The Man From her Wayward Past. Susan Stephens
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gone off radar again, Luke.’
He shook himself round to take in what Nacho was saying.
‘Though this time my sister has been good enough to leave a voicemail with the news that she’s revisiting old haunts.’
Luke groaned inwardly. He was doing the same thing, so bang went his excuse not to look for her. Raking tense fingers through his thick brown hair, he added a couple of days to an already crammed schedule. Juggling wide-ranging business interests with his family’s huge charitable foundation, as well as playing polo at the international level, demanded enough of his time without going on some wild goose chase looking for Nacho’s wayward sister. It wasn’t as if Lucia going off radar was anything new. The only female in a family with four forceful brothers, Lucia had broken away as soon as she could, quickly gaining the reputation of being a party girl extraordinaire.
‘I know she’s all grown up now, but I still feel responsible for her,’ Nacho was explaining. ‘You will do this for me, won’t you, Luke?’
How could he refuse? Nacho had assumed responsibility for his siblings when their parents were killed in a flood, which had worked out great for Lucia’s brothers, who were all older than Lucia, and had been okay for Lucia to begin with. But when she’d hit her teens …
‘I’ll find her,’ he confirmed. ‘If she’s revisiting old haunts, what about school?’
‘Which school?’ Nacho demanded.
They both laughed.
Super-bright and super-bad, Lucia had run several headmistresses ragged. ‘If she’s in Cornwall,’ he murmured, thinking out loud, ‘it shouldn’t be hard to find her. The village is dead, apart from the club. Let me follow a hunch,’ he said, remembering Lucia dancing at the wedding. That chick could move.
‘I can’t ask for more than that,’ Nacho agreed.
They started talking polo again, but Lucia had taken up residence in Luke’s head. Both their mothers were Cornish, which was how the two families had met each year, holidaying together at the same quaint guest house on the rugged Cornish coast. The Sundowner had excellent stables and immediate access to the beach, which had given it the edge over the rest of the local accommodation where Luke’s parents were concerned. The Sundowner Guest House was intimate and private, plus the owner’s quirky take on hospitality, treating every family as her own, meant it offered something money couldn’t buy.
Luke loved Cornwall. He was glad to be back here doing business. It was the one place he felt free. Maybe he hadn’t realised it as a boy, but when he’d galloped across the beach with Lucia’s brothers he’d been true to himself. Now he was successful in his own right he wanted to recapture those feelings of elation and freedom.
‘Let me know as soon as you hear something, Luke,’ Nacho pressed him, adding, ‘I envy you being back in St Oswalds. Do you remember tearing up the beach on those wild ponies?’
‘How could I forget?’ He liked that Nacho felt the same. ‘Would you come back if I reinstated polo on the beach?’
‘You bet I would,’ Nacho assured him.
With one of the top polo players in the world on board, his plan was already starting to take shape, but as Nacho applied more pressure for him to bring polo back to Cornwall Luke was still thinking about Lucia.
He and Lucia were so different. Luke was an only child, brought up preppy and obedient, and when he was a boy the Acostas had seemed an exotic bunch to him, with their dark flashing eyes and outstanding horsemanship. He had made a point of riding on the beach at the same time as the brothers, wanting them to see his own skill on a horse. Nacho had taught him how to stand on a horse’s back while it galloped, nearly killing him in the process, while Lucia had merely tossed her glorious black hair in his face and turned a dismissive back.
Remember those eyes when Lucia flashed a challenge? Those dark, mischievous eyes …
Damn those eyes! Lucia was more trouble than she was worth. ‘I’ll be in touch when I’ve got something to tell you, Nacho.’
‘That’s good enough for me, Luke.’
He exchanged the usual pleasantries and ended the call with Lucia firmly fixed in his mind.
He was still thinking about her later that day, remembering the last time he’d seen her at an Acosta family wedding. Expecting a temperamental teen, he had found a woman who was all grown up. And hot. The way she had sashayed up to him, only to veer away at the very last moment on the pretext of seeking out one of her brothers, had left him with an ache in his groin and sweet revenge on his mind.
Forget Lucia, Luke told himself sternly as he waged the endless razor war on stubble that refused to surrender. Tonight he was meeting an attractive blonde who ran an events company, which dovetailed nicely with his plan to start investigating the possibility of reinstating the annual Polo on the Beach event, which had been started way back by Lucia’s father. His conversation with Nacho had crystallised his plans, and though it was a setback to find St Oswalds so run down, construction was one of the main planks of his business, so it made perfect sense for him to regenerate the village and bring the world back to its door.
And Lucia? What part would she play?
So much for forgetting about Lucia, Luke concluded, studying his freshly shaved face in the mirror. Shaving was a necessary habit rather than a purposeful exercise. Stubble was already shading his face, making him look more piratical than ever. His East Coast American father liked to protest that he could never understand where Luke’s looks came from. ‘All that thick, dark hair and the swarthy complexion … and those muscles! So vulgar.’ That was his father’s verdict. At which point he would cast an accusing glance at Luke’s mother and tell her that it must be her side of the family to blame.
That was the link between him and Lucia. They were both outsiders. Lucia was the girl yearning for independence in a household dominated by four alpha males, while he was the musclebound son of Princeton. Quite how that would help him combine a business dinner with a blonde with a hunt for a wild child on the loose remained to be seen.
Lucia’s body had just gone into meltdown. Luke Forster was in the club. It wasn’t possible …
Unless there were two formidable warrior-type men who stood head and shoulders above every other man in the place, with the looks to make any pretty-boy film star pack up his bags and go home, it was a rock-hard certainty. No two men on earth looked as good as that.
So what was Luke Forster doing here?
Rooted to the spot, with a tray of drinks balanced precariously in her shaking hands, Lucia was hiding in the shadows by the bar, oblivious to the barman yelling, ‘Get a move on, Anita. There’s another order waiting. You know we’re shorthanded tonight, babe.’
‘Move it, Anita!’
She leapt into action at the sound of Van Rickter’s voice. Why couldn’t the manager keep his voice down? Her name-change wouldn’t fool Luke for a second. To make matters worse, Luke had a woman on his arm—a very glamorous woman. Lucia could just imagine them both laughing when Luke explained in his husky, mocking tone that Lucia was running away again, and this time with a name that reflected her interest in music and coffee.
‘Thanks, darling,’ the barman said as he passed another loaded tray across the bar. ‘You’re the best.’
She zipped away, taking the long route round to her table of customers to avoid Luke. She didn’t want him to see her like this … Not just working here at the club. She would defend her right to work to the bitter end. But Luke knew her too well. He would sense how she’d changed. Dirty … Defiled … Ashamed and afraid …
But she was fighting back in her own time, and on her own terms.
Stamping down on the recent past, Lucia returned her thoughts to Luke. She had tried everything to eject