Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 20

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 childlike 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 col-our 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.

‘Give it back to me, please,’ she commanded.

But he just offered her a lazy smile. ‘With that prim tone you could be my headmistress,’ he mocked.

‘How would you know?’ she hit back. ‘The way I remember you telling it, you rarely bothered to attend school.’

His soft laugh was appreciative, but his tone held something else entirely when he added, ‘Oh, I’ve known a few stiff-backed, cold-eyed females in my time.’

Which instantly reminded her of all the state institutes he had lived in during his childhood. And her inner eye was suddenly seeing a dark-haired, dark-eyed, lonely little Spanish boy who, even at the tender age of nine, had known exactly what it was like to rely only on himself for survival.

How many confidences had they exchanged during that long hot summer seven years ago? she wondered as a disturbing little ache took up residence in her stomach.

And how much of what he’d told her had been the truth? she then added cynically. And how much merely words calculated to earn her soft-hearted sympathy—while he quietly and calculatedly fleeced her father across a green baize table?

‘What’s the grimace for?’

Huskily intimate, disturbingly close. She blinked, glanced up, found he had shifted his stance slightly and now had a shoulder leaning against the crack between the two doors. It was such an obvious blocking tactic that Caroline was instantly on her guard.

‘My bag please, Luiz,’ she insisted, ignoring his question to hold out the hand from which her shoes now dangled from her own slender fingers.

He in turn ignored both the command and the outstretched hand. ‘Did you know that your eyes go grey when you’re angry?’ he murmured.

Messages began to sting through her blood. Sexual messages. ‘My bag,’ she repeated.

He sent her a spine-tingling smile. ‘And your mouth goes all prim and—’

‘Stop it,’ she snapped. ‘This is childish!’

‘Exciting…’ he argued.

She heaved out a breath that was supposed to relay irritation but only managed to sound fraught. And her outstretched fingers began to tremble, so she closed them into a fist and returned them to what they had been doing, which was keeping her towel in place.

‘I’m beginning to catch cold standing around here like this!’

And sure enough she started to shiver, though whether from cold or from something else entirely she refused to let herself consider. But, whatever the reason, it diverted Luiz away from his lazy teasing. And, with a swiftness that completely threw her, he straightened from the door to whip off his jacket then settle it around her wet shoulders.

The oddly gallant gesture sent her defences crumbling. Tears flooded into her eyes. ‘Don’t play him, Luiz,’ she pleaded huskily.

‘Here,’ he prompted, taking her dress and shoes from her fingers. ‘Feed your arms into the sleeves then get rid of that wet towel…’

It was a refusal to listen in anyone’s books. Despair wriggled through her while she obeyed him without thinking and pushed her arms into the sleeves of his jacket. The silk lining was warm against her cool damp skin, the scent of him suddenly swirling all around her.

‘I thought you were going to help me,’ she choked. ‘But all you’ve done is make matters worse!’

‘Madness only responds to the prospect of more madness,’ he answered quietly. ‘The only way to stop him tonight was by giving him a good reason to stop. So we play in an hour, away from the hotel, because I am not—’

His words were cut off mid-flow when Caroline reached up to press both hands to his shirt-front in pained appeal. ‘Please don’t do it! How can you want to do this to me all over again?’

But Luiz wasn’t listening. Instead he was staring down at the place where her hands lay spread across the fine white linen covering his breastbone. His own hands came up to cover hers, and suddenly she was made acutely aware of hot flesh, of the prickly evidence of very male body hair, of the hard pack of muscle and the solid thump of a living heart beating steadily beneath it all.

A heart she knew could rage out of control when he was in the throes of passion. A silk-fleshed body she could remember moving against her own. And that thick crisp mat of chest hair sweeping down like an arrow, aimed directly at his—

Her mouth ran dry. The sex was back. That burning, pulsing, nagging ache that was tugging her senses into life. His hands moved, leaving her hands so he could slide his fingers beneath his jacket, and the towel suddenly slid to the floor. Skin touched skin. Caroline arched on a gasping response.

‘No,’ she groaned when she dared to let her eyes make contact with the burn now taking place at the back of his.

Luiz didn’t answer. It was too late anyway, because he’d closed the gap and was kissing her—kissing her like a lover—fiercely, deeply, and so very intimately that she was utterly shattered by how beautiful it was.

I’ve missed him, she thought, and felt the tears return. I’ve missed the power with which we affect each other, the passion we can generate with just a simple touch. Her fingers moved, drifting up his shirt and to his face, where they traced each contour with the fever of a blind woman Braille-reading her most treasured possession.

He responded with a sigh that shivered through both of them, and he brought her into even closer contact with him, close enough for her senses to fly when she felt the throbbing evidence of his pleasure.

And she knew it was crazy, but in these few brief sensual moments, she knew that Luiz belonged to her. She owned him. She possessed him. If she said, Die for me, Luiz, he would die.

But, more than that, as incredible as that might seem, she would also die for him.

‘Luiz…’ she breathed into his mouth.

The soft breathy sound had the most powerful effect on him. On a low growl, he literally submerged her in a hot and hungry flood of heat that completely consumed her will to fight.

If she’d ever had any, she derided herself. Luiz was her weakness, just as gambling was her father’s. Once you acquired an addiction it remained with you for life. Starve it for years and it would still erupt at the first tiny, tempting sip. And she was certainly sipping at her addiction, she admitted as she fell into the kiss with all the urgency of starvation, tasting him, touching him, needing him, wanting more!

His hands caressed her and she let them, his mouth devoured hers and she allowed it to. She could taste mint on his breath and on the moistness of his tongue, and feel the deep throb of his heart beneath her restless fingers.

Something gave between them. She hardly understood what it was until her breasts were swinging free and Luiz’s hands were taking possession. After that the whole thing became a banquet at its most ravenous. He deserted her mouth to go in search of other delights, and she tossed back her head and simply preened with pleasure while he licked and sucked and teased her breasts.

It felt perfectly natural to lift up one long silken leg and hook it around his lean waist for balance as she arched to offer him easier access. But the action brought her into even more intimate contact with the hard masculine core of him. And after that she became lost in a burning bright kaleidoscope filled with touch and feel and sound and scents that were so entrenched in her psyche because this man had been her first lover. The one who’d taught her to feel like this, to respond like this, to need like this!

Her only lover—though she hoped to goodness that Luiz couldn’t tell that was the case. Couldn’t tell that she was responding this wildly and this helplessly because he was the only man ever to make her feel like this.

And while it happened it didn’t seem to matter that he was also the man who’d completely shattered her once, betrayed her so badly that she had never been able to recover. Her father didn’t matter. The game didn’t matter. The knowledge that Luiz could only hurt her again didn’t matter.

In fact she was so lost in what he was doing to her that when the knock sounded on the pool room door she could barely comprehend what the sound meant. Until Luiz straightened abruptly, thrust her leg away, then clamped her weak and trembling frame to his own pulsing body before reaching out to open the door a crack.

At which point the shock waves of what they had been so close to actually doing, began ricocheting horribly through her system. Seven years with no contact, she was thinking dizzily, and they’d fallen on each other like a pair of hungry animals at the first opportunity they had been handed.

It was all so utterly, shamefully vulgar that she buried her burning face in Luiz’s throat and hoped to God that the person knocking on the door was not her father.

A man’s voice she had never heard before, but which had the same American drawl as Luiz, said, ‘It’s all arranged. You have half an hour.’

‘Okay,’ Luiz acknowledged gruffly, quickly shut the door again, then with a firmness that utterly shook her, he put her from him.

It took her a few moments to realise what was happening, but one glance at his coldly closed face and she knew that the passionately out-of-control man she had been kissing had suddenly turned back into her enemy.

‘What’s arranged?’ she asked tautly.

‘What do you think?’ he replied.

He meant his game with her father, she realised. Even after what had just erupted between them he was still going to play him.

‘Here…’ Bending down, he picked up her dress where it had fallen to the floor at some unknown point. ‘Put this on; you’re dry enough. We have things to do and you can’t leave here looking like this.’

Looking like this…Through glazed eyes Caroline stared down at herself, saw the pulsing tightness of her distended nipples, her flushed skin, her long white thighs still trembling from the way he had made her feel. Even Luiz’s jacket was no longer where she’d thought it was.

He was shrugging it back onto his own broad shoulders with what was a callous disregard for her raw sensibilities as she stood there almost naked in front of him, feeling completely humiliated and cheap.

Instead of burning up with undiluted passion she was now icy cold with dismay. The nausea arrived, attacking her throat and forcing her to swallow thickly a couple of times before she dared let herself speak.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered.

‘Not as much as you would like to, I think,’ was his reply.

She was completely demolished by it, because it was such a dreadful truth. Slipping back into her dress took the concentrated effort of just about every brain cell that hadn’t been atomised. As she shimmied the black creˆpe up her body, she noticed her bra lying on the tiled floor and wanted to crawl away in shame.

Luiz bent to scoop it up, stuffing the flimsy piece of silk into one of his pockets before turning her around to do up her zip. She moved like a rag doll, unable to think, unable to speak, and just stood there while he bent to feed her feet into her strappy black shoes.

He straightened again, then waited while her shaky fingers attempted to smooth some of the creases out of her dress. And the tension sizzling between them was dreadful. Not once did either attempt full eye contact. Not once did either of them attempt to speak again after that last telling comment of his.

When she eventually went still, in an indication that she had made the best of herself she could under the circumstances, Luiz opened the door, then stood back in a grim gesture for her to precede him back into the basement foyer.

The stranger she had encountered in the lift was standing talking to one of the dinner-suited bouncers. He glanced up as they appeared and was suddenly riveted. Caroline didn’t even notice him; she was too busy being repulsed by the feel of Luiz’s hand resting on her back as he escorted her to the stairwell.

She didn’t want him to touch her now. She didn’t want Luiz anywhere near her. Her chin was up, her head held high and her body erect—but her eyes were blind and inside she felt as if she were dying.

The moment they reached the upper main foyer, she stepped right away from him.

‘Where are you going?’

Already two blissful steps away, Caroline paused but didn’t turn. ‘If you want to ruin my father a second time then go ahead,’ she invited coldly. ‘I certainly can’t stop you—but I don’t have to watch you.’

After that, she began walking again.

‘But we haven’t finished.’ His hand came out to capture one of hers. And without another word he began trailing her across the foyer towards a door marked ‘Private’ that seemed to open magically as they approached it.

Frowning, because she just didn’t understand what was happening here, she found herself inside yet another foyer that had her high heels tapping on black and cream marble. Luiz led her across to another door, which he opened by hand this time, gestured her to precede himself inside, then quietly closed the door behind them.

It was an office, Caroline saw. A very elegant black and cream office.

‘What is this place?’ she asked warily.

Stepping past her, Luiz walked across the room towards the desk, then placed himself behind it. ‘My office,’ he answered, bending down to unlock and open a drawer.

‘You mean…’ Her eyes flickered around the room. ‘You mean, you actually work here?’

‘Work here. Live here…’ He placed a heavy leather-bound dossier on the desk in front of him. ‘This is my hotel, Caroline,’ he added levelly.