скачать книгу бесплатно
She’d hoped they would find peace in Hawaii, three thousand miles away from the ice and snow of Alaska. She’d prayed she would find her own peace, and finally stop dreaming of the blue-eyed, dark-haired man she’d once loved. But it hadn’t worked. Every night, she still felt Vladimir’s arms around her, still heard his low, sensual voice. I love you, Breanna. She still saw the brightness of his eyes as he held up a sparkling diamond beneath the Christmas tree. Will you marry me?
Ugh. Furiously, Bree pushed the memory away. No wonder she still hated Christmas. Let other women go home to their turkeys and children and brightly lit trees. To Bree, yesterday had been just another workday. She never let herself remember that one magical Christmas night when she was eighteen, when she’d wanted to change her life to be worthy of Vladimir’s love. The night she’d promised herself that she would never—for any reason—gamble or cheat or lie again. Even though he’d left her, she’d kept that promise.
Until now. She reached into the back of her closet, pulling out her black boots with the sharp stiletto heels.
“Bree?” Josie said anxiously.
Not answering, Bree sat down heavily on the bed. Putting her feet into her boots, she zipped up the backs. It was the first time she’d worn these stiletto boots since she was a rebellious teenager with a flexible conscience and a greedy heart. It took Bree back to the woman she’d never thought she would be again. The woman she’d have to be tonight to save her sister. She glanced at the illuminated red letters of the clock. Three in the morning. A perfect time to start.
“Please, you don’t have to do this,” her sister whimpered. Her voice choked as she whispered helplessly, “I have a plan.”
Ignoring the guilt and anguish in her sister’s voice, Bree rose to her feet. “Stay here.” Squaring her shoulders, she severed the connection between her brain and her pounding heart. Emotion would only be a liability from here on out. “I’ll take care of it.”
“No! It’s my fault, Bree, and I can fix it. Listen. On Christmas Eve, I met a man who told me how …”
But Bree didn’t wait to hear whatever cockamamy sob story someone might have fed her softhearted sister this time. She grabbed her black leather motorcycle jacket and headed for the door.
“Bree, wait!”
She didn’t look back. She walked out of the tiny apartment and went down the open-air hallway to the moss-covered, crumbling concrete steps of the aging building where all the Hale Ka’nani Resort’s staff lived.
It’s just like riding a bike, Bree told herself fiercely as she raced down the steps. Even after ten years away from the game, she could win at poker. She could.
Warm trade winds blew against her cold skin. Pulling on her black leather jacket, she went down the illuminated paths of the five-star resort toward the beautiful, brand-new buildings used by wealthy tourists and the even wealthier villa owners, clustered around the edge of a private, white-sand beach.
My heart is cold, she repeated to herself. I feel nothing.
The moon was full over the Pacific, leaving a ghostly trail across the black water. Palm trees swayed in the warmth of the Hawaiian breeze. She heard the distant call of night birds, smelled the exotic scent of fruit and spice mingling with the salt of the sea.
Above her, dark silhouettes of tall, slender palm trees swayed in a violet sky twinkling with stars. Even with the bright full moon, the night seemed black to her, wide and endless as the sea. She followed the illuminated path around the deserted pool between the beach and the main lobby. As she grew closer to the beach, she heard the sound of the surf build to a roar.
The open-air bar was nearly empty beneath its long thatched roof. Hanging lights swayed in the breeze over a few drunk tourists and cuddling honeymooners. Bree nodded at the tired-eyed bartender, then went past the bar into a connecting hall that led to the private rooms reserved for the villa owners and their guests. Where rich men brought their cheap mistresses and played private, illegal games.
Opening the door, Bree stumbled in her stiletto boots.
Clenching her hands at her sides, she took a deep breath and told her heart to be a lump of ice. Cold. Cold. Cold. She had no feelings of any kind. Poker was easy. By the time she was fourteen, she’d been fleecing tourists in Alaskan ports. And she’d learned the best way not to show emotion was not to feel it in the first place.
Never play with your heart, kiddo. Only a sucker plays with his heart. Even if you win, you lose.
Her father had said those words to her a million times growing up, but she’d still had to learn the hard way. Once, she’d played with all her heart. And lost—everything.
Don’t think about it. But in spite of her best efforts, the memory brought a chill of fear. She’d been so determined to leave that life behind. What if she’d forgotten how to play? What if she’d lost her gift? What if she couldn’t lure the men in, convince them to let her ante up without money, and get the cards she needed—or bluff them into believing she had?
If she failed at this, then … Bree felt a flash of sweat on her forehead. Running for the Mainland might be their only option. Or, since they had no money or credit cards and it was doubtful they’d even make it to the airport before they were caught, swimming for the Mainland.
She exhaled, forcing her body to calm down and her heart to slow. It’s just poker, she told herself firmly. Your heart is cold. You feel nothing.
Bree went all the way down the long, air-conditioned hall. A large man weighing perhaps three hundred pounds sat at a polished oak door.
She forced a crooked smile in his direction. “Hey, Kai.”
The enormous security guard nodded with a single jerk of his chins. “What you doing here, Bree? Saw your sister take off. She sick or something?”
“Something like that.”
“You working in her place?” Kai frowned, looking over her dark, tight jeans, her black leather jacket and black stiletto boots. “Where’s the uniform?”
“This is my outfit.” Her voice was cool as she stared him down. “For poker.”
“Oh.” His round, friendly face looked confused. “Well. Okay. Go in, then.”
“Thanks.” Forcing the ice in her voice to fully infuse her heart, she pushed open the door.
The private room for the villa residents had a cavernous ceiling and no windows. The walls were soundproofed with thick red fabric that swooped from a center point on the ceiling. The effect made the room glamorous and cozy and claustrophobic all at once. To Bree, it felt like entering the tent of a sheikh’s harem. But as she approached the wealthy men who were playing at the single large table, if there was a stab of fear down her spine, she didn’t feel it.
She’d succeeded. She’d turned off her heart.
There were no women players. The only females in the room stood in a circle behind the men, smiling with hawkish red lips, wearing low-cut, tight silk gowns. At the table, she saw the dealer, Chris—what was his last name?—whose eyes widened with surprise when he saw her.
The four players at the table were Greg Hudson and three owners she recognized: a Belgian land developer, a long-mustached oil man from Texas and a short, bald tycoon from Silicon Valley. But where was the arrogant stranger Josie had mentioned? Had he already quit the game?
Whatever. It was time to play.
In her black leather jacket and jeans, Bree pushed through the venomous, overdressed women. Without a word, she sat down at one of the two empty seats at the table around the dealer, beside Greg Hudson.
“Deal me in,” she said coolly.
The men blinked, staring at her in shock that was almost comical. One of the men snorted a laugh. Another frowned. “Another cocktail waitress?” one scoffed.
“Actually,” Bree said with a grin, “I’m with the housekeeping staff, and so was my sister.”
The men glanced at each other uncertainly.
“Well, well. Bree Dalton.” Greg Hudson licked his lips, looking at her with beady eyes in his florid, sweaty face. “So. Did you bring the hundred thousand dollars your sister owes me?”
“You know we don’t have that kind of money.”
“Then I’ll send my men to take it out of her hide.”
Bree’s knees shook beneath the table, but she did not feel fear. Her body might feel whatever it liked, but she’d disconnected it from her heart. Crossing her legs, she leaned back in her chair. “I will play for her debt.”
“You!” He snorted. “What will you wager? This game has a five-thousand-dollar buy-in. You could scrub the bathrooms of the entire Hale Ka’nani Resort for years and not have that kind of money.”
“I offer a trade.”
“You have nothing of value.”
“I have myself.”
Her boss stared at her, then licked his lips. “You mean—”
“Yes. I mean you could have me in bed.” She looked at him steadily, feeling nothing. Her skin felt cold, her heart as frozen as the blue iceberg that sank the Titanic. “You wanted me, Mr. Hudson. Here I am.”
There was a low whistle, an intake of breath around the room.
Bree slowly gazed around the table. She had everyone’s complete attention. Without flinching, she let her gaze taunt each man in turn, all of them larger, older and more powerful than she could ever be. “Who will take the gamble?”
“Well now.” Looking her over, the Texas oil baron thoughtfully tilted back his cowboy hat. “This game just got a lot more interesting.”
In the corner of her eye, she saw a dark, hulking shadow come around the table. A man sat down in the empty chair on the other side of the dealer, and Bree instantly turned to him with languid eyes. “Allow me to join your game, and I could be yours….”
Bree’s voice choked off midsentence as she sucked in her breath.
She knew those cold blue eyes. The high cheekbones, sharp as a razor blade. The strong jaw that proclaimed ruthless, almost thuggish strength. So powerful, so darkly handsome, so sensual.
So impossible.
“No,” she whispered. Not after ten years. Not here. “It can’t be.”
Vladimir Xendzov’s eyes narrowed with recognition, and then she felt the rush of his sudden searing hatred like fire.
“Have you met Prince Vladimir?” Greg Hudson purred.
“Prince?” Bree choked out. She was unable to look away from Vladimir’s face, the face of the man she’d dreamed about unwillingly for the past ten years.
His cruel, sensual lips curved as he leaned back in his chair.
“Miss Dalton,” he drawled. “I didn’t know you were in Hawaii. And gambling. What a pleasant surprise.”
His low, husky voice, so close to her, so real, caused a shiver across her skin. She stared at him in shock.
Her one lost love. Not a ghost. Not a dream. But here, at the Hale Ka’nani Resort, not six feet away from her.
“So what’s on offer? Your body, is it?” Vladimir’s words were cold, even sardonic. “What a charming prize that would be, though hardly exclusive. Shared by thousands, I should imagine.”
And just like that, the ice around her heart exploded into a million glass splinters. She sucked in her breath.
Vladimir Xendzov had made her love him with all the reckless passion of an innocent, untamed heart. He’d made her a better person—and then he’d destroyed her. Her lips parted. “Vladimir.”
He stiffened. “Your Highness will do.”
She didn’t realize she’d spoken his name aloud. Glancing to the right and left, she matched his sardonic tone. “So you’re using your title now.”
His blue eyes burned through her. “It is mine by right.”
She knew it was true. His great-grandfather had been one of the last great princes of Russia, before he’d died fighting the Red Army in Siberia, after sending his wife and baby son to safety in Alaskan exile. As a poverty-stricken child, Vladimir had been mocked with the title at school. When he was twenty-five, he’d told her that he never intended to use the title, that it still felt like a mockery, an honor he hadn’t earned—and was worthless, anyway.
But apparently, now, he’d found a use for it.
“You didn’t always think so,” Bree said.
“I am no longer the boy you once knew,” he said coldly.
She swallowed. Ten years ago, she’d thought Vladimir was the last honest man on earth. She’d loved him enough to give up the wicked skills that made her special. When he’d held her tight on a cold Alaskan night and begged her to be his bride, it had been the happiest night of her life. Then he’d ruthlessly deserted her the next morning, before she could tell him the truth. When she needed him most, he’d stabbed her in the back. Some prince. “What are you doing here?”
His lip curled. Without answering her, he turned away. “The table is full,” he said to the other players. “We do not want her.”
“Speak for yourself,” one of them muttered, looking at Bree.
Looking around, she jolted in her chair. She’d forgotten the other men were there, looking at her like hungry wolves at a raw mutton chop. The beautiful, sexily dressed women standing in a circle behind them were glaring as if they would like to tear her limb from limb. Perhaps she’d taken her act a little too far.
Feel nothing, she ordered her shivering heart. I have ice for a heart. She looked away from the large, powerful men and sharp-taloned women. They couldn’t hurt her. The only man who’d ever been able to really hurt her was Vladimir. And what more could he do, that he hadn’t done already?
One thing, a cold voice whispered. Ten years ago, he’d taken her heart and soul.
But not her virginity.
And he never would, she told herself fiercely. Bree didn’t know what Vladimir Xendzov was doing in Honolulu, but she didn’t care. He was ancient history. All that mattered now was protecting Josie.
To save her little sister, Bree would play cards with the devil himself.
With an intake of breath, she lifted her chin, ignoring Vladimir as she looked around the table. “It is for this first game only that I offer my body. If I lose, the winner will get me, along with all the money in the pot. But if I win—” when I win, she amended silently “—I will only bet money. Until I possess the entire amount of my sister’s debt.”
As she spoke, her heart started to resume a normal beat. Bluffing, playing card games, was home to her. She’d learned poker when her father had pulled her up to their table in Anchorage and taught her at the tender age of four. By six, shortly after her mother had died two months after giving birth to Josie, Bree was a child prodigy accompanying her father to games—and, when he saw how much money she could make, his partner in crime.
Leaning forward, she looked at each man in turn, ignoring the death stares of the women behind them. “What is your answer?”
“We are here to play poker,” another man complained. “Not for hookers.”
Bree twirled her long blond hair slowly around one of her slender fingers and looked through her lashes at the Silicon Valley tycoon. “You don’t recognize me, do you, Mr. McNamara?”
“Should I?”
She gave him a smile. “I guess not. But you knew my father, Black Jack Dalton.” She paused. “Have you enjoyed the painting you paid him to steal from the archives of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles? When did you learn it was a fake?”
The Silicon Valley tycoon stiffened.
“And Mr. Vanderwald—” she turned to the gray-haired, overweight man sitting beside her boss “—twelve years ago you were nearly wiped out, weren’t you? Investing in an Alaskan oil well that never existed.”
The Belgian land developer scowled. “How the devil did you—”
“You thought my father conned you. But it was my idea. It was me,” she whispered, lowering her eyelashes as she ran her hand down the softly worn leather of her black motorcycle jacket. “It was all me.”
“You,” the fat man breathed, staring at her.
She was doing well. Then, from the corner of her eye, she felt Vladimir’s sardonic gaze. It hit her cheek and the side of her neck like a blast of ice. Her heart skidded with the effort it took to ignore him. He was the one man who’d ever really known her. The mark she’d stupidly let see behind her mask. She felt his hatred. Felt his scorn.
Fine. She felt the same about him. Let him hate her. His hatred bounced off the thickening ice of her scorn for him. She’d thought he was so perfect and noble. She’d killed herself trying to be worthy. But when he’d learned the truth about her past, he’d deserted her, without giving her a chance to explain.
