Fortune in the Stars (10 page)

'No, I'm not—I'm a Leo!' she blurted out in
exasperation.

'Are you, now?' he chuckled. 'And what do they
do—rip men to shreds with their pussy-cat claws?'

'I've really no idea,' she muttered, wondering if a
subject existed that he couldn't eventually fan into a blazing row. 'I
know practically nothing about astrology.'

'Neither do I—so what are we arguing about?'

'For heaven's sake, you're the one who's just said how he
loves arguing!' she shrieked.

'So I did, and it's sweet of you to be so obliging,' he
said softly, the quick glance he gave his watch only strengthening her
feeling that his mind was on other things. 'So now let's discuss
falling in love—it's such an uncharted area for me.'

'And one, therefore, that there's little point in your
trying to discuss,' retorted Penny.

'But it's such fun learning from an expert,' he persisted,
before his entire body suddenly froze rigid at the distant sound of a
ringing phone. 'And now all my worries will be over, is that right,
Penny?' he asked flippantly, but the darkness of the stubble on his
chin accentuated the sudden pallor of his face before he turned from
her and strode from the room.

'Dominic…what is it?' demanded Penny, fear
prickling against her skin as he appeared in the kitchen doorway, a
granite harshness immobilising the unmistakable rage suffusing his
still-unshaven face.

'Don't ask me!' he rasped. 'Just—'

'What on earth are you saying?' she gasped, a sudden surge
of fear driving the breath from her lungs. 'Lexy…what's
happened to her?'

'I wouldn't have thought even a bitch as stupid as you
could be foolish enough to ask that,' he enunciated with barely
controlled fury. 'Pack—we're leaving.'

Fear now a choking panic, she raced after him as he strode
off.

'Dominic, please… I
beg
you! Tell me what's happened!'

He spun round as she reached his side, his face pale with
unleashed rage.

'And I near as damn it begged
you
,
didn't I, Penny?' he snarled, pushing her violently from his path as he
strode on.

'Dominic, can't you understand there was nothing more I
could possibly tell you?' she pleaded frantically, running to keep pace
with him.

He stopped in his tracks, his clenched fist smashing
against the wall scant inches from her with a sickening crunch.

'Get away from me,' he intoned hoarsely. 'That could so
easily have been you.'

'If it makes you feel any better, then go on and hit me!'
she cried wildly. 'But for God's sake tell me what's going on!'

'I'll tell you!' he raged, his control seeming to snap as
he rounded on her, his fingers bruising against the flesh of her upper
arms as he grasped her and lifted her almost off her feet.
'No…not here,' he hissed, evil in the eyes burning down into
her. 'The light's not good enough… I want to be able to read
every shade of every expression on your face.'

With his totally incomprehensible words only increasing
her feelings of dread, Penny gave no resistance as he half dragged,
half carried her to her room. Images of Lexy, laughing, rebellious,
gentle, were flashing through her mind as the overhead lights came on.
Then those images were blotted out by the ravaged gaze of the man
gazing down at her upturned face and whose fingers now bit cruelly into
her flesh.

'Now, let me read in your beautiful, lying face whether or
not the name Peter Langton means anything to you,' he whispered, his
eyes as cruel as his punishing fingers as they read the betrayal
already staining her cheeks. 'Of course it does,' he snarled, flinging
her from him with a violence that knocked the breath from her as she
landed sprawled across the bed. 'What can I possibly tell you about
Lexy that you don't already know, you stupid, ignorant, criminally
irresponsible bitch?'

As Penny struggled into a huddled sitting position, the
realisation beginning to dawn on her chased away her feelings of panic
and replaced them with ones of outrage. He had had her almost gibbering
with fear over the possibility of something having happened to Lexy,
but brotherly love, she now realised, had little to do with the
violence of his rage —it was simply that his sister had had
the temerity to get herself involved with a man whom this monstrously
overbearing brother happened to dislike. In the light of what she had
just witnessed, she could understand only too well why Lexy had broken
habits of a lifetime and run for cover!

Her expression tight with disgust, she gazed up at his
blackly scowling countenance.

'Why don't you take a look at yourself in that mirror over
there?' she suggested through clenched teeth. 'I've seen
three-year-olds display temper-tantrums similar to yours—but
never an adult. Pick up a few things and smash them, then call me a few
more names—that should help make you feel really great!'

She realised the instant the words were out how stupid
and, more to the point, how decidedly dangerous it was of her to have
expressed her anger so recklessly given his present mood; and the
murderous look in his eyes as he made a sudden start towards her only
strengthened that view. She felt the breath she had been unconsciously
holding burst from her as he abruptly straightened, the hands clenching
compulsively at his sides the only indication of the formidable battle
he was waging for control.

'You have fifteen minutes to get your things together,
then we're leaving,' he stated in a voice she scarcely recognised; then
he turned and left her.

For the second time in the space of hours, Penny packed.
And it was only when she had closed the second of her cases that she
gave a sudden groan of anger and frustration. He had lied about the
roads being impassable! Had she just kept going in the small hours of
this morning she could have saved herself all this!

'You lied to me about the roads, didn't you?' she hurled
at him in accusation as she dumped her bags by the front door.

'How impertinent of me if I did—lying being your
exclusive prerogative,' he drawled, frowning as he glanced down at her
two pieces of luggage. 'Can't you make do with one?'

Feeling inordinately inclined to fling herself on the
floor and have a tantrum of her own, Penny gritted her teeth.

'No!'

He gave a shrug of annoyance, his eyes now scrutinising
her lightweight navy sweat-shirt and matching skirt—the only
relatively warm clothing she had brought with her.

'Haven't you anything warmer than that?'

'No, I haven't!'

With an exclamation of impatience he strode off, appearing
moments later with a heavy cream sweater of his own.

'You'd better put this on.'

Tempted to tell him what he could do with it, Penny
nevertheless took it and put it on—she was frozen.

Furious that her body was choosing to respond to being in
an article of his clothing much as it did to being in his arms, Penny
picked up her bags and stormed through the door he had just opened. Yet
once they were settled in his car she found herself puzzling over his
unnecessary and obviously grudging concern for her
well-being…it was hardly as though they would be tramping
around in the open—and she would swelter on the plane dressed
like this.

'Where are we going?' she demanded as it suddenly occurred
to her that he was driving in completely the wrong direction.

'As I told you, the roads are blocked,' Dominic muttered,
slipping down a gear as the car began sliding on the mud-washed road.
'Contrary to your belief, I wasn't lying—so we're having to
go down by sea.'

'I wouldn't have thought they'd have any ferries running
in weather like this,' said Penny, her heart thudding uncomfortably as
her glance was drawn to the heaving grey of the sea.

'Wouldn't you?' he replied, his attention now entirely on
the hazardous road conditions.

Penny said nothing—what was the point? Instead
she made do with examining what could only be described as a crushing
sense of disappointment now pervading her. Infuriating and
argumentative though she had found him, it was pointless denying that
she had liked him and that it had come as a sickening shock to her to
discover the streak of vindictiveness in him that could make him behave
so disgustingly—and all because his sister was involved with
a man he happened to dislike. In fact, it went further than mere
vindictive-ness; it was her recognition of the barely dormant violence
in him that had terrified her into complying with his orders to pack
and leave. There was no earthly reason why she should be dragged along
with him on a journey which no sane person would even contemplate in
weather conditions such as these… She was here on his whim,
as punishment for being an unwitting party to the cause of his
unbalanced rage.

She glanced at his handsome, unyielding profile, the
inevitable leap of excitement within her only magnifying the strength
of her disappointment in him. She turned her face away. Why was it only
now that she saw with such clarity how easily she could have loved him?
Faults and all, as she had believed him to be until today, she could so
easily have loved him…had been so close to loving him. And
not just because of the powerful sexual feelings he awoke in
her…though it seemed only right that feelings as
overwhelming as those should go hand in hand with a readiness to love.
And now that she knew him for the petty-minded and malevolent person he
really was, there was no way he would ever be able to arouse such
feelings in her again.

It was with a surge of relief, tinged with residual
regret, that she turned to glance at him through new eyes and found
their heads turning in unison.

So lost had she been in introspection that she had failed
even to notice the slowing down of the car. It drew to a halt in almost
the same instant their eyes met, his brooding and impenetrable, hers
widening in sudden protest as the colour drifted slowly from her face.

'Don't worry, it probably isn't as bad as it looks,' he
stated, his oddly detached words eventually penetrating the charged
silence.

Penny tore her eyes from his, her fingers awkward as they
fumbled against the seat belt. No, it was probably a million times
worse, she told herself with almost queasy apprehension—not
that his words could possibly have had anything to do with what her
stunned mind was so busily rejecting.

The wind was gusting strongly as they stepped out on to
the quayside, but the rain was no more than an intermittent drizzle.

'Would you mind getting the things from the boot while I
have a word with Don Jaime over there?' he asked, handing her the keys
and striding off towards an elderly man waving to him from the bows of
a magnificent white racing yacht—one of several boats still
moored by the quay.

Having removed the luggage and relocked the boot, Penny
gazed around, her eyes widening in disbelief at the sight of what must
have been millions of pounds' worth of boats, seemingly abandoned to
the mercy of the elements. Not that there weren't plenty of people
around to tend these beautiful toys of the super-rich, she then
realised wryly as she spotted several men in oilskins checking their
battened-down and protected charges with meticulous care.

What in God's name was she doing here? she asked herself
dejectedly; and what in God's name was she doing feeling that same
ungovernable magnetism towards a man for whom she now felt no more than
contempt?

Dragging her mind away from thoughts she had no stomach to
examine, she looked down the length of the quay, frowning as she found
the distraction she had so eagerly sought. The peninsula was known as a
millionaires' playground, and all around were gleamingly elegant craft
that proclaimed it to be every bit that…but nowhere was
there anything that could by any stretch of the imagination be
described as a common or garden ferry-boat!

Huddling herself into the welcome warmth of Dominic's
sweater, she began walking towards the yacht on which Dominic had
joined the man whom he had referred to as Don Jaime.

As she walked, the wind floated odd snatches of their
conversation to her, and though she spoke no Spanish it became quite
obvious to her that the conversation was a fairly heated one.

She hesitated uncertainly for a moment, then continued
when both men began laughing, Dominic throwing back his head, his
strong white teeth gleaming against his tan while the wind tossed his
hair to a carefree wildness. All he needed was a dagger between his
teeth and he would be the picture of the devil-may-care buccaneer
incarnate, she mused bitterly.

They were deep in serious conversation by the time Penny
reached the boat, and it was the aristocratic-looking Spaniard who
spotted her first, his tone making it plain even to her that he was
reprimanding Dominic for not acknowledging her presence.

'Sorry, I didn't see you down there,' Dominic called down
to her. making shouted introductions as he leapt from the boat down on
to the quayside beside her.

'If you have to put to sea with a madman, at least it's
one who learned to handle a boat at the knee of a master,' the man
called down to her in good English, his eyes twinkling. 'But no short
cuts, eh, Dominic?'

'I'll stick to your route—that's a promise, Don
Jaime,' chuckled Dominic, placing a sudden and heavily warning arm
across Penny's shoulders as her face started giving signs that an
exceptionally unpleasant understanding was beginning to dawn on her.

'Off you go now—just leave the keys in the car,' called Don Jaime. 'And I'll make sure there's transport
awaiting you at the other end.'

'Dominic—'

'We'd better get our things and get going,' he cut in,
striding off and dragging her along with him. 'Where are the car keys?'

'In the car. Dominic—'