The Man From her Wayward Past

So she didn’t need him. Good. He shouldn’t get involved. He would call Nacho—let him take over. Lucia was wild and had set herself on a very different path from him. He was all about polo and business, and had no intention of being distracted or pulled down by anyone. Lucia was clearly on a downward trajectory. With every advantage in the world, she had chosen to work in a club.

Really? Did he believe that?

All he knew for certain at this point was that in his family no one went against expectation, and feelings were curbed as stringently as any horse in a dressage arena. Lucia was composed entirely of emotion. She was an untameable Acosta. He should put her out of his mind for good

Which was easier said than done. He was becoming increasingly worried about her, and in spite of the cold facts he owed Nacho.

Was that all?

So she was attractive. He would soon tire of all the drama.

Wasn’t it entertaining to be around someone with so much character for a change?

Didn’t he love to hunt?

He liked the chase best of all.

What the hell was he thinking?

Lucia was the kid sister of his closest friend. She was out of bounds. And, in the unlikely event that he found himself in the mood for a walk on the wild side, he’d choose someone as worldly as he was—not some pampered Argentinian princess.

Who wasn’t too proud to get down on her hands and knees and scrub a filthy club if that was what it took.

And who was one hell of a good-looking woman, Luke conceded, even in the extraordinary outfit Lucia was forced to wear at work.

All the more reason for him to keep his distance. With his blood boiling in his veins she was safer away from him.

Three o’clock in the morning came and went. The last patron had left the club. They had swept up and tidied and Luke had gone. She’d been too busy to notice when he left. He had left with the blonde, she presumed, feeling sick inside. He definitely hadn’t remembered what day it was today.

So what? Why should she care if Luke had forgotten it was her birthday? She didn’t need him. Luke Forster could go to hell in a bucket for all she cared.

‘Didn’t your birthday start at midnight?’ Grace asked, giving Lucia’s arm a squeeze as they left the club together.

‘How did you know?’ Lucia asked as they took shelter for a moment before braving the rain.

‘I know everything about you,’ Grace teased fondly.

Including Lucia’s real name. Grace was too good a friend for Lucia to want to deceive her. ‘So you’ve heard the party-girl rumours too?’

Grace laughed. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word. You’re not a party girl any more than I am, Lucia. But some of our friends at the club seem to think we should lighten up a bit.’

‘I hope you’re not referring to Van Rickter?’

Grace frowned. ‘I wouldn’t call him a friend, exactly, but there are other nice people working at the club.’

‘What are you hiding under your jacket?’ Lucia enquired as they crossed the road.

‘We had a whip-round for your birthday,’ Grace explained, starting to smile.

‘What is it?’ Lucia asked, her curiosity well and truly roused.

‘I’m not saying. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. But I will tell you this much—everyone seems determined to tempt at least one of us off the straight and narrow this year.’

‘It might take a bit longer than that for me,’ Lucia admitted, shivering as the cold wind whipped around her.

‘Don’t be such a defeatist,’ Grace teased. ‘A lot can happen quickly if you’re lucky.’

Lucia huffed as Grace squeezed her arm again, and then both girls screamed as they sploshed through an icy puddle in the middle of the road.

‘I stuck a couple of mags in the bag as well,’ Grace called out as they parted company at the entrance to the Sundowner Holiday Park. ‘You might recognise one of the centrefolds. You were talking to him in the club.’

Lucia’s heart went crazy with excitement. The centrefold was hardly going to be Van Rickter—unless the magazine in question was Amphibian World.

She ran all the way to the caravan and, throwing her shoulder against the buckled door, launched herself inside. Dropping her things on the floor, she snatched the magazines out of the gift bag and flung herself onto the lumpy bunk. Leafing through as fast as she could, she stalled at the centre page of the second magazine.

Luke Forster was ROCK!’s Torso of the Year.

Dropping the magazine, she threw herself back against the cold tin wall. ‘You blue-blooded hypocrite!’ Her main gripe was not how Luke looked—which was pretty spectacular by any standards—but the way he behaved when he was around her, as if he were a paragon of all the virtues. ‘So you’re incorruptible, are you?’

Now, this was worrying. Not only was she talking to herself, but she was involving a magazine in the conversation. With an angry huff, she plucked the gum from her mouth and stuck Luke’s centrefold to the wall. ‘Take that!’ A thump from her fist secured it. Standing back, she had to concede Luke’s centrefold did brighten things up a bit.

So where was he? Lucia wondered, going through her nightly routine of getting ready for bed in the freezing caravan by piling on more clothes. If Luke was still in Cornwall he was probably tucked up in a nice warm room at the Grand by now—with the blonde. Ack! And if he thought about Lucia at all it would only be to wonder if she was ready to go home yet.

‘No, I’m not ready,’ she snarled, glaring at Luke’s poster. ‘And I’m not giving up. I can’t give up. I can’t go home. Not like this….’

Their nice, warm kitchen in Argentina, where the roof never leaked and the floor was never cold, and she had never once had to pick ice off the insides of the windows …

Unscrewing the top of the flask of hot chocolate that Margaret left on the table each night, she scowled at Luke’s centrefold as she gulped the warm liquid down. She tried not to think about the list of goals she had intended to achieve by now—goals Lucia had been so confident were achievable when she was fourteen.

Reaching beneath the bed, she drew out the precious tote full of memories and extracted the battered notebook in which, as a dreamy-eyed teen, she had written down her innermost hopes and dreams. She didn’t often do this. She saved it for when things were really bad. The bag of dreams, as she called the old canvas tote, was her comforter. It contained her journal from when she was fourteen, and her rather more neglected journal from now. She pulled the old one out and started to read.

It is imperative to follow this list to the letter if I’m ever going to break free from Conan the Barbarian and his gang of galloping gauchos—otherwise known as my brothers …

Lucia smiled as she read the messy list, with all its scribbles and crossings-out. It was hard to believe she had ever been so naïve. Most of her ideas had been based on articles she’d read in teen magazines, which of course were essential reading for fourteen-year-olds with everything to learn. She would have to completely re-jig the list. Get a wax after she’d got a man? Well, that was wrong to start with. And, the way she felt right now, getting a wax could be number two-hundred and thirty-six on next year’s list. Yes, Luke was gorgeous, but …

No. She couldn’t.

She just couldn’t, that’s all.

But just out of curiosity, and because trips down memory lane seemed to be in vogue right now, she straightened out the much-thumbed pages and began to read.

1. Get a job!—preferably promoting a bar, which is a great way to meet new people, according to ROCK! magazine

2. Get a flat!—something gorgeous and stylish in the best part of town. N.B. V. close to the bar!

3. Get a wax!

She remembered that last entry being based more on dreading what her rapidly changing body might do next rather than any horrific hirsute happenings. And how many times had that entry been deferred? And why did she still shift position nervously when she read it?

She pulled a face as she got up to check her top lip in the mirror. Flopping back down again, she remembered her mother’s pale face when a visit to the beautician loomed. Perhaps that was the answer to her waxing phobia. She could still hear her young self asking, ‘Are you all right, Mama?’ And her mother’s response: ‘You’ll understand one day what it means to be a woman, Lucia, and what we have to go through for our men …’ Hefty sigh at that point.

All sorts of images had flashed into Lucia’s young brain—nostril-hair-plucking, blackhead-excising, even earwax-removal with one of those long, pointy things—but never had she imagined that her mother was referring to that most delicate of regions, let alone that some stranger was going to view her private bits close up prior to coating them in molten wax like some medieval torturer. And it didn’t finish there—as Lucia had discovered in that invaluable teenage self-help tome known to one and all as ROCK! Magazine. Then this female Torquemada was going to rip away at those nether regions without so much as a by-your-leave.

Youch!

No way, José!

Back to the list. The next entry after wax, was

4. Get a tan

Lucia remembered a columnist in ROCK! insisting that this must be subtle—a mere sun-kissed whisper that would fool any man into thinking it was natural.

5. Get a cool new wardrobe!

One that did not include a bobbly polyester uniform in a shade that might once have been white, presumably.

6. Get a hairdo

This prompted another visit to the mirror, where she lifted up her haystack hair. Most people complained that their hair was too thin or too straight. She was currently experiencing the opposite problem, known as The Inexplicable Explosion of Frizz. Without her styling products and gadgets, and without money to get it done in a salon, she was on her own.

7. Get a gym membership

First off, gym memberships cost money. And there was a more important consideration: without the hairdo, the tan, the wax and the cool new wardrobe, she was never going to make it through the door of a decent gym.

8. Get a good dance teacher—for the Samba, preferably. Someone like the old gaucho Ignacio, on Nero Caracas’s ranch. Judging by the way Ignacio vaulted the fence when I decided to ride Nero’s fire-breathing monster stallion bareback, Ignacio has still got some moves in him!

9. Get a gag for her polo-playing brothers—so they can’t share any embarrassing secrets with any men I might attract once I’ve completed all of the above.

10. Get a (non-polo-playing) man

And there the list ended. Lucia smiled as she remembered Ignacio teaching her to dance the Samba, and quite a few other dances as well, bringing his ancient ghetto blaster, as Ignacio had called his battered radio, to the hay barn, where she’d been able to blunder about undisturbed. Okay. Looking on the bright side. She was still podgy and in need of a suntan with a frizz ball on her head, but this babe could dance.

‘Cheers, Margaret,’ Lucia murmured, wrapping her frozen hands around the warm flask of chocolate. This small, kind act of someone who had so little made Lucia more determined than ever to help her elderly friend.

‘And hello, Luke,’ she added, addressing Luke’s smouldering poster just inches from her bed.

Hopping out again, she took a closer look. Wow hardly covered it. Lucia’s brothers frequently featured on billboards, but always in full polo rig and usually mounted on a horse. They were certainly never caught half-naked, sluicing themselves down, in a shot Lucia couldn’t imagine strait-laced Luke agreeing to in a million years.

‘You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?’ she murmured, taking full inventory of Luke’s previously hidden assets.

And then there was the pose. Brandishing a whip as he glared into the camera, Luke was naked to his washboard waist, his hard tanned torso accessorised by nothing more than sharp black stubble and a steel watch that could probably tell his position in relation to the moon. A pair of obscenely revealing riding breeches and knee-high leather boots completed an image guaranteed to make any girl’s day.

Posters were a safe way to appreciate the finer points of one of the world’s fittest men. She liked that. As she jumped about and blew on her hands to keep warm before hypothermia set in, Lucia guessed the only way Luke would have been caught out in a shot like that was through the involvement of her school friend and ruthless sister-in-law Holly. Holly was a journalist at ROCK! magazine, and had tamed—sorry—was married to Lucia’s brother Ruiz. Capturing Luke in such a provocative pose would have been an incredible scoop for her.

Three cheers for Holly the reporter! Lucia concluded, chalking one up for the girls. She took another look at Luke’s centrefold.

Goodness, Luke was big …

No wonder she was having erotic dreams. Trying hard not to fixate on Luke’s clinging breeches and the improbable-sized bulge within, Lucia shook her head. She could admire all she liked, but it certainly would never happen now. It couldn’t. She couldn’t. One thing was sure: after this unveiling he could stick his disapproval the next time they met.

The next time they met?

There was nothing on her to-do list that ruled against meetings with an approved family friend, she reasoned, climbing into bed.

CHAPTER FOUR

I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats o’er vales and hill …

I’m the only twenty-four-year-old I know who doesn’t need to take her pill.

Anon.

Are all poets destined to end up on the (remainder) shelf?

Pull yourself together, Lucia!

RESTING her cheek against the cold wet glass the next morning, Lucia stopped scribbling in her journal and stared out of the caravan window at the windswept shore. If she had wanted distance from her brothers she had certainly got it here. She missed them, but no way was she going to ask them for the money to help Margaret. If she did she’d be right back to square one. Yes, she loved her brothers, but Nacho especially made no distinction between caring and smothering, which had left her gasping for freedom in the shadow of four powerful men and their saintly friend Luke.

Luke …

Did her body have to respond with such unbridled delight to the idea of so much stern, glowering disapproval locked inside one hot man?

Maybe she liked Luke’s steely self-control too much, Lucia reflected, glancing at his poster image. It was certainly enough to overrule her fear of men.

Most men. Picking up her bag, she made a mental note to get the strap repaired. It had suffered a few injuries when she had used it to beat off the concierge. Teeth, nails, handbag, heel of her shoe … A frantic struggle which seemed so feeble now she looked back. But at least she had got away. Eventually.

The concierge had made her feel dirty, calling her names as she ran from the room, clutching her ripped shirt together. He’d said she was asking for it, when nothing could be further from the truth. She did like parties, and she liked flirting with hot guys, but now she could see that her fun-filled reputation had done her no favours. She could just imagine Luke’s scorn if he ever found out what had happened. Getting changed in the staffroom without remembering to put the lock on the door? It was such a stupid thing to do. But she had to try to put it behind her or she would never get on with her life.

Tilting her chin, Lucia gave Luke’s image one last confident stare, but the ache still remained. Where was he now? With the blonde? Perhaps Luke had sensed she was tainted—that the concierge had had his hands all over her. Everywhere. It made her stomach heave just thinking about it. She could still remember his fingers intimately feeling … squeezing … probing, and his sour breath choking her as she struggled to escape. If Luke knew that he would just think, Party girl. What do you expect?

She jumped as her phone rang, and then frowned as she checked the number. She had to take a moment before she could answer. Talk of the devil—though Luke would have no truck with hell. What? No air-con? Luke would be more likely to hold a season ticket to cloud extreme, where he could strum his whip beneath the glow of an oat-fed halo. No way would he waste his time on an aerodynamically inefficient tail and a totally useless pitchfork unless he could use it to strike a polo ball.

‘Luke,’ she said finally, when she had calmed down a little. ‘What a nice surprise. Did you leave something at the club?’

‘In the unlikely event I had left something at the club I would go back to pick it up. I wouldn’t call you.’

Well. That told her. Luke couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic had he tried. Crouched on the bench seat, with her legs drawn up, she hugged the phone. ‘Of course not,’ she said, injecting energy into her voice. ‘So, what can I do for you?’

‘I didn’t see you when I left the club. You were working, I expect.’

‘I’m sorry. I—’

‘Strange,’ he rapped over her. ‘The first time I saw you at the club you assured me you weren’t working there often. But the manager says you are. And he knows you as Anita. What’s going on, Lucia? Why are you lying to me?’

‘What I do or don’t do is none of your business, Luke.’

‘Nacho made it my business.’

‘So you’re my brother’s deputy now?’

‘I’m your brother’s friend,’ Luke argued quietly.

Luke couldn’t have disarmed her faster. There was no point starting a feud with someone Nacho loved when the very last thing she wanted was a total break with her family. ‘So why are you calling me?’

‘I’m concerned about you, Lucia.’

‘Well, don’t be. And if my brothers are so worried, why don’t they call? Or are they too busy playing polo?’

‘Why are you always so suspicious, Lucia?’

‘Because you’re all joined at the hip,’ she flashed. ‘And because my brothers never like me to have too long a leash. Isn’t that right, Luke?’

There was silence at the other end of the line.

Damn him! Luke had made her feel homesick, reminding her of all the warmth and support she received in Argentina. It made everything here seem bleaker—the wind rattling round the caravan, the freezing cold water, the hideous episode with the concierge which she was doing her best to block out, and then her subsequent high-speed drive through the night, reckless …

And her lousy job at the club.

A dead-end job to end all dead-end jobs.

Her heart sank like a stone. She couldn’t bear for gorgeous, glorious, successful Luke to know her life was a complete and utter mess. And she certainly couldn’t bear for him to share that little nugget of information with her brothers. If they knew what had happened … How they would blame her for her frivolous, careless party-girl lifestyle. She deserved this, didn’t she?

Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, she said briskly, ‘Is this a courtesy call, or does it have some purpose, Luke?’ She needed him to get off the line fast, before her voice broke.

‘I’ve never heard you in this mood before,’ he said suspiciously.

‘Independent, do you mean?’ Her fingers had turned white on the phone. It was one thing acting tough, but when she really wanted to cling to Luke’s disembodied presence like a brainless limpet until all the bad things went away it was far better to end the call as soon as she could.

‘Are you still there, Lucia?’

‘I’m here.’

Luke checking up on her was nothing new. She had been an object of amusement for Luke and her brothers for as long as Lucia could remember. They thought she was a fancy, frilly little joke—a novelty, a pet they would like to keep locked up in a box until they decided to bring her out and coo over her on those rare occasions when they weren’t trying to murder each other on the polo field.

‘Just tell my brothers everything’s fine.’

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