Exotic Affairs(69)

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 didn’t like his touch on her skin, or the itchy suspicion that he had been shadowing her movements since the lift, and had timed his approach to coincide with the fact that they were standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs well away from other people.

And she didn’t like the uneasy sensation of feeling vulnerable to someone stronger than herself and clearly so sure of himself that he dared detain her like this.

‘Please let go of me,’ she said.

His grip did tighten. Her pulse began to accelerate. ‘But if I let you go you will not learn how I became acquainted with your papa,’ he pointed out. ‘Or, perhaps more significantly, where I became acquainted with him…’

‘Where?’ she responded, aware that he was deliberately dangling the knowledge at her like a carrot on a stick.

‘Share a glass of wine with me,’ he urged. ‘And I will tell you.’

And it was such a juicy carrot, she noted, one that was trying to make her go one way while every single instinct she possessed was telling her to run in the other.

At which point anger took over, for if he believed she was open to this kind of coercion then he was severely mistaken! ‘I’m sure,’ she replied in her coldest voice, ‘that if my father thinks your meeting memorable enough he will tell me about it himself. Now, if you will excuse me?’ she concluded, and gave a hard enough tug at her captured wrist to free it, then walked stiffly up the steps without glancing back.