Dealing Her Final Card(25)

She really must think he was a fool. She must have no respect whatsoever for his intelligence, to think that she could look at him with those beautiful luminous eyes and make him believe she’d actually loved him once. It would not work. They both knew it had always been about money for her. It still was.

I’ve never been with a man before. I’ve never even kissed a man since you.

Reaching for his wine glass, he took a long drink and then wiped his mouth. She was a fairly good liar, he’d give her that. But he was immune to her now. Absolutely immune.

Except for her body.

He’d enjoyed watching her scrub his floors, watching the sway of her slender hips, of her backside and breasts as she knelt in front of him. He’d wanted to take her, then and there.

And he would. Soon.

Their kiss had been electric. He still shuddered to remember the softness of her body as she’d clung to him. The scent of her, like orchids and honey. The sweet, erotic taste of her lips. He’d intended to punish her with that savage kiss. Instead, he’d been lost in it, in memory, in yearning, in hot ruthless need.

Gritting his teeth, he roughly tidied up the outdoor kitchen, slamming the dirty pans into the sink. No matter how he tried to deny it, Bree still had power over him. Too much. When he’d seen her slip and fall on this floor, her cry had sliced straight through his heart. And suddenly, without knowing how, he’d found himself beside her, helping her to her feet.

You called me Breanna.

Irritated, he exhaled, setting his jaw. He glanced up toward the house. It had been almost an hour. What was taking her so long?

He grabbed a plate and served her a portion of the soufflé, then took a crystal goblet from the cupboard on the lanai. He carried them both over to the tray on the granite table, beside the open bottle of merlot. He looked out at the shimmering pool, at the crashing waves of the dark ocean below the cliff. He tried to relax his shoulders, to take a deep breath.

After he’d nearly died in the car crash on the raceway, his doctor had arrived from St. Petersburg and told him he needed to find a less risky way to relax. “You’re thirty-five years old, Your Highness,” the doctor had said gravely. “But you have the blood pressure of a much older man. You’re a heart attack waiting to happen.” So Vladimir, wrapped up in bandages over his broken bones, had grimly promised to give up car racing forever, along with boxing and skydiving. He’d bought this house and started physical rehabilitation. He’d done yoga and tai chi.

Or at least he’d tried.

He hadn’t made it through a single yoga class. The more he tried to calm down, the more he felt the vein in his neck throb until his forehead was covered with sweat. The pain of doing nothing, of just sitting alone with his thoughts, left him half-mad, like a tiger trapped in a cage.

He’d done extreme sports because they made him feel something. The adrenaline stirred up by thinking he might die was a reminder that he was still alive. The never ending sameness of his work, of one meaningless love affair after another, sometimes made him forget.

And yoga was supposed to relax him? Vladimir grumbled beneath his breath. Stupid doctors. What did they know?

He’d already had twelve weeks of twiddling his thumbs, “healing” as ordered, while knowing his brother was in Morocco, tying up various gold and diamond sources in underhanded ways. When his leg had healed enough for him to drive, Vladimir had bought the new Lamborghini to go to the weekly private poker game at the Hale Ka’nani Resort. Then he’d found Bree, who drove him absolutely insane. Even more than yoga.

But what the hell was taking her so long? The dinner he’d made was growing cold. Scowling, he looked up at the second-floor bedroom balcony. How long could it take for a woman to shower?

“Bree,” he yelled. “Come down.”

“No,” he heard her yell back from the open French doors of the balcony.

He set his jaw. “Right now!”

“Forget it! I’m not wearing this thing!”

“Then you won’t eat!”

“Fine by me!”

This dinner wasn’t going at all as he’d envisioned. Growling to himself, Vladimir left the dinner tray on the table and raced inside. Taking the stairs two at a time, he went down the hall and shoved open the double doors to the master bedroom, knocking them back against the walls.

Bree whirled around with a gasp.

Vladimir took one look and his mouth went slack. His heart nearly stopped in his chest.

She stood half-naked, wearing the expensive lingerie, a pale pink teddy and silk robe he’d had a servant buy for her in Kailua. “Make it tacky,” Vladimir had instructed. “The sort of thing a stripper might wear.”