by Sarah Morgan
“I’m out,” he said, sitting back, running his hand across his darkly tanned face. Johann, an Austrian baron, playboy and fixture on the Monte Carlo scene, diligently maintained his deep tan by sunbathing daily on the pool terrace, usually with a stiff cocktail at his side. “I’ve nothing else, Bartolo.”
Thank God, Sam thought, eyes burning, body alternately hot and cold. He was done. It was over. Let them go home now and figure out what they were going to do. “Johann—”
“Be quiet,” he snapped.
She flushed, bit her tongue, knowing the man called Bartolo watched and listened to everything. She knew Bartolo had watched her tonight, too, had felt his gaze rest on her repeatedly, and each of his inspections grew longer, heavier, more personal until she thought she’d scream for relief. He made her feel strange.
He made her feel alone. And hopelessly vulnerable.
It wasn’t a way she wanted to feel. Not now, not ever.
But now Bartolo smiled lazily as he lay down his own cards. “You were on a winning streak for a while.”
“I nearly had you,” Johann agreed, signaling for another round of drinks.
Sam’s hands tightened on her knee, convulsively squeezing her kneecap. No more liquor, she prayed, no more liquor tonight. Let’s just go, Johann. Let’s leave here…
“So close,” Bartolo said.
Sam hated Bartolo then, realizing for the first time that he had been expertly baiting Johann tonight, egging him on. But for what purpose? He’d already stripped Johann of everything—house, wealth, respect. What else was there to take?
Johann nodded. “So close.” He paused, studied the other man. “One more hand?” he proposed, taking the bait.
The air bottled inside Sam’s chest and her nails dug into her hands. Damn Bartolo, and damn Johann. Johann couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t possibly think he’d win, not playing Bartolo, and certainly not after drinking. “Johann.”
“Shut up,” Johann said without looking at her.
She flushed with fresh shame but she wasn’t going to shut up, wasn’t going to let this slaughter continue. Bartolo was amoral. But she knew what was right, and this wasn’t right. “Come home with me now, Johann. Please.”
“I told you to shut up,” Johann snapped.
The heat scorched her face. It was humiliating being here, humiliating running after a man, begging a man to stop, think, pay attention. But she’d do what she had to do. She’d do anything for little Gabriela.
“Johann,” she pleaded softly.
Johann ignored her. But Bartolo looked at her, a long measured look that went straight through her. A look that said he was merciless and proud, hard and unforgiving. Ruthless. Savage.
Bloodthirsty.
She leaned forward, touched Johann’s shoulder. “Johann, I beg you—”
Johann reached up, shoved her hand off. “Go home before I ask that hotel security walk you out.”
“You can’t continue,” she whispered, face, body, skin aflame. She was mortified, and terrified. The future had never seemed as dark as it did that moment.
Johann looked up, nodded at the plain suited security guard standing just inside the VIP room’s door. “Could you please see the baroness out?” he asked, even as he took the fresh cocktail from the waitress. “She is ready to go home.”
All eyes but Johann’s were on her but she didn’t move, didn’t even flinch despite the plainclothes security guard at her elbow. “This isn’t right,” she said out loud.
But no one answered her and she felt Bartolo’s eyes. His gaze burned, seared. Punished.
The guard bent his head, murmured, “Madame, please.”
Madame, please leave without making a scene. Madame, go home while your husband loses everything and everyone…
Furiously, reluctantly, Sam stood, her gown’s white jersey fabric falling in long elegant folds. “If you can’t think of me, Johann, can you please think of Gabby?”
He didn’t answer her. He didn’t look as if he’d heard her. Instead he was drinking hard, throwing back his cocktail even as the dealer was dealing a new hand.
Escorted by hotel security, Sam walked silently through the casino overwhelmed by the clink and bells and whistles of the one-arm bandits edging the casino floor. She hated casinos, hated the noise, the garish colors and lights, the artificial glamour that seduced so many.
Fortunately the security didn’t touch her, push her or rush her. There was no hurry. She, like the hotel staff, knew what happened now was beyond her control. No one would stop a gambler, not even a compulsive gambler. Monte Carlo had been built on the backs of those with deep pockets and a dearth of self-restraint.
Back at the small town villa in the historic district, Sam collected a sleeping Gabby from the neighbor’s house, carried her home, put her in her bed and after a lingering glance into the little girl’s simple bedroom, shut the door.
Sam curled in a chair downstairs in the living room, a blanket pulled over her shoulders. The house was chilly but Sam couldn’t turn up the heat. There wasn’t money to pay for such extravagances. There wasn’t money for anything.
Tears started to her eyes but she pressed a hand to her face, held the tears back. Don’t cry. You can’t cry. Tears are for children.
But some tears fell anyway, escaping from behind her hand, from beneath the tightly closed eyelids.
It was all too bitter, too brutal, too lonely. She’d tried so hard to give Gabriela a better life. That’s why she’d married Johann, that’s why she put up with his abuse. Sam had done everything in her power to help things here, improve things for the child. But none of it mattered. Johann was determined to gamble and drink, no matter the cost.
Much later she finally fell asleep, still huddled in the armchair and didn’t wake until she heard Gabriela bounding down the stairs.
“Where’s Papa?” Gabby asked, nearly five years old and endlessly enthusiastic.
Gabby had already dressed in her school uniform and even in her dark gray uniform with the white piping, Gabby was beautiful. A day rarely passed without someone stopping Sam to comment on Gabriela’s stunning looks, and Gabby was stunning.
Gabby’s mother had been a model from Madrid. She’d done some small films in Spain and hoped to go to Hollywood to try her luck there, but died tragically a year after Gabby was born. The details about Gabby’s mother’s death were all a bit sketchy, but Gabby had inherited her mother’s Spanish beauty with her classic features, her dark hair, and those green-gold eyes bordered by shamefully long, jet-black lashes.
“Good girl, you’re all ready,” Sam said standing and folding the blanket. “And your papa’s out but he’ll be back later,” she added, trying to look unconcerned, trying to look as if she hadn’t spent the night crying in a threadbare overstuffed armchair worried sick about a future that looked increasingly bleak and chaotic.
“He hasn’t been home in days,” Gabby complained. “And you’re still wearing your fancy dress.”
It was Sam’s one and only fancy dress. Sam checked her smile, knowing it was brittle, and false. “I fell asleep reading,” Sam fibbed, refusing to worry Gabby. “But let’s have breakfast now and then we’ll do your hair for school.”
Sam kept Gabriela chattering until she’d walked her to school a quarter mile away, but once Gabby ran into the building, leaving Sam on the pavement, Sam felt her defenses crack and fall.
What were they going to do? How were they going to manage? No home, no money, no food, no tuition for Gabby’s school…
Sam had nothing of her own, not even a bank account. When Johann married her, he stopped paying her a salary and what little Sam had saved over her years as a nanny had been spent on Gabriela. Johann had never understood that little girls quickly outgrew their clothes and even much beloved dolls eventually wore out.
As she walked the eight large city blocks back to their villa town house, Sam struggled with the reality of their lives. In the four years she’d been with the
van Bergens, things had gone from bad to worse, and worse to nightmarish. If she had family, she’d take Gabby and go there now. But Sam had no family, had spent most of her childhood and teenage years in the orphanage in Chester.
She’d left school at seventeen, and with the help of a parish scholarship, attended Princess Christian College in Manchester, but even with the scholarship she’d had to work several jobs to pay her bills.
Money had always been very tight. Sam had never been spoiled. And yet even living frugally, and even knowing how to scrimp and save, Sam knew her situation now was far more dire than it had ever been. Sam knew she could fend for herself. But what about Gabby? How would Sam take care of Gabby if they had no home, no income, no place to go?
Climbing the four steps of the town villa, Sam entered through the front door and was just about to unbutton her coat when she heard Johann call to her.
“If you could spare a moment, Baroness. I’d like to speak to you.”
If she could spare a moment? Oh, that was rich, Sam thought, following the sound of Johann’s voice to the living room.
Late-morning light flooded the windows, patterning the wood parquet floor in great sheets of light, the usual blare of horns and noise from Monte Carlo’s busy streets failed to penetrate the walls and windows of the old villa. The room, she thought numbly, was quiet. Too quiet.
She faced him, hands bunched inside her coat pockets. “Yes?”
“Do take off your coat,” he said irritably. “You make me nervous standing there all bundled up like that.”
Silently she unbuttoned the tweed coat, tugging it off her shoulders before laying it across the couch. “What did you want to speak to me about?”
Johann clasped a drink in his hands, the glass resting on his chest. “I’ve settled my debt to Bartolo.”
The dark gloom hanging over her head immediately lifted. Sam felt almost dizzy with relief. She couldn’t hide her smile of delight. “You did? Excellent! I’m so glad—”
“He’ll be here in an hour to collect you.”
It was too rapid a mood swing, too harshly said. Sam exhaled hard, then breathed in again. “What?”
But Johann didn’t speak. Instead a deathly quiet shrouded the living room. Sam held her breath, not thinking, not understanding, certain Johann would clear the misunderstanding.
Yet he said nothing.
She heard nothing.
Only the clink of ice shifting and melting in his glass.
“Say something,” she choked, feeling as if she were suffocating in the heavy stillness.
“I did. You just didn’t like what I said.”
Little spots danced before her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. She’d heard wrong. Had to have heard wrong. “Then say it again.”
Baron van Bergen’s lashes dropped. “You heard me the first time.”
Sam couldn’t believe it had come to this. He’d been an addict ever since she’d met him but this…this…
This was unthinkable.
Impossible.
The end of reason itself.
Sam took a frightened step toward him before freezing, unable to take another. “You didn’t give me away.”
Johann’s eyes opened briefly, and he shot her a dirty look before slinking lower in his chair and keeping his cocktail tumbler pressed to his forehead, expression increasingly pained.
“I didn’t give you,” he contradicted sourly, eyes closed. “I lost you.”
“Lost me.” Her voice nearly broke, her English accent sharper, more pronounced. Sam balled her hand in a fist behind her back, nails biting into her palm. “How could you lose me?”
“Things happen.”
He was wrong about that, Sam thought, hands tingling, body cold and icy as if her blood had frozen in her veins. Things only happened to Johann van Bergen. “To you,” she said bitterly.
He opened one eye, looked at her, deep wrinkles fanning from his eyes. “Since you’re not doing anything, liebchen, could you get me another drink?”
Liebchen. Liebling. Nothing like good old German endearments he didn’t mean, had never meant. Seething, Sam dug her nails harder into her skin. “No.”
Grunting, Johann rolled the cold tumbler across his forehead. He was obviously hungover. He’d been out all night, had only recently stumbled in. “Explain this to me.”
His lashes lifted, his pale blue gaze slid over her, inspecting her. “Is that a new dress?”
Sam glanced down at her cream brocade dress with rich lavender and purple threads, the hem of the dress edged with silky purple ribbon. The dress had been part of her trousseau two years ago, part of the elegant designer wardrobe Johann had bought for her before she’d discovered he was deep in debt and couldn’t afford groceries much less fine clothes. “No. We can’t afford new clothes, remember?”
He grunted again, rolled the glass in the opposite direction over his brow. “Mein Gott, you remind me of my mother. She was a nag, too.”
Sam didn’t flinch, stooping instead to numbly pick up a gold tasseled pillow that had fallen from the threadbare sofa onto the hardwood floor and tossed it back onto the couch.
Johann could mock her all he wanted. Theirs had been a marriage of convenience. Nothing more, nothing less. She didn’t care now what he thought of her, hadn’t cared for his opinion when she’d married him. The only reason she’d agreed to the marriage in the first place was to protect his child. A child he seemed determined to neglect and reject.
“I’m not going to him,” she said now, “Or with him, or anywhere near him. You’ll have to find another way to settle your debt.”
“Oh, you’re tough now, are you? I wonder if you’d be so tough if I’d wagered my darling daughter instead of you.” He paused. “Gabriela, my beautiful little angel daughter.” He laughed low, mockingly and shook his glass, rattling the ice cubes. “I did consider it, though. More than once. But Bartolo was interested in you. Not sure why. You’ve no money, no education, no connections, no family. You’re British. Boring. And might I add, frigid.”
“It shouldn’t matter if I’m frigid since there won’t be any physical intimacy.”
“Not with me, anyway. But I can’t see him taking you and not taking you, if you get my meaning.”
She did, all too well, and it was all she could do to keep her disgust from showing.
To think that Johann would wager her…
And to think that this Bartolo would accept…
Sam had put up with Johann’s abuse for years and she told herself not to let the insults hurt, told herself his opinion didn’t matter but on the inside she was cold, so cold, as if the December chill had burrowed all the way through her. She was there to protect Gabby, nothing else mattered. “So what happens now?”
“Cristiano comes to get you. You’re his problem now and I wish him all the luck in the world.”
“Johann!”
“Must you talk so loud? I’ve a hellish headache.”
She lowered her voice marginally. “This isn’t funny.”
He slunk lower in his chair. “No, it’s not funny. I’ve lost everything. My cars. My penthouse. Now my villa. It’s all gone.”
Her throat felt raw. She couldn’t disguise her bitterness. “Why do you gamble?”
“Christ, Sam, it wasn’t like I killed someone.” He took a gulp from his glass. “It was a mistake.”
Sam stared at the man who’d been her husband for exactly four hundred and sixty-five days and her employer for two years before that. He was an alcoholic, a gambler, a womanizer and the father of the most amazing, beautiful, and once lonely little girl in the world. “What happens to Gabby?”
“I don’t know. She never came up.”
“Well, I won’t leave her here with you. If I go, I take Gabby with me.”
Johann took another great gulp, draining his glass. “I don’t think that’s up to you. It’s not up to me anymore. It’s his decision. He’s the one that owns you.”
Owns you.
Owns. Like meat. Or a piece of property. Real estate in the Côte d’Azur. Eyes burning, her throat swollen, Sam swallowed the pain. Intellectually she knew Johann had never loved her, never wanted her, had only married her to keep Gabby’s mother’s family from taking her, but still, his coldness, his indifference and cruelty cut.
“You’ll use Gabby to force me into another man’s bed?” Sam sank down onto the edge of the couch.
“Well, you were no use in mine.”
Sam felt a moment of panic, pure unadulterated panic. At twenty-eight, she knew who she was, and what she was, and Johann was right. She wasn’t a sexual woman, not even a sensual woman. Despite the wedding ring on her finger, she had no knowledge of men, of sex, or desire. And she was content to leave it that way. A woman didn’t have to be sexual. A woman didn’t need a man. She’d been alone for years but she wasn’t alone anymore. She had Gabby. She loved Gabby. “I’ll do this…go to him…settle your debt, on one condition. You let me adopt her.”
“It’s out of my hands.”
He acted as if Gabby was nothing more than a tennis ball. He’d just throw her in any direction, toss her where it suited him. “Impossible! You’re her father, her legal guardian—”
“But I told you, Sam. God, I do wish you’d listen.” Irritably Johann pressed the crystal tumbler to his temple. “Cristiano is coming for you. He wants you. You. Understand?”
She heard him, but she didn’t understand.
The idea of a man wanting her was more than she could comprehend and she stared at Johann so long it hurt her eyes, her mind, her heart.
Baron van Bergen was handsome and dissolute. Selfish. Impulsive. Immature. And the father of the most gorgeous child with the most beautiful heart. Sam had been a nanny for some of the wealthiest, famous families in the world and she’d never met a child like Gabriela van Bergen before.
“I want to see him,” she choked. “I want to see him now.”
“He’s coming later, Sam.”
“I won’t wait. I must see him now. I must speak to him now—”
“And tell me what?” The voice drawled from the doorway and even without looking Sam recognized the voice. Cristiano Bartolo. The devil had arrived.