Don Joaquin's Pride

She saw that too now. All of a sudden it was clear as crystal. Surely only temporary insanity could have convinced her otherwise? And it added a whole new dimension to her suffering to appreciate that he had reached that decision long before she had. Without another word, for she wasn’t capable of saying anything more, she walked out of his office again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LUCY found herself back in her bedroom without any recollection of having actually taken herself upstairs.

She lowered herself shakily into a chair and stared into space. She had behaved like a idiot, she decided. Joaquin had called their intimacy complete madness, but he didn’t know the half of it, did he? Joaquin still believed she was Cindy Paez, heartless fraudster and goodtime girl. She plunged upright again, suddenly desperate to reclaim her own reputation, her own identity by telling him the truth. Then shame and reason reclaimed her and she dropped back into the chair again to cover her face with her hands in a gesture of frustration.

She had promised that she would protect Cindy. She had promised that she would not betray her. Cindy needed time to sort out her finances and time to work out how and when she would tell Roger about the fix she was in. Lucy had promised her twin that breathing space. In any case, only a fool would imagine that Joaquin would greet a confession to the deception Lucy and her twin had engaged in with anything other than even greater outrage and disgust.

Whichever way Lucy looked at the situation, she saw that her boats had been burnt the very first day she had met Joaquin Del Castillo and allowed him to believe that she was Mario Paez’s widow. Since the moment she had met Joaquin she had been lying her stupid head off! Tough luck that she had then fallen head over heels in love with him. But she needn’t kid herself that Joaquin would find her any more attractive as Lucy Fabian. In thinking along that line she was being pathetic and trying to avoid the real issue, which was…

Joaquin had dumped her.

Joaquin had ditched her.

Joaquin had rejected her.

The fantasy world she had allowed herself to live in for the past eighteen hours had, as a result, just collapsed round her ears. She had been a one-night stand. Not even one full night, she reflected in even greater mortification. He had tossed her out of his bed before dawn and now he wanted her out of his house and his country as well. A man couldn’t make his feelings much clearer than that!

She had brought it all on herself too! Had she imagined that sex would be the magic way to Joaquin’s heart? She cringed, bitterly angry at her own weakness. All the regret that she felt she should have experienced earlier in the day now filled her. She had allowed Joaquin Del Castillo to use her for an evening of entertainment. But how did she blame him when she had virtually offered herself on a plate? It wasn’t as if he had even pretended that he wanted a real relationship or anything like that. No one single lie had he told her. And yet still she had gone to bed with him! How was she ever going to come to terms with that humiliating truth?

A maid knocked and entered with an envelope.

Rising to reach for it, Lucy turned it over and frowned, registering that it had not come through the post. Only when she had opened it did she realise what it was. The wretched repayment agreement which Joaquin had first faced her with in Fidelio’s tumbledown home! What the heck was she supposed to do with it when she couldn’t sign it?

She had to phone her sister again: she had no other choice. Leaving her bedroom, she just walked straight across the corridor. The door of a guestroom opposite her own was lying wide, clearly in the process of being aired. Lucy dialled Cindy’s London apartment.

‘I thought you weren’t going to ring again!’ Her twin gasped accusingly.

‘Have you spoken to Roger yet?’ Lucy frowned momentarily as she was distracted by a loud click on the line.

‘How am I supposed to do that when he’s in Germany?’ Cindy demanded.

Lucy had totally forgotten that fact. Only now did she remember her sister complaining about the fact that Roger’s firm was sending him to Berlin for a fortnight and that he wouldn’t be back until just before their wedding. ‘Sorry, I—’

‘Look, there’s been a cash offer of the asking price on your flat and I’ve accepted it. I intend to tell Roger that I’m giving you the money.’

Lucy tensed in disbelief at the news. ‘But—’

‘When really I’ll be transfering the funds to Fidelio’s bank in Guatemala. OK? Are you satisfied now?’

‘You need to tell Roger the truth, Cindy,’ Lucy protested.

‘No, I don’t,’ Cindy snapped angrily. ‘All you have to do now is convince Del Castillo that that is all I can afford to repay.’

‘I don’t think Joaquin will accept that.’

‘How can you be such a wimp when I’m depending on you?’ Cindy condemned. ‘In fact, it strikes me that you’ve already made one hell of a mess of things out there!’

Lucy paled, her stomach knotting. ‘I’ve done everything I could, Cindy—’

‘Everything but tell her where to get off!’ The unexpected intervention of another female voice on the line gave Lucy such a shock that she dropped the receiver as if she had been burnt by it. Yolanda?

Lucy looked on aghast as Joaquin’s sister strolled into the room, cool as a cucumber. She had a cordless phone clamped to her ear, a phone which

she was still actually talking into. ‘You’ve got some nerve, Cindy Paez…sending Lucy over here like the sacrificial lamb, so that you can save your own precious skin!’

‘Yolanda?’ Lucy gasped, grabbing for the receiver she had dropped to see if her twin was still on the line. ‘Cindy?’

‘Who…was…that?’ Cindy mumbled, sounding as aghast as Lucy felt.

Across the room the brunette made a production out of lowering her phone to show that she had said all she intended to say.

‘Never mind,’ Lucy said shakily. ‘Bye, Cindy.’

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Yolanda suggested with an amused look, as if discovering that Lucy was an imposter was of no serious importance.

In a daze, Lucy followed her downstairs. Yolanda walked into a magnificent drawing room, closed the door and settled herself down on an antique sofa.

‘How did you find out?’ Lucy fixed strained eyes on her companion and stayed upright.

‘Easy-peasy. Before you came back upstairs I went into your bag, dug out your passport and looked! Then I checked your travel wallet and found this sweet mini photo album. Inside it there’s a picture of twin baby girls, and another of you and your sister as grown-ups.’ Yolanda rolled her eyes with decided scorn over such sentimentality.

‘So now you’re going to tell your brother—’

‘Not necessarily…’

Lucy blinked and focused with widened eyes on the young Guatemalan woman. ‘But—’

Yolanda shrugged. ‘Joaquin’s sure to find out eventually. Why should I get involved? Why should I be the one to blow the whistle?’

Lucy breathed in deep, thinking fast. Right now, Yolanda was at daggers drawn with her brother. Did it give the volatile brunette a kick to know that she had found out the truth about Lucy while he was still in the dark?

‘I mean one way or another your silly sister will end up paying, because Joaquin doesn’t quit.’

‘Cindy’s not silly…she’s just scared!’ Seeing Yolanda stiffen at that contradiction, Lucy sighed. ‘All right, let me tell you the whole story, and then maybe you’ll understand.’