Santiago's Command Read Free Page B

lies that had been printed about her.
    ‘If I’d known how warm, charming and welcoming the natives were I would have made it here sooner,’ she said, flashing him a smile of saccharine-sweet insincerity and having the satisfaction of seeing his jaw tighten in annoyance.
    ‘And how long are you thinking of staying?’
    ‘Why? Are you planning on running me out of town, sheriff?’ she mocked, adopting a mock-Western drawl.
    He responded to her levity with another stony stare. On the receiving end, Lucy found the level of his relentless hostility frankly bewildering.
    God, does this man need to get a life!
    Her story was old news and even if he believed she was as bad as they had painted her, which in truth was pretty bad, it hardly explained an antipathy that seemed … personal?
    ‘I shouldn’t joke—you probably can.’
    She had the impression that all this man had to do was snap his fingers and the locals would be lining up to be part of a run-her-out-of-town posse, less a form of mob mentality and more mass hypnotism.
    She wasn’t seeing much evidence of it but it was clear the man exerted some sort of weird charismatic control locally … either that or there was something in the water. In the time she had been here Lucy had heard the name Santiago Silva with monotonous regularity in the area. You couldn’t buy a loaf of bread without hearing someone sing the praises of this paragon, which, considering he was a banker—a fairly universally despised animal these days—seemed pretty amazing to Lucy.
    Their comments had built an image of someone very different from the man standing there looking down his autocratic nose at her. He did not look remotely like the warm, caring person she’d heard described, but he did look every inch the autocratic feudal throwback who expected people to bow and scrape.
    ‘You have met my brother.’ He arched an ebony brow.
    A mystified Lucy began to shake her head, then the penny dropped.
    Her eyes widened. ‘Ramon.’ Who had rung the
finca
just before she left that morning inviting her to dinner at the
castillo
.Wow, was she glad she’d said no to this opportunity to meet his brother … the sort of social event nightmares were made of if this taster was any indicator! Stiff and starchy now, imagine how he’d look in a tie—besides beautiful. Lucy gave her head a little shake to dispel this image.
    It was not so surprising she hadn’t seen the connection straight off; Ramon had none of the autocratic arrogance of his unpleasant brother. He was actually a really sweet boy who had gone out of his way to help when they had been stranded in the clinic car park the day after she arrived. He’d been a hero, administering first aid to Harriet’s ancient car.
    Since then he had called twice at the
finca
, the last time, she recalled with a smile, he had helped her catch one of the donkeys before the vet arrived, falling flat on his face in the dust and dirt at one point and ruining his lovely suit. It was hard to believe he was related to this man.
    ‘You will not meet him again.’ The comment was delivered in a soft, almost conversational tone that was in stark variance to the menace it conveyed.
    Lucy shook her head, genuinely bewildered by the turn this conversation was taking. Was this about her refusing the invitation to dinner at the big house? Had she committed some sort of social faux pas?
    The possibility bothered her for Harriet’s sake. Her friend had made a lot of effort to fit in so she felt her way cautiously. ‘I won’t?’
    ‘No, Miss Fitzgerald, you will not.’
    ‘Is Ramon going away?’
    ‘No, you are going away.’
    Lucy’s patience snapped. ‘Will you stop being so damned enigmatic and spit it out? Just what are you trying to say?’
    He cut across her in a voice that felt like an icy shower. ‘For someone who is clearly a clever woman you have not done your research. Until he is twenty-five, my brother hasno access to his trust fund unless I