Don Joaquin's Pride

‘I would suggest that this humble abode is a most unpleasant surprise to you, señora. We both know that you would not have troubled to make this journey had you not believed that it would be well worth your while to attend a dying man’s bedside,’ Joaquin Del Castillo drawled with freezing bite.

With a frown of confusion, her concentration running at a tenth of its usual efficiency, Lucy gazed blankly back at her dark brooding companion with his unnerving air of command and authority. He was towering over her like an executioner, and involuntarily she took a nervous step back from him. ‘What are you talking about? Why aren’t we going inside? I want to see Fidelio—’

Joaquin vented a harsh laugh of disbelief. ‘Fortunately for him, he is not here.’

‘Not here?’ Lucy frowned. ‘You mean he’s been taken into hospital?’

‘No. Only the sick go to hospital, and Fidelio is not sick.’

A wiry little man of Central American Indian ancestry suddenly appeared out of the deep shade cast by the out-housing and cast Lucy into even greater confusion. ‘Who’s that, then?’

‘Mateo works for me.’

With that assurance, Joaquin strode forward to greet his employee. A brief exchange of a language she didn’t even recognise took place. Then the older man retreated back into the shadows again. Not once had he angled so much as a curious glance in Lucy’s direction.

Returning to her side, Joaquin threw wide the battered door on the little stucco house. ‘Fidelio is not on his deathbed,’ he then informed her with grim satisfaction. ‘He is currently working many miles from here and he has no idea that you are even in Guatemala.’

‘I don’t understand—’

‘I imagine you’re in shock.’ Joaquin closed a domineering hand over her shoulder and urged her into the dim depths of the interior, which contained only a few pieces of dusty decrepit furniture. It was obvious that the little house had stood empty for some time. ‘You thought you had got away scot-free with your confidence tricks. In fact you believed you were about to enrich yourself yet again at Fidelio’s expense—’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Lucy protested.

‘Then listen and you will find out,’ Joaquin advised very softly. ‘I took it upon myself to bring you here, and here you will stay for as long as I choose to keep you.’

Pale with apprehension, her head reeling, Lucy felt her way clumsily down into a rough wooden chair before her legs gave way beneath her. ‘Fidelio isn’t here,’ she recited in shaky repetition. ‘And he’s not ill…and you are saying that you plan to keep me here…what on earth are you trying to say?’ She pressed a weak hand to her pounding temples. ‘I must have misunderstood you—’

‘You have misunderstood nothing. But you are naturally reluctant to face the reality that the golden goose will lay no more eggs,’ Joaquin intoned grimly. ‘And that while your pathetic begging letters were sufficient to impress Fidelio, they left a very different impression on me!’

‘Begging letters?’ Lucy questioned, her brow indenting.

With a scorching glance of savage contempt, Joaquin Del Castillo swept up the small wooden box resting on the hearth. Opening it, he planted it down on the rickety table beside her. ‘Your own letters, señora. In every single one of them you talk of your poverty, your terrible struggle to survive…your desperate need for financial help!’

Like a woman caught up in a bad dream, Lucy reached out an unsteady hand and lifted an envelope, instantly recognising her sister’s distinctive handwriting. As she dropped the envelope again her stomach performed a sick somersault. Poverty…struggle to survive…Cindy? Cindy, who had inherited a large amount of money from their father in an insurance pay-out at nineteen? Cindy, who spent like there was no tomorrow and who only ever bought the very best?

‘And yet throughout that entire period you were living in style and security,’ Joaquin Del Castillo delivered with fierce condemnation.

‘How do you know that?’ Fathoms deep in shock at what she was being told, Lucy nonetheless struggled to concentrate.

‘I had enquiries made in London. You own an expensive Docklands apartment and take regular trips abroad,’ Joaquin derided with a curled lip. ‘You have enjoyed a most lavish lifestyle at Fidelio’s expense. You played on the chivalry and compassion of a trusting, unworldly old man and it has taken you only five years to fleece him of all his savings!’

‘Oh, dear heaven…’ Lucy mumbled in sick comprehension.

‘Your constant demands for money ruined him. This was to have been Fidelio’s retirement home,’ Joaquin Del Castillo shot at her with harsh condemnation. ‘Before you began dipping your hand deep into his pocket Fidelio had the means to transform this place and look forward to a comfortable retirement after a lifetime of hard work. But now, when he should be taking his ease in his old age, he has been forced to take another job just to support himself!’

‘I thought that Fidelio was a wealthy man—’

‘How could you think that a ranch foreman was wealthy, señora?’ Joaquin demanded with crushing derision.

‘A ranch foreman? I think there’s been a t-terrible misunderstanding,’ Lucy stammered, a look of growing horror in her strained eyes.

The Central American rancher dropped down into an athletic crouch and gripped the arms of her chair, making her feel cornered and trapped. Blistering green eyes glittered threat at her. ‘Don’t play stupid with me…I’m not a patient man. There has been no misunderstanding. Accept now that there will be no easy escape from your imprisonment—’

‘Imprisonment?’ Lucy yelped, already recoiling from his menacing proximity. ‘For goodness’ sake…are you threatening me?’

‘Until such time as you choose to sign a legally binding agreement to repay the money you virtually stole from Fidelio you will remain here,’ Joaquin Del Castillo decreed. ‘But you are in no danger of suffering any form of violence. I would not soil my hands with you!’

‘Is that supposed to be reassuring?’ Lucy asked in a very wobbly voice, while she wondered what was wrong with her malfunctioning brain. For on one level she was jerking back from him like some prudish Victorian maiden, and on another level she was staring into those extraordinary green eyes of his and marvelling at their beauty.

‘Do you dare to suggest that I would use physical force on a woman?’ Joaquin demanded in outrage. ‘I…a Del Castillo, stoop to so shameful an act?’

Dry-mouthed, Lucy simply gaped at him. Sizzling eyes the colour of jade were focused on her. All that passion, all that fire, concealed from her and rigorously suppressed throughout their journey. No wonder Joaquin Del Castillo hadn’t been able to manage much in the way of casual conversation! His efforts to conceal that incredibly volatile temperament from her must have been as constraining as a gag.

He sprang fluidly upright again. His bold sun-bronzed features were hard as iron. ‘Mateo remains outside, purely to ensure your safety. There is nothing around you here but mile after empty mile of cattle country. This is a most dangerous and inhospitable terrain for the inexperienced.’

‘You can’t make me stay here,’ Lucy told him dazedly.

He swept up a folded document from the table and extended it. ‘If you sign this, you may leave immediately. Without a signature, you remain.’

Lucy snatched the document from him. Mercifully it was written in English, but it was couched in long-winded legalese. Slowly and with a straining frown of effort she worked down the page, and then came to a sum of money that was so large it jolted her into even deeper shock. According to what she was reading, Cindy had received the most enormous sum of money from Fidelio Paez over the past five years. And the document was an agreement to repay the entire sum immediately.

Beads of perspiration formed on Lucy’s furrowed brow. Whether this monstrous man accepted it or not, there had been a ghastly misunderstanding. Cindy genuinely believed that her father-in-law was rich, and if she had written asking for money it had definitely been done in the mistaken conviction that Fidelio Paez could well afford to be generous.

Fidelio was almost seventy years old. On a foreman’s wages it must have taken him a lifetime to build up so healthy a savings account. Two lifetimes, Lucy adjusted, marvelling that a ranch foreman could ever have amassed such a sum. But now all that money was gone, and with it the old man’s security. How on earth was such a huge amount to be repaid?

The small flat which Cindy had bought for Lucy and their late mother was already up for sale, Lucy reminded herself in a rush of relief. But even if the property fetched its full asking price it would still only cover about half of the outstanding debt. Did Cindy own her expensive Docklands apartment? And how much of Cindy’s original inheritance at nineteen still remained intact? Any of it?

Her twin had joked that buying the flat for her sister and her mother had been a good way of preventing her from spending all her money. ‘I’m too extravagant…I know I am, but why shouldn’t I treat myself?’ Cindy had asked her twin defensively. ‘I just can’t resist nice things. Roger gets really angry with me, but he’s always had it easy. How could he understand what I went through living with Dad? Roger never had to go without food or decent clothes because his father had taken every last penny and blown it on booze!’

The memory of that revealing conversation still pierced Lucy like an accusing knife. When her twin had castigated Roger for his lack of understanding of what made her a spendthrift, she might as well have thrown in Lucy’s name too. Lucy had been protected when she was a vulnerable child. Cindy had been betrayed by an adult in the grip of an addiction out of his control. And without doubt her sister still bore those scars.

‘Will you sign, señora?’ Joaquin Del Castillo challenged softly.

Lucy trembled on the brink of speech. She stifled a craven desire to tell him that he had entrapped the wrong sister. Not yet, an inner voice screeched. Impulsive speech or action would be an act of insanity with a male who had gone to such frightening lengths to corner a woman he believed to be a heartless confidence trickster. Furthermore a confession of her true identity would at this moment make him even angrier. And Lucy was no longer labouring under the naive conviction that she was dealing with some straightforward rancher from the backwoods.

The repayment agreement still tightly gripped in her hands had been drawn up by a top-flight and no doubt very expensive legal firm in the City of London. Joaquin Del Castillo had also admitted to having had enquiries made about her sister in London. All that sort of thing cost a great deal of money. Joaquin Del Castillo was also wearing what looked very much like a Rolex watch. She had noticed it the night before but had assumed that it was a cheap fake. Now she was no longer so sure. The cowboys in that ramshackle bar the day before had been doing an extraordinary amount of respectful bowing and scraping around Joaquin Del Castillo.

‘Who are you?’ Lucy questioned tautly.

‘You know who I am, señora.’

‘I know nothing about you but your name,’ Lucy argued feverishly.

‘It is not necessary that you should know more,’ Joaquin fielded with supreme disdain. ‘Now…will you sign that document?’

Lucy tilted her chin and said shakily. ‘I’m not prepared to sign anything under duress.’

Shimmering green eyes raked over her pale frightened face. ‘So I will call with you next week and see how you feel then,’ Joaquin drawled silkily, and in one long fluid stride he turned on his heel.

‘Next week…?’ Lucy gasped incredulously, her head thumping so hard that she was beginning to feel slightly sick. ‘I assume that’s your idea of a joke—’

He swung back with innate grace. ‘Why would I be joking?’

‘You can’t possibly mean that you intend to leave me here until next week!’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not? Because I don’t want to be here and you’ve got no right to keep me here against my will…I could put the police on you for this!’ Lucy sliced back frantically as she forced herself upright again on wobbling knees.

‘And what crime would you then accuse me of committing, señora?’ Joaquin Del Castillo prompted with sardonic amusement. ‘You are not even on my land. You came here of your own volition and now you are taking up residence in your father-in-law’s home. What do either of those actions have to do with me?’

Aghast at that subtle and devious response, and the clear forethought and planning which must have preceded it, Lucy stared at him with increasing desperation. ‘I could never find my way back to San Angelita without your help!’

Joaquin shrugged without remorse. ‘And you won’t get it unless you sign that agreement. By the way,’ he murmured in casual aside as he paused in the open doorway, ‘don’t waste your time trying to suborn Mateo. He speaks no English, and in common with all Fidelio’s friends and well-wishers he is disgusted by what you have done!’

A cold sweat of panic breaking out on her skin, Lucy got up and hurtled dizzily through the door in his wake. ‘I can’t sign that agreement…I don’t have that kind of money.’ She stumbled clumsily over that driven admission as she gazed pleadingly up at him. ‘We need to talk about this. Surely there’s some other way of sorting this awful business out…’

Joaquin Del Castillo stared down at her, stunning eyes narrowed to a sliver of glinting light in his darkly handsome features. Her breath locked in her dry throat. Those spectacular eyes, scorching as the sun’s heat, beat down on her. All of a sudden she felt as if a hundred trapped butterflies were going crazy inside her. Her heart crashed against her breastbone, shock shrilling through her as she trembled, paralysed to the spot by the most extraordinary rising sense of excitement.

‘Some other way would naturally be the only way you know,’ Joaquin breathed huskily, a derisive slant to his hard, compelling mouth. ‘Sex is your currency and I can see that you would not find lying back under me a punishment.’

Lucy gave him an incredulous look, reeling under the onslaught of that insult.

He lowered his imperious dark head, sunlight gleaming over the glossy luxuriance of his blue-black hair. ‘That air of gauche uncertainty and fragile femininity is remarkably convincing…or at least it would be if I wasn’t aware that you have been the mistress of at least two wealthy married men!’

‘How…dare…you?’ Lucy gasped, cheeks aflame and incensed.

‘How very easy it must have been for you to fool Mario into believing that he had found the love of his life!’

Cindy had adored Mario Paez, and had been totally gutted by his death. Sheer outrage ripped through Lucy and she flew forward, swung her arm back like a champion golfer to gain momentum, and took a violent swing at another human being for the first time ever. Joaquin sidestepped her with such speed and dexterity that she almost lost her balance and fell flat on her face. A pair of large and very powerful hands snapped around her waist and the next minute she was airborne.

Out of her head with frustrated fury as Joaquin held her at extended arm’s length, with her feet dangling out of contact with solid ground, Lucy flailed her clenched fists about uselessly, because she couldn’t get close enough to hit him. ‘Put me down…put me down, you pig!’ she screeched at him full blast.

Savagely amused green eyes raked over her hectically flushed and outraged face. ‘There’s also a certain piquancy to your extreme lack of size. You look like a dainty doll but you have the temper of a shrew—’

‘Let go of me, you great hulking bully!’ Lucy spat at him.

‘Claro! I am seeing the real woman now,’ Joaquin Del Castillo purred as he surveyed her, lush inky black lashes low on smouldering eyes. Raw sexuality emanated from him in unashamed waves. ‘And what a tigress you must be between the sheets…all teeth and claws and hunger.’

About to launch another seething outburst at him, Lucy blinked in sheer bemusement, her soft full mouth falling open. Never before had any man addressed her in such terms. He wiped out her anger. She was more fascinated by that tantalising and false image of herself than insulted. Unwarily she clashed with those amazingly intense eyes of his and gulped. He looked like a mountain lion about to leap on a little fluffy lamb. ‘No…’

‘The word you use with me is sí…it means yes, and I like to hear it,’ Joaquin Del Castillo confided in a deep dark drawl that rasped down her spine like sandpaper on silk, and he drew her in to him and banded his arms round her narrow ribcage instead. ‘Say it for me…’

A strange all-pervasive ache stirred deep in Lucy’s pelvis, wiping out her ability to concentrate. ‘No—’

‘Sí…’ Joaquin instructed, slowly crushing her swelling breasts into the hard wall of his chest, one strong arm sliding down her back to curve round her hips and hold her fast as he studied her with flaming mesmeric intensity. ‘Dios…you will say it to please me.’

‘Please you…’ Lucy echoed, her entire body plastered to every vibrant masculine angle of his and assailed by a quivering seductive pliancy. Her heart was racing so fast it threatened cardiac arrest. Driven by a temptation stronger than she could resist, she raised her hand and traced the sculpted line of one slanting male cheekbone, smooth golden skin overlying a truly spectacular arrangement of bone.

His dark head lowered to capture her exploring forefinger between his lips. Lucy watched him in shaken fascination. A soft gasp was dragged from low in her convulsing throat. Every pulse in her treacherous body went crazy as he gently sucked, silken black lashes almost hitting his cheekbones. Like ice cream on a hot stove she could feel her flesh melting over her bones in a sweet, strong agony of need so new to her experience it overwhelmed her defences.

‘Sí…’ Joaquin prompted thickly as he lifted his arrogant dark head.

‘Sí…’ Lucy framed without even knowing what she was saying, utterly enthralled by the wash of agonising sensation pulsing up inside her.

He caught her parted lips with his and tasted her. Raw, burning excitement blazed up in a head-spinning tide that swept her away. Just one kiss… She had never dreamt but had often fantasised, never once expecting to experience such a response in reality. But the hard hot heat of Joaquin Del Castillo’s hungry mouth on hers was a passionate revelation to Lucy. The passion he summoned up inside her controlled her utterly. She couldn’t get enough of him even when the need to breathe sobbed in her deflated lungs.

‘The face of a sweet Botticelli angel, the brain of a calculator and the sexual appetite of a natural whore,’ Joaquin spelt out silkily, lifting his head and holding her back from him. ‘It would please me to throw you down and take you here…to use you as you once used poor Mario. But I believe I can withstand the temptation.’

Lucy was shell-shocked, gasping for air. Her every nerve jangled with a sense of deprivation so strong she almost cried out in protest and grabbed him back to her again. Stunned by a complete inability to work out how she had turned into a wanton stranger in Joaquin Del Castillo’s arms, and finally forced to support her own weight again, Lucy reeled dizzily. The sick pounding behind her temples made her weary mouth curl in a little moue of pain.

‘Looking pathetic doesn’t work with me either,’ Joaquin slung down at her with grim emphasis.

Lucy focused on him hazily and noticed, really could not have helped noticing when he wore such close-fitting pants, that he was in a very masculine state of arousal. And so shaken was she by the sight of a male in that condition she stared and abstractedly recalled that he had begun the assault on her senses by doing wildly indecent things to her finger. Suddenly she was undyingly grateful that matters hadn’t proceeded any further than that one breathtaking kiss, for she had no idea, absolutely no idea, just how… Her mother had warned her that what a woman often thought she wanted wasn’t much fun once she actually got it. She was now more than ready to be convinced.

‘I feel ill…’ Lucy confided helplessly, swaying without even realising it and wondering why her skin still felt as if it was on fire when he was no longer touching her.

‘You cannot fool me into removing you from here,’ Joaquin drawled with derisive cool, his lean dark face unimpressed. ‘I fully intend that you should endure the privations of what you would sentence Fidelio to endure when he is no longer fit to work.’

She wasn’t well; that was what the matter was with her. In fact, she felt just as she had felt when she had had the flu a month back, only worse, she conceded absently. Had she imagined Joaquin Del Castillo kissing her? Why would he have kissed her? What sense did that make?

‘Men don’t make sense…men are animals,’ Lucy announced with semi-delirious conviction, without even realising that she was talking out loud. ‘You are the prime example…you are the definitive proof. I should never have argued with Mum—’

‘Madre de Dios…’ He interrupted her rambling spiel with incredulity. ‘What—?’

Lucy groaned, pushing a shaking hand over her wet brow, no longer able to focus properly, just as her knees began to shake and crumple beneath her. ‘Awful…feel awful—’

Joaquin Del Castillo’s dusty black riding boots appeared in her vision. ‘I will not be taken in by this outrageous theatrical display, señora.’

Lucy slumped down on one elbow. And then with a faint moan, as the world swung tipsily and blackness folded in entirely, she passed out altogether.

CHAPTER THREE

LUCY stirred and shifted. An experimental movement of her head confirmed that the awful pounding there had mercifully subsided. But even before she opened her eyes, she was assailed by a bewildering surge of powerful images.

Joaquin looking down at her, fabulous eyes green as jade, his concern palpable. Joaquin murmuring in soothing Spanish as she tossed and turned in a fever. Joaquin laughing. Laughing? But only for a split second. His lean dark face had swiftly shuttered again, leaving her with a sharp sense of loss. So confusing were those pictures flashing through her reawakening brain she blanked them out.

Opening her eyes, she discovered that she had not dreamt up the incredible bedroom in which she had lain since she had succumbed to her second attack of flu. Afternoon sunlight illuminated the exquisite antique furniture and the wonderful watercolours on the walls. It was a huge room. Elegant and unbelievably luxurious, right down to the solid six inches of superb lace edging the sheet beneath her hand. Her fingers stroked the lace and then stilled uncertainly again as Joaquin came back into her thoughts at the speed of a shooting star. Was this his house? If it was, he was a seriously wealthy male. Who was he?

Twenty-two. In spite of all her efforts to the contrary, she had got to twenty-two years of age without meeting one moment of serious temptation, Lucy conceded ruefully. And then the biggest, bossiest creep in Guatemala, who unfortunately happened to enjoy devastatingly spectacular good looks and the kind of sensual technique she had doubted even existed, had made a sexual advance on her finger. She quivered just thinking about that moment and felt her foolish tummy churn and leap at the memory of the kiss which had followed.

A bemused indent forming on her brow as she realised that she was thinking about Joaquin Del Castillo yet again, Lucy sat up and sent her gaze winging round the room. She needed to phone Cindy, but there was no telephone. Sliding out of bed on wobbly legs, she went into the en suite bathroom. Weak though she was, she headed straight for the shower cubicle.

Afterwards, she studied her reflection in the vanity mirror and heaved a sigh over her pale face and the childishly curly torrent of caramel-blonde ringlets forming as her hair dried. She smoothed a hand over the mint-green nightdress she wore. It was beautiful, and, like everything else she had brought to Guatemala, it belonged to her sister. Light as silk and whisper-thin, the fabric moulded every female curve and was a far cry from the cotton jersey nightwear which Lucy usually favoured.