Don Joaquin's Pride

Roger, stolid and conservative, Roger, who was prone to giving her sister lectures on money management. Roger, whom Cindy had already admitted was in the dark as to certain aspects of her past. Oh, dear heaven, what a dreadful, dreadful mess, Lucy conceded, her heart twisting over the situation her twin was now in. No wonder Cindy was panicking! How was Roger likely to handle this ghastly business breaking just before their wedding took place?

As Lucy hovered, literally frozen to the spot as she grasped what must now be her twin’s deepest fear, it was a great relief when her sister returned to the phone again.

‘Lucy…?’ Cindy wailed chokily. ‘What am I going to do?’

Lucy murmured as soothingly as she could, ‘We’ll work this out somehow. I’ll get a job and help—’

‘After the wedding!’ Cindy broke in to stress tremulously. ‘Promise me that you’ll keep this Del Castillo guy in the dark and occupied until my wedding is safely over.’

Lucy paled at that demand. ‘But…but, Cindy—’

‘Roger will dump me if I tell him about this now…any man would! I’ve gone from being a good catch to a liability, and if I was Roger I know I’d run, because I’m going to be living off him now and I’m no good at budgeting!’ Cindy sobbed out, becoming more hysterical with every passing second. ‘Promise me, Lucy…promise me!’

An instant later, although she could see many potential pitfalls in continuing such a deceptive course of action, Lucy heard herself uttering reluctant agreement. How could she urge Cindy to tell her future husband the truth in advance of their wedding? Suppose Roger did break off their engagement? Lucy didn’t want to carry the blame for that development.

‘Whatever happens, don’t call me again,’ Cindy urged in a frantically nervous surge. ‘Oh, yes, and whatever you do, don’t sign that repayment agreement in my name!’

‘Sign in your name…?’ Lucy repeated in a strangled tone, because she would never have dreamt of forging her twin’s signature on any document.

‘I must say he has a nerve, expecting me to come up with the whole sum. The best I can offer is a ten-year instalment plan!’ Cindy asserted bitterly.

‘I’ll try to sort something out—’

‘But don’t you run the smallest risk of Del Castillo finding out that there are two of us,’ Cindy warned fearfully. ‘And if you can’t make it back in time for the wedding, don’t worry about it…as long as my bridegroom turns up, I’ll be OK!’

A split second later, the connection was cut.

Having replaced the phone, Lucy was just drawing in slow, sustaining oxygen when the bedroom door opened. She almost died of fright on the spot. Dropping down on her knees, she grabbed at the fancy fringed valance which swept down to the carpet, intending to conceal herself under the bed. Unfortunately, the mahogany bedframe she exposed went to within a couple of inches of the floor.

As she heard Joaquin’s awesomely familiar drawl respond to whoever he was speaking to, either in the corridor or just inside the bedroom—for she couldn’t see where he was now that she had dropped down below the level of the bed—absolute panic took hold of her. Feverishly scanning the nearest furniture for a potential hiding place and seeing nowhere, she listened, horrorstruck, to his conversation coming to an end. The door thudded shut. Lucy flattened herself to the carpet and stopped breathing altogether.

A phone buzzed; not the phone by the bed. Possibly a portable. Joaquin answered it. He didn’t speak long and concluded the call in a rather impatient tone. It finally dawned on Lucy that she was in Joaquin’s bedroom. But it was early yet, she reasoned, maybe he would just go back downstairs again. Surely he didn’t go to bed before eleven in the evening? Going by the pictorial evidence of his social life in that magazine, Joaquin Del Castillo was the It Girl’s male equivalent, ungiven to the sobriety of early nights.

She listened to the soft slither of cloth against cloth and then just cringed. He was getting undressed. But as long as there remained the smallest chance of her creeping out again unseen, Lucy preferred to stay where she was. How could she possibly emerge from hiding now and make any credible excuse for her behaviour? Another door opened. Another light went on. Her hope of escaping undetected rose high. He was in the en suite bathroom! Just as Lucy was about to crawl to the corner of the bed and make a break for freedom, a pair of bare brown male feet appeared in the path of her vision.

‘Are you planning to join me in the shower?’ Joaquin drawled the enquiry, his intonation smooth as black velvet.

CHAPTER FOUR

IN SHATTERED receipt of that slumbrous invitation, and the obvious fact that Joaquin Del Castillo had been aware all along that she was cowering on the floor on the far side of his bed, Lucy’s tongue just glued fast to the roof of her dry mouth. ‘I…I…’

Slowly, she lifted her head, so engulfed by embarrassment that she didn’t know where to put herself, wildly wishing herself anywhere but the place she now was. At his feet in her nightie in his bedroom late at night! His fine white linen shirt hung unbuttoned and loose over his well-cut beige trousers, revealing a powerful torso, and his pectoral muscles were lightly defined by rough dark curls of hair. His skin was the colour of rich honey. Presented with that impressive expanse of male chest, she tried and failed to swallow.

‘Even from the door, I can see over the bed, querida. I’m a lot taller than you are,’ Joaquin said drily.

Maybe that crack about sharing his shower was some sort of Central American joke, Lucy decided, it not occurring to her for one moment that he could possibly have been serious. As he reached down a lean brown hand to close it over hers and pull her upright, she looked up and collided with those extraordinary black-fringed green eyes head-on. Whoosh…it was like falling on an electric current! Whatever desperate excuse might have been struggling for utterance on her tongue evaporated from her brain like Scotch mist.

‘Lucy…Lucy,’ Joaquin chided silkily in that dark, deep sensual accent of his, curving long brown fingers over her sensitive jawbone.

Her head felt light. The butterflies in her tummy were back. She could feel every tiny muscle she possessed tauten, even her skin tightening over her bones. But this time she recognised what was happening to her. She saw into the dark secret heart of that surge of excitement rising and her breath snarled up in her throat in shock.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost your nerve,’ Joaquin prompted lazily, his intent gaze scanning her upturned face.

In turn, Lucy was helplessly studying him. The high cheekbones which gave his lean features such proud definition, the cool, straight dark brows, the strong nose, hard jawline and wonderfully shaped mouth. ‘You fancy my brother something rotten,’ Yolanda had said, and Lucy finally acknowledged just how right his sister had been. A wash of colour burned her cheeks, for she felt the full weight of her own foolishness.

‘No, I—’

Joaquin elevated a satiric dark brow. ‘You weren’t expecting me this soon, es verdad?’

Desperately trying to wrench herself free of the effect he was having on her, Lucy made a huge effort to concentrate. But she couldn’t work out what he was talking about, which scarcely helped. ‘I don’t—’

‘No importa…’ His brilliant green gaze shimmered.

As she collided afresh with that searching scrutiny, her heart started to race. Sense told her to move, but the whirring tension in the air was the most deliciously seductive sensation. Paralysed to the spot in mesmerised stillness, she could feel her pulses racing, the very blood coursing through her veins. He was so close to her she could smell the hot vibrant scent of him, and it made her head spin and her body quiver with the kind of longing that left her weak.

The silence thickened to an almost unbearable level.

His bright gaze narrowed. Lifting his hand, he tugged loose the ribbon tie of the wrap she wore. It was done in such an entirely natural way that she simply stood there as he tipped the silky wrap from her shoulders and let it slide down into a pool at her feet. ‘J

oaquin…what on earth?’ she whispered, just a split second too late.

In answer, Joaquin gave her a wolfish smile. Settling his hands on her taut shoulders, he lowered his proud dark head. She knew he was going to kiss her. Sheer anticipation wiped her mind clear of all else. She just wanted him to do it! In fact she could hardly wait: it was like a tremendously important test. The last time he had kissed her, she had had a fever. And ever since then she had wondered and wondered whether she had truly felt what she remembered.

With a smoky laugh that acknowledged the height differential between them, Joaquin sank down on the side of the bed and tugged her towards him. Then he slid his hands to her hips and lifted her on to his lap. What are you doing? a little voice screamed in the back of her bemused brain.

‘No, this isn’t… Well, it isn’t…’ Lucy began tremulously as self-consciousness and a sense of events moving too rapidly out of her control almost freed her of the spell he cast.