‘Nothing!’ she snapped.
The beads of perspiration that had broken out over the pale skin of her brow suggested otherwise.
‘I know I shouldn’t have taken the horse, but I was waiting for Ramon and Santana obviously needed exercise and you hadn’t bothered to exercise him …’
‘So this is my fault?’
The note of fake comprehension caused the spots of dark colour on her pale cheeks to deepen. ‘No, but—’
‘But you,’ he cut back in a hard voice, ‘saw an opportunity of scoring points because I warned you off—’
‘No!’
‘Then I can only assume you wanted my attention. You didn’t have to steal my valuable horse in order to get that—if you wanted to be kissed all you had to do was ask.’
She looked at him with simmering dislike. ‘Not in this life!’ she pronounced with an emphatic shake of her head. She swallowed and pressed a hand to her mouth.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m feeling a bit nauseous,’ she admitted, thinking about Ramon’s abrupt departure and wondering if the two could be connected … They had shared that smoked salmon sandwich …?
‘Let me look in your eyes,’ he said, taking her chin in his fingers.
‘I don’t have a head injury.’
His fingers fell away. ‘Do you remember what happened?’
‘Of course I remember what happened—I came off.’
‘Got thrown.’
‘All right, got thrown,’ she gritted, thinking, Go on, rub it in why don’t you? ‘That’s why I lost control when he got spooked by that little pig.’ Actually it had been quite a large pig.
To hear one of the dangerous wild boar that lived in the woods dismissed with a disgusted grimace made him blink.
‘I’m a good rider. I’ve been riding all my life.’
‘And have you been falling off all your life?’
Struggling to combat the rising nausea, Lucy wiped the rash of damp off her forehead, managing to lift her head and fix him with a glare. ‘I suppose you have never fallen off.’ She pressed her hand to her mouth and thought, Please do not let me throw up in front of him.
The annoyance died from Santiago’s face as he studied her pale features. ‘You look terrible.’
And she felt terrible.
‘Do you feel faint?’
At that moment she would have accepted a graceful, aesthetically pleasing swoon, but it wasn’t an option. ‘No, I don’t feel faint, I feel …’ She clapped a hand to her mouth, jumped to her feet and sprinted across the clearing. A few yards away she fell to her knees.
‘You all right?’
She shrugged off the hand on her shoulder and got to her feet, unable to meet his eyes. ‘Obviously I’m not all right.’ The nausea was much easier to cope with than the humiliation of the situation … God, she wanted to die; he had actually held her hair away from her face!
Santiago was the very last person in the world she would have expected a display of such thoughtfulness from, or, for that matter, expected to possess such a strong stomach.
‘Did you hit your head … lose consciousness?’ Her creamy complexion was tinged with a greenish hue and she was visibly swaying like a young sapling in a breeze … Sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, he suspected, was the only thing keeping her upright.
‘No, I … I was already …’ Losing track of her rebuttal, her voice faded to a whisper as her eyes half closed.
Convinced now he was dealing with a concussion at the very least, Santiago was moving in to catch her when she opened her eyes, directing her wide-eyed cerulean stare directly at his face.
‘It wasn’t the fall. I’ve been feeling … off most of the morning.’ Her brow furrowed; it was hard in retrospect to recall when it had started. Post smoked salmon, definitely.
The confession sparked his dormant anger into life. ‘Of all the selfish … stupid …!’ he blasted. ‘So let me get this right—not only did you steal a horse you could not handle simply to thumb your nose at me, you did so while unwell.’
Lucy, who had been on the point of offering a shamed apology, lost all urge to admit she’d been wrong.
‘I didn’t know I was going to be sick …’ Wincing at the unattractive whiney note in her voice, Lucy reached for the scarf she had wound around her neck that morning, intending to tie back her hair with it, and found it was gone …
‘What is it now?’ He watched cautiously as she bit her quivering lip and hoped she was not about to start throwing up again, though he conceded it was preferable to tears.
It was bizarre. He had always considered himself an even-tempered man, certainly not someone prone to mood swings, but with this woman he could feel a strong compulsion to throttle her and two seconds later an equally strong compulsion to offer her a shoulder to cry on.
‘I lost my scarf …’ She stopped as he looked at her as though she had gone mad and added, ‘And I wasn’t trying to thumb my …’ Her forceful declaration came to an abrupt halt, she swallowed and thought, My God, wasn’t that exactly what I was doing?
Something about this man made her want to score points: his aggressive sexuality, his self-righteous attitude, his smug conviction he was always right—no, actually, it was everything!
‘I shouldn’t have taken the horse … the biggest horse,’ she tacked on before she could stop herself.
And once she’d begun it was impossible to stem the flow of words that spilled from her.
‘The one that nobody else can handle, fastest, shiniest car … biggest bank balance … oh, and let’s not forget the Olympian-class smug superiority. Do you ever stop competing? It’s nothing short of a miracle that Ramon isn’t riddled with insecurities.’ She ran out of steam, dismay gradually seeping into her expression as she realised what she’d just said.
‘Shiniest car?’
Her eyes fell.
‘Is that how you see me—a boy with his toys …?’
She saw him with no clothes on, or she had in her erotic, shameful dreams. She closed her eyes and groaned. ‘Oh, just call the police. I’ll go quietly.’ Sitting in a police cell had to be preferable to enduring his company.
‘Don’t worry, I am not going to call the police.’
She choked on her relieved sigh when he tacked on, ‘I’ll sack the groom. It was his responsibility and rules are rules.’
Her horrified blue eyes flew to his face. ‘You wouldn’t …’ She stopped as she encountered an ironic look.
‘And with my word being law and my reputation as a despot being at stake I need to make an example of someone,’ he delivered straight-faced.
‘Very funny. Oh, God, I’m going to be ill again.’
‘THERE’S no point waiting.’
The decision made, Santiago slid an assessing glance towards the woman who was now sitting with her back propped against a tree trunk looking very much like a wilting exotic flower. The last bout of vomiting had left her very weak.
Admiration was something he had never imagined he would feel about Lucy,