by Ann Major
Eva's sparkly black high-heeled shoe flailed for the last rung of the ladder. The sea breeze whipped her gown, exposing too much leg to Paolo who stood ready to catch her. When the water splashed against the yachts, salt spray hit her ankle.
She gasped. If she misjudged, she could fall into the water between the yachts, and her heavy gown might drag her under.
"Careful, Liebchen!" From above her, Otto’s command was cool and autocratic.
White-faced, she clung to the teak ladder until she found the bottom rung. Then Paolo's strong arms came around her waist, and he lifted her down into the tender. Otto jumped deftly after her. She grabbed the rail, and Paolo let her go and cast off.
Soon it would be dusk. On the front edge of the huge, black storm, Portofino was jewel pink and gold—a paradise of sun and sea—all sparkle and shimmer beneath a hazy violet sky. On one hilltop, Anya's villa was brilliantly lighted. Although Eva was disturbed by what had happened in Otto's cabin and frightened of the wind and water, she told herself she'd soon be up there, safe and sound on dry land.
Even though Otto forced a reassuring smile, Eva sensed his building tension when he cupped her chin, and it was all she could do to endure his cold, possessive fingers.
His thick white hair blew about his face as his fox-sharp, blue eyes studied her with an unnerving intensity. Although he was plump and tanned and an inch shorter than she, his shortness of stature did not diminish the aura of power he exuded. He had a temper and was so used to commanding, few dared to cross him.
She remembered how his eyes had blazed and the vein on his forehead had throbbed when she'd told him that she’d changed her mind about announcing their engagement tonight.
His public image was everything to Otto. The newspapers said he was the most eligible bachelor in Europe. Architectural magazines ran stories on his castles. Art magazines published articles about his priceless art collection. Her parents had been thrilled last night when she'd told them she was considering accepting his offer of marriage. No doubt they would be disappointed in her when they learned that she’d postponed the announcement.
Frowning, Otto lifted Eva's left hand and examined the diamond he'd given her. He had agreed not to make the announcement—if reluctantly.
"You're angry?" she murmured.
His face was dark and sullen, but his voice was soft. "You are a prize I covet."
"I'm just not sure," she whispered. "Please..."
When the powerful engine of the cigarette boat roared, she tried to pull her hand from his, but his grip was too strong.
"You're still pale," Otto murmured, his penetrating blue eyes searching her face as his men threw off the lines. "Are you all right?"
"Nerves. I told you I'm afraid of boats."
His expression hardened. “As long as that’s all that’s wrong…”
Afraid that he saw too much, she turned away, her gaze fixing on a sleek black yacht moored nearby that hadn't been there earlier.
"The engagement," she began, "the party, deciding to come here at the last moment. Everything seems too hurried."
"You screamed in your room. Why?"
She could not say, I saw him. I heard him.
"An anxiety attack. I'm not used to parties like this, mingling with royalty. Boats…"
She was looking at the black sloop. There was something mysterious about her. Eva read the bold curls of gold script on her stern. Rogue Wave. The yacht's lines were so graceful she made Otto's many-decked, floating giantess with her air conditioners and stabilizers and helipad seem ostentatious and too top heavy.
"Did your scream have anything to do with your wanting to postpone the announcement?"
"I didn’t scream," she said, not meeting his eyes.
"Nicholas Jones never showed up." There was a grim note in Otto's voice.
"Oh?"
"I’m afraid you will have to be content with me instead." His voice held a bitter edge.
There were no lights below on Rogue Wave, but Eva sensed a stealthy movement at a darkened window just above the waterline. Was someone watching them from the dark?
Shakily Eva twisted the slender gold-and-onyx ring on her right hand. Someone had come into her room and had returned the ring that she had given Raoul. She had fainted. Then she’d opened her eyes and had imagined him beside her.
What was going on? Who was Nicholas Jones? Had he left the ring? Had he really known Raoul? But Otto had told her Nicholas Jones hadn't come. Had she imagined Raoul in her stateroom?
She had the ring. That much was real. Until she got to the bottom of the mystery of the black box and its contents in her room, she couldn’t consider marrying Otto. But she had to tread carefully. Connoisseurs was too dependent on Otto and his friends. Otto was egotistical and easily wounded. She couldn’t afford to humiliate or hurt him.
Otto brought her hand to his cool lips. Then he seized the controls of the boat. Leaning back, he was soon steering with a single finger as the boat jetted recklessly across white caps in the harbor.
Eva gripped the railings as they raced past moored yachts, showering them with a rooster tail of white spray while sending a dangerous wake in all directions. The powerful rush of damp sea wind tore her hair loose from its pins and whipped it against her cheeks. By the time they roared up to Anya's private dock, one glance in chrome trim told her she looked as if she'd stuck her finger in an electric light socket.
Thrilled, Otto turned toward her. "Well, Liebchen, what do you think of her?"
She was too shaken from the wild ride across dark water to give a polite answer. "Look what it did to my hair!"
He plucked a pin out of the red frizz and handed it to her. "I love it. You look wild—half-tamed."
Half a dozen of Otto's liveried men helped her onto the dock that led to the platform for the funicular that would carry them up a sheer cliff to Anya's villa.
Otto took her hand. "Perhaps I’m so anxious to announce our engagement because you are the first woman who has ever denied me her bed this long."
"We aren’t married," she said.
"That’s so rarely an obstacle." There was a predatory gleam in his eyes. "Besides, everyone believes we are lovers."
When a plump fingertip touched the diamond necklace that was cold against her throat, lifting a single, blood-red ruby,” she grew still.
"When a man marries at fifty-eight..."
She licked her suddenly parched lips. "For the fourth time..."
"He knows exactly what he wants."
"You sound like you're buying a Renoir," she said.
"You are worth far more than a Renoir." He smiled but his cold voice sent a chill through her.
What was the matter with her? Why couldn't she just do the sensible thing and marry this man her family approved of?
Taking her hand, he led her toward the funicular. Then he stepped into the cramped metal cage that shook in the high wind. Grasping a rusty bar, Eva glanced upward at the thin cable snaking up the steep tumble of jagged rocks.
"There are no roads to the villas," Otto explained. "Mule trains still carry most heavy items up to the homes. I was very lucky to convince the local committee to allow me to build this funicular."
The cliff looked almost vertical in places. Usually she wasn't afraid of heights, but the strong wind had the metal cage vibrating.
Paolo shut the gate on them, sending them up alone.
"No." Otto commanded. "I want you to stay with Eva—everywhere, every moment—when I can’t be at her side tonight."
A look passed between the two men, some silent order, given and received as Paolo pushed open the gate and squeezed his great body in with them. Otto punched a red button, and the funicular shot jerkily upward on a series of grumbling metallic groans.
The ascent was steep and terrifying, so steep that Eva didn't dare look down as the cage shook violently. By the time they reached the villa, the sky was almost totally black except for a few diamond-bright stars and flashes of lightning.
Otto left her with Paolo, and Eva found a bathroom and repinned her hair. Exiting the bathroom, she wandered among Anya's guests out onto the palm-shaded terraces that clung to the high cliffs. White lights had been hung in the trees, and the swimming pool that had been chiseled into the vertical rock face was a dazzling aquamarine color. Flowers blazed against darker leaves in potted plants and beds.
There were dozens of beautiful women in designer gowns and jewels. The finest French champagne flowed as freely as the sparkling waves lapping against Otto’s cigarette boat far below. Behind tall windscreens made of glass, the soft breezes smelled of salt air and summer blossoms—geranium, gardenia and oleander. Despite the impending storm, the moonlit evening in this protected garden was idyllic. Even so, Eva felt on guard.
There was a ring on her finger she couldn't explain. The man she had given it to was dead. She couldn’t stop asking herself who had returned it and why? The mere memory of his voice and the shadowy glimpse she’d had of him in the stateroom sent tremors through her every time she thought about the experience.
Concentrate on the party.
Portofino was a Mecca for tourists because it held onto its old world charm. Ever since she'd arrived, she had felt as if she'd lifted the curtain of time and walked back into the past.
Near the pool behind her, a pair of lovers ignored the flashes of lightning and strengthening breezes and embraced.
"Nothing ever changes here except the shift of the sun in the sky."
Eva recognized the voice of Il Padrino, the man Otto had pointed out as the local godfather. He was speaking to a dark-eyed starlet. "We read, we relax, we talk, we make love…" The silly girl giggled as she pushed her body against his.
Eva drifted away, but his words lingered in her mind, arousing that aching, unwanted emptiness that usually haunted her only in dreams. Tonight Raoul seemed eerily near and too vividly real.
She went into the house and admired Anya's magnificent antiques as well as the paintings on the walls. She was fascinated by two masterpieces in particular. The first was of the phoenix, that great mythical bird fabled to live five hundred years before plunging itself into a wall of flame that would be its funeral pyre. The second painting was of the same subject, but in it the phoenix was rising from its ashes. When she glanced around the room, she saw Paolo nearby, watching her.
Bodyguards—their necessity seemed sinister somehow. She shivered. The rich were as trapped by their wealth as were the poor by their poverty.
She moved toward Otto, who was mingling with his guests. As always he spent his time promoting his businesses.
Once he’d told her, "Like you, Liebchen, I'm a shopkeeper at heart."
"You keep a big shop."
Conceited about his wealth, he’d laughed.
Not that Otto differed from other members of the glitterati from dozens of countries, who were here tonight. All were vying for attention, competing to see and be seen. Sensing there was a vicious social hierarchy even among these kings and queens of society, she was glad she could ignore their games. But such freedom would not be hers much longer—not if she married Otto. She would have to be his hostess, his queen.
As Eva moved through the throng on Otto's arm, she was aware that she and his necklace of diamonds and blood-red rubies were on display as much as his fabulous paintings were. Otto wanted everybody to believe that she was his lover.
For so many years she had worked hard for this moment, to be the envy of everyone, to have a man in her life her family respected.
If she married Otto, she would have approval, success, children. But what of love and happiness? Never had she felt more utterly alone.
Otto's guests expressed their interest in Connoisseurs. She found herself trying to act like Otto—using this social occasion to promote her business, but what she secretly wanted was to feel cherished by her future husband. She told herself that Otto was older, that he'd known too much hardness in his life to ever wear his heart on his sleeve.
Suddenly she and Otto were standing beside a gold-and-marble table piled with gifts. He was telling stories of his childhood, how he'd grown up in Paris, a refugee from East Germany.
"I learned early that life was precarious, my friends. You must seize what you want—whether it is an empire, a moment or a woman." The thin aristocratic lips parted in one of his sly smiles as he lifted Eva's left hand so that everyone could admire his diamond on her finger.
There were gasps. Then applause.
He had not actually announced their marriage. And yet he had.
Trembling, she fought to smile and ignore his betrayal, but the edges of her mouth would not cooperate. And her face felt like it was cracking. The ornate room with its velvet sofas, tall mirrors and fine oil paintings began to spin in a sickening whirl.
Otto's cold lips grazed her cheek possessively. "You are pale, Liebchen," he whispered, pretending concern.
Pale with suppressed rage. She could see the looks of envy on many of the women's faces. Again she tried to smile, and again felt only that curious tightness.
Otto reached for the nearest gift, the largest one of all. It was wrapped in black paper and tied with golden streamers.
Black and gold.
The same paper and ribbon as the gift she'd found in her stateroom.
She glanced down at the ring on her right hand. In an instant her fury toward Otto was forgotten. All the remaining color drained from her face. Her knees felt like rubber. Uncertainly she turned to Otto, touched his arm and held on to him for support. He smiled down at her, pleased.
Otto ripped into the paper and pulled out a tiny vellum envelope and handed it to her. Otto's nine aristocratic names were mocking swirls of bold black ink.
Eva felt the blood rush back into her face.
On the card inside was a single word. Revenge. It was signed Nicholas Jones.
Otto glanced at the message. Then his fierce gaze flashed around the room. He spoke to her hurriedly, but she didn't hear him. The roar in her ears was too deafening.
Nicholas Jones—he was here! Had he come into her room earlier and pretended he was Raoul? Why?
The crowd grew quiet as everyone waited for Otto to open the gift.
She looked up at him desperately. "I thought you said he wasn't coming," she whispered.
She was shocked by the change in Otto. He seemed smaller somehow, as if all ego and arrogance had drained out of him. His face was chalky.
His thin lips were clamped together when he spotted a broad-shouldered man across the room. The man, who was tall and dark and dressed in black, stood in the shadows beneath the golden phoenixes.
Even though his back was to her, something about him was so achingly familiar she froze. His tuxedo fit him like a glove, emphasizing his broad muscular shoulders yet not exaggerating them. He was talking to Anya. He made a gesture with his hand that was peculiarly French—Cajun French— and yet peculiarly his alone.
A shock of recognition jolted her.
Suddenly a French door was blown open, and a powerful, salt-scented gust swept through the room.
As servants ran to shut the door, the man turned slowly. There was an iridescent ribbon of golden light in his ebony hair as he bent his head and lifted his drink. That gesture, too, was peculiarly his.
Behind him the golden feathers of the phoenix burned like fire.
Raoul? Nicholas Jones?
Mon Dieu.
The treacherous, lying devil who'd murdered a hundred men in cold blood for money was very much alive and prospering. And he’d broken into her stateroom.
Some part of her had always known he'd survived.
And yet this man with the black hair and the deep dark eyes and the devastatingly beautiful masculine face wasn't her Raoul. He was of some newer, crueler vintage. Fresh lines carved the sides of his mouth and added a new harshness as well as a terrible coldness to his features.
This ruthless man had come into her stateroom and left a gift, his
intention—to shred her heart. He was a stranger, either reborn or disguised as the man she’d once loved, a stranger who mesmerized her with his fierce, feral, animal magnetism. If she’d loved Raoul, this man aroused far darker emotions.
She had never quite believed Otto. She had always thought that if only Raoul had come home, they could have proved him innocent of Otto's accusations.
This man appeared capable of anything.
She wanted to run, but she couldn't move a muscle.
Otto’s hands were shaking as he opened a case of the finest imported French champagne. He lifted a bottle and held it up for the crowd to admire. He tried to smile, but his face was a mask.
Everybody clapped and smiled. Everybody except Otto and Eva and the dark uninvited guest across the room.
Then the man’s cynical gaze met hers with mocking fire, and an incredible shock slammed through her again. His tanned face hardened, his black eyes narrowed with a fresh blaze of anger and contempt. He lifted his champagne glass toward Otto and her in a faux salute before he turned back to Anya.
His face purpling, Otto jammed the bottle into its cardboard cradle and thrust the magnificent gift aside. Instantly he called Paolo to his side and spoke to him in low, rapid whispers. Seconds later Paolo moved through the crowd toward Anya, but when he reached her, Raoul had vanished.
Somehow Eva and Otto got through the next hour. Otto opened his gifts while she read the cards for him in a voice that shook almost as much as his hands did. From time to time her gaze flickered about the room, searching for but not finding Raoul. Instead she found more of Otto’s men prowling everywhere. After all the presents had been opened, guests began to come up to Otto and congratulate him.
When Otto was surrounded, Eva slipped out of the house and raced down the stone steps and footpaths, past the huge rock walls embroidered with geraniums and cascading bougainvillea, past the aquamarine pool, and lost herself in the hanging gardens that clung to the cliffs in tiers of imported palms, eucalyptus, mimosas, flowing fountains, and pines. When she reached the far corner of the garden, she came to a high glass wall that served as a windscreen and a boundary wall as well. A narrow lap pool reflected the dark shapes of the trees and the starry sky. Anya's brilliantly lighted terracotta mansion was almost invisible, so steep were the cliffs and so dense the pines, but Eva could hear the music drifting down from the house.