‘Por Dios…did you think I expected you to share my bed for nothing?’ Joaquin enquired, smooth as glass. ‘I cut my teeth on women considerably more calculating than you. I expected a price, but even I could never have dreamt that it would be a wedding ring!’
‘Rot…in…Hades!’ Lucy hissed the last word like a spitting cat and stalked off the floor to take refuge in the cloakroom.
That louse was the guy she thought she loved? She rinsed her hands under cooling water and shivered with angry confusion and a deep, deep sense of loss. Why was it she was now remembering his teasing warmth that morning he had called, before everything had gone catastrophically wrong? Though now she knew what the warmth had been angled at achieving, didn’t she? Joaquin had still been planning to make her his occasional bed partner. So if she was in shock right now, so was he.
She clutched the edge of the vanity unit and breathed in deep on that latter acknowledgement.
Joaquin was still—quite understandably—seethingly angry with her. He might be putting on a show of cool for the sake of appearances, but just a couple of hours ago Joaquin had discovered that she had engaged in a really massive deception and that virtually everything he had believed he had known about her had related to her sister Cindy instead! Then Roger had seized probably the worst possible moment to persuade Joaquin into attending the reception. Why the heck had Joaquin agreed?
‘Even if I wanted to, I’m not in a position to just walk away now,’ Joaquin had said. So Joaquin had allowed Roger to smooth things over in the aftermath of all the bad feeling over Fidelio simply because Lucy was going to have his baby. But why had he immediately informed Roger that they were getting married? Relieved to see such a tidy conclusion to an impending drama, Roger had naturally been delighted to hear and share that news.
So what was she going to do? Stick her nose in the air and walk away just to show that she could do it? Or recognise that right now Joaquin had a perfect right to be furious at the games she had played in Guatemala? But had he really planned to make her his mistress? Recalling her visit to his London home, and the passion which would very probably have plunged her back into bed with him again, she flushed with embarrassment.
If making her his mistress had been Joaquin’s ambition, he had been progressing well on that score. She might have found herself involved in a heartbreaking affair in which she was always waiting for his next phone call. Lucy spread thankful fingers across her still flat tummy. If there was a choice…and it was by no means certain that there was a choice—for she didn’t want a reluctant bridegroom—she knew she loved Joaquin, and that she would rather be his wife than his mistress…
When she returned to the table, she saw Joaquin standing with Roger and Cindy. She watched his charismatic smile flash out, but noted that it didn’t quite reach his eyes. For a male in the mood he was in, he was, however, putting on a heck of an impressive show. And why not? He was rich, he was sophisticated, he was the original Mr Cool on the surface…but underneath? He absolutely fascinated her. A secretive smile brought a dreamy curve to Lucy’s mouth as she kept her distance and mingled with the other guests.
When it was time for Cindy to change so that she and Roger could head for the airport, her sister took her up to the hotel room with her. ‘So my former worst enemy is going to join the family…only you could have pulled that off in so short a time!’
‘It’s not quite as simple it sounds. I’m going to have a baby,’ Lucy finally told her twin.
Cindy was dumbstruck. ‘But of the two of us you’re supposed to be the cautious, sensible one.’
‘Human, too.’
‘But you were only over there a few—’
‘Long enough,’ Lucy slotted in ruefully.
Cindy grinned. ‘So I’m going to be an aunt and get to see what it’s like being a mother before I try it for myself.’ She hesitated, her face colouring. ‘I guess Joaquin will bring you up to speed on the other business.’
Lucy frowned. ‘What other business?’
‘Never mind now. It’s not something I want to think about any more,’ Cindy gabbled in a rush, but she gave her twin a rueful glance. ‘But I can tell you one thing… Joaquin’s a really decent guy!’
On the way downstairs again, having refused to satisfy Lucy’s curiosity as to what she had been talking about, Cindy paused to throw her bouquet. A crowd of young females gathered but Cindy threw her flowers wide and high and with deadly accuracy at Joaquin. ‘I wanted you to have it,’ she whispered to her twin.
Ten minutes later, the bridal couple having departed, Lucy climbed into Joaquin’s Ferrari. ‘I suppose we’re about to talk,’ she said tautly.
‘Not a good idea while I’m endeavouring to hold on to my temper, querida,’ Joaquin drawled in succinct warning.
‘Feeling like that, it’s just insane to talk about us getting married,’ Lucy sighed.
‘I don’t see it in that light. I have a duty to my child and to my family name. There is no choice about how we handle this with my sixteen-year-old sister in the same household. We’ll be married within three days.’
‘Three days?’ Lucy echoed in disbelief.
‘If I cannot get a special licence for us to marry here within that time-frame, I will fly you back to Guatemala and have the deed done there.’ His bold bronzed profile grim, Joaquin filtered his car somewhat aggressively into the traffic flow. ‘The sooner we are married, the better. If I can contrive to shield my sister from the consequences of my own stupidity, I shall do so.’
Lucy hadn’t thought of Yolanda, but now she did and she cringed with discomfiture. An out-of-wedlock pregnancy was not the way to impress a teenage sister with the principles which Joaquin would wish to instil.
‘I…I could go away somewhere… I mean, obviously, I wouldn’t keep in touch with her—’
‘Don’t be foolish. A child cannot be hidden for ever. Or perhaps you are thinking that the child should not be born. It is my wish that it should be!’ Joaquin shot at her in a harsh but anxious undertone.
Lucy paled. ‘It’s my wish too.’
‘Por Dios…then why are you arguing with me?’
She closed her aching eyes. Joaquin wasn’t giving her a choice, but she still knew that she had a choice. Did she marry him because she loved him and she
was carrying his child and hope that somehow, some way, they could work a miracle together? It could not be said that Joaquin was in a mood to be easily persuaded. It could not be said either that working miracles was on his mind.
‘Why don’t you just talk out how angry you are with me for pretending to be Cindy?’ she muttered ruefully. ‘I can take it…’
The silence just sizzled. He had so much emotion, but it was all under firm lock and key. He thought strictly in shades of black and white. She was pregnant. For him, that was a problem. He seemed to believe he could solve that problem as if it was any other everyday problem. He took no account whatsoever of emotions. Did he feel anything for her apart from anger?
Lucy surfaced from sleep and slowly pushed herself up on her elbows to find herself lying on a bed in an unfamiliar but decidedly masculine bedroom. The light by the bed gleamed over a silk tie lying across the arm of an antique chair. The last thing she recalled was being in Joaquin’s car.
She checked her watch. It was almost midnight. As she sat up, the door opened and Joaquin entered. When he realised she was awake, he stilled and studied her with veiled eyes. Self-conscious beneath that scrutiny, Lucy pushed her tumbled caramel hair back from her face and tucked her feet beneath the white dress pooled around her.
‘Your sister didn’t choose that gown,’ Joaquin commented. ‘It’s too elegant.’
Taken aback, Lucy coloured, but he was right. Cindy had stipulated the colour but her mother-in-law had chosen the style.
His penetrating gaze still glittering over her, Joaquin vented a roughened laugh. ‘You look the very picture of Victorian innocence. In Guatemala, you wore only revealing clothes designed to attract male attention. Too short, too tight, too provocative.’