Angelo looked down at the table. Everyone else was playing cautiously now, and he idly considered walking away and leaving them while they still had something. But the black dog of his old despair was shadowing him and he knew he would keep going. Keep playing. Keep pushing himself to feel something.
Anything.
‘Place your bets now, gentlemen, please.’
There was a rush of last-minute activity around the table as everyone placed their chips.
The blonde pouted and placed a perfectly manicured hand on one silk lapel. ‘Chéri? Rouge, I think this time, don’t you?’
A smile lifted one corner of Angelo’s mouth, but his narrowed eyes were as blank and expressionless as ever. He looked down, moving a towering pile of chips across the baize, pausing as he reached the solitary green marker. Considering.
Green.
The stack of coloured counters represented several hundreds of thousands of pounds, but around them his hands were perfectly steady. Green. It would be like making a bet with himself that he hadn’t been wrong about her or who she really was. The odds might be outrageously, overwhelmingly against him, but there was a spark in the dark, dark, self-destructive heart of him that urged him onwards. The money was easily dispensable, easily replaceable …
It wasn’t about the money.
It was about the danger. It was about that girl.
For a brief second Angelo closed his eyes and allowed himself to imagine the adrenalin rush of taking such a wild gamble— like a shot of alcohol on an empty stomach—astringent, invigorating, intoxicating. Even to lose would be something. Would make him feel something.
A sting.
Pleasure-pain.
Anything.
Opening his eyes again, he caught a flash of movement at the corner of his eye.
In the space left by the departed player, a shadow had fallen across the table. Cast by the light from the low lamps, it showed a woman’s silhouette—the sweep of her shoulder, the curve and swell of a breast that, even though it was only two-dimensional shades of grey made him want to brush it with his fingers.
Her perfume was infinitely subtle, but he picked it up instinctively, like an animal on the scent of its prey. Or its mate. That scent of darkness vibrated like a low note inside his head, drowning out the shriller, sweeter, more sickly perfume of the blonde girl beside him.
Slowly he lifted his head.
Like heat-seeking missiles his eyes found hers, his gaze searing through the space that separated them. His expression remained absolutely still as his eyes travelled over her, taking in her perfect poise, the elegance of the pearlescent dress, the dark silken fall of her hair, stripping them away to try to find traces of the trembling, rebellious girl he knew lay beneath.
And then he noticed her bare brown feet.
Sensation struck him like a punch in the solar plexus. Sharp, breathtaking. Surprising.
A ripple of impatience went around the table and vaguely he was aware of the other players waiting. The croupier hesitated. ‘Monsieur?’
‘No. I’m out. Settle my account, please.’ The croupier nodded respectfully and Angelo felt the blonde at his elbow wilt with disappointment. He didn’t care.
He was fed up with playing, fed up with winning. He wanted the next challenge.
But when he looked up she was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
ANNA didn’t stop running until she had reached the bottom of the hotel steps and there was a taxi right in front of her. Heart hammering, she wrenched the door open and flung herself inside.
‘Château Belle-Eden, s’il vous plaît. The beach. La plage.’
She saw the taxi driver glance at her curiously in his rear-view mirror, no doubt wondering why a girl in an expensive designer dress wanted to go to the beach at this time of night, but Anna didn’t care. Anything to put some distance between her and Angelo Emiliani.
Green. He had been going to bet on green. To taunt her with the fact that he recognized her and knew exactly what she was up to. And to show her exactly how wealthy he was, and how little a loss like that would affect him.
She could still picture his hands as they moved the chips across the table. God, they were beautiful: slim, long-fingered, artistic, the skin smooth and golden in the light from the lamp above. Hands that could handle huge sums of money without a tremble—what else could they do?
A small sound escaped her—something between a whimper and a groan—as she stared wildly and unseeingly out of the window into the street-lit dark. It was completely new to her, this maelstrom of yearning that turned every nerve in her body into a taut string, vibrating with sexual awareness. She realized that she was shivering, sitting bolt upright on the back seat of the car, and with a conscious effort leaned back, looking up at the stars through the back window. But it was impossible to relax while every cell in her body was screaming in protest at being torn away from Angelo Emiliani.
‘Stop the car! Arret!
‘Mademoiselle? Are you OK? We are almost there—at the beach. You want me to stop now?’
Up ahead Anna could see the turning off the main road on to the private track that led down to Belle-Eden’s beach. In desperation and despair she rubbed her fingers over her stinging eyes.
‘No. Sorry. Carry on. The beach will be fine, thank you.’
Pulling up at the top of the track, the driver looked worried. ‘Ici, mademoiselle?You will be all right on your own out here?’
‘Fine, thank you. I’m home now.’
Stepping out into the warm night air, she breathed in the salt wind and heard the bass beat of music from the beach below. Hurriedly she paid the driver, suddenly desperate to get back to the uncomplicated company of her GreenPlanet friends and drink beer and dance.
Her bare feet sank into the sand as she ran to the edge of the dune, from where she could see the camp fire on the beach and the writhing bodies of people dancing to the music that came from some unseen source. Stumbling down towards them, she hitched the silk dress into the denim hotpants and put both hands up to her head, burying them in her hair, messing it out of the silken sleekness achieved by Fliss. The warm salt breeze caressed her bare skin. Every nerve-ending seemed to have heightened sensitivity and to be crying out for more.
‘Anna! You’re back! Cool dress …’
She moved through the crowd, closer to the camp fire. Normally there were only about twenty GreenPlanet campers, but tonight there were maybe double that number as friends had joined them. Gavin, one of the group’s founders, broke away from the people he’d been talking to and came over, holding out a beer.
‘OK?’
She nodded. ‘I met him.’
Behind his small wire-framed glasses Gavin looked momentarily bewildered. ‘Who?’
Anna almost wanted to laugh. How bizarre that Gavin shouldn’t know who she was talking about when Angelo’s face, his voice, his scent was filling her head and blurring the rest of the world behind a haze of longing.
‘Angelo Emiliani.’
Even saying his name set fireworks off in her pelvis. She took a mouthful of warm beer and continued slightly breathlessly, ‘I think you might be right about the pharmaceutical connection. I overheard him on the phone mentioning Grafton-Tarrant.’
Gavin nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Wow. Righteous. I’ll get