Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid

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a guilty glance over his shoulder, Sir Edward Newbury turned petulant, and, with a tersely uttered sentence, shrugged off his daughter’s hand so he could place another stack of chips on the table. All Caroline could do was stand and watch as five thousand pounds sterling hovered in the balance between a ball landing on black or on red.

      Black. Sir Edward lost again.

      Again Caroline attempted to stop him. Again her pleas were petulantly thrust aside. Only this time Luiz found his hands clenching into tight fists at his sides when he caught the briefest glint of telling moisture touching lovely eyes. It was sheer hopelessness that sent them on a hunting scan of the crowded casino, as if searching for help where none would ever be found.

      Then, without any warning, she suddenly glanced up at the control room, those incredible eyes homing directly in on him with such unerring accuracy that he caught his breath.

      So did Vito. ‘Jeez,’ he breathed.

      Luiz did not so much as move a single muscle. He knew she couldn’t see him; he knew the glass did not allow her to. Yet…

      His skin began to prickle, a fine tremor of response rippling through his whole body on a moment’s complete loss of himself as he stared straight into those beautiful, bright tear-washed eyes. His throat had locked; his heart was straining against a sudden fierce tightening across his breastplate. Then her soft mouth gave a tremulous quiver in a wretched display of absolute despair—and his whole body was suddenly bathed in a fine layer of static electricity.

      That mouth. That small, lush, sensual mouth—‘He won,’ Vito murmured quietly beside him.

      From the corner of his eye Luiz caught Sir Edward Newbury’s response as he punched the air with a triumphant fist. But his attention remained fixed on Caroline, who was just standing there watching, with a dullness that said winning was as bad as losing to her.

      Abruptly he turned away. ‘I’m going down,’ he told Vito. ‘Make sure everything is ready for when we leave here.’

      And neither his voice nor his body language gave away any hint of the burst of blistering emotion he had just been put through before he strode away.

      ‘Yes!’ On a soft burst of exultation, Sir Edward Newbury turned and scooped his daughter into his arms. ‘Two wins on the trot! We’ve hit a winning streak, my darling! A couple more like this and we’ll be flying high!’

      But he was already high. The wild glint burning in his eyes was frightening. ‘Please, Daddy,’ Caroline pleaded. ‘Stop now while you’re ahead. This is—’

      Madness, she had been going to say, but he brusquely cut her off. ‘Don’t be a killjoy, Caro. This is our lucky night, can’t you see that?’ Letting her go, he twisted back to the table as the croupier was about to slide his winnings over to him. ‘Let them ride,’ he instructed, and Caroline had to look on helplessly as every penny he had won was instantly waged on one feckless spin of a roulette wheel.

      A crowd had started to gather around the table, their excited murmurs dying to a hush as the wheel began to spin. Caroline stopped breathing, her tongue cleaving to the roof of her paper-dry mouth as she watched that small ivory ball perform its tantalising dance with fate.

      Inside she was angry—furious, even. But she had been reared never to make scenes in public. And the fact that he knew it was a weapon her father was more than happy to use against her. It was the nature of his weakness to rely on her good behaviour while he behaved appallingly.

      So much for sincere promises, she derided as she watched through glazed eyes as the wheel began to slow. So much for weeks and months and years of careful vigilance, when she’d learned that trusting anything he said was a way to look disaster in the face.

      She was tired of it, wearied with fighting the fight at the expense of everything else in her life. And she had a horrible feeling that this time she was not going to be able to forgive him for doing this to her yet again.

      But for now all she could do was look on, feeling helpless, locked inside her own worst nightmare in the one place in this world her nightmares could be guaranteed free reign. This place, this hotel—this wretched casino. All she needed now was for Luiz Vazquez to materialise in front of her and the nightmare would be complete.

      Like lightning striking twice. She shuddered.

      Someone came to stand directly behind her, she felt their warm breath caressing her nape, though she only registered it vaguely. Her attention was fixed on that tormenting little ball and the rhythmic clacking noise it made as it jumped from compartment to compartment in a playful mix of ivory, red and black.

      And the tension, the pulsing sense of building expectancy that was the real draw, the actual smell of madness, permeated all around her like a poisonous drug no one could resist.

      ‘Yes!’ Her father’s victorious hiss hit her eardrums like the jarring clash of a hundred cymbals as he doubled his reckless stake—just like that.

      The gathered crowd began enjoying his good fortune with him, but Caroline wilted like a dying flower. Her heart was floundering somewhere down deep inside her. She felt sick, she felt dizzy—must have actually swayed a little, because an arm snaked around her waist to support her. And it was a mark as to just how weak she was feeling that she let that arm gently ease her back against the hard-packed body standing behind her.

      This was it, she was thinking dully. There would be no stopping him now. He wouldn’t be happy until he had lost everything he had already won—and more. She didn’t so much as consider him winning, because winning was not the real desire that drove people like him to play. It was, quite simply, the compulsion to play no matter what the final outcome. Winning meant your luck was in, so you played until your luck ran out, then played until it came back again.

      A fine shudder rippled through her, making her suddenly aware that she was leaning against some total stranger. With an abrupt tensing of her spine, she managed to put a little distance between them before turning within that circling arm to murmur a coldly polite,‘Thank you, but I’m—’

      Words froze, the air sealed inside lungs that suddenly ceased to function as she stood there, staring into a pair of all too familiar devil-black eyes that trapped her inside a world of complete denial.

      ‘Hello, Caroline,’ Luiz greeted smoothly.

      CHAPTER TWO

      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.

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