The Man From her Wayward Past. Susan Stephens
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entered the club.
‘I hear there’s a big do on tonight,’ Grace announced, dropping her bag on a nearby table. ‘Wish I didn’t have these sniffles. A red nose and leaking eyes doesn’t do much for tips. I was hoping to meet someone fabulous tonight who would take me away from all this—’
As Grace gestured around Lucia reflected that not so long ago just the mention of a ‘big do’ would have been a call to arms. She had loved nothing better than to tease and flirt and dance. With four brothers ready to flatten any man who so much as looked at her the wrong way, she had grown up with no concept of danger when she turned it on, and had felt free to be as flirtatious as she liked. Her instant reaction to the merest suggestion of a party would have been on with the five-inch heels, the dress at least a size too small, followed swiftly by slap, glitter, lashes and nails, all topped off by the studiously perfected party pout. But that was then and this was now, and things were very different now.
Turning to Grace, Lucia thought her friend looked unusually pale tonight. ‘Let me take your shift if you’re not feeling well,’ she suggested.
‘Another shift straight after this one?’ Grace shook her head in firm refusal ‘You haven’t stopped working since you got here. You’ll make yourself ill if you go on like this. Put on your heels tonight, walk in like you own the place, see who’s around. Save one for me if there are any likely men.’
Inwardly Lucia shuddered, but as Grace laughed she wiped her hot face on her sleeve and joined in the merriment. Grace had no idea what had happened to Lucia in London, and Lucia wasn’t about to burden her new friend with details of that experience.
‘Uh-oh, here comes trouble,’ Grace warned as Van Rickter returned.
While Grace hurried into the back to get changed for work, Van Rickter picked on Lucia. ‘Hey, Anita from the block,’ he sneered. ‘Put some elbow grease into that scrubbing. I can always find someone to replace you.’ With an ugly laugh, he spun on his Cuban heels.
Everyone at the club knew her as Anita. It was the name of Lucia’s favourite Puerto Rican character from the musical West Side Story. Finding a surname had been easy. Sitting in a coffee bar, she’d thought, Just lose the ‘a’. So Lucia Acosta had become Anita Costa. Why the subterfuge?
It wasn’t possible to have people treat you normally, let alone strike out for independence, when your four polo-playing brothers featured on every billboard in town.
Resting her hands on the small of her aching back, Lucia dreamed of Argentina and the endless freedom of the pampas. Her warm, safe home in South America had never seemed further away, especially when it turned out that she had a real talent for jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Her life, since that rogue concierge in London had made staying on at her job there impossible, had been one long slide down. It made no difference that she came from a wealthy family, and anyway, she was determined to go it alone.
‘Okay?’ Grace trilled as she hurried past with a crate of drinks.
‘Never more so.’
Brushing her hair back, Lucia returned to scrubbing. After London she was glad to have a job at a club where no one knew her. Before she died, her mother had used to say to Lucia, ‘Keep your wits about you.’ Well, she’d certainly failed at that in London, believing the concierge was her friend.
It was hard to believe her mother had been killed almost ten years ago in a tragic flood. Demelza Acosta had been Cornish, which was why the family had always holidayed in St Oswalds. And why Lucia had fled here, she supposed, seeking refuge in the one corner of England where she remembered being truly happy.
Lucia’s head dipped over her scrubbing brush as Van Rickter came into view.
‘It’s your lucky day, Anita,’ he observed sarcastically. ‘I’ve sent Grace home. No one wants to be served cocktails by a waitress with a runny nose, so you’re on bar duty tonight. And don’t even think of complaining that your cleaning shift doesn’t end until seven,’ he warned. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to get ready.’
Half an hour to race over to the caravan, hose herself down in cold water and get back to the club. If she didn’t stop to eat it should be possible. ‘That’s fine with me.’ She needed the money.
Van Rickter’s piggy eyes almost disappeared into folds of unnaturally pale flesh as he eyed her suspiciously. ‘Make sure you clean yourself up. And put some hand cream on. Those wrinkled mitts are enough to put anyone off their champagne.’
‘I will,’ she said, flashing a smile she knew would rattle Van Rickter far more than an exhausted look. She got tips on the bar.
Being nice and clean was more important for work than a full stomach. No one wanted a stinky server leaning over them, and she sure as hell wouldn’t get any tips, Lucia reasoned, teeth chattering as she tied her wild black hair back neatly. She had just showered in shriekingly cold water in the beat-up caravan that came with her other job, and with ice on the insides of the windows it would take some considerable time before she warmed up.
Yes, she’d landed not one but two jobs—though the one that came with the caravan thrown in was rather more complicated than her work at the club, as she didn’t get paid. Not yet. She was trying to help Margaret, the old lady who owned the Sundowner Guest House and Holiday Park, where Lucia had stayed as a child, to get back on her feet.
Teeth chattering, she rubbed herself down on a rough towel whilst shooting anxious glances at Grace’s uniform. The tiny cocktail waitress ensemble looked far too small. She had put on a bit of weight since coming to Cornwall, having been plied with more Cornish cream teas than was good for her by Margaret. Not that she hadn’t been what you might call voluptuous to start with.
Thanks to her handsome Argentinian father and her Cornish mother Lucia had been built to withstand not just the terrifying winds of the pampas but the frigid cold of a Cornish winter—genes that had made her infamous polo-playing brothers giants amongst men, but which had left her with the short straw. Now she was more a dumpy style of windbreak. Not that being curvy had seemed to put men off in the past. In fact at one time she’d used to have men—for men read her brothers’ approved friends—eating out of her hand. Safe to say in London that hand had been well and truly bitten off.
Her brothers had definitely snaffled all the best growing genes, Lucia reflected as she heaved and tugged on Grace’s minuscule boob-tube. Lucia was five foot three, while each of her brothers was at least a foot taller. Their width was breathtaking, whilst hers was merely distance across.
And that distance had never seemed greater, Lucia concluded, as she attempted to stuff one breast inside the elasticated boob-tube only to have the other spring out. And she had yet to tackle Grace’s hot pants. Malevolently gleaming silver beneath the flickering light, they taunted her in silent reproach for a diet high on cheap and comforting junk food.
Having finally managed to subdue both breasts, she approached the hot pants warily, like an enemy that had to be put in its place.
Ouch!
The hot pants were definitely in place.
In tank top and jeans, ripped, tanned and pumped after exercise, Luke Forster was reclining with his cowboy boots crossed on an ornate coffee table at his hotel suite at the Grand Hotel in St Oswalds when he took a call from Argentina.
‘Do me a favour and look Lucia up while you’re there in Cornwall?’ Luke’s closest friend, Nacho Acosta asked him after they had finished discussing their latest polo match.
‘Lucia’s in Cornwall?’
‘That’s what she told me,’ Nacho confirmed.
Luke stalled. Must I? Was his first thought. Lucia was Nacho’s sister, and more trouble than any man needed. As Nacho recited Lucia’s number he processed some swift mental imagery that seemed to centre mainly on Lucia’s breasts.
That was so wrong. Nacho was his best friend and Lucia was the