He had seen the overturned quad bike from the top of the hill seconds before he saw Gabby. In those seconds he had lived the nightmare that haunted his dreams. For a terrible moment he could feel the weight of his daughter’s lifeless body in his arms the same way he had felt her mother’s—it was his job to keep her safe and he had failed.
Then he saw her, recognised even at a distance the familiar defiant stance, and the guilt and grief were replaced by immense relief, which in its turn was seamlessly swallowed up by a wave of savage anger. An anger that quickly shifted focus when he identified the tall blonde-haired figure beside his daughter.
He should have known that she would be involved!
He approached with long angry strides, looking like some sort of avenging dark angel—the fallen variety. Lucy didn’t blame the kid for looking terrified. She gave the shaking child’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. Really, she should have guessed when the child had started talking casually about helicopters, but she hadn’t. For some reason she hadn’t thought about Santiago Silva as married, let alone a widow, or a father! It was still a struggle to think of him as any of these things, as was maintaining her smile as he approached.
Yesterday she had been conscious that where this man was concerned the veneer of civilisation was pretty thin; right now it was non-existent. He was scary but also, she admitted as she felt a little shiver trace a path down her rigid spine, pretty magnificent!
He swept straight past her, but not before Lucy had felt the icy blast of the glittering stare that dashed over her face.
She watched as he placed his hands on his daughter’s shoulders and squatted until he was at face level with her.
‘Gabby, you …’ Torn between a desire to throttle his wilful daughter and crush her in a bear hug, he took a deep breath. Feeling like a hopelessly inadequate parent, he searched her face and asked brusquely, ‘You are hurt?’
Even Lucy, who was extremely unwilling to assign any normal human emotions to this awful man, could not deny the rough concern in his deep voice was genuine.
‘I’m fine, Papá. She—’ the little girl cast a smile in Lucy’s direction ‘—helped me.’
‘Not really.’
For a moment his burning eyes met hers, then, a muscle along his clean shaven jaw clenching, he turned away, rising to his feet with a graceful fluidity that caused Lucy’s oversensitive stomach to flip.
‘Papá …’
‘Wait in the car, Gabriella.’
With one last look over her shoulder at Lucy, she walked, head down, towards the car.
Without looking to see if his daughter had obeyed, Santiago Silva began to speak into the phone he had pulled from the breast pocket of his open necked shirt.
Lucy’s Spanish was good enough to make out that the conversation was with a doctor who was being requested to meet them at the castillo.
He might be an awful man but he was also obviously a concerned father. ‘She wasn’t unconscious or anything.’
Santiago closed the phone with a click and covered the space between them in two strides.
As he bent his face close to her own Lucy felt the full force of his contempt as he responded in a lethally soft voice, ‘When I require your medical expertise I will ask for it. As for having any contact with my daughter …’ He swallowed, the muscles in his brown throat visibly rippling. ‘Do not attempt to make any contact or you will be sorry.’
Lucy’s sympathy vanished and her anger rushed in to fill the vacuum it left. She didn’t bother asking if that had been a threat—it clearly was.
Fighting the urge to step back, she lifted her chin to a pugnacious angle and enquired coolly, ‘So, the next time I find her trapped under a grown-up toy she is clearly not old enough to get behind the wheel of, I’ll walk by on the other side of the damned road, shall I, Mr Silva? That might be your style, but it isn’t mine.’
‘I know all about your style and I would prefer that members of my family are not contaminated by your toxic influence … but, yes, you did try and help my daughter, so thank you for that at least.’
It was clear that every word of the apology hurt him. ‘Does it occur to you that your daughter wouldn’t feel the need to break the rules if you cut her a bit of slack?’
He stared at her incredulously. ‘You are giving me advice on parenting? So, how many children do you have, Miss Fitzgerald?’
She sucked in a furious breath. Where did this man get off being so superior? ‘Well, if I did have one I’d make damned sure I wasn’t too busy to notice she had driven off on a quad bike!’
The expression that Lucy saw move at the back of his eyes—so bleak it was almost haunted—made her almost regret her taunt, but she stifled the stab of guilt. She’d save her pity for someone who deserved it. He was a bully, used to people sitting and taking what he dished out.
Well, she wasn’t going to take it, not from him, not from anyone.
‘Stay away from my family or I will make you wish you’d never been born.’ Without waiting for her response, he turned and started walking towards the car.
By the time she reached the finca Lucy was so mad she was shaking like someone with a fever.
‘Lucy, my dear, what’s wrong? What’s happened?’ Harriet studied the face of her ex-student with growing concern.
‘Nothing, I’m fine. Don’t get up,’ she added as the older woman struggled to rise from her chair. ‘You should have rested longer. You know what the doctor said about keeping your foot up to stop it swelling again.’
Harriet subsided back into her seat with a frustrated grunt. ‘I’ll stay here if you tell me what’s wrong, Lucy.’
In the middle of pacing agitatedly across the room, Lucy paused, her fists in tight balls at her sides, her face coloured by two bright spots of anger on her smooth cheeks, and gave a high little laugh. ‘Mr Smug Sanctimonious Creep Silva is wrong!’
Harriet looked confused. ‘Ramon!’ she exclaimed. ‘But he seems a sweet boy, if a little full of himself … whatever has he done?’ She had never seen the student she considered one of the brightest young women she had ever taught lose her air of serene calm. Even during the awful press witch hunt she had remained cool and aloof.
‘Ramon …?’ Lucy shook her head impatiently and took up her pacing. ‘It’s not Ramon, it’s his brother,’ she gritted.
‘Santiago? You’ve met him … is he here?’
Lucy gave a grim smile. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve had that pleasure twice now.’ She reached for the phone and punched in the number she had scribbled down on the pad beside it. ‘Ramon …?’ Lucy slowed her agitated breathing and took a deep breath. ‘Dinner tonight …?’
When she told Harriet the full story her old tutor was sympathetic but, to her annoyance, inclined to make excuses for Santiago Silva. ‘He jumped to conclusions and that was wrong.’
‘He virtually called me a tart and now today he flings out his threats!’ Lucy raged. Even thinking about the man made her want to smash things. Nobody had ever got under her skin this way.
‘Why not let me explain the situation to him, Lucy?’
Lucy’s lower lip jutted mutinously. ‘Why should I explain? He’s the one in the wrong.’
‘Gabby is the apple of his eye and very wilful. He’s also very protective of his younger brother. I understand their father died when Ramon was just a boy, and Santiago was very young when he inherited the estancia. Reading between the lines, I get the impression that given half the chance his stepmother fancied herself