by Julia James
‘I adore dancing,’ the hostess at his side gushed breathily.
Xavier could hear her accent—Polish, Russian, something in that region. Presumably she’d come to London in the hope of a better life than she would have at home. He felt a flicker of compunction. For so many of the former Eastern Bloc life was tough, and he couldn’t blame such women for trying to improve their economic circumstances, even if in distasteful ways such as being a casino hostess, or worse. Then his eyes hardened again. That allowance might be made for immigrants, but could it extend to someone like Lissa Stephens? She’d grown up with the advantages of a free education, free health care and, if necessary, free housing. So what need was there for her to work in a place like this—unless she chose to? And what did it say about a woman who wanted a job like this?
Time to move in on Lissa Stephens and take her measure close up.
He walked to where she was dancing in a clinch.
‘My dance,’ he said.
The man swivelled his head belligerently. Xavier dealt with him first.
‘Trade?’ he invited.
The man looked past his shoulder at the blonde Slavic beauty hovering, who clearly outshone his existing dance partner. Instantly his belligerence vanished.
‘Deal,’ he said, his voice only slightly slurred. He dropped his current partner and pasted a big smile on his face at the woman at Xavier’s side, sweeping her off into a dance. Judging by her peeved expression, the girl hadn’t wanted the trade—but Xavier couldn’t care less. He turned his attention to his target.
In the dim, flashing light she looked no different close up, except for her slight air of being taken aback.
‘Shall we?’ he said, and not waiting for an answer took her into his arms.
She stiffened like a board.
Surprise flickered in him—it was an out-of-place reaction for her to make. Instinctively, he eased back a little, drawing some distance between them.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
Something moved in her eyes, then it was gone. A smile stretched her mouth.
‘Hi—I’m Lissa,’ she said, her voice husky, ignoring his comment.
The smile widened. Or did it strain, rather, as if it were an effort? Xavier dismissed the momentary speculation. His hands rested on her waist, and through the cheap satin he could feel the curve of her body. His eyes surveyed her face.
There was no hardness in her expression now. Instead there was only blankness. Close up, her make-up was atrocious. Layered on over her skin, cracking already around her nostrils, her eyes caked in shadow and her lashes in thick mascara. And as for her mouth—
Her crimson lipstick was like jam, sticky and thick.
Revulsion shimmered through him. No woman of his acquaintance—and his acquaintance with women was extensive—would ever have done what this girl had done to her face! The women in his world, Madeline and her friends, were all chic, elegant, and their make-up was immaculate. They were from a different species than the woman he was dancing with. Disdain edged his eyes.
Then, catching himself, he concealed it. It would not serve his purpose to let it show. Deliberately making himself relax, he looked down into her face.
‘So, Lissa—do you think you’ll bring me good luck at the tables?’
He smiled encouragingly. Again, just for a moment, she seemed to stiffen in his arms. Then it was gone.
‘I’m sure you’ll be lucky,’ she said. Once more the smile seemed to stretch right across her mouth.
‘Fine by me,’ Xavier answered. ‘Let’s go.’
He dropped his hands from her, and just for a second she seemed to sway slightly. He ignored it, and started to usher her from the dance floor, effortlessly guiding her forward, across the bar area and into the gaming rooms. He could just about feel the manager’s eyes on him, greedily eyeing him up. A cynical twist pulled at his mouth. Well, he would oblige the proprietors of this third-rate establishment and lose sufficient money to be sure of a welcome return.
Should one be necessary, of course.
Although he very much doubted it would be. His eyes narrowed, focussing on the over-laquered hair bouncing on Lissa Stephens’s bared shoulders, on her derriere, swaying as she walked in front of him on her high heels. Already, his worst assumptions were being confirmed. Lissa Stephens looked to be exactly what he had feared she was—a woman he could never permit his brother to marry.
Lissa all but collapsed on a high-perched chair at the blackjack table. What on earth was going on? Her heart was slugging in her breast, and with her dress as tight as it was that was a bad idea. Her stomach was churning and she was breathless to boot. Desperately she tried to get her head together—and failed completely. All she could do was cling to the chair and try and keep going.
But it was hard—horribly hard.
Two realities had just slammed into each other, and the result was carnage. She could cope with one reality, but not both. The sordid reality of having to work in this place, looking so tarty, having to smile at complete strangers and coax them to buy extortionately priced bad champagne, was only bearable so long as she could mentally dismiss each and every punter that she had to ‘be nice’ to. She couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t, let any of them get to her—for any reason whatsoever.
But the man who was now coolly picking up his cards got to her all right—slamming into her with a reality that had a physical impact on her. Got to her in the same way as being run over by a bus got to you. Knocking every breath of air out of your lungs so that all you could do was swallow and gaze helplessly.
Except that gazing was the one thing she knew, with every last shred of effort, she must not do. Yet the urge to do so was overwhelming. His physical presence at her side was overwhelming. When he had walked up to her on the dance floor and disengaged her from her partner, with a single line in a continental accent that had curled inside her, it had been overwhelming, and when he had slid his hands around her waist and drawn her towards him she had completely frozen. Yet her heart had been thumping like a trip hammer, her whole body as tense as a board with awareness of the man.
As her fingers tightened now on the ornamental arms of the chair she felt a wave of reaction go through her. This was all wrong. Wrong and horrible, and … Well, just wrong and horrible. Because to have a man like that—who just took your breath away—paying attention to you, any attention at all, in a place like this, when you looked like a cheap trashy tart, was just excruciating. She wanted to run, bolt, hide with mortification.
With a sharp, painful inhalation of breath she forced some composure into herself. What the hell had she to be mortified about? OK, so the guy was as out of place here as a diamond on a rhinestone necklace. But he was here, wasn’t he? So that meant that, however fancy he was, he was still just a punter. So what the hell did it matter that he was the most incredible-looking male she’d ever set eyes on outside a movie?
And anyway … Another harsh truth hit her squarely in the face. She’d been so preoccupied trying to come to grips with the impact the man had on her that she was only now registering it.
Whatever the reason he’d swapped Tanya for her, it was not because he wanted to eye her up. There had been nothing in his expression to indicate that he found her attractive.
Her mouth tightened momentarily. Good God, how on earth should a man who looked like he did find a woman who looked the way she did right now attractive? Only the sleazeballs here ever made eyes at her—a man like the one beside her now wouldn’t look twice at some tarty hostess with bad make-up and worse hair.
Just for a second, a pang went through her.
If he could only see her the way she could look.
She slammed the thought shut. The girl she had once been, with the time and the joie de vivre to make the most of the looks she had been born with, to find fun in flirtation and dating, didn’t exist any more. Hadn’t done since the screech of tyres and the sickening shock of metal impacting upon metal had destroyed everythin
g she had so blithely taken for granted till then. Now life had reduced itself to the hard, cruel essentials, to the unrelenting grind to try, so desperately, to achieve the one goal to which she had now dedicated her life.
As for her looks—well, they had got her this job, and she could be glad of that at least. And she could be glad, she knew, that the cheap, tacky, tarty look she had to adopt here was actually a protection for her. Any man who leered or letched over her looking the way she did now would be the very last to appeal to her. Her hostess image was almost like armour against the sleaziness of her job.
A job she had to do, like it or not. So there was no point wishing she could just walk out of the door and never come back. Steeling her spine, she deliberately let her gaze go to the blackjack table, watching the play.
Fast as the cards moved, she could see that the man at her side was not playing the odds, and was therefore losing repeatedly. She frowned inwardly. The guy did not look like a loser. Just the opposite.
She gave a mental shrug. So what if the guy dropped money as if it was litter? What did she care? Her only job was to get him to buy as much champagne as she could and stay the distance until her shift was over, then she could finally get home. And sleep.
‘I’m sure some champagne would turn your luck,’ she ventured purringly, forcing her voice into a kind of caressing simper. Even as she spoke she felt revulsion shimmer through her. God, this was a sordid job all right. Crass and tacky and vulgar.
Well, tough—the familiar litany bit through her: she needed money and she just couldn’t be too fussy about how she got it, so she must just get on with it and do it.
She stretched her mouth in its usual fake smile, and tilted her head invitingly. From the corner of her eye she saw Jerry, one of the waiters who circulated endlessly with trays of ready-filled champagne glasses.
The man at Lissa’s side straightened slightly, and turned to look at her. For just a second she felt she was being bored right through by a laser beam, and then, just as abruptly, it was gone. Now there was only a veiled look in the dark, long-lashed eyes that she could not look into.
He gave the slightest shrug.
‘Why not?’ he responded, and, glancing past her, beckoned Jerry with a single flick of his index finger, relieving him of two foaming glasses and handing one to Lissa. Carefully she took it, ensuring she did not touch the man’s fingers. Even so she felt her stomach tighten yet again.
‘So, do you think I should try the roulette table?’
His Gallic-accented voice quivered down her spine, upsetting all the toughly held defences she needed in a place like this. Oh, hell—why, oh, why, was this happening? It was just all wrong—all out of place. A man like this, and her in a place like this, looking the way she did, acting out this distasteful farce. She took a gulp of champagne as if it would help her steel her nerves. Forcing herself, she made herself smile at him.
Don’t look at his eyes. Look at him, but don’t see him. Look through him. Pretend he’s just one of the regular punters. Pretend it’s all just normal, perfectly normal.
She could feel her jaw aching with the tension in it as she held her bright, false smile, her gaze, by supreme force of effort, not quite meeting his.
‘Oh, good idea!’ she exclaimed vacuously. ‘I’m sure you’ll win at roulette.’ She lifted her glass. ‘Here’s to Lady Luck,’ she toasted brightly, and took another gulp of champagne. She drank as little as she could while she was working, but right now she felt she needed all the help she could find to get through this excruciating ordeal.
As she lowered her glass it registered that he hadn’t actually drunk anything at all. Given the quality of the champagne, she was hardly surprised—but then why buy it? For the dozenth time she gave a deliberate mental shrug. Nothing, nothing about this man who for some bizarre and inexplicable reason was in this casino, and for some even more bizarre, even more inexplicable reason was keeping her by his side, was of the slightest concern to her. He was a punter—her sole task was to get him to spend money, and that was all.
Carefully, she slid off the high chair, trying not to wince as her tired, sore feet hit the floor.
Roulette proved just as much of an ordeal as blackjack had. Yet again she had to sit beside him, too close, and watch him reach forward, to place his chips on the squares. This time, because roulette was more random—though the odds were always, as ever, stacked in favour of the house—he did win from time to time. But he played carelessly, as if it didn’t bother him in the slightest whether he won or lost. Opposite, Lissa could see Tanya making eyes at him—to no avail.
Finally, when the last of his chips were gone, and with a slight shake of his head he’d countered the croupier’s offer of more, he turned to Lissa.
‘Tant pis.’ He gave a shrug to dismiss his losses.
She made herself smile.
‘Bad luck,’ she said. It was inane, but expected.
An eyebrow rose. ‘Do you think so? I think we make our own luck in life, n’est ce pas?’
Something shadowed in Lissa’s eyes. Did you make your own luck in life? Or was it external, arbitrary—cruel? Did luck turn in the blink of an eye, transforming happiness to tragedy in the space of a few moments?
The swerve of wheels, the speed of a car, minute seconds of inattention. And instant, devastating tragedy—destroying in moments the happiness of everyone. Destroying more than happiness … so much more.
Her eyes hardened.
Xavier saw the change in her expression—the hardness in it suddenly. It stirred an answering hardness in him. Lissa Stephens, like the Russian girl, or any of the others here, would be a woman who made her own luck—and it would be at the expense of men.
But not—his expression darkened—at the expense of his vulnerable, good-hearted brother.
His eyes flickered briefly over the girl’s face. All his forebodings were proving true—the very thought of Armand entrapped by this excuse for a woman in any way whatsoever was abhorrent. As his own revulsion at the vulgar, tarty image the girl presented impacted in his mind, so, too, did the conviction that his brother could not possibly know what this ‘woman of his dreams’ did for a living.
Well … Xavier’s eyes hardened again momentarily. This was exactly why he’d interrupted his own business schedule—why he’d despatched Armand to visit XeL’s key retailers in Dubai, with instructions to fly straight on to New York from the Emirates to do likewise there. So that he would have the opportunity to make a dispassionate, deliberate investigation into what Lissa Stephens was.
And, whilst he was grimly convinced that he now had all the evidence he needed to condemn the girl as fulfilling the worst of his fears, he would, nevertheless, move on to the next stage as he had planned. He shot back his cuff and glanced at his watch.
‘Hélas, I must go. I have an early morning meeting tomorrow. Bon soir, mademoiselle—and thank you for your company.’
He bestowed a smile on her, somewhere between perfunctory and courteous, and moved off. Lissa watched him go. Wearily, she brushed her forehead. A tight band was pressing around it. Tiredness swept over her in a wave—tiredness and depression.
What was the point of her responding to a man like that? None at all. Even if she hadn’t been working in a place like this, looking like a cheap tart, she still would have had no business registering anything about him. Her life had no room, no time, for anything other than what filled it now.
Guilt shafted through her. Oh, God, how could she dare complain about her lot when she had nothing worth complaining about? Nothing whatsoever compared with—
She shut her mind off. The incredibly disturbing Frenchman had achieved one good thing. He had mopped up the rest of her time here, and now she could go home at last.
A bare ten minutes later, back in normal clothes again, hair vigorously brushed free of backcombing and lacquer, face stripped of its caking make-up, she plunged out into the London night.
CHAPTER THREE
; IT WAS chill and raw and spattering with rain, but she didn’t care. After the smoke and cheap perfume and the smell of alcohol in the casino, the dirty London air smelt fresh and clean in comparison. She took a lungful, lifting her face into the drizzle, hands plunging deep into her padded jacket pockets. She was wearing jeans and a comfortable jumper, and flat heeled ankle boots good for walking briskly. Her long hair, in need of a wash after all the lacquer, was brushed off her face into a high ponytail that dipped down her back as she lifted her face. Like one released from prison, she strode off along the narrow alleyway the back of the casino opened onto and made for the more brightly lit street beyond, where her bus stop was.
She walked swiftly—not just because looking sure and purposeful was one of her safety precautions at this time of night in this part of London, but also because she was cutting it fine to catch the night bus she needed to take her south of the river at this early hour of the morning. If she missed the bus it would be well over half an hour until the next one.
As she headed briskly towards the bus stop, a hundred metres away on the other side of the road, the rain intensified. The few cars heading along the road threw up water as they passed, but just as she paused at the kerbside to dart across the road to the stop, impatient to cross because she could see her bus approaching, a large car came right past her, too close to the kerb. Its rear wheels caught a puddle that had formed and water sprayed up at her, soaking into her jeans. She gave a start of annoyance, jumping back instinctively. But what annoyed her even more was that the car, a sleek, black expensive-looking saloon, had promptly stopped dead. It was blocking her path across the road, and she could only, with a mutter of exasperation, dodge around the back of the car, wait for another car to swoosh past, and then hurry across the road. The bus was almost at her stop. She wasn’t going to get to the far side in time to flag it down, and unless someone happened to be using that stop—which they never did—it would just sail by.