Kept At The Argentine's Command

Lulu was tempted in that moment to phone her parents, who would be arriving at the castle tonight. But how would that look? And she couldn’t lean on Gigi this weekend of all weekends.

She gasped as another splash of muddy water, this time from passing pedestrians, hit her shoes and saw the mud now attached to her sadly limp blue ribbons. Her pride wavered.

Dieu, she knew she’d regret this.

She grabbed her trolley and pushed it towards the back end of the car.

It was really completely unfair, but frankly she’d be a fool if she passed this up.

She stood there. In the rain. Waiting.

He took his time.

Lulu narrowed her eyes on his languid stroll around to the boot, all shoulders and confident attitude, looking infinitely rugged and male and capable.

But she knew differently. Knew how a sturdy exterior could mask all kinds of weaknesses and flaws.

She’d bet this man had plenty. For one thing, he didn’t like women. The things he’d said to her on the plane... The way he’d curled his lip at her shoes... She’d seen the way he’d looked at them. He had no idea how secure these shoes made her feel. She stamped one of them, because he was making her wait deliberately.

‘Open the boot, would you?’

He looked her up and down. She wasn’t going to apologise for her rudeness. He needed to know she was onto him.

All the same, she took a shuffling step backwards.

She drew herself up, happily over six feet in her shoes, but still gallingly forced to tip up her chin to look him in the eye.

With a half-smile, as if he knew what she was doing, he unlocked the boot, and Lulu was mollified—and a little relieved—when without a word he began hauling her luggage inside.

He handled the matching powder-blue cases as if they weighed nothing. The problem was he was tossing them into the boot as if he was shifting hay bales.

Lulu made a sound of dismay, but from the look he gave her she was a little afraid he might haul her in there too if she said something.

It was only when he looked about to launch her carpet bag after the cases that she jumped and threw herself bodily in front of him to prevent certain shattering.

‘Doux Jésus, stop!’

He held off, but the look on his face told her he was unimpressed—which was pretty rich, given he was the one destroying her property!

‘It contains the crystal I’ve brought as a wedding gift. For Gigi—and Khaled,’ she added, grudgingly.

‘Crystal?’

‘Goblets...tableware. Crystal.’

He continued to stare at her, as if she’d announced she was giving them a horse and cart.

Lulu inhaled a breath. She held out her arms. ‘Give that to me.’

He complied, but she wasn’t expecting him to step right up to her. She was suddenly more aware of him than ever, and inhaled his aftershave—something woodsy that mingled with the scent of his own skin. It was attractively male in a way she wasn’t used to.

Confused and flustered, Lulu looked up.

She encountered his firm chin and the sensuous line of his mouth, which only made her feel more unsettled.

He had a faint frown on his face and she suspected she mirrored it.

She turned her back on him to lodge the bag carefully between two cases to prevent it being bounced around.

Rude, ignorant, appalling, macho jerk.

He waited until she’d stepped back to lower the boot. She waited patiently by the passenger door with her umbrella. But he abruptly headed for the driver’s side of the car.

‘The “macho jerk” wants you to get in the car,’ he said flatly as he yanked open his door.

Lulu realised two things in that moment. One, she’d spoken her thoughts aloud, and, two, he wasn’t going to open her door.

Given he had all her luggage now locked up inside his car, she didn’t have much choice, but she cursed herself for her weakness. She should have waited for a cab.

As if to remind her why she’d made her choice, the rain began to pelt harder.

Why is this happening to me?

She closed her umbrella and opened the door herself.

‘Try not to drip on the upholstery,’ he shot at her as she lodged her furled umbrella at her feet.

Distinctly queasy with the added tension, Lulu looked around in desperation. Where did he expect her to put it?

‘Here.’ He took it from her hand and laid it on the coat he’d tossed on the back seat.

Alejandro then turned back to discover that instead of buckling herself in she had shoved the door open further, so that the rain had begun to slant in.

His temper snapped. ‘Close that damn door!’

She looked for a moment as if she was going to jump right out of the car.

And then she leaned forward and began to dry retch miserably into the gutter.

He wrenched open his door and cut around the car to find her bent double.

He hunkered down. The face she lifted was bone-white. This she couldn’t fake. She clearly wasn’t well, and he suspected he’d got some things wrong. He produced a handkerchief to blot her mouth and soak up the tears that were sliding down her cheeks.

If she’d been hoping for some sympathy it was effective. The big glistening eyes, the silent tears, how fragile she suddenly looked beneath her showy outfit—as if she was trying to shrink into invisibility within it...

He put his hands around her shoulders to help her back into the car and out of the rain, but her response took him off guard. Her arms shot out and she instantly had them wrapped around his neck as tenaciously as a strangling vine.

He was enveloped in the scent of her, and he wondered for a second if this was her clumsy attempt at a pass. Only the feel of her rapid heartbeat told him she was scared. It was like holding a small nervous bird to his chest—as if what she was feeling was too big for her slight body. And yet what had she to be scared of?

She was overwrought—that was all, he told himself, and possibly a little the worse for wear from her in-flight tippling.

A better question was how had he come to be the only man in Scotland who was saddled with the job of delivering a vodka-wilted bridesmaid to their shared destination?

It had to be vodka, because he couldn’t smell any alcohol on her. All he smelt were those cottage violets—and something warmer and real that was just her.

He tentatively rubbed her back, as he would one of the young kids on the estancia who had taken a fall from a horse and had the wind knocked out of them, and tried to ignore the fact that she was an incredibly appealing full-grown female with her breasts pushed up against his chest.

‘I don’t think I’ll be sick again,’ she confided miserably.

She hadn’t actually done anything other than spit up a little bile, but he didn’t doubt her suffering. She looked more miserable than a human being should.

‘Please don’t tell anybody about this,’ she said in a muffled voice against his neck.

It was a strange request, but she was obviously serious about it.

He cleared his throat. ‘Come on, let’s strap you in. Are you all right to travel?’

She nodded, allowing him to help her.

He went around to the boot to grab a bottle of water from the chiller. He yanked the screw lid off for her and when he offered it to her she took a few grateful sips.

‘Okay now?’ he asked gruffly.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskily, swallowing deeply and refusing to meet his eyes. ‘It won’t happen again.’

He drove the keys into the ignition.

‘Do you want to stop for coffee? Get something in your stomach?’

She shuddered. ‘I can’t think of anything worse.’

‘It might sober you up.’

Her eyes flashed his way in confusion. ‘I am sober.’

He gave her an old-fashioned look.

‘I am not drunk. I have not been drinking.’

‘You can deny it if you want, querida. It doesn’t change the fact you were stumbling all over that flight, your words were a little slurry and you’ve just been sick.’

She looked at him in horror, her knuckles white around the bottle. ‘I wasn’t— That’s you— I mean, nobody else thought that—’

Lulu tried to control her shaking because it wasn’t helping her case.

‘Maybe I should just find a taxi,’ she said, deeply humiliated, and distressed as she sloshed some of the water on her skirt. Although getting out of this car was the last thing she felt up to doing. ‘This isn’t working for me and it’s clearly not working for you.’

‘Look,’ he said, keeping the car idling while he took the bottle from her hands, lidded it and tossed it onto the back seat. ‘In my experience nobody likes to be confronted with their behaviour while under the influence. You had a few drinks on the flight...they didn’t agree with you. I’m not judging.’

‘Yes, you are judging,’ she burst out unhappily. ‘And nobody thought I was drunk.’

‘No, probably not—they were too busy thinking what a pain in the arse you were to fly with.’

Her chin wobbled. ‘Do you get something out of insulting me?’

‘Sí, it takes the edge off.’

She stared at him. He’d silenced her. Good. The truth was she still looked very pale, and he didn’t want to argue with her any more.

‘If you must know,’ she said, clearly unable or unwilling to let this go, ‘I had some analgesics on the plane on an empty stomach and they disagreed with me. They’re to blame.’

Alejandro was ready to dismiss this out of hand, only then he remembered the medication he’d seen delivered to her.

‘Well, that was stupid,’ he said.

He ignored the wounded look on her face. She could save it. He’d been manipulated by women who made this one look like a rank amateur. Besides, he wasn’t playing Sir Galahad to her fair maiden. Been there, done that—had the divorce papers to prove it. The problem was she was already getting to him.

He swung the car out into the traffic. ‘Almost as stupid as not giving up your seat on the flight,’ he reiterated.

Lulu realised she was cornered. How on earth did she answer that?

‘It’s not your business,’ she muttered, looking away.

There was no way she could tell him that whatever had been in her stomach had ended up in the plane toilet, because that was going to lead to more questions.

Questions with answers that had nothing whatsoever to do with him.

It was her private business. Her mother had drummed that into her years ago.

‘If you weren’t drunk there’s nowhere to hide, querida. I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. But you behaved like a spoilt brat. Forgive me if I choose to treat you like one.’

Lulu wanted to die of shame.

‘You’re an awful man,’ she muttered, ‘I hope we have nothing to do with each other this weekend at the castle.’

‘Sweetheart, you took the words out of my mouth.’

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY STOPPED TO fuel up the car after a couple of hours on the road. Lulu wound down her window and saw a newspaper headline behind the glass of the service station window: Celebrity Wedding. Oligarch Brings in Private Army of Security.

It was a little daunting to realise she was heading into all that.

The other daunting reality was striding back towards the car. His superbly fit and powerful frame was gloved in an understated but clearly expensive set of dark trousers and a navy shirt. Like a man who went on secret missions with the armed forces and climbed walls without ropes, just using his weapon of a body as all the equipment he required.

Lulu looked away.

Ah, oui, this was her new little problem. She had discovered now she felt physically better that she was responding to that Latin machismo thing some women went a little silly over. She might not have a boyfriend as such, but she did have hormones.

She really needed to make a big effort to curb her imagination.

People were looking his way as he approached the car. So maybe she wasn’t the only one. She had to admit he had the impervious aura of confidence that belonged to someone for whom the small stuff of life was taken care of. She imagined Alejandro du Crozier rarely fuelled up his own car, although he’d taken care of it easily enough.

She had watched him do it through the side mirror—watched him sticking the petrol gun into the tank. There was something about a man’s broad forearm, a chunk of watch, a powerful wrist and a strong hand gripping the nozzle that put all sorts of erotic images into a woman’s head.

Admittedly they were images mostly gleaned from books she’d read. Her personal notebook of erotic experiences was fairly limited.

Alejandro tossed a wrapped sandwich onto her lap as he eased in beside her and turned the engine over.

‘Ham salad. It’s not much, but it should tide you over until we reach Dunlosie.’

Lulu wondered if this was him thawing towards her. Whatever it was, it was a thoughtful gesture. ‘Thank you,’ she said uncertainly, and busied herself with unwrapping her sandwich.

She could feel his eyes on her.

‘Would you like half?’ she offered.

Alejandro had bought the sandwich with an eye to her turning up her pert little nose at plastic-wrapped food. His preconceptions took a solid hit.

‘I had a king’s breakfast,’ he said shortly. ‘Eat up.’

Lulu gave an internal sigh. So much for the thaw.

Half an hour up the road, Alejandro flipped his phone onto speaker.

A male voice began to speak in Spanish, and Alejandro replied in the same language.

Lulu found herself transfixed by the deep, mellifluous quality of his voice as he spoke his own language. Then a Scot’s voice came on the line.

‘We’re pleased to have you here in Edinburgh, Mr du Crozier. Congratulations on captaining South America to that win in Palermo. It warms a Scotsman’s heart to see the English floundering on a field.’

Lulu’s head snapped around at that. What was this?

Alejandro chuckled. ‘No problem at all,’ he said easily in his smooth, deep voice. ‘It was a good match.’

Lulu felt as if she’d had the rug pulled out from under her. Where had this come from? The smile, the ease, the charm?

‘We will be sending our principal to you tomorrow, at your convenience and we’ll give you an aerial viewing of the property. Will it be just you, Mr du Crozier?’

‘Possibly one other.’ Alejandro glanced her way. ‘Two o’clock looks good.’

As he ended the call Lulu told herself not to make any enquiries—she would only look nosey.

‘I’m looking at property while I’m here,’ he said, his eyes on the road. ‘I’m thinking of investing in a golf course. It’s on a picturesque strip of land along the coast near Dunlosie.’

He didn’t look like a golfer. Although she suspected those broad shoulders and strong arms could hit a golf ball to the moon and back.

‘Do you play golf professionally?’ she ventured. When he raised an eyebrow she added hurriedly, so that she didn’t look stupid, ‘That man said something about you captaining a team?’

He smiled slightly. ‘Polo. I captained South America.’ He was watching her as if gauging her reaction. ‘It received some press coverage.’

Vaguely his name stirred a memory. She rather thought she ought to know it.

‘I have a little fame, Lulu.’

He must have read her frown.

‘Ah, oui.’

She tried not to look curious or impressed, or as if she cared. He was smiling to himself, and she wanted to tell him she didn’t care if he was famous, or who he knew. It wasn’t as if she was angling to spend any time with him when they reached the castle. She wasn’t interested in him. He was just transport.

She leaned forward and rummaged in her bag.

It was almost a relief to have her phone in her hand and something to concentrate on other than the magnetism of the man beside her.

He flicked on the sound system.

‘Is that necessary?’

Alejandro spared her a glance. ‘It passes the time.’

‘I’m trying to do some work.’

‘Games on your phone?’

‘Wedding plans. See.’ She held it up but he kept his eye on the wet road.

‘Isn’t that the bride and groom’s prerogative?’

‘I’m maid of honour,’ she said proudly. ‘I have responsibilities.’

Alejandro thumped the wheel with the heel of his hand.

‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded.

‘Santa Maria,’ he said under his breath, and after a moment began to chuckle.

‘What’s so funny?’

When he kept laughing her expression took on a look of bafflement, and for a moment she looked very young and decidedly adorable.

He didn’t want her to look adorable. He took another look. Definitely adorable. No wonder she had entitlement issues. He doubted there was a man alive who could resist those big brown eyes or her air of fragility.

It would bother him. If he was considering taking this anywhere. But since the day he had learned he’d inherited everything, in the form of the estancia and all the debts his father had collected, and gained nothing but his mother’s endless demands for more money, his wife’s desire for freedom and the everlasting dissatisfaction of his disinherited sisters he’d carried around the feeling that he’d let them all down.

Fragile women required a lot more than he was able to give.

‘I want to know why you’re laughing at me,’ she insisted.

‘I’m going to kill him.’

‘Kill who? What are you talking about?’

‘Fate. The universe. Khaled Kitaev.’

‘You’re not making any sense.’

‘I’m padrino de boda, querida.’

She had a blank look on her face that made him want to spin this out a little longer, because watching her lose a little of that tight composure was almost worth the hassle.

He relented and filled her in. ‘Best man.’

She dropped her device and it slithered through her satin skirt and thumped at her feet.

‘You can’t be!’

‘I am.’

‘But we don’t like each other.’ She clamped her mouth shut, as if she couldn’t believe that had just slipped out.

No, maybe not, but he’d just discovered he did like her. She might be spoiled and self-centred, but he lived in a world where most women fell at his feet.

Lulu Lachaille would fall, if he applied the right pressure here and there, but she wasn’t going to trip herself up.

She might just be what he was looking for this weekend after all.

Distraction from the spectacle that was a wedding, where everybody mouthed belief in fidelity and love ever after but nobody in his world practised it.

Although he had to admit Khaled and Gigi did seem to be that rarest of unions—a couple who genuinely liked one another.

And he liked Gigi’s little friend, with her pretty curls and her rosebud pout and her French girl’s way of looking as if she was bored and it was his job to entertain her.

‘I wouldn’t say I don’t like you,’ he said, checking out her pretty knees, just visible under the froth of her netted underskirt. Her hands went there immediately, smoothing it down.

‘Not in that way,’ she said crossly. ‘I don’t want you to like me that way at all. I mean in a platonic sense. In a maid of honour and best man duty sense.’

‘Now I’m a duty? Careful, querida, you’ll damage my ego.’

‘I doubt that,’ she said repressively.

He grinned.

She looked decidedly flummoxed.

‘You’ll need to make an effort, then,’ she blurted out almost defensively.

‘I intend to.’

Lulu tried to ignore the fact that she felt hot all over. Was he flirting with her?

‘I’m serious. You’ll have to be polite to me so people don’t notice anything’s wrong.’

But something is wrong, thought Lulu, checking him out surreptitiously. Why did he have that sexy half-smile sitting at the corner of his mouth? He kept looking at her and she didn’t want him to look at her. It made her feel most unlike herself.

‘The best man has duties with the maid of honour,’ she persevered staunchly, feeling as if she was drowning in something and holding on to talk of the wedding as a life buoy.

‘Sí, I believe he does.’

Not those kind of duties. The thought just appeared in her head. It should have embarrassed her, and her heart was racing crazily, but a big part of her was actually enjoying the attention.

Alejandro du Crozier was flirting with her and she wasn’t diving for the nearest manhole to escape.

Probably because she knew she wouldn’t be seeing him again after this weekend.

It wasn’t as if he was going to ask her out. This was just a straightforward few hours in a car together, and then there was the weekend... Maybe it would be okay just to pretend for a few hours that she was normal and he was...interested?

That was when the car gave a bit of a lurch, and the sound of rubber dragging on the road had Lulu gripping her seat.

Alejandro said something filthy in Spanish even as he braked, and all the heat that had been building between them dissipated with the reality of the car coming to a stop at the side of the road.

Lulu forgot how much she’d been enjoying herself as her old friend panic set in and she looked around wildly. ‘What’s going on? Why are we stopping?’

There was no way she was getting out here, in the middle of nowhere!

‘It’s a flat. The back left tyre is shot.’

At least it wasn’t electrical. Lulu slumped a little in her seat. She could stay where she was, safe and sound, and it wouldn’t take too long. She could manage this. But she needed to dial down the panic. She cast about for something to pin her focus to in the car and remembered her phone.

In the silence that followed she glanced up, only to find he was watching her. She really didn’t want him to notice how nervous she was. ‘Well, fix it,’ she said defensively, before returning her attention to the screen.

Fix it?

Alejandro cut the engine and eased back in his seat to take a good look at what exactly he had on his hands.

One hundred and thirty pounds, at a guess, of Paris-bred entitlement—and he damn well wasn’t her mechanic. His gaze dwelt on her soft, petulant mouth. Although there was something he wouldn’t mind fixing.

He reached across, plucked her phone from her hands and tossed it onto the back seat.

Time to take the edge off his distracting sexual interest in her.

Lulu gave him a puzzled look. He’d sort that out for her too.

He leaned in.

Her eyes widened, her breath came short, but she didn’t exactly push him away as he slid his fingers through the astonishingly silky weight of curls behind her head and fitted his mouth with practised ease to hers.

Her muffled yelp gave him the opportunity to invade her warm mouth. He had planned to make this quick. He didn’t linger where he wasn’t wanted. Only Lulu wasn’t struggling, and she made no attempt to push him away. Instead her hands unfolded over his shoulders and then, almost tentatively, she was kissing him back.

He let her.

This wasn’t about proving a point any more.

Her hand stroked gently against his shoulder as she moved her mouth sensuously against his.

She was seducing him. And it was working. His body was suddenly as hard as a pick axe.

Which was inconvenient, given neither of them could do anything about it right now, in a broken-down car on the side of a quiet Scottish road.

Sí, not one of his smarter moves.

He began to think about leaping into ice holes in Reykjavik, of losing to a lesser team, about the very real possibility that a photo of him making out like a teenager with this girl might all too easily end up on the internet.

But what should have killed his desire stone-dead was the wave of tenderness that came over him as she drew away and hid her face in his neck in a gesture of embarrassment that oddly, crazily, had a rush of male protectiveness surging up from nowhere.

He found himself stroking the back of her neck, the urge to be affectionate with her amazingly strong.