’ Lucy thought it wise to warn him.

‘No, I don’t feel very well …’ Her eyes were closed as she spoke but she could feel his dark gaze on her face.

Presumably she looked terrible because he started jogging faster. There was no way, she thought dully, that he could keep up this pace for much longer even if he was incredibly fit.

‘Nearly there,’ he murmured close to her ear. ‘Hold on.’

‘God, don’t be nice to me,’ she begged, wondering what alternative universe she had slipped into where Santiago made her feel safe and cared for. ‘Or I’ll cry.’

Tears would have left him unmoved but the plea touched him. He could not think of another woman he knew who would prefer to be yelled at than give in to tears. ‘Shut up or I’ll drop you.’

Lucy sketched a weak smile and forgot to hate him. ‘Thank you. I suppose I am being very ungrateful.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll try not to throw up on you … it’s a beautiful suit,’ she heard herself say, and wondered if, despite the fact she felt freezing cold, she had a fever. ‘God, I’m never sick!’ she groaned, vowing to show more sympathy in future to people who were physically more fragile than she was.

She was now and the sight of her poor pale face made him complete the last leg of the journey in record time.

By the time they reached the stableyard there was no question of it being illicit lust that made Lucy cling to him; she wasn’t even aware that she was groaning softly into his shoulder.

He looked around the deserted yard, which normally at this time of the day was a hive of activity, and felt his frustration grow.

He cut between the buildings built around a quadrangle and across the lawn, ignoring the burning of his shoulder muscles, spurred on by the soft moans of the woman he carried.

He walked straight through the massive double doors of the front entrance and into the vaulted hallway. It was empty. He opened his mouth to yell when Josef appeared. Normally insouciant Josef’s eyes widened when he saw his boss with a semi-conscious woman in his arms.

‘Where is my brother?’

‘With the doctor. He’s rather unwell.’

‘Ramon is ill, too?’ Santiago closed his eyes. Two invalids on his hands, one literally, and an errant daughter to collect from the station. When they spoke of it never raining but pouring, his was presumably the day they were referring to.

‘Can I help with the young lady, sir?’

‘No, you can get Martha and the new girl … Sabina, and ask them to come to the west-wing suite … inform the doctor he is required there and have the helicopter ready to take off in thirty minutes. Gabby is coming home early.’

Josef waited as he reeled off the instructions and then, with a nod, vanished. A man of few words, Josef; Santiago liked that about him.

‘You’re so pretty.’

Lucy blinked and pushed her way free of the last layers of sleep. The figure standing by the window came into focus. To her relief, it was not a hallucination—unless hallucinations spoke and wore braces.

She blinked at the small elfin features of Gabby.

‘Thank you,’ Lucy replied, easing herself carefully up on one elbow and turning her curious gaze around the room. She had not been that interested in her surroundings the previous night when Santiago had brought her in here and relinquished her to the care of the doctor and the two women who had stayed with her during the night.

One of them had spoken perfect English, the other was the sweet girl who had cut her hand, both had been incredibly kind.

‘I thought you were in school.’

‘I ran away.’

Lucy was weak enough to feel a fleeting moment of sympathy for Santiago.

‘What time is it?’

The furniture in the room that was massive enough to lose the enormous four-poster she was lying in was dark and heavy and looked like museum pieces. The stone walls were covered with tapestries and portraits of severe-looking historical persons. The personal touch of an arrangement of garden flowers in the gleaming copper bowl set in the empty cavernous fireplace filled the room with their scent and lightened the general museum-style gloom.

‘It’s two o’clock.’

Lucy was startled. She had fallen asleep in the early hours. ‘Why didn’t someone wake me?’ She brushed her hair from her face and struggled to tear her eyes from the portrait of a hatchet-faced woman in a jewelled turban. The eyes looked spookily familiar, an ancestor presumably of the present incumbent. Clearly hauteur was not a new Silva characteristic, any more than the masterful nose.

‘They said to let you and Sara sleep.’

Lucy yawned and dragged her attention back to the girl. ‘Sara?’ Her brow crinkled. Was she meant to know the name? At that moment she was struggling with her own.

‘She’s one of the maids. She ate some of the bad salmon that was for the cook’s mother’s cat, too.’

Struggling to follow this information overload, Lucy moistened her lips with her tongue—they felt dry and cracked—and recalled the smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel that Ramon had produced when she had said she couldn’t possibly go riding until she had had her breakfast.

‘I haven’t eaten either but not to worry, I have it covered,’ he had said, producing the breakfast treat wrapped in a linen napkin.

When she had laughed and conceded he had thought of everything she hadn’t known that had included food poisoning! Could he have escaped unscathed?

‘Ramon?’

‘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.