Her lips parted. Then she folded her arms protectively against her chest. “Look. Whatever our wager was, you can’t actually expect me to …”
“Expect you to what?”
“Sleep with you.”
“You were serious when you offered it as a prize.” He looked down at her. “‘My skills at cards are nothing compared to what I can do to you in bed,’ you said.” His tone was mocking. “‘A single hour with me will change your whole life,’ you said!”
Shivering, she looked away. “I was bluffing,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know how to do those things.” Her cheeks colored, and shame burned through her as she looked at the marble floor. “I’ve never been with a man before. I’ve never even kissed a man—since …” She bit her lip and muttered, “Not since you.”
He stared at her. “You’re a virgin?”
His voice dripped disbelief. A lump rose to her throat, and she nodded.
“Right,” he said scornfully. “You’re a virgin.”
She lifted her head in outrage. “You think I’m a liar?”
“I know you are.” His cool blue eyes met hers. “You lie about everything. You can’t help it. Lying is in your blood.”
Lying is in your blood. Before Bree’s mother died, her parents had been regular law-abiding citizens, childhood sweethearts married at eighteen, high school teachers who mowed the lawn in Alaska’s short, bright summers and shoveled snow through eight-month winters. Her mother had taught English, her father science. Then, at thirty, Lois Dalton had contracted cancer. Newly pregnant with her second child, she’d put off chemo treatments that might risk her baby. Two months after Josie’s birth, Lois had died. Jack Dalton lost his wife, his best friend and, some said, his mind….
He’d quit his job as a teacher. He left the new baby with a sitter. And every day, after he picked up Bree from first grade, he took her to backroom poker games. First in Anchorage, and then to ports where Alaskan cruises deposited new tourists each day. With each success, his plans had grown more daring. And they’d worked. At first.
Pushing the memory aside, Bree shook her head. “I’m not lying. I’m a virgin!”
“Stop it. You made the bet. You made your bed.” Vladimir lightly trailed his hand above her head, along the carved wooden post. “Now you will sleep in it.”
She glared at him, setting her jaw. “I only made that bet because I was desperate—because I had nothing else remotely valuable to offer! For Josie—”
“Josie was safe. You had more than enough.”
A sudden thought struck Bree, and she caught her breath. “Did you … let me win?” she whispered. “Is that why you kept raising the stakes—why you egged me on during the game? So that I could cover Josie’s debt?”
His jaw tightened. “I thought she was some innocent kid that Hudson had lured into the game. Not like you.” His eyes flashed as he looked down at Bree. “You could have walked away. But when I offered you the one-card gamble, you accepted. There was no desperation. It was pure greed. And it told me what I needed to know.”
She swallowed. “What?”
“That you hadn’t changed. You were still using your body as bait.”
She took a deep breath and whispered, “I never thought in a million years that I would lose that game.” Exhaustion suddenly swamped her like a wave. Tears rose to her eyes. “And if you were any kind of decent man, you would never expect me to actually …”
“To what? Follow through on your promise?” He gave a hard laugh. “No, what kind of monster would expect that?”
Bree exhaled. “How stupid can I be, appealing to your better nature?”
“I won. You lost.” He folded his arms, staring at her with his eyes narrowed. “You have many, many faults, Bree Dalton. Almost too many to count. In fact, your faults are like grains of sand on a beach that stretches across the whole wide world …”
“All right, I get it,” she muttered. “You don’t exactly admire me.”
“… but I never thought,” he continued, his eyes glinting, “that you’d be a sore loser.”
Bree stared up at him mutinously. Then, setting her jaw, she turned away and stomped over to the bucket of cold water. She snatched up the scraggly sponge and held it up like a sword.
“Fine,” she snapped. “What do you want me to scrub? The bottom of your Lamborghini? The concrete around the pool? A patch of mud by the garden? I don’t even care. But we both know your house is already clean!”
His sensual mouth curved at the edges. Gently, he took the sponge out of her hand and dropped it with a soft splash into the bucket. “You can stop cleaning anytime you want.”
She searched his eyes. “I can?”
He put his hands on her shoulders, looking down at her.
“Come to bed with me,” he said quietly.
Flashes of heat went up and down her body. His hands on her shoulders were heavy, sensual, like points of light. With an intake of breath, she ripped herself away from him.
“Dream on,” she said, tossing her head with every ounce of bravado she possessed.
He shrugged. “Then I’ll have to find some other way to make you useful.”
Bree started to reach for the bucket and sponge, but he stopped her. “No. You are right. Enough cleaning.” He gave a sudden wicked grin. “You will cook for me.”
Her jaw dropped. He must have forgotten the last time she’d cooked for him, taking a romantic date idea from a magazine. It had been romantic, all right—she’d nearly burned the cabin down, and then the firemen had been called. “You can’t be serious.”
Vladimir lifted a dark eyebrow. “Because you’re still a terrible cook?”
She glared at him. “Because you know I would poison you!”
“I know you won’t, because we will share the meal.” He leaned forward and said softly, “Tonight I am craving … something delicious.” She saw the edge of his tongue flick the corner of his sensual lips. “Something sinful.”
Even though he was talking about food, his low voice caused a shiver of awareness down her spine. She swallowed.
“Well, were you thinking chicken noodle soup from a can?” she suggested weakly. “Because I know how to make that.”
“Tempting. But no.” He tilted his head. “A goat cheese soufflé with Provençal herbs.”
Her mouth dropped. “Are you kidding?”
“Try it.” His lips turned up at the corners. “You might like it.”
“I might like to eat it, but I can’t cook it!”
“If you cook it, I will allow you to have some.”
“Generous of you.”
“Of course.” Innocently, he spread his arms wide. “What am I, some kind of heartless brute?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
He gave a low, wicked laugh. “It’s a beautiful night. You will come out onto the lanai and cook for me.”
“Fine.” She looked at him dubiously. “It’s your funeral.”
And so half an hour later, Bree found herself on the patio beside the pool, in the sheltered outdoor kitchen, struggling to sauté garlic and flour in garlic oil.