Don Joaquin's Pride. Lynne Graham

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      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ