Taken by the highest bidder Page 3

  Anger burned in her, anger and indignation. What kind of man took a woman from her family? What kind of man would accept a wagered wife?

  It disgusted her, horrified her, and her hands clenched help­lessly inside her coat pockets, her gaze fixed on the hotel's belle epoch architecture. Be calm, she told herself, be calm. Losing control won't help anything.

  She focused on the hotel's architecture instead. The Hotel de Paris and Le Casino were both constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century on a square overlooking the sea. She'd read somewhere that the square had once been an untidy wasteland, overgrown with dense vegetation, hiding deep in the cliffs near seawater-filled caves.

  Apparently the famous Monte Carlo Le Casino had been built first, and the hotel second, the hotel just steps from the casino. Once the hotel was finished, stables were added to house horses and carriages, then a fountain designed, and finally gardens land­scaped with imported palm trees to create an exotic tableau to lure winter weary Parisians.

  Sam was no Parisian, but she was weary. Very weary.

  He had to let her explain about Gabby, had to listen to Gabriela's situation. Gabby couldn't be left with Johann. Johann might be her father but he wasn't to be trusted, especially not with a vulnerable child.

  Abruptly Cristiano finished his call and put away his phone. "I'm sony—"

  "No. No,' she said fiercely, hands bunching into fists inside her coat pockets. "I won't go."

  "Baroness—"

  "You don't understand. This isn't about me, it's about Gabriela,"

  His hard expression briefly eased. "I'm not sending you on your way, Baroness."

  "You're not?"

  "No. I was going to say, I'm sorry I had to take the call, but I've taken care of my meeting. There's nowhere I have to be for the next hour. We're free now to sit down and discuss Gabriela,"

  Sam felt relief and embarrassment wash through her, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I thought...assumed...you were giving me the brush-off,"

  His eyes, hazel green and gold, warmed. "Give you the brush-off? Baroness, I've just spent ten million pounds to make you mine. The last thing I want to do is give you the brush-off"

  His. There was that possession again. His, to be his, to be­long to someone. To belong to a man.

  It was odd, she thought, nerves twitching, her body so tense she felt like the tightened strings on a violin, but she'd been mar­ried twice and had never belonged to a man. And now Cristiano Bartolo talked about possession and yet there'd be no marriage-Life was strange- No, make that impossible.

  "Shall we go in?" Cristiano said, gesturing to the hotel.

  "Mr. Bartolo?"

  "Yes, Baroness?"

  Something in his voice made her blush, and she took a step back, her skin tingling, a fire burning from the inside out. He was hard, male, and confident. Strong,

  Very, very strong.

  And that's what unnerved her most Sam wasn't used to male strength, hadn't experience with a man like Cristiano Bartolo. Yes, she'd been married twice, but neither husband had been strong, or male, like this. Neither husband commanded attention, seized control, shaped the world to suit them. "I haven't agreed to anything," she said breathlessly, "you do realize that, don't you? I'm here to talk—that's it"

  The corner of his mouth lifted in a faint, mocking smile. "You do know the moment a woman throws up walls and restric­tions, a man's determined to destroy them?"

  The tops of her cheekbones burned. Even her ears felt hot. "I'm not trying to be provocative."

  "But that's the charm, Baroness. You're provocative just by being you." And turning, he climbed the hotel's marble steps giv­ing Sam no choice but to follow.

  Sam noticed how the doorman jumped to attention, and while he nodded politely at both, he murmured a warm welcome to Cristiano.

  Sam glanced back at the doorman as they entered the hotel's grand domed lobby. "He addressed you by name," she said,

  "I'm a fixture here."

  "You have quite a few meetings here, then?"

  "If you want to call them meetings."

  A cryptic answer, but one she understood perfectly well.

  Maybe she hadn't had sex, but she knew what it was. "So you meet women here?"

  "I have a room here."

  "Always?"

  "When I feel the need to entertain."

  When he wanted to sleep with a woman. She turned away, stared across the lobby feeling ridiculously old and prudish. She'd never thought she'd end up twenty-eight and celibate. When Charles proposed, she'd thought she’d have such a differ­ent life. She'd be a wife, lover and mother. Instead fate intervened and she'd become this. Tired. Worried. Worn,

  "I can show you my suite, if you'd like," he offered.

  They were standing in the hotel's grand lobby now, almost directly beneath the vast blue glass dome and Sam flashed him a look of disdain. "No, thank you."

  Cristiano laughed, softly, seductively. He liked that flash of fire in her. It was a relief to know she wasn't always so grave and serious. And yet already the spark in her was gone, replaced by more quiet worry, the line of which was almost permanently etched between her fine brown eyebrows.

  Last night she'd looked regal, a conquering warrior, and yet today in the morning light, dressed in her simple, sturdy tweed coat, her fair English complexion tinged pink and her blue eyes wide, round, he thought she looked very young, very English, and very scared.

  Cristiano liked women, enjoyed women, but he didn't enjoy them scared.

  He wanted Samantha, wanted to own her, possess her, but not trembling like a frightened puppy in his bed. He wanted a woman, a strong woman, with spirit.

  "Well, you will see it," he said lazily, "the question is just— how soon?"

  Sam was listening to him, she was, and yet his words didn't penetrate her brain.

  Instead she watched his mouth move, the lips parting, shap­ing, and she found herself fascinated by the shape of his mouth, the hard lines of his face. He had a strong jaw, strong straight nose, fiercely black eyebrows and then there was that cleft in his square chin and two deep grooves on either side of his firm mouth. His eyes, thickly lashed, were neither green nor gold, but hazel, what ought to be an ordinary hazel but there was so much heat in his eyes, so much spirit and intelligence his eyes fairly snapped with energy. With life.

  Again it struck her that he was awake. Alert

  Alive.

  Had she been with Johann so long she'd forgotten what it was like to speak to a man that really looked at her? Listened to her? Had she been so isolated these past four years she'd forgotten how men behaved?

  "How soon until you see it, Baroness?"

  Samantha blinked, knew she'd missed whatever question or point Cristiano had just said. "I don't know," she stammered.

  He inclined his head, then turned, and walked through the hotel's grand lobby toward one of the sitting areas at the far end of the room.

  Sam had to hurry to catch up with him as he walked. He was tall, broad shouldered, and his steps, long but measured.

  "We must talk," she said breathlessly, trying to keep up with him.

  Cristiano barely turned his head to look at her. "About what?"

  She nearly sputtered in surprise. "You know perfectly well what I've come to discuss. It's barbaric. Inhumane. You don't gamble with people's lives, much less children's lives."

  He slowed his pace as they reached the low velvet couches up­holstered in royal shades of purple, red and blue. "I don't gam­ble with lives. I prefer cash. Stocks. Real estate. Unfortunately your husband had just you left so he offered you up."

  "You didn't have to be unscrupulous, Mr. Bartolo! You could have taken the higher, moral ground."

  Cristiano's eyebrows lifted, one black eyebrow arching slightly higher than the other, and Sam thought he looked exactly the way the devil would, if the devil played cards. "And why would I want to do that, Baroness?"

  Samantha's breath caught in her throat as she sta
red into Cristiano's face. He was tall, big, and broad. Taut. He'd walked with a long even step, his arms loose at his sides, apparently at ease, but she was far from relaxed. His very ease unnerved her. "Because you're a gentleman, Mr.Bartolo."

  The corner of his mouth curved, a brief mocking smile. "You shouldn't make assumptions. They're usually wrong."

  Then he sat down, a slow drop into the low upholstered sofa. Sam remained where she stood, her mouth open with disbelief. He was mad, she thought, nearly as mad as Johann. "And what about Gabriela? What about her?"

  He shrugged, stretched a long arm out over the back of the sofa. "What about her?"

  "She can't be left with Johann. He's not a fit parent."

  "Then surely she has another relative who could take her, someone better suited to parenting a young child?"

  "She might, but I don't know of anyone. I think her mother's family wanted her once, there was going to be a custody trial, but that was years ago. I don't even know where to find her mother's family now."

  He studied her for a long moment, hazel gaze assessing. "Why didn't her mother's family win the custody battle?"

  Sam swallowed, plagued by guilt even two and a half years later. "1 married Johann. To give Gabby—and prove to the court that she had—a stable, loving family."

  "Even though you knew it was a lie?"

  Sam ducked her head, didn't answer. She knotted and unknotted her fingers before finally sitting down in a chair opposite him. "I did it for Gabby, to protect her. The court did award us cus­tody, and Gabby trusts me, Mr.Bartolo. She depends on me. I can't let her down."

  "She's not even your daughter and yet you're so very protec­tive of her."

  "I have to be. Someone has to be,"

  Cristiano's eyes narrowed as he studied her tight expression. "You love her."

  Without a doubt. "Yes."

  "And your husband. Do you love him this much, too?"

  Sam's eyes closed and she sagged inwardly, exhausted, over­whelmed. She'd never loved Johann even though she'd tried ini­tially. She'd thought maybe her kindness, her compassion might save him...that her love could maybe make them a family but she'd been wrong. Naive.

  Opening her eyes, the fatigue weighed even more heavily on her. She felt as if she'd been battling to save Johann for far too many years now. She didn't know how to keep fighting for him, for the family, for security any longer. The task had become too great, the toll too much. Living with Johann had drained her. "I've done my best to protect him."

  "And is that the same thing as love?"

  Her lips curved grimly. "It is what it is, Mr.Bartolo."

  Cristiano's expression didn't change, and yet Sam felt some­thing shift—her? Him?—and when he spoke again, the mood somehow was different. "I don't like your husband," he said. "I have never liked your husband, but I like him even less now"

  "Because he wagered me?"

  "And then tried to sell his child, the very child he refused to give to her family"

  Her mouth went dry and she felt like a marionette doll, odd, gangly, all wooden arms and legs. "He wouldn't sell Gabby."

  "He tried. It wasn't enough he'd settled his debts with you. He thought perhaps he'd buy back some of his lost property, an even exchange, the town villa for his daughter,"

  "No."

  "Yes. indeed."

  Sam looked past Cristiano to the creamy marble columns supporting the ornate stained-glass dome. "And what did you say?" she whispered, her mouth so dry, her throat scratchy.

  "I don't buy children. Baroness."

  She shook her head, shocked. She knew Johann was selfish and a drunkard, a gambler, and a player—but this...it was re­pulsive. "Do you see why I can't leave her there? Do you see why I must protect her?"

  "Baroness, I have no authority over her. I can't take her. Only the courts—"

  "But I can!" Sam clasped her hands together, leaned towards Cristiano, hands pressed as if in prayer, "I'm still her step­mother."

  "Johann won't allow it. Not if he thinks he can get me to pay for her."

  "How much?" Sam whispered. "How much does he want?"

  "Three million. The price of his town villa."

  Her eyes burned and she smiled bitterly to hide her pain, "I was ten million and his child was only three?"

  "My thoughts exactly."

  Sam ground her teeth together, panic growing on the inside. Panic at the future, the present, panic that she was losing her grip on reality, panic that it seemed she was going to lose Gabby.

  "Sit back," Cristiano said. "Breathe. You look as if you're going to faint,"

  She shook her head, woozy and nauseous all over again, and struggled to speak, but couldn't find her voice, couldn't even shape her lips. Her face felt stiff, frozen. Her whole body trem­bled.

  Cristiano reached out. touched her arm. "Do you need water?"

  She shook her head again. "No," she croaked, but she did feel terrible. Terrible, horrible, devastated. It was as if her world had been a little snow globe and it had been dropped, shattered.

  For a moment Sam did nothing but concentrate on breathing, in and out she breathed, deep slow breaths to ease the pain in­side her. But just breathing didn't help. If she breathed in, it hurt If she exhaled, it hurt. Nothing would change the pain.

  "She's not your child," Cristiano said quietly.

  Anger rolled through Sam, hot and wild, cutting through her fog. "But she feels like my child, and I'll protect her like my child, and I will worry about her, and I will worry for her. You can be selfish and cold but I won't be."

  "No, I know you won't be. That's why I wanted you. That's why I played hard for you. You didn't fall into my hands by chance,"

  If he hoped to reassure her, he was failing, miserably. Every word he spoke only heightened her unease and the sense that ev­erything was changing—quickly, dramatically, drastically—and Samantha resisted change, particularly if it was beyond her control. "You wanted this?"

  "Very much so."

  "You can't take another man's wife'

  One of his strong black eyebrows lifted quizzically. "You do if she's neglected."

  Dazed, she gave her head a slight shake and Cristiano merely smiled, a cool smile, much like the glittering light thrown off by the huge chandeliers overhead. Neither his smile nor the bright light above them warmed his eyes now.

  "Doesn't it grate you, Baroness "he said after a slight pause, "that while you've scraped and struggled to pay bills, your hus­band sat in the casinos for months losing thousands a night?"

  It did, oh God it did, but she couldn't find the words, or the protests. She blinked, held back the tears. "He stopped for a while."

  "Not very long. I know. Because every time he lost, I won. And everything he offered, I took,"

  "So this is your fault."

  "He's a compulsive gambler."

  "It's a sickness"

  "So I discovered."

  "And could you show no mercy?"

  "No." And his expression slowly changed, jaw firming, cheekbones jutting beneath hard eyes. "I am not a merciful man."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Cristiano sent Sam home in a taxi and traveling back home, she glanced at her watch constantly. Two minutes later, five min­utes, eight-She felt obsessed with time. Driven by time. It was a quarter to noon now. Cristiano had said the car for her would arrive at four, which meant she now had less than four hours to pack and arrange her life, less than four hours to say her goodbyes. Which really meant saying goodbye to Gabby. Four hours to say good­bye after four years of being together...

  Sam couldn't fathom it, couldn't get her head around it. The situation boggled her mind, not because Johann had gambled and lost his entire fortune, but the fact that she'd been dragged into this. Johann and Cristiano's gambling had nothing to do with her, or Gabriela. If they wanted to gamble, let them live with the con­sequences. She and Gabriela shouldn't have to suffer for their poor decisions.

  And Gabriela would suffer i
f Sam left her. Gabby wasn't even five, and yet how many homes had she known? How many different guardians and adults had drifted in and out of her life? How many had actually helped her? Considered her needs be­fore their own? How many had given love?

  Love, Sam silently repeated, stepping from the taxi, there was a concept. But it was love Gabby needed, not things. Love, not money. Love, not power or control or whatever it was men seemed to think made the world go round.

  And facing the tired villa in need of repairs and refurbish­ment, Sam knew what she needed to do. She needed to take Gabriela away from here, far from the brittle glamour of Monte Carlo, the selfish, greedy games Johann and Cristiano had played, the shallowness of people who cared more for money than a child. She'd been pushed too far this time.

  Johann was wrong and so was Cristiano. Sam refused to let Gabby be hurt yet again. Once Sam knew what she needed to do, she also knew where she'd go. The moment Gabby came home from school they'd be gone.