Santiago's Command. KIM LAWRENCE

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      Santiago nodded absently as he scrolled down the page he held, squinting to read the neat but microscopic tightly packed writing on it. The message it held was familiar: Ramon, his mother said, had messed up and what, she wanted to know, was he going to do about it?

      His head lifted. ‘You didn’t mention you have to retake your second year.’ A fact that his stepmother, without actually saying so, managed to expertly imply was actually Santiago’s fault.

      Maybe, he mused, she had a point?

      Had the time come for some tough love? While he wanted his brother to enjoy the freedom he had missed out on after their father’s premature death, had he been guilty of over-compensating and being too indulgent and overprotective?

      Ramon shrugged. ‘To be honest, marine biology isn’t really what I was expecting.’

      Santiago’s jaw tightened as he scanned the younger man’s face with narrowed eyes. ‘Neither, as I recall, was archaeology or, what was it … ecology …?’

      ‘Environmental science,’ his brother supplied. ‘Now that, believe me, was—’

      ‘You’re so bright, I just don’t understand how …’ Santiago interrupted, reining in his frustration with difficulty and asking, ‘Did you actually go to any lectures, Ramon?’

      ‘A couple … yeah, I know, Santiago, but I’m going to buckle down, really I am. Lucy says—’

      ‘Lucy?’ He saw his brother’s face and added, ‘The goddess. Sorry, I forgot.’

      ‘A good education, Lucy says, is something that no one can take away from you.’

      Santiago blinked. This Lucy didn’t sound like any of the numerous females his brother had hooked up with to date. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting this Lucy.’ Maybe a good woman, someone who thought education was a good thing, was what his brother needed?

      The jury was still out but he decided to keep an open mind.

      When on her very first day at the finca Harriet’s car had refused to start Lucy had said no problem and walked the mile into town. There had been a problem—not the distance, but the scorching Andalusian midday sun.

      A week later Harriet’s car was still sitting propped up on bricks in the yard, awaiting the part the mechanic had had to order, and the tip of Lucy’s nose was still peeling, though the painful redness had subsided and her complexion had regained its normal pale peaches and cream glow.

      Today she had not taken up Harriet’s sensible suggestion of a taxi—she loved to walk—but she had chosen a more appropriate time to make the trip and, arriving early, she had managed to buy everything on Harriet’s shopping list while it was still cool enough to enjoy the walk back through truly incredible scenery, but she was taking no chances. Lucy had plastered on the factor thirty and borrowed a shapeless straw sun hat from Harriet.

      It was still only ten-thirty when she reached the footbridge across the stream that bordered Harriet’s property, a single-story terracotta-roofed cottage that had the basics and not much else. It was the four acres of scrubby land that had attracted her friend. On retirement Harriet had decided to live her dream and start, to the amazement of her academic ex-work colleagues, a donkey sanctuary in Spain.

      When Lucy had said she thought she was being very brave, her old university tutor had retorted she was simply following the example of her favourite ex-student. Lucy, who was not accustomed to being held up as a role model, had not pointed out that her change of lifestyle had not been one of choice, more of necessity.

      On impulse she walked down the grassy bank by the bridge and slipped off her sandals. The first initial touch of the icy water against her hot, dusty skin made her gasp. She laughed with pleasure as she felt her way carefully over the smooth stones, wading out until the water reached her calves.

      Pulling off the sun hat, she shook free her ash-blonde hair and, head tipped back to the azure sky, she closed her eyes to shut out the sun and sighed. It was bliss!

      With a tightening of his thighs against leather and solid flesh Santiago urged the responsive animal out of the protective shadow of the pine trees where they had paused. His strong-boned features set in an austere, contemplative mask, he patted the animal’s neck as it responded to his light touch and walked forward, hooves silent on the boggy patch of ground as they moved towards the fast-flowing stream.

      Now he knew why the name had seemed so familiar.

      The disguise of sexy angel was good but not that good, not for someone who possessed a once-seen-never-forgotten quality, and Lucy Fitzgerald definitely did!

      She was not dressed in the sharp tailored red suit and spiky heels—four years ago that iconic image had been used again and again by the media—but he had no doubt that this was the same woman who had elicited universal condemnation from a morally outraged public.

      She hadn’t said a word to defend herself, but then that had been the idea; a word that broke the gagging injunction would have landed her in jail, a place that Santiago for one would have paid good money to see her end up!

      An image of the tear-stained face of the wronged wife in the story drifted into his head, the brave face the woman put on not hiding the emotional devastation that presented a dramatic contrast to the cold composure that Lucy Fitzgerald had displayed under the camera lens.

      It had been the sort of story that under normal circumstances Santiago would not have read beyond the first line—but for the timing. The situation of the advertising executive who had resorted to the courts to protect himself from Lucy Fitzgerald had borne an uncanny resemblance to the one he had at the time found himself in, albeit on a lesser scale.

      In his case the woman—he barely remembered her name, let alone her face—who had sought to gain financially had been more opportunistic than ruthless, and of course not being married and caring very little what the world thought of him had made him a less vulnerable target than Lucy Fitzgerald’s victim, who, instead of caving in to his mistress’s threat of exposure, had instead sought an injunction to stop her speaking out.

      Blackmail was the action of a coward and a woman like Lucy Fitzgerald represented everything Santiago despised. This was why, while the face of his own would-be blackmailer, a woman whom he had never even slept with, had vanished, the composed Madonna-like face that had hidden a dark heart of stone had stuck in his mind—his heavy-lidded glance dropped—as had her body.

       You and the rest of the male population!

      The silent addition caused his firm, mobile lips to twitch into a self-mocking grimace as his dark gaze continued to slide over the lush curves beneath the simple cotton top and skirt she was wearing. The woman might be poison, but she did have a body that invited, actually demanded, sinful speculation.

      Of course she was all too … obvious for his taste, but it was easy now to see why his easily influenced brother had been so smitten, a case of lust not love.

      Exert a positive influence!

      He choked back a bitter laugh. His uncharacteristic and misguided optimism could not have been more poorly timed. Positive? If Lucy Fitzgerald was even a fraction as bad as her reputation, she was toxic!

      Santiago felt a passing stab of nostalgia for the empty-headed, СКАЧАТЬ