Like lightning striking twice. She shuddered.
Someone came to stand directly behind her, she felt their warm breath caressing her nape, though she only registered it vaguely. Her attention was fixed on that tormenting little ball and the rhythmic clacking noise it made as it jumped from compartment to compartment in a playful mix of ivory, red and black.
And the tension, the pulsing sense of building expectancy that was the real draw, the actual smell of madness, permeated all around her like a poisonous drug no one could resist.
‘Yes!’ Her father’s victorious hiss hit her eardrums like the jarring clash of a hundred cymbals as he doubled his reckless stake—just like that.
The gathered crowd began enjoying his good fortune with him, but Caroline wilted like a dying flower. Her heart was floundering somewhere down deep inside her. She felt sick, she felt dizzy—must have actually swayed a little, because an arm snaked around her waist to support her. And it was a mark as to just how weak she was feeling that she let that arm gently ease her back against the hard-packed body standing behind her.
This was it, she was thinking dully. There would be no stopping him now. He wouldn’t be happy until he had lost everything he had already won—and more. She didn’t so much as consider him winning, because winning was not the real desire that drove people like him to play. It was, quite simply, the compulsion to play no matter what the final outcome. Winning meant your luck was in, so you played until your luck ran out, then played until it came back again.
A fine shudder rippled through her, making her suddenly aware that she was leaning against some total stranger. With an abrupt tensing of her spine, she managed to put a little distance between them before turning within that circling arm to murmur a coldly polite, ‘Thank you, but I’m—’
Words froze, the air sealed inside lungs that suddenly ceased to function as she stood there, staring into a pair of all too familiar devil-black eyes that trapped her inside a world of complete denial.
‘Hello, Caroline,’ Luiz greeted smoothly.
CHAPTER TWO
HER heart flipped over, then began to beat wildly. ‘Luiz…’ she breathed through lips gone too numb to move while, No, her mind was telling her. She was hallucinating—dreaming him up from the depths of her worst fears—because this place and her father’s madness were all so synonymous in her mind with this man. ‘No.’ She even made the denial out loud.
‘Sorry but—yes,’ he replied with a real dry amusement slicing through his lazy tone.
But it was an amusement that did not reach the darkness in his eyes, and the room began to blacken around its edges as yet another dizzying sense of pained dismay took the place of shocked numbness.
‘Please let go of me,’ she said shakily, desperately needing to put some distance between the two of them before she could attempt to deal with this.
‘Of course.’ The hand was instantly removed. And for some crazy reason she found herself comparing his ready compliance with the complete disregard the stranger in the basement had shown when she had made the same request of him.
A man who had reminded her of Luiz. A man she hadn’t liked on sight, whereas Luiz she…
‘Your father’s luck is in, I see,’ he remarked, his gaze now fixed on what was going on behind her.
‘Is it?’ Scepticism sliced heavily through the two short syllables, bringing his dark eyes back to her face.
But Caroline could no longer look at him. It hurt to look at him. For Luiz personified everything she had learned to despise about her father’s disease. Obsession, machination, deception, betrayal.
Bitterness suddenly rose to almost completely engulf her. She went to spin away from him, but at the same moment the crowd began to surge in, jostling her in their eagerness to congratulate her father, wanting to demonstrate their delight in seeing someone beat the bank against all the odds for once. Luiz’s arm came back, looping round her in protection this time against several elbows being aimed in her direction, and Caroline found herself being pressed so close to him that she would have to be dead not to be aware of every hard-packed nuance of the man.
Her heart-rate picked up and her breathing grew shallow. It was awful. Memories began to flood her mind. They had been lovers once. Their bodies knew each other as intimately as two bodies could. Standing here, virtually imprisoned by the crowd closing round them, was the worst kind of punishment that fate could have doled out to her for being stupid enough to agree to come back here.
It was a knowledge that filled her with a kind of acrimony that poured itself into her voice. ‘Still playing games for a living, Luiz?’ she shot at him sarcastically. ‘I wonder what the management would do if they found out they have a professional in their club.’
His dark eyes narrowed. And it was because she was being forced to stand so close to him that she felt the slight tensing of certain muscles—like a dangerous cat raising its hackles. ‘Was that your version of a veiled threat by any chance?’ he questioned very carefully.
Was it? Caroline asked herself, aware that all it would take was a quiet word in the ear of the management to have Luiz very quietly but very firmly hustled out of here. But—
‘It was merely an observation,’ she sighed, knowing that she had no right to criticise Luiz when her own father was just as bad.
‘Then, to answer your observation, no,’ he replied. ‘I am not here to play.’
But Caroline wasn’t listening. A sudden idea had hit her, one that had her heart leaping in her breast. ‘Luiz…’ she murmured urgently. ‘If I had a quiet word with the management about my father, would they stop him from playing any more?’
‘Why should they?’ His mouth took on a derisive twist. ‘He’s no professional, just a man with a vice he has turned into an obsession.’
‘A suicidal obsession,’ Caroline extended with a shiver.
The hand at her spine gently soothed her. And what was worse was that Luiz didn’t say a single word. He knew her father—knew him only too well.
‘I hate this,’ she whispered, wishing she could just creep away and pretend it wasn’t happening. But she couldn’t, and somehow, some way she had to try and stop this madness before her father ruined them completely.
‘Do you want me to stop him?’ Luiz offered.
Her eyes flicked up to clash with his. ‘Do you think you can?’ she murmured anxiously.
In response Luiz simply lifted his gaze to where her father was emerging from his sea of congratulations. ‘Sir Edward,’ he said.
That was all. No raising of his voice, no challenge in the tone. Just the two quietly spoken words. Yet they carried enough impact to cause a small cessation in the buzz of excitement taking place.
And the fine hairs on the back of Caroline’s neck began to tingle as she sensed her father spinning around. She couldn’t see him because Luiz was keeping her pressed against him, but in the following long seconds of tense silence she certainly felt the full thrust of her father’s shock.
His recovery was swift though. ‘Well,’ he drawled. ‘If it isn’t Luiz. This is a surprise…’
Eton-educated, brought up to be always aware of his own worth, Sir Edward Newbury’s King’s-English accent was a pitch-perfect blend of sarcasm and condescension that made his daughter wince.
Luiz didn’t wince. He just offered a wry smile. ‘Isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘Seven years on and here we are again. Same time, same place—’
‘It must be fate,’ her father dryly tagged on.
And fate just about covered it, Caroline was thinking hollowly. Ill fate. Cruel fate.
‘I see your luck is in tonight,’ Luiz observed. ‘Taken the bank to the cleaners, have you?’
‘Not yet, but I’m getting there.’ Her father sounded different suddenly. Enlivened, invigorated.
At which point Caroline made herself turn in the circle of Luiz’s arm to witness for herself the covetous gleam she knew was going to be in her father’s eyes. But she also saw the chi
ldlike pique that took hold of him as he skimmed his gaze over her face. He knew very well how badly he was letting her down tonight, but was belligerently defiant about it.
It made her heart want to break in despair.
‘How much do you think you’ve managed to win so far?’ Luiz questioned curiously.
Sir Edward didn’t even give his winnings a glance. ‘Bad luck to count it, Luiz. You know that,’ he dismissed with a shrug.
‘But if you’re feeling really lucky, then perhaps you could be tempted into a private bet with me?’ Luiz suggested. ‘Put the lot on the next spin,’ he challenged. ‘If you win, I’ll double the amount, then play you for the lot at poker. Fancy the long shot?’ he added provokingly, ignoring Caroline’s protesting gasp.
Their curious audience was suddenly on edge. Caroline simply went cold. Luiz called this stopping him? In all her life she had never felt so betrayed—and that included the last time Luiz had betrayed her trust in him.
‘No,’ she whispered, her eyes pleading with her father not to take Luiz on.
But he wasn’t even aware of her presence any more. And she knew exactly what he was doing; he was busily adding up his present winnings, doubling them and doubling them again, then playing Luiz at a game even she knew Luiz was lethal at, and seeing all his problems melting away in one sweet lucky night.
‘Why not?’ He accepted the challenge, and as his daughter stared at him in dismay he turned and, with a brief nod of his head to the waiting croupier, coolly instructed, ‘Let it all ride.’
And the wheel began to spin once again.
Behind her Caroline could feel Luiz watching things over the top of her head. In front of her, her father stood, outwardly calm and supremely indifferent to the eventual outcome even though their lives, in effect, stood hovering in the balance. And all around it was as if the whole casino had come to a breathless standstill while everyone watched the game play itself out. There wasn’t a person present who believed that Sir Edward could win on the same colour for a fourth time.
Caroline certainly did not believe it. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she told Luiz, and shrugged herself free of his grasp.
He let her go, though he remained standing directly behind her. And, like everyone else, they stood watching as the wheel began to slow, allowing that wretched ball to bounce playfully from slot to slot.
It was torture at its worst. She had known they should not have come here, had told her father over and over again that Marbella was the last place on earth they should look for salvation.
But he hadn’t listened. He was desperate, and desperate men do desperate things. ‘We have no choice!’ was all he’d said. ‘The finance company that bought up all our debts is based in Marbella. They refuse to speak to us unless we show up personally. We have to go there, Caroline.’
‘And your gambling debts?’ she’d hit out at him angrily. ‘Do they have their greedy hands on all of those too?’
He’d flushed with guilt, then gone peevish on her as he always did when caught by his own inadequacies. ‘Do you want to help sort this mess out or not?’ he’d challenged harshly.
She had, but not this way. Not by banking everything they had on the spin of a stupid roulette wheel.
The dizziness returned, the blood seeping slowly out of her head as if squeezed by that steadily slowing wheel. Then, quite suddenly, it stopped. Silence hit the room. No one moved for the space of a few tense breathless seconds—until Sir Edward said, very calmly, ‘Mine, I think.’
Without uttering a single word, Caroline turned and walked away, leaving the melee to erupt behind her.
How much had he won? She didn’t know. When would he play Luiz? She didn’t care. As far as she was concerned the whole miserable thing was well and truly over. She’d had enough—more than enough—and she never wanted to step foot in a place like this again.
She even felt a real disgust with herself for being talked into coming here at all. She should have known he couldn’t keep his word. Should have known he didn’t really care what happened to them so long as he could get his kicks.
The casino doors swung shut behind her. Eyes bright, mouth tight, body stiff with tension, she walked towards the stairwell with the intention of going back to their room. But suddenly she knew she couldn’t do that, couldn’t just go back there and await the next instalment in her father’s quest for utter ruin. And on an impulse she didn’t think to question, she found her feet were taking her across the basement foyer and towards the pair of doors that stood opposite the casino.
She’d half expected the swimming pool room to be locked at this time of the night but it wasn’t, she discovered, though the lights had been turned down to their minimum, so only the pool itself was illuminated, showing glass-smooth cool blue water—and not another person in sight.
Without really considering her next actions, Caroline stepped out of her shoes, unzipped her dress and draped it over the back of a nearby chair, then simply dived cleanly into the water.
Why she did it, she didn’t know, and cared even less that she had dived in wearing bra, panties and even her black stockings and suspenders. She just powered up and down that pool like someone intent on winning a medal.
She was performing her fourth lap when she noticed Luiz sitting in the chair next to the one on which she had placed her dress. The cold cut of her eyes completely blanked him as she made a neat rolling turn then headed back down the pool.
He was still there when she made her sixth cutting crawl through the water, still sitting there on her eighth. By the tenth her lungs were beginning to burst and she had to pause for breath. Crossing her arms on the tiled rim, she rested her brow against them and stayed like that until the panting began to ease.
‘Feel better for that?’ Luiz questioned levelly.
‘No,’ she replied, and at last lifted her face to look at him. ‘Do you, for playing the voyeur?’
‘You are wearing more than most women do who use this pool,’ he casually pointed out.
‘But a gentleman, on noting the difference, would have had the grace to leave.’
‘And we both know that I am no gentleman,’ he smilingly tagged on as if on cue.
Had she been cueing him to admit that? Caroline asked herself. Yes, she accepted, she had. It pleased her, for some reason, to make Luiz admit to what he was.
Or wasn’t, she amended. ‘Where’s my father?’
‘Counting his winnings, I should imagine.’ His shrug demonstrated his complete indifference. ‘Are you ready to get out of there?’ he enquired then. ‘Or are you expecting me to strip off and join you?’
‘I’m coming out,’ she decided immediately, not even considering whether or not his suggestion was a bluff. Past experience of this man’s dangerous streak made her sure that he was quite capable of stripping to the skin then joining her without hesitation.
And she had no wish whatsoever to see Luiz Vazquez strip. Didn’t need to, to know exactly what he looked like naked. Just as he didn’t need to see her remove the black silk bra, stockings and panties to know exactly what was hiding beneath, she added grimly as, with another neat roll, she took herself underwater to swim to the nearest set of steps.
By the time she rose up again Luiz was standing at the edge, waiting with a large white towel stretched out at the ready. Where he had got it from Caroline didn’t know, and found that once again she didn’t really care. It was as if her brain had gone on strike where caring was concerned.
So she climbed up the steps and calmly took the towel from him with a ‘Thank you’ murmured politely, and no hint of anything else in her tone.
He noticed the absence of emotions, of course. ‘You’re being very calm about this,’ he remarked.
Caroline wrapped the towel sarong-wise around her body. ‘I hate and despise you. Will that do?’ she offered, bending to squeeze the excess water out of her hair.
He grimaced. ‘It’s a start. Do you want me to get another towel to
dry your hair with?’
Finger-combing the wet tangles, she tossed back her head to send the chin-length bob flying back from her face. The swim had seen off most of her make-up other than her mascara, which now stood out sooty black in a naturally porcelain-white face.
‘I want nothing from you, Luiz,’ she told him. ‘Because your idea of a favour is to cut off the outstretched hand.’
‘Ah…’ His own hands slid smoothly into the pockets of his black silk evening trousers. ‘The hand I cut off, I have to presume, belonged to you?’
She didn’t want to talk about it, so she turned away. Spying her dress on the chair, she went to pick it up. ‘I’m going to my room,’ she announced, walking towards the pool house door. ‘Goodbye, Luiz,’ she added coldly. ‘I would like to say that it was nice to see you again, but I would be lying, so I won’t bother…’
It would have been the perfect exit line too, if Luiz hadn’t spoiled it. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ he prompted lazily.
She stopped, turned, and frowned at him in puzzlement. He was still standing more or less where she had left him, tall, lean, superbly presented against a backcloth of shimmering blue, and sexily dark and disturbing enough to make any girl’s heart squeeze.
Caroline’s heart gave that terrible little squeeze. And she despised herself for being so susceptible to him, knowing him for what he was.
‘Your purse and your shoes,’ he kindly pointed out to her, and went to collect them from where she had left them, the purse thrown down on the chair, the shoes kicked carelessly beneath.
The shoes he casually held out towards her, dangling them from their straps on long lean fingers. Tight-lipped she took them, but when she went to reach for her purse Luiz slid it smoothly into one of his cream tux pockets.
Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride Page 20