Santiago's Command Read Online Free Page A

comment. ‘This sum is not negotiable,’ he emphasised. ‘You must walk away—’ He stopped, brows knitting into frustrated lines above his dark eyes. ‘What are you doing?’
    She paused and threw a look over her shoulder, sticking out one hip to balance the bag she had slung over the other shoulder. ‘What am I doing?’ She gave a laugh and fixed him with a glittering smile. ‘I would have thought that was obvious, Mr Silva—this is me walking. I like walking but nobody has ever offered to pay me for it except for charity. Give me your number and I’ll give you a bell the next time I do the marathon.’
    He looked so astonished that this time her laugh was genuine.
    Santiago watched her make her way up the dusty track, an expression of baffled frustration etched on his handsome face. He had pitched his offer high deliberately; he had allowed for the possibility she might try and negotiate the figure up, but her outright refusal had been an option he had not even considered.
    With a gritted oath he vaulted into the saddle and turned his horse in the opposite direction to that she had taken.
    It was not until his temper had cooled and he had slowed to a canter that it occurred to him that he had no idea what she had been doing there in the middle of nowhere. The only inhabited building within a two-mile radius was the place he had leased to the English academic who had started up, of all things, a donkey sanctuary.
    It would be difficult to imagine two women with less in common, so ruling out that left—what …? Could she have been waiting for someone? In that lonely spot … no … unless … she had been meeting someone and they had required privacy?
    By the time the horse had reached the
castillo
gates the conviction that he had stumbled onto a lovers’ tryst, that she had been waiting for his half-brother, had become a firm conviction.
    His brother was not behaving rationally. Santiago saw those electric-blue eyes in his head and he felt his anger towards his sibling subside. He doubted Ramon was the only man unable to act rationally around Lucy Fitzgerald, who was unable to see past her smouldering sexuality, the only man willing to ignore the truth in order to possess that body, but fortunately for Ramon he was not one of them.
    Did she think she had won?
    Beneath him Santana responded to the light kick of encouragement and broke into a gallop; to catch a thief one had to adopt the same ruthless methods they did.
    Literally shaking with fury, Lucy made the last stage of her journey in record time. She paused at the
finca
door to compose herself. As satisfying as it would have been to vent her feelings on the subject of Santiago Silva, the last thing herfriend needed right now was the news that her house guest had had a run in with him.
    Harriet would feel obligated to defend her and she could not see that going down well with her feudal despot of a landlord, who would, she thought scornfully, quite likely feel perfectly justified evicting anyone who disagreed with him. He was just the type of small-minded bully who enjoyed wielding the power he had inherited!
    No, the best thing all around, she realised, was not to mention the incident at all—and why should she? He had no idea that she was staying with Harriet and so long as she stayed out of his way and she didn’t darken his doorstep with her presence—a treat she felt happy to miss out on—unless fate was very unkind she would never have to set eyes on the wretched man again.
    Taking comfort from the knowledge, she took a deep breath, pasted on a smile and patted her cheeks. Her eyes widened as she felt the dampness there. God, Santiago Silva had achieved what a media army had failed to do—he had made her cry.
    Harriet, normally uncomfortably observant, had not noticed the tear stains, which suggested that her white-faced friend was suffering a lot more than the mild discomfort she claimed after literally hopping out to the stables during Lucy’s