The Argentinian's Virgin Conquest

by Bella Frances

  She tossed her hair back and lifted her chin. Thrust out her hand. ‘Your reputation precedes you, Marco. Though one rather hopes it’s undeserved.’

  For a moment there was complete silence. And then she heard Dante’s unmistakable chuckle. And the high-pitched titter of girls. Everybody seemed to be staring from her to Marco and back again.

  ‘Well, I never thought I’d see you lost for words, man.’

  He slapped his friend on the back, moved past him and pulled out a chair for Lucie. She sat down with a curt thank you and looked round the table. Marco took his place and everything started up again. Champagne glasses were lifted to lips and bottles of beer were clinked together.

  Lucie’s heart pounded in her ears. What on earth had prompted her to say that? She’d tried to be funny but it just hadn’t worked. Why was she so gauche? Why couldn’t she just relax when she met people? It was either a full-blown panic attack or...just an attack! She’d give anything to be able to smile and speak and act like a normal human being. And she had very little time before she’d have to go through it all over again. It had seemed such a good idea when he had suggested it, but now that the awards were mere days away, thqt mental chatter was really starting up.

  ‘I’ll take that one for the team, buddy. As long as you take ten minutes out of your...ahem...very busy private life to get this deal finally moving.’

  A shadow passed over Dante’s face. Swiftly, almost imperceptibly. But then he was back. He nodded. ‘I read over the reports. And I guess I’m going to have to make the move some day.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘It is,’ said Dante, with a grin breaking right over his face.

  Marco beamed. ‘You’ll never regret it. And the community here will never forget it. Honestly, I can’t tell you how proud I am. This is massive Dante. Huge. Not only the investment, but the fact that you’re prepared to make Little Hauk your base. I can’t tell you what that means to me professionally. And personally.’

  Dante nodded slowly. He looked directly at Lucie, those blue lasers finding their target easily.

  Marco was still droning on. ‘Well, that’s part one of the master plan in place. All you need now is the picket fence and the beautiful wife and you’ll be home free.’ He laughed. ‘More champagne anyone?’

  And the words circled the air, causing all sorts of images to flare and then float.

  Dante settled down? Married?

  ‘I don’t think you need any more to drink, buddy. My master plan has no space for your drunken hallucinations. Not any time in this millennium, that’s for sure.’

  A pause hung over the table like a thick cloud of smog.

  ‘Aw, come on—we all know it’s only a matter of time before you’re down on one knee, begging some poor woman to marry you. God help her.’

  The air crackled with laughter at Marco’s comeback. Lucie touched her hair, fingered her earring, tugged her skirt down. She lifted her napkin and spread it out on her lap. The menu, in an old leather cover, stood lopsided, leaning on an ice bucket. She picked it up, pressed it flat onto the white plate before her.

  Set Menu for Dinner... Starters... Entrees... Specials of the House.

  She flicked the laminated pages and read the words, determined to erase the ones she had just heard spoken out loud. Even though she’d said she didn’t want anything from him after this week, she suddenly realised that it hurt to know that she would never be a part of Dante’s master plan.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘THE PLAN IS that we’ll pass Sag Harbour Marina, fly along the Long Island Gold Coast, take a little tourist tour of Manhattan and land after about forty minutes. In time for lunch. How does that sound?’

  Lucie clicked her belt closed, touched her headphones and nodded with a smile to Dante.

  ‘Yeah? Okay?’

  She made a thumbs-up sign and turned to look out at the landscape that was disappearing below her into a Toytown model of waterways, hedges, pools and matchbox mansions.

  She’d only been there three days and at one thousand feet in the air above it already felt wistful for the place. Again she wondered at herself. She’d been in fabulous locations all over the world. Palaces, yachts, secluded villas tucked away on their own private islands. From her earliest memories she’d been away for weekends here and there, dragged about to parties and holidays in luxury locations that most people couldn’t even dream of. Even her own idyllic Petit Pierre—her heaven on earth, the home that she normally pined for from the moment she left it until she arrived back, where she discarded her worries and woes and wrapped herself up in a warm, wonderful world—didn’t feel quite so amazing as this stretch of island dotted with green, blue and brown.

  She could dwell on that, let the mental chatter increase to deafening proportions, or she could simply let herself be swept along in the next few hours of what Dante had promised would be ‘interesting’ times.

  She stole a glance at him, piloting the helicopter, making it look like the easiest thing on earth. He did that with most things, of course. It was something in the way he held himself—his shoulders were always low, never tensed, never hunched. Or was it the way he moved—as if every part of him was tuned and oiled, supple and strong? The way he held her eyes when he spoke. Or listened. The way he held her hand.

  Held her hand.

  Who would have thought that jumpy, jittery Lucie could stand to have someone hold her hand? Now, that was a miracle itself. But there were more miracles to come—he had promised her.

  She knew exactly what he was referring to. And he had been incredibly patient with her. But there was only so far she could allow her intimacy with him to go. No matter how gentle, how tender, how sensitive he’d been, she still couldn’t relax enough to allow him full access to her body.

  ‘All in good time—no need to get anxious,’ he’d said. And she’d said it was hardly worth bothering about.

  But she knew and he knew that it was just one more in a long series of hang-ups that were holding her back. When those voices started their chattering in her head, their deafening anxious phrases going on and on, bringing her further and further down, she knew she was slipping back.

  And when she felt that finger under her chin, lifting it up, and saw those eyes beaming into hers—well, that was all very well. He had a vested interest in keeping the party going. But when Dante went back to his life, his season in Dubai, and then moved back to Little Hauk to start up this new polo foundation—well, where would Lucie be? Tagging turtles. Dodging phone calls. Hiding.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked again, his voice resonating through the headphones, making her jump.

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled back as he slipped her a conspiratorial wink.

  ‘See that place down there—?’ He pointed to a huge sprawling series of buildings, a pool half-empty and green with moss, hard-baked brown earth and grass that hurt. Of course it had its own jetty, as all these huge places had—Little Hauk included. She looked round at Dante questioningly.

  ‘That was Marco’s family’s place. Until his father gambled away every last cent and his mother upped and offed.’

  Lucie looked back at the enormous rambling estate, sitting in the dust, surrounded by immaculate properties to the left, to the right and behind it, and the ocean in front. To think the swarthy, happy guy who’d held court with Dante, good-naturedly sparring with him, had been brought up there. It was easily the biggest landmass of prime real estate she had ever seen. They must have been immensely rich, even by her standards.

  But he had no side. No airs. No graces. Just like Dante.

  ‘Big, isn’t it?’ said the muffled voice in her ears. ‘Just goes to show that there’s nothing you can rely on in this world but yourself. Marco learned that the hard way. It’s his dream to buy it back—to clear the family name. And I don’t think it will be too long either.’

  Lucie nodded at that. She’d learned last night that Marco had built up several local businesses, and that it had been his
sheer willpower that had resulted in their dream of the polo foundation. And now he and Dante would be partners he was probably well on the way to making his dream come true.

  What was Lucie’s dream? What was she going to do to bring honour on her family? Could her family and her home be taken away? It had never even occurred to her that she might be anything other than Lady Lucinda Bond of Strathdee. It was like air and earth—the granite of the castle and the waters of Petit Pierre. It was unconscionable that the day might come when everything that defined her would go.

  As mansion upon mansion passed beneath them in a blur she suddenly felt a sense of panic. What if it did all go? What if one day the privilege and the money vanished? If her father’s title became no more than a piece of paper, with no power, pomp or even circumstance. What if she had nowhere to hide any more?

  Baseball fields, an airport and then the towers of Manhattan appeared. She barely noticed them, so caught up was she in the thoughts rampaging through her mind.

  She’d never once considered being anything other than Lady Lucinda Bond, and one day Duchess of Strathdee. And had never really been remotely grateful for it either. She’d spent such an age privately bemoaning the fact that she had two decadent, indolent parents and hadn’t once appreciated the fact that were it not for them she wouldn’t have so much as a bean to spend. The castle in Scotland, the villa, the yacht, the annual income... None of that she had earned herself.

  Her father’s choices and her mother’s choices were what they were. She shouldn’t worry about them—she should be out there following her own dream. Tagging turtles, dodging phone calls and hiding? They weren’t her dreams—they were holding tasks. Things to do to kill time.

  She looked at Dante. He never bemoaned his mother. He never spoke about any of his family in anything other than glowing tones.

  She could read between the lines, of course—when he described all his mother’s achievements she got the sense of a woman who spent more time fixing other people’s problems than attending to her own family. There were only so many hours in the day, and if she was spending them with other people’s children who was spending time with hers?

  But he was silently, resolutely loyal. No cracks showed in that family. And, though Lucie had never breathed a word of her own views about her parents to anyone other than Dante, the world could see by her actions that she wanted nothing to do with any of them.

  It was time she grew up, stopped feeling sorry for herself and began to appreciate the gifts life had given her instead of taking it for granted and whining all the time.

  ‘Central Park Reservoir,’ said the voice in her ears, and she looked out across the vista of flat and jagged roofed towers in every shade of brown and beige, like a meadow filled with stumpy corncobs. And there sat the park, sunk down like some huge mossy stepping stone, with the flat blue puddle of the reservoir in the middle. ‘Almost there.’

  Dante tipped up his visor and winked and Lucie beamed right back. He had gone out on a limb, inviting her to this awards dinner. She knew that now—she could tell how important it was to him, despite how easily he played it down. He wouldn’t want to upset anyone—least of all his mother—and there was no way that Lucie was going to get all needy on him. There would be no panic attacks, no blubbing, no fainting. Nothing but head up, chest out and onwards. She wouldn’t be anything other than the perfect guest.

  ‘One hour and we’ll be sitting down to lunch in one of Manhattan’s finest. And twelve hours after that we’ll be through with this and we can both get back to our lives.’

  He winked again, but this time the smile that Lucie returned was fixed. It was painted. It was fake.

  ‘Bet you can’t wait,’ he said, widening his grin. Then he tipped down his visor and turned back to the job in hand.

  * * *

  Dante felt like a heel.

  He gripped the collective lever and gave the helicopter another burst of speed as she banked to the left. The truth was that he couldn’t wait for this whole thing to be over. It was getting under his skin like a third degree burn, and he was beginning to feel that he might need more than a cold compress to get through it.

  He’d known as soon as Marco had made that stupid comment about picket fences and pretty wives that something had clicked in her head. He could have cheerfully reached across and strangled him, punched him, thrown him into the bay as shark bait.

  His fingers gripped the control as he straightened up and settled himself down. He had less than twenty minutes before they came face to face with the formidable force of nature that was his mother. And then the toughest part of the gig—coming right up.

  He should have thought this through a whole lot better. He should have seen it coming. Hell, a blind idiot would have seen it coming. Lucie was perfect for him. That was what his mother was going to conclude after about—oh, a nanosecond in her company. And even if he sent her an affidavit right now, got a restraining order, or even a gag, she would still manipulate the conversation round to suit her way of thinking.

  Yes, she wanted her son married off. It was untidy otherwise. He was like a rope lying about that somebody could trip themselves up on.

  Yes, he had to be married—but not just to anybody! Oh, no, someone with class, with pedigree. Someone beautiful, intelligent, witty and warm. Yes, Lucie was absolutely perfect for him. And for that reason she had to be told in no uncertain terms that their hot week in the Hamptons was a one-time, never to be repeated ever event.

  He snatched a quick glance at her but she was sitting immobile, staring out at the scenery. He so badly wanted to be wrong about the whole ‘picket fence’ thing, but he knew in his heart of hearts how she’d looked when she’d heard those words. He’d seen it so many times before. That flare of an imagined future. Some crazy vision of them together that was just never going to happen. He’d spelled it out in words of one syllable...

  So—he pressed his foot to the floor to turn—there would be today, then tonight, and then the final love scene. And then the wobbly lip while suitcases were packed and off they went.

  Pity. She was as close to perfect as anyone had ever been.

  But nobody was. Nobody. And didn’t the fact that she had all those little hang-ups already just go to prove that she would be capable of descending to the depths, the way Celine had? Celine—who had once been a normal girl, who’d held down a job, got a car, an apartment.

  To his teenage eyes she’d seemed the most sophisticated woman imaginable. Beautiful, sexy, clever, and in control of all those boys with their raging hormones. They’d practically drooled over her. Of course in retrospect he could see that by knowing that above all others he was her choice he’d been feeding some sort of hole in his ego. Perhaps...

  But all that had been before the red rages, the wild moods, the threats. Before she’d started trying to close down the rest of his life.

  Just as he’d woken up to the fact that he was a fifteen-year-old boy in a relationship more straitjacketed than any marriage, she’d decided she couldn’t live without him.

  Oh, no. He was never, ever going to go through that again. Lies. Manipulation. Guilt. Pain. Dark, dark days. Women were either fickle, governed by their emotions, or they were machines like his mother. And he didn’t want any of those in his life.

  So, much as he liked Lucie—and he did...he liked her a lot—he was never getting burned again.

  With a start, Dante looked up. The helicopter had landed on the roof of the hotel—auto-piloted by him from somewhere out on the Hudson, it would seem.

  Lucie was unclipping her belt and sticking her headphones in the pouch. The day was clear and the timing was—perfect. They had time for a quick change and then would come the start of the onslaught. But he’d be kind. He’d be chivalrous and attentive. He’d make his mother proud and he’d make sure Lucie had a fantastic time to remember him by.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked as the doors closed on the elevator and started to drop them down to their floor.r />
  ‘Dante, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but that’s the fourth time you’ve asked me that since we landed.’

  He surveyed her carefully.

  ‘And, yes, thank you very much—I am okay.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ll remember that. You don’t like to be asked if you’re okay too often.’

  ‘Why bother remembering? We’ll be on two different continents shortly. I really don’t think you need to store up any silly facts. You can be sure that I won’t.’

  She turned and stared at the coppery panels at the front of the elevator that reflected their blurred outlines. The LED display showed the floor numbers falling. And although she’d only uttered a few words Dante felt as if he’d just taken a hit to the back of the head. Interesting...

  CHAPTER NINE

  IF REAL ESTATE and polo failed as careers he should take up fortune-telling. Because—really—every single thing that he had predicted had come true.

  His mother was beyond taken with Lucie. It was as if she’d prayed to the gods for a prospective daughter-in-law and, hey, one had dropped right out of the sky and into the Presidential Suite at The Park—complete with beauty, money, class and enough social graces to see her through every white tie, black tie and smart-but-casual function that could ever be dreamed up.

  She had no idea—none—about the other stuff. Lucie’s hang-ups about her body, about crowds, her hiding from the world in the middle of nowhere. The fact that she had a dysfunctional family just like almost every other person he knew. If she did know about it—or even suspect it—she was choosing in her own very particular way to ignore it.

  And there was no way he was going to start dishing the dirt. Every single thing Lucie had told him had been in confidence. She had opened up more than he could ever have imagined—should ever have imagined. And that was great—but it also cast a shadow.

  Trust, confidence, sharing secrets... It didn’t scream no-strings weekend the way he’d intended. If it had been confined to trusting him with her body—which she had, becoming increasingly confident in telling him what she wanted—then, yes, she’d done that. But there was still room for more. If only he could get her away from his mother for long enough.