Page 76 of Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride

It played oddly on her defences to remember that. Made her want to relax her guard and smile back at him, be the old Caroline, from when life had been wonderful and she’d been in love and thought she didn’t have a single care in the world.

Her hand twitched in his—reacting to secret wishes. His own fingers tightened, as if he thought she was trying to get away and he was making sure that she didn’t.

‘Luiz…’ she pleaded, responding to that glimpse of the man she used to know.

It was like watching warm living tissue turn to stone. ‘If you are going to start begging, then don’t,’ he advised. ‘We went way beyond the point where it could be of any use to you to do so, a long time ago.’

When had that point been exactly? she wondered, taking his verbal slap-down with a wince she didn’t even bother to try and hide. When they’d been kissing each other into a frenzy in the pool room, perhaps? The twist to her mouth mocked the suggestion, because the man who had all but completely devoured her had recovered too quickly and too well to be vulnerable to anything—including the begging voice of the woman he’d held in his arms at the time.

In his office then, when he had cruelly and efficiently slayed her with words? No room for begging there, she thought grimly. No room for anything but bitterness and anger and pain and…

‘Negotiations are over, I take it,’ she clipped.

He gave a curt nod. ‘All I want from you now is a simple yes or no to my proposition.’

‘Your blackmail, you mean,’ she countered thinly.

‘Okay, blackmail.’ He gave an indifferent shrug to her play on words, and took her into a large white hall constructed almost entirely of marble.

A pair of narrow hallways led off to the left and the right of her, linking the separate wings of the villa, she assumed. But it was to one of the rooms directly off this main hallway that Luiz took her.

‘Who does this house belong to?’ she asked tartly. ‘Only I suppose I should know just whose hospitality I will be offending, coming to their party looking like this…’

‘Then you don’t need to think about it,’ Luiz answered pragmatically. ‘Since it is me you will be offending.’

In a night of hard shocks, this was just another one to help 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 o

ne 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.

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