Free Santiago's Command by Kim Lawrence Page A

had greeted him on his return that morning, making it pretty conclusive that his threats had backfired big time and Lucy Fitzgerald had lost no time calling his bluff—only he didn’t bluff, as she would find out.
    ‘I thought we could have a private little talk …’ Not this little talk—Santiago was annoyed with himself for losing focus.
    ‘We don’t have anything to talk about and, for the record, I don’t like being played. How did you know—’ She stopped, feeling stupid. ‘There wasn’t an important call, was there?’
    ‘Of course there was a call … and I imagine it will take a good thirty minutes.’
    ‘Imagine or know!’
    He met her angry glare with a lazy, insolent smile. ‘What’s the problem, Lucy—you can dish it out but can’t take it?’
    Her chin went up at the challenge. ‘Dish it out?’ she echoed, her blue gaze falling from his. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she denied, thinking,
He knows …
The realisation that he had seen through their act was, she realised, almost a relief. She expelled a long sigh—no more pouting! With all the sexy stuff she hadn’t felt like herself all evening—’herself’ being cool, blonde and in control.
    This evening she’d been blonde and continually on the edge of losing any semblance of control. This man pressed all her buttons and made her feel the victim’s rage she had thought she had conquered long ago.
    She felt a twang of guilt, which turned into pity for Ramon—she could not imagine his brother seeing this as a bit of harmless fun.
    ‘I am presuming that the overacting this evening was for my benefit?’ An image of her stroking his brother’s arm, a relatively innocent action if it had been anyone but this woman, drifted into his head and he snarled, ‘Ever heard of subtlety?’
    Lucy’s head lifted and she read the contempt and anger etched in the sculpted lines of his hard-boned face.
    ‘I presume this was to drive up the price.’
    Her eyes widened—so he didn’t know.
    He saw her reaction and gave a thin smile. ‘Another language you speak fluently … money.’
    It occurred to Lucy as she sucked in a breath that she had played her part a bit too well—he was looking at her with a level of loathing that she struggled to be objective about.
    ‘And did it work?’ she wondered, hiding the stab of irrational hurt that threatened to make her well up behind her amused smile. The opinion of a self-righteous jerk, she reminded herself, was no reason to feel bad. In fact the time to worry was when a man like him started approving of you.
    ‘No, there is no extra money on the table—there is no money.’
    She pursed her lips into a pout and took what she hoped came across as a fearless step towards him. Thrusting one hip out, she planted her hands on her thighs and fixed him with a smile that deepened as she heard the distinct sound of his teeth grinding.
    ‘Pity … still, sometimes the satisfaction of a job well done is reward in itself.’
    ‘I have no idea if some bad experience turned you poisonous or if you were just born that way because, to be frank, the nature-nurture argument does not interest me.’
    Inside seething, Lucy adopted an air of amused interest, watching the muscles along his strong jawline ripple.
    ‘And I can take anything you can throw at me.’ Bravewords, or should that be reckless? Lucy just hoped they would not come back to bite her.
    ‘We’ll see, shall we …?’
    Sheer stubbornness made her retain eye contact. It saved running the risk of not being able to look away. His black stare had a disturbingly hypnotic quality.
    Her pounding heart drowned out the lonely cry of a hunting owl overhead. The atmosphere was suddenly thicker than the thick emerald-green moss that grew along the riverbank, the moss her heels had sunk into as she’d walked to the bridge … Lucy felt as though she were sinking now. She swallowed past the constriction in her throat and, doing her best to look amused, met