‘You must think I’m mad...’ She took a long gulp of the brandy and then choked helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not used to this.’
‘That is one thing in your favour,’ he said drily. ‘And now, Miss Lorne Wilson, you will begin at the beginning. How is it that you are all alone with no money?’ He raised questioning eyebrows. ‘I presume you have no money?’
‘Not much,’ she admitted slowly. ‘That’s why I hadn’t stayed anywhere. I thought I could just manage if I slept out in the open somewhere and eked out the food.’
‘You thought you could just manage?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘And how long have you been “just managing”?’
‘A while.’ She sniffed dismally. ‘I was just going to have a look at the Coto Doñana National Park and then think about going home.’
‘Have a look...?’ His voice trailed away in a mixture of disgust and wonder. ‘Do you realise how vast that place is? It is not somewhere that one wanders alone. Maybe a guided tour or something similar but the lynx and wild boar that lodge there would be very pleased to make your acquaintance on a dark night. It is a wild place, Lorne, not suitable for a little English girl with hair like spun silver and wrists that one could snap in a second.’ As he gazed at her something dark and warm in his face caught and held her eyes and the moment stretched until he shook his head suddenly, a shadow passing over his face that turned it cold and withdrawn. ‘This is crazy.’ The muttered words held a note of anger and the hostility was back in his voice when he spoke next. ‘Start at the beginning.’
‘I came to Spain eight weeks ago with some friends,’ she began slowly, the chill that had entered his voice making her suddenly lonelier than she had felt for days. ‘There were four of us who have just graduated from university and we thought it would be fun to travel a bit, take some time out for a year or so.’
‘That would be fun, yes,’ he agreed with shuttered eyes.
‘But it didn’t work out.’ She was beginning to flounder and he would think she was trying to hide something, but how could she possibly explain to this cold, austere man how happy she had been when Sancho had suggested showing her his homeland? She had only got to know him in the last few weeks of university life although she had admired him from afar for the last four years, but he had always had a different model-girl type on his arm every time she had seen him. And then it had been her on his arm and she had been wild with delight and all her friends had been green with envy. Especially Janie. Janie... with her long red hair, even longer nails and come-to-bed eyes. But she had seemed so happy with Steve and they had been going out together for nearly a year. Even now it was hard to believe—
‘It didn’t work out?’ The deep voice with its foreign accent brought her back to the present with a jolt and she shook her blonde head slowly.
‘No.’ That was the understatement of the year, she thought grimly. When Sancho had endorsed Janie’s suggestion that she and Steve join them on the tour round Spain she had been delighted. The financial saving had been considerable and it had all worked out fine, or so she had thought. How naive could a person be? That was what Janie had thrown at her when Lorne had found her best friend and Sancho in bed together. Steve had left on the next flight home but she had been determined to complete the proposed trip. No one was going to send her skulking home like a whipped dog with its tail between its legs, least of all an over-sexed Spaniard and a tramp of an English girl.
‘Would you care to elaborate on that?’
She shook her head again as she looked him straight in the eyes. ‘I can’t, I really can’t. Suffice it to say one of us went home, the other two are in the south of Spain somewhere and I’m here. We were touring, on our bikes,’ she finished weakly.
‘Well, as an explanation it is pretty poor but I suppose it will do,’ he said sardonically. ‘The final line is that you are now injured, homeless and without funds?’
‘That’s about it.’ She eyed him warily.
‘There is an English word that describes you very well,’ he said coolly, ‘and I really cannot think of a suitable substitute in Spanish. The word is dimwit. Have you heard it?’
‘How dare you?’ She winced visibly as the sudden jerk of anger tweaked her ankle. ‘Look, you said you would run me back to my hotel; it’s no different if you get me back to my bike and I can take it from there.’
‘The hell it is.’ His accent made the words almost attractive. ‘I do not know what sort of men you are used to running around with, Lorne Wilson, and frankly I think I would prefer not to know—’ his eyes flashed condemningly over her bare legs in the brief shorts ‘—but you are now my responsibility and I do not intend to send you off into the night like a bird with a broken wing. You are clearly quite incapable of looking after yourself; in fact I think a child of ten would have more sense than you. You will stay here tonight and we will review the situation in the morning.’
‘What?’ She stared at him with big saucer eyes, ignoring the insults for the moment.
‘And I think we can probably provide something more... suitable for you to wear in the meantime.’ His nose all but wrinkled. ‘My sister has her own apartment here when she pays a visit and although considerably taller she is as slender as you.’
‘There’s no need for that and—’
‘Oh, but there is,’ he corrected tightly. ‘This is not a tourist resort and you may have noticed that young females do not display themselves quite so wantonly in this part of Spain. The young men who followed you probably thought, quite legitimately, that you were encouraging them to do so, especially in view of the fact that you were not accompanied.’
‘Well, that’s just plain ridiculous,’ she said angrily as her temper rose to boiling-point. ‘Do you mean to tell me that women here have to be covered from head to foot? What are you living in, for crying out loud, the Dark Ages? Women should be able to dress exactly how they want to without becoming targets for the sort of animals that followed me.’
‘Not a feminist too?’ He shut his eyes briefly and she was furious with herself for noticing, at such a time as this, that his eyelashes were incredibly long and curly as they rested for a moment on the hard, tanned cheeks. ‘I really think I need another brandy and then I must make a telephone call. But first you need to refresh yourself. Teresa and Benita will help you bathe and then I will put a bandage on that ankle to try and contain the swelling.’
‘But you have to go out,’ she said faintly. ‘You said—’
‘I think I realised when I picked you up off the road that my evening was not going to plan,’ he said drily. ‘Now please allow me, if not as a man then as a doctor, to take care of you tonight. Tomorrow we can arrange the hospital visit and organise accommodation and a ticket home.’
‘But why are you helping me like this?’ She stared at him, her grey eyes huge and liquid in her tear-smudged face and her silky blonde hair a cascade of silver falling over slender shoulders. ‘You don’t have to...’
‘In my country we do not forget the rules of hospitality,’ he said coldly after a long pregnant moment when he had searched her face with his piercing eyes. ‘You are a stranger in my land and you are in need, it is as simple as that. Also the fact that I cannot understand how you have not been eaten alive before now compels me not to—how would you put it?—push your luck?’
‘Eaten alive?’ There was a darkness in his face that frightened her. ‘But there are no wild animals in this part of Spain, are there?’
‘The human animal is far more ferocious than any wild cat when its appetite is aroused,’ he said grimly, ‘and