LITMIR.BIZ

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keep her knocked permanently out of kilter, she supposed, remembering the Luiz of seven years ago telling her smilingly that he lived out of hotels. ‘Homes are for families, and I don’t have one,’ he’d told her casually, but she’d seen the bleakness in his eyes when he’d said it, and known that inside he hadn’t been feeling casual at all.

      It was a memory that brought with it another question that almost blew her mind apart. ‘You’re not married now, are you?’ she choked out.

      His answering burst of laughter took them in through the door and offered no warning whatsoever of what she was about to come face to face with.

      Her heart dropped with a sickening thump to the pit of her stomach. The roller coaster ride of emotion she seemed to be on swung her through yet another violently swerving dive. Admittedly, it was a beautiful room, furnished in the very best that was tasteful in Spanish architecture.

      But it wasn’t the room that held her frozen. Or even the blanket awareness of a couple of dozen people turning in their direction—though their sheer elegance was enough to have her shrinking back to half hide behind Luiz, while sheer vanity sent her fingers up to self-consciously touch her tangle-dried hair.

      No, being aware that she must look as if Luiz had just plucked her out of the sea like a mermaid and decided to bring her along here for her novelty value was not what was filling her with a dizzying dismay. It was the sight of a green baize table waiting at the ready, barely three feet away from where she stood, with a solemn-faced croupier standing nearby, counting different coloured gambling chips into neat stacks on a separate counter.

      ‘Where is he?’ she whispered, her voice thickened by the actual reality of what Luiz had set up here.

      He didn’t even try to misunderstand the question. ‘In one of the bedrooms,’ he replied. ‘Taking a rest before the evening begins.’

      Begins…The word played back and forth across her frozen senses, her glazed eyes barely seeing the waiting party of people now, even though they were standing there in expectant silence, obviously waiting for Luiz to introduce her.

      But Caroline didn’t want to be introduced. In fact she felt positively sick with revulsion at the very idea. Because if they were here, and that table was there, then they were all no-good gamblers like her own wretched father. Like the man standing at her side.

      And it was decision time, she realised starkly. Now, before this situation got any worse!

      Without any further consideration of what she was about to do, she slid herself stealthily round until she was standing directly in front of Luiz. ‘All right,’ she breathed into his left shoulder.

      ‘All right, what?’ he quizzed, aiming a puzzled frown down at her.

      ‘All right. I’ll sleep with you,’ she whispered. Cold fingers took a fierce grip on his sleeve. ‘Now,’ she added tautly. ‘We’ll go and do it right now…’

      CHAPTER FOUR

      HIS sudden tension suggested that she had just managed to shock him. Caroline didn’t care. She wanted out of this room and she wanted her father kept out of it too.

      Hard hands suddenly grasped her shoulders, the slender bones almost snapped under the tension she was placing them under. ‘Caroline—’

      ‘No!’ she interrupted with a choke that was almost a sob. Her mouth was quivering, she couldn’t seem to stop it, and her throat was hot and tight. ‘Negotiations are over, you told me,’ she reminded him. ‘You wanted my answer. Well, you’ve got it. So now get me out of here!’

      His chest heaved on the sigh that shot from him; his fingers increased their grip. ‘You fool!’ he muttered, then, on a complete change of manner, said sardonically to their audience. ‘My apologies, but I seem to have inadvertently embarrassed my companion. Please, go on enjoying yourselves while I take her away and attempt to make my peace before I bring her back again.’

      The answering rumble of surprise and consternation flicked at her like the stinging tip of a whip. Luiz was smiling back at them through violently gritted teeth. His hands left her shoulders, an arm returning to clamp around them instead. Then he walked her stiff and quivering frame back through the doors, letting them shut behind them.

      He was furious with her for causing that scene. Caroline knew that, but had gone way beyond the point where she could do anything about it. The knowledge of what she had just agreed to was clinging like a tight steel band around her aching chest and stopping her from uttering a single word in her own defence.

      With a grimness that made her feel like a child being marched off by a stern parent, Luiz took her across the foyer and along the opposite hallway. At the other end was a door that opened into a large bedroom furnished with the same stylish elegance as the other room, only this room had a king-size bed occupying prominent position instead of a card table.

      The door closed them in. Caroline stood just in front of it with her head held high and waited to find out what was to come at her next.

      Would he order her to take all her clothes off and climb into the bed? Or was he going to offload whatever it was he was keeping severely damped down inside him before he ordered her out of her clothes?

      She couldn’t see his face because he had his back to her, but she could certainly see his tension. And on one level she was rather satisfied to see that she seemed to have managed to rock the unrockable poise of Luiz Vazquez.

      He moved at last, breaking the throbbing silence with a short heavy explosion of air before dipping his hand into one of the pockets of his cream tux. It came out again with her evening bag, which he tossed onto a nearby chair. She’d forgotten he even had it. Next came her black silk bra—which she had forgotten about also. But she was now painfully reminded of their passionate interlude in the pool room as she watched that item land on top of the bag.

      He removed his jacket next. It landed on the bed. Broad shoulders, tanned neck, bright white dress shirt made of a fine enough linen for her to see the darkness of his skin showing through. Her heart began to stutter. Her throat went dry. The steel band around her chest tightened its grip a little more. He swung around to look at her appraisingly, making her sharply catch her breath.

      She couldn’t speak. She was too stressed out to speak. But even if she’d been able to she knew that she wouldn’t. She had played her last card. Whatever was left was for Luiz to play.

      ‘You have fifteen minutes to do whatever it takes to make you face my guests without the expression of horror.’

      The command utterly threw her. She had expected anger, she had expected seduction, she had even expected a heavy mix of both! But she hadn’t expected to feel the slap of his icy contempt.

      But her chin tilted even higher, amethyst eyes glinting with a defiance that hid whatever she was feeling inside. ‘But I don’t want to face your guests in any way,’ she stiffly informed him.

      ‘Nevertheless,’ he drawled, ‘it is what you are going to do.’

      ‘They have nothing to do with what we are here for!’ she protested, breaking free from her steel casing when all Luiz did was swing away again, to stride across the room towards a long line of floor-to-ceiling cupboards.

      ‘And it wasn’t your friends that filled me with horror,’ she added as she followed angrily in his footsteps. ‘It was that card table standing there ready and waiting, like a stage prop, for you to play out some hideous act of destruction on my father!’

      ‘You are still assuming that I am going to win, then,’ he remarked, opening one of the cupboard doors.

      Her footsteps stopped. ‘Whether you will or not no longer comes into it!’ Despite the anger, her anxiety was beginning to show in the faint tremor of her voice. ‘We made a deal where if I sleep with you, you don’t play him! You proposed it, Luiz!’ she reminded him. ‘And I just agreed!’

      In the process of withdrawing a fresh dinner jacket from

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