by Lynne Graham
‘Hacienda de Oro…literally the House of Gold. The conservationist’s paradise, the archaeologist’s dream destination…but the It Girl’s living death,’ the self-possessed brunette completed, with a dissatisfied twist of her sultry mouth.
‘The It Girl’s living death…?’ Lucy repeated weakly, not quite sure she had heard her correctly.
‘I’m Yolanda Del Castillo, Joaquin’s sister. Surely you know what an It Girl is?’
Lucy nodded, but only slowly. She had read about the cult of the new It Girls in newspapers. Young, rich, high society British women, who were wildly popular with the media. They partied from dawn to dusk, wore fabulous clothes and dated only the most newsworthy men. Such an existence was so far removed from Lucy’s own that she just stared at Yolanda Del Castillo, who undeniably seemed to possess all the attributes it took to be an It Girl, continually photographed, pursued and envied. Even in daylight, it seemed, Yolanda dressed as if she was about to go to a party.
‘You speak wonderful English,’ Lucy remarked, awkward in the presence of such exoticism.
Yolanda uttered a rueful groan. ‘Where do you think I was educated?’
Most probably in a British school, Lucy gathered, feeling foolish.
‘Where is this house?’ Lucy pressed.
‘You’re still in the Petén, just a different part of it.’
‘So how did I get here?’ Lucy asked.
‘Joaquin had you airlifted in.’
‘Airlifted?’ Lucy interrupted helplessly. ‘Who are you people?’
‘You really don’t know, do you?’ Yolanda rolled her dark eyes in dramatic disbelief, momentarily looking much younger than the twenty-two or twenty-three which Lucy had estimated her to be. She threw the bedroom door wide again. ‘Hang on a minute—’
‘Yolanda…is there a phone I could use?’ Lucy hastened to ask, before Joaquin’s sister could disappear again.
Yolanda’s attention shifted to the vacant spot by the bed. She frowned in surprise. ‘Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a phone!’ she remarked with instant sympathy. ‘You may be a con-artist, but for Joaquin to have the phone removed is total sensory deprivation! I couldn’t exist for five minutes without a phone!’
Lucy turned white as milk. ‘You know…I mean—?’
‘You thought I didn’t just ’cos I came in to chat?’ Yolanda shrugged a languid shoulder. ‘I’m bored out of my mind here without company. But I know what you did… Of course I know, and it was disgusting! Fidelio is the sweetest old man.’
Cut to the bone by that blunt condemnation from yet another source, and feeling as limp as a wrung-out dishrag, Lucy sank down on the edge of the bed. Within minutes Yolanda reappeared, to toss a glossy magazine down beside her.
‘Fidelio Paez started working for my family when he was fifteen, señora,’ Yolanda informed her with cool dignity. ‘We threw a big retirement party for him. Imagine how we felt when we later found out that Fidelio had gone to work for a neighbour because he was too embarrassed to ask Joaquin if he could continue working for us!’
‘And then Fidelio told your brother what had happened to his savings,’ Lucy assumed uncomfortably.
‘No! Fidelio has no idea that you cheated him out of his money,’ Yolanda contradicted instantly. ‘Joaquin had to do his own detective work.’
In considerable discomfiture, Lucy dropped her head.
‘And while we’re on the subject of my brother, stop embarrassing me by making a total ass of yourself around him!’
Her lips parting company in sheer shock, Lucy looked up.
‘The way you were carrying on when you were ill, I initially thought that Joaquin had brought his mistress home!’ Yolanda admitted in exasperation.
‘His…m-mistress?’ Lucy stammered with incredulity.
‘All Joaquin’s mistresses have been foreigners like you. Guatemalan women don’t sleep around. We know better,’ the brunette told her with unapologetic superiority.
‘What way was I…“carrying on”?’ Lucy tilted her chin, denying the charge.
‘OK, so you had a fever, but you were continually moaning on about how beautiful Joaquin’s eyes were and asking him to kiss you…talk about deeply uncool! Listening outside that door, I was just cringing for you!’
A tide of truly painful colour illuminating her face, Lucy turned her shaken gaze away from her visitor in self-protection. Suddenly her eyes were stinging with stupid tears.
Yolanda walked round the bed to get a better look at her victim and frowned in frank bewilderment. ‘You know, you just don’t add up…you are acting so wet!’
Lucy chewed at her wobbly lower lip. ‘I’m only feeling weepy because I’ve been ill—’
‘No…you fancy my brother something rotten,’ the brunette countered, unimpressed, and she shook her head in wondering pity. ‘I have problems, but you have got an even bigger problem, Lucy!’
The door snapped shut on Yolanda’s departure. Drawing in a deep shuddering breath, Lucy lifted the magazine she had left behind. Her hands were trembling and she felt as weak as a kitten. But, worst of all, she felt utterly humiliated. A con-artist who had made an ass of herself? Evidently while her temperature had been high she had rambled on like some dizzy teenager suffering from a severe crush.
The cover of the magazine bore a picture of Joaquin emerging from a limousine with a very beautiful blonde. Lucy leafed through and found the relevant page. It was a North American magazine dedicated to depicting the lives of the rich and famous. Correction, Lucy adjusted as she slowly scanned the pages of photos, the lives of the super-rich…
For Joaquin Del Castillo appeared to own a whole selection of homes around the globe. There were several shots of various enormous properties, sheltering behind high walls and huge gates. Her heart beating very fast, Lucy skimmed through the brief blurb for actual facts. Joaquin was variously described as a ‘billionaire industrialist’ and a ‘reformed playboy’, who now spent much of his time advising governments on conservation. He was thirty years old, single, and he changed women like he changed his shirts. His late father hadn’t married for the first time until he was sixty, and there was strong speculation that Joaquin was planning to do the same.
Lucy snapped shut the magazine again. So, a gorgeous billionaire had kissed her! Where had that naff thought come from? Mortified by her rebellious mind, which refused to focus on what was truly important, Lucy instead pondered the likely power at Joaquin’s fingertips. Her blood duly chilled. Cindy had made a very dangerous enemy who had the resources to cause a great deal of trouble.
Since she was now totally exhausted, and in no state to leave her room in search of a phone, Lucy crawled back into bed, sinking beneath the cool sheets to close her eyes in weary relief.
‘Lucy…?’
Even as Lucy surfaced from sleep again every fibre in her body knew that the speaker was Joaquin, for nobody else had ever managed to make her name sound that exciting. That wonderful sexy drawl, rich as honey with smoky overtones, haunted her dreams, so she kept her eyes shut, warding off temptation as best she could.
‘Go ’way,’ she mumbled in sleepy self-defence.
‘Wake up, Lucy…’
With drowsy reluctance, Lucy focused on the male poised at the foot of her bed. It was dusk. But, even in that duller light, his dark-as-midnight hair gleamed with vitality and his fabulous eyes glittered like jewels. That Joaquin should always look spectacular was no longer any surprise to Lucy, for other memories were stirring to endow him with a familiarity she accepted without question. Joaquin had been with her when the fever had been at its worst. Whenever she had become momentarily conscious of her surroundings again Joaquin had been there.
With a sigh, Lucy stretched to loosen her muscles. Belatedly conscious of the tension zapping through the air, she glanced up and connected with the direction of Joaquin’s intent gaze. As she dropped her own attention to the straining mounds of her breasts, now so clearly delineated beneath her
nightdress, she froze in dismay. Mortified by the provocative display she had unintentionally made of herself, Lucy flushed a rosy red and grabbed at the sheet to tug it up over her scantily clad frame.
Joaquin tilted back his proud dark head and continued to look at her levelly. However, his handsome mouth had now taken on a distinctly cynical twist. ‘You’re obviously feeling much better.’
‘Would you mind telling me exactly where I am?’ Lucy was breathless and hugely self-conscious, and desperate just to fill the silence.
‘In one of my guestrooms,’ Joaquin imparted with formidable cool. ‘It is three days since you fell ill.’
‘You’re wearing a suit…’ Lucy noted inconsequentially, taking in the beautifully tailored cream linen sheathing his lithe powerful physique. The shade merely enhanced his dark and vibrant animal magnetism. Her brain refused to dwell on one thought for longer than two seconds. She watched his sleek and aggressive jawline clench. ‘And you seem so…so constrained…’ She noted this to herself in instinctive confusion, for she could not help but contrast his concern when she had been ill to his current frozen demeanour.
Volatile green eyes flashed down at her in flaring anger. ‘Let me tell you what I am repressing, señora,’ Joaquin Del Castillo spelt out, the deep-freeze act fracturing fast. ‘A near overpowering desire to drag your scrawny little body out of that comfortable bed and make you dig ditches and sweat in honest labour as you deserve!’
Sprung finally from all introspection, Lucy flinched and paled.
‘Indeed it is a great challenge for me to treat you with the consideration due to an invalid,’ Joaquin Del Castillo admitted in a driven undertone. ‘But I wish to impress on you that I never at any stage intended you to suffer harm or injury. The doctor believes that you were not very fit to begin with. Had I been aware that you were genuinely as physically frail and weak as you appeared, I would have ensured that the journey you underwent to Fidelio’s home was less taxing.’
He could use an awful lot of words without actually grasping the nettle and apologising, Lucy registered. For of course, she conceded with the sense of hindsight, that long arduous ride must have been completely unnecessary to a male with Joaquin Del Castillo’s financial resources. Even she knew that a four-wheel drive could have traversed so flat a terrain with ease.
‘Is it your wish that I contact your fiancé to inform him that you have been ill?’ Joaquin enquired icily.
A blank look flowered in Lucy’s eyes. ‘But I don’t have a fiancé…’
Joaquin stiffened, and then surveyed her with sudden intense derision. ‘So you have jilted Roger Harkness! I noticed that you wore no ring and I should have guessed. He was the one aspect of your lifestyle which failed to make sense. Why would a woman with your expensive tastes choose to marry a newly qualified accountant?’
Recalling too late that she was supposed to be pretending to be Cindy, and deeply shaken that he should be aware not only that her sister was engaged but also of the identity and occupation of her fiancé, Lucy gasped. ‘I…I—’
‘Dios…so you were only playing with Harkness? Amusing yourself while you waited for your next rich protector to come along?’ Joaquin Del Castillo assumed with contemptuous distaste. ‘You have deprived me of the pleasure of telling him exactly what you are, for no man should take such a bride without forewarning!’
An anxious burst of low-pitched Spanish interrupted him. A stout little woman with grey hair had come into the room. She wasted no time in sliding a thermometer between Lucy’s lips. Studying the younger woman’s drawn face and anxious eyes, she glanced at her employer in speaking reproach.
Lucy watched Joaquin’s powerful chest swell with the effort it took to bite back his temper. His expressive mouth compressed into a bloodless line of rock-steady restraint, but slight colour now delineated the hard jut of his high cheekbones. With an inclination of his imperious dark head, he squared his broad shoulders. ‘We will discuss this matter again when you are stronger,’ he informed her glacially.
Like a fish let off the hook at the very last moment, Lucy felt her tension evaporate, and she slumped back against the comfortable pillows. An hour later, as she dined from a tray set with exquisite porcelain, fine crystal and solid silver salt and pepper shakers, she perfectly understood Joaquin Del Castillo’s outrage at the situation in which he now found himself.
He had brought her to Guatemala to confront and punish her. He had intended to corner her into signing that repayment agreement by marooning her in Fidelio’s isolated home and making her rough it. Yet here she was, lying back against freshly laundered pillows being waited on hand and foot. Only the very rich could afford such a level of service. And the more Lucy pictured Joaquin’s lean dark aristocratic face, the more she marvelled that she had not instantly recognised that blazing aura of power and expectation for what it was.
She really had to get hold of a phone and warn Cindy. That had now become a matter of even greater urgency. ‘No man should take such a bride without forewarning’. The memory of that devastating assurance from Joaquin filled Lucy with fear on her sister’s behalf. Cindy’s wedding was only a few weeks away. Very probably Joaquin knew that date as well. His continuing belief that she was Cindy, but no longer a bride-to-be, was currently her sister’s only protection from such a vengeful act.
With decision, Lucy got out of bed. It was after ten in the evening. Hopefully most of the occupants of the house would be downstairs. The wrap that matched her nightdress lay across a chair. Donning it, she crept out of her room into a long well-lit corridor with a highly polished wooden floor adorned at intervals with superb woven rugs. She passed by closed doors with her nerves humming a tattoo that made the hair on her nape prickle with forboding.
It was an enormous house. From the mouth of the corridor she peered out on to an impressive gallery with a ceiling that soared high above, hearing first the distant echo of voices and then quick steps traversing the hall which she assumed lay below. Several feet from her, she noticed a door lying ajar. On tiptoe, she approached, listened, and, hearing nothing, gently pushed the door wider.
Seeing that the bedroom, which was even more grand than her own, was empty, she hurriedly checked that there was a telephone before quietly closing the door behind her again to ensure that she would not be overheard. Since sneaking about like a cat burglar did not come naturally to Lucy, her heart was now beating so fast that it was threatening to choke her. She switched on the massive lamp behind the phone.
At speed she punched out the number of her sister’s apartment, praying that her twin was at home. The instant Cindy heard her voice, she laughed, and said brightly, ‘I suppose you’ve been having too good a time to call before this!’
‘Don’t I wish!’ Lucy groaned, and sucked in a deep calming breath before she continued, ‘I’ve landed into a really serious situation here, Cindy.’
In as few words as possible, she then hurried to tell her twin what she had to be told about her father-in-law Fidelio Paez’s predicament.
However, it was a very difficult dialogue. Cindy kept on interrupting, first with ringing cries of disbelief and argument and finally with growing anger and resentment.
‘Mario showed me a photo of the most incredible big ranch house…and he was staying in a five-star hotel suite when we met. Was he lying to me…deliberately lying about his background? Explain that to me!’
‘Look, I know nothing about that end of it,’ Lucy admitted unhappily, and as once again she repeated the cold facts which Joaquin had laid before her, a thunderous silence began to build at the other end of the line in London.
‘If Fidelio couldn’t afford to give me all that cash, he shouldn’t have sent it,’ Cindy finally framed in a cool, brittle voice which sounded alien to her anxiously waiting twin.
‘Cindy…Joaquin Del Castillo wants that money repaid. At least there’ll be the proceeds of the flat you bought for Mum and me…hopefully it will sell soon,’ Lucy pointed out awkwardl
y in the seething quiet. ‘Is there anything more left of that insurance pay-out you got when you were nineteen?’
‘Do you seriously expect me to leave myself as poor as a church mouse over this nonsense?’ Cindy demanded shrilly.
‘As much as possible of Fidelio’s money has to be returned to him—’
‘I didn’t steal that rotten money, nor did I borrow it! I asked and Fidelio gave, and I’m very sorry if he’s broke now, but that’s not my fault and it’s not my responsibility either!’ Cindy practically shouted, her increasing panic at what she was being told audible.
‘Cindy—’
‘This guy Del Castillo has really got to you, hasn’t he? Well, you can stop talking about handing over what the sale of the flat brings in because Roger’s expecting to put that money towards a house, and I can’t tell him about all this nonsense…I can’t!’
‘It’s not nonsense, Cindy. Joaquin Del Castillo is a very rich and powerful man and I don’t think he’ll let this matter drop—’
‘If he’s so darned rich, let him repay the money! No wonder rich people are rich,’ Cindy cried wildly. ‘They hang onto what they’ve got!’
There was a jarring noise, as if the phone handset at the other end had been thrown down, but the line had not been disconnected. In the background, Lucy could hear her unfortunate twin giving way to angry sobs. Lucy hung on to her receiver, hoping that her sister would return to the call she had abandoned and start speaking to her again. Maybe crying would help Cindy to calm down, Lucy told herself, but there was no denying that her twin’s outraged and defiant response had been an unpleasant surprise.
But possibly she had been hugely naive to expect any other reaction, Lucy reflected guiltily, belatedly struggling to put herself in her twin’s place. Cindy had just received an awful shock. The news of Fidelio Paez’s true station in life had shattered her sister. Cindy had sincerely believed that her father-in-law was a wealthy man. And if Cindy now had to replace Fidelio’s savings, she would be surrendering the financial security she had learnt to take for granted in recent years. Nor had her sister any hope of concealing her changed circumstances from the man she was soon to marry.
