Caroline turned and walked away, leaving the melee to erupt behind her.
How much had he won? She didn’t know. When would he play Luiz? She didn’t care. As far as she was concerned the whole miserable thing was well and truly over. She’d had enough—more than enough—and she never wanted to step foot in a place like this again.
She even felt a real disgust with herself for being talked into coming here at all. She should have known he couldn’t keep his word. Should have known he didn’t really care what happened to them so long as he could get his kicks.
The casino doors swung shut behind her. Eyes bright, mouth tight, body stiff with tension, she walked towards the stairwell with the intention of going back to their room. But suddenly she knew she couldn’t do that, couldn’t just go back there and await the next instalment in her father’s quest for utter ruin. And on an impulse she didn’t think to question, she found her feet were taking her across the basement foyer and towards the pair of doors that stood opposite the casino.
She’d half expected the swimming pool room to be locked at this time of the night but it wasn’t, she discovered, though the lights had been turned down to their minimum, so only the pool itself was illuminated, showing glass-smooth cool blue water—and not another person in sight.
Without really considering her next actions, Caroline stepped out of her shoes, unzipped her dress and draped it over the back of a nearby chair, then simply dived cleanly into the water.
Why she did it, she didn’t know, and cared even less that she had dived in wearing bra, panties and even her black stockings and suspenders. She just powered up and down that pool like someone intent on winning a medal.
She was performing her fourth lap when she noticed Luiz sitting in the chair next to the one on which she had placed her dress. The cold cut of her eyes completely blanked him as she made a neat rolling turn then headed back down the pool.
He was still there when she made her sixth cutting crawl through the water, still sitting there on her eighth. By the tenth her lungs were beginning to burst and she had to pause for breath. Crossing her arms on the tiled rim, she rested her brow against them and stayed like that until the panting began to ease.
‘Feel better for that?’ Luiz questioned levelly.
‘No,’ she replied, and at last lifted her face to look at him. ‘Do you, for playing the voyeur?’
‘You are wearing more than most women do who use this pool,’ he casually pointed out.
‘But a gentleman, on noting the difference, would have had the grace to leave.’
‘And we both know that I am no gentleman,’ he smilingly tagged on as if on cue.
Had she been cueing him to admit that? Caroline asked herself. Yes, she accepted, she had. It pleased her, for some reason, to make Luiz admit to what he was.
Or wasn’t, she amended. ‘Where’s my father?’
‘Counting his winnings, I should imagine.’ His shrug demonstrated his complete indifference.‘Are you ready to get out of there?’ he enquired then. ‘Or are you expecting me to strip off and join you?’
‘I’m coming out,’ she decided immediately, not even considering whether or not his suggestion was a bluff. Past experience of this man’s dangerous streak made her sure that he was quite capable of stripping to the skin then joining her without hesitation.
And she had no wish whatsoever to see Luiz Vazquez strip. Didn’t need to, to know exactly what he looked like naked. Just as he didn’t need to see her remove the black silk bra, stockings and panties to know exactly what was hiding beneath, she added grimly as, with another neat roll, she took herself underwater to swim to the nearest set of steps.
By the time she rose up again Luiz was standing at the edge, waiting with a large white towel stretched out at the ready. Where he had got it from Caroline didn’t know, and found that once again she didn’t really care. It was as if her brain had gone on strike where caring was concerned.
So she climbed up the steps and calmly took the towel from him with a ‘Thank you’ murmured politely, and no hint of anything else in her tone.
He noticed the absence of emotions, of course. ‘You’re being very calm about this,’ he remarked.
Caroline wrapped the towel sarong-wise around her body. ‘I hate and despise you. Will that do?’ she offered, bending to squeeze the excess water out of her hair.
He grimaced. ‘It’s a start. Do you want me to get another towel to dry your hair with?’
Finger-combing the wet tangles, she tossed back her head to send the chin-length bob flying back from her face. The swim had seen off most of her make-up other than her mascara, which now stood out sooty black in a naturally porcelain-white face.
‘I want nothing from you, Luiz,’ she told him. ‘Because your idea of a favour is to cut off the outstretched hand.’
‘Ah…’ His own hands slid smoothly into the pockets of his black silk evening trousers. ‘The hand I cut off, I have to presume, belonged to you?’
She didn’t want to talk about it, so she turned away. Spying her dress on the chair, she went to pick it up. ‘I’m going to my room,’ she announced, walking towards the pool house door. ‘Goodbye, Luiz,’ she added coldly. ‘I would like to say that it was nice to see you again, but I would be lying, so I won’t bother…’
It would have been the perfect exit line too, if Luiz hadn’t spoiled it. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ he prompted lazily.
She stopped, turned, and frowned at him in puzzlement. He was still standing more or less where she had left him, tall, lean, superbly presented against a backcloth of shimmering blue, and sexily dark and disturbing enough to make any girl’s heart squeeze.
Caroline’s heart gave that terrible little squeeze. And she despised herself for being so susceptible to him, knowing him for what he was.
‘Your purse and your shoes,’ he kindly pointed out to her, and went to collect them from where she had left them, the purse thrown down on the chair, the shoes kicked carelessly beneath.
The shoes he casually held out towards her, dangling them from their straps on long lean fingers. Tight-lipped she took them, but when she went to reach for her purse Luiz slid it smoothly into one of his cream tux pockets.
‘Give it back to me, please,’ she commanded.
But he just offered her a lazy smile. ‘With that prim tone you could be my headmistress,’ he mocked.
‘How would you know?’ she hit back. ‘The way I remember you telling it, you rarely bothered to attend school.’
His soft laugh was appreciative, but his tone held something else entirely when he added, ‘Oh, I’ve known a few stiff-backed, cold-eyed females in my time.’
Which instantly reminded her of all the state institutes he had lived in during his childhood. And her inner eye was suddenly seeing a dark-haired, dark-eyed, lonely little Spanish boy who, even at the tender age of nine, had known exactly what it was like to rely only on himself for survival.
How many confidences had they exchanged during that long hot summer seven years ago? she wondered as a disturbing little ache took up residence in her stomach.
And how much of what he’d told her had been the truth? she then added cynically. And how much merely words calculated to earn her soft-hearted sympathy—while he quietly and calculatedly fleeced her father across a green baize table?
‘What’s the grimace for?’
Huskily intimate, disturbingly close. She blinked, glanced up, found he had shifted his stance slightly and now had a shoulder leaning against the crack between the two doors. It was such an obvious blocking tactic that Caroline was instantly on her guard.
‘My bag