LITMIR.BIZ

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was stingingly aware that he was still studying her, but pretended not to notice. It wasn’t a new experience for her to be looked at like this. She had the kind of natural blonde, curvaceously slender, long-legged figure that incited men to stare. And the stranger was good-looking; she had noticed that about him before she’d lowered her gaze.

      But she was in no mood to be chatted up in a lift—if she was ever in the mood anywhere, she then added, bleakly aware that it had been a long time since she had let any man get close to her.

      Not since Luiz, in fact, right here in Marbella.

      Then. No. Abruptly she severed that memory before it had a chance to get a grip. She wasn’t going to think of Luiz. It was a promise she had made to herself before she came here. Luiz belonged in the distant past, along with every other bitter memory Marbella had the power to throw up at her. And this tall dark stranger looked too much like Luiz to stand the remotest chance with her.

      So she was relieved when the lift stopped and she could escape his intense regard without him attempting to make conversation. Within seconds she had completely forgotten him, her mind back on the problem of finding her father as she paused at the head of a shallow set of steps which led down to the main foyer and began searching the busy area in front of her.

      This was one of the more impressive hotels that stood in prime position on Marbella’s Puerto Banus. Years ago, the hotel had possessed a well-earned reputation for old-fashioned grandeur which had made it appeal to a certain kind of guest—a select kind that had once included both herself and her father.

      But the hotel had only just been re-opened, after a huge refurbishment undertaken by its new owners, and although it still held pride of place as one of the most exclusive hotels in the resort, it now displayed its five-star deluxe ranking with more subtle elegance.

      And the people were different, less rigidly correct and aware of their own status, though she didn’t doubt for a moment that if they were staying here then they must be able to afford the frankly extortionate rates.

      It was a thought that brought home to her just how much she had changed in seven years. For seven years ago she too would not have so much as questioned the price of a two-bedroom suite in any hotel. She had been reared to expect the best, and if the best came with a big price-tag attached to it then that was life as she had known it.

      These days she didn’t just question price-tags, she calculated how long she would have to work to make that kind of money.

      In fact money was now an obsession with Caroline. Or at least the lack of it was, along with a constant need to keep on feeding that greedy monster her family home had become.

      A frown touched her brow as she continued to search for the familiar sight of her father’s very distinctive tall and slender figure among the clutches of people gathered in the foyer. For two hundred years there had been Newburys in residence at Highbrook Manor. But the chances of there being Newburys there for very much longer depended almost entirely on what her father was doing at this precise moment.

      And he certainly wasn’t in evidence here, she acknowledged as, with a grace that belied her inner tension, she set herself moving down the steps and across the foyer to see if he had left a message for her at the reception desk.

      He hadn’t. Next she went off to check out the lounge bars in the faint hope that he might have met someone he’d used to know, got to talking and lost track of the time. Again she drew a blank, and her heart began to take on a slower, thicker beat because she knew that there was now only one place left for her to look for him.

      Grimly she set her feet moving over to a flight of steps set in their own discreet alcove that led the way down to the hotel basement. Walking down those steps took a kind of courage no one would understand unless they had known her seven years ago. By the time she reached the bottom she was even trembling slightly. For very little had changed down here except maybe the decoration, she noticed with a sickly feeling of déjà vu. The basement area still possessed its own very stylish foyer, still had a sign pointing to the left directing the guests to the hotel’s fully equipped gymnasium, beauty therapy rooms and indoor swimming pool.

      Still had a pair of doors to her right, which were as firmly closed as they always had been, as if to keep carefully hidden from innocent eyes what went on behind them.

      But the sign hanging above the doors was not innocent. ‘Casino’ it announced in discreet gold lettering.

      Her father’s favourite playground of old, she thought with a small shiver. A place where compulsive excitement went hand in hand with desperation and the flip of a card or the roll of a dice or the spin of a wheel had the potential to make or break you.

      If he had given in to himself and gone in search of excitement, then she was sure she was going to find him on the other side of those wretched doors, she predicted as she took a reluctant step forward.

      ‘You will be disappointed,’ a smoothly accented voice drawled lazily.

      Spinning round in surprise, Caroline found herself looking at the stranger who had shared the lift with her. Tall, dark, undeniably good-looking—her stomach muscles flipped on yet another sense of déjà vu. For he really did look uncannily like Luiz. The same age, the same build, the same rich Spanish colouring.

      ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, thinking that even her first meeting with Luiz had been right here in this basement foyer, with her hovering uncertainly like this and him smiling at her like that…

      ‘The casino,’ he prompted with a nod of his dark head in the direction of the closed doors. ‘It does not open until ten o’clock. You are too early…’

      Pure instinct made her check the time on her watch, to discover that it was only nine-fifteen. Sheer relief had her winging a warm smile at the stranger—because if the casino wasn’t even open, then her father could not be ensconced in there, wrecking what small chance they had of saving their home!

      And now she felt guilty. Guilty for mistrusting him, guilty for being angry, guilty for thinking the worst of him when of course he wouldn’t do that to her!

      ‘Perhaps I could persuade you to share a glass of wine with me in the lounge bar, while we wait for the casino to open?’ the stranger invited.

      Caroline flushed, realising that he had misinterpreted her sudden smile, and the pick-up she had carefully avoided in the lift was back on track with a vengeance. The kind of vengeance that made him flash her a megawatt smile.

      By contrast she completely froze him. ‘Thank you, but I am here with someone,’ she informed him stiffly, and pointedly turned back to the stairs.

      ‘Your father, Sir Edward Newbury, perhaps?’ he suggested lightly, successfully bringing her departure to a halt.

      ‘You know my father?’ she questioned warily.

      ‘We have met,’ he smiled. But it was the way that he smiled that chilled Caroline’s blood. As if he knew something she didn’t and was deriding that knowledge.

      Or deriding her father.

      ‘I have just seen him,’ he added. ‘He crossed the foyer towards the lifts only a few short minutes ago. He seemed—in a hurry…’ That lazily mocking smile appeared again, making her feel distinctly uneasy.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘For letting me know.’ And she turned away from him once again.

      The feel of his fingers closing around her wrist came as a shock. ‘Don’t rush away,’ he murmured. ‘I would really like to get to know you better…’

      His voice was quite pleasantly pitched—but his grip was an intrusion and alarm bells were beginning to sound in her head, because she had a horrible feeling that if she tried to break free his fingers would tighten—painfully.

      She didn’t like this man, she decided. She didn’t like his smooth good-looks or his easy confidence or the lazy charm he was utilising—while using physical means to detain her.

      She

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