Purchased For Revenge
She gazed at him helplessly as he walked towards her. Her heart had started to beat. Not racing, but with slow, heavy beats that seemed to take an eternity. Time seemed to be slowing down around her.
He came up to her.
She could not see his face properly in the dim light. The moonlight slanted across his face, turning it to planes and shadows. Turning her limbs to sponge. Her hands tightened on the stone balustrade. She ignored the cold that bit into her flesh.
It was the only part of her that was cold. In the rest of her a slow heat was burning.
‘Why did you? Run?’
The sound of his voice, with its low-pitched, accented timbre, caught at her senses.
‘I don’t know.’
It sounded to her ears such a stupid answer to make. But it was an honest one. It drew a slight smile from him. An indentation of his mouth. Her eyes went to it, drawn irresistibly. It did something to her. Something that fanned the slow-burning heat inside her and sucked the breath out of her lungs. She felt herself stepping back from the balustrade, letting go of it. Her arms fell helplessly to her sides.
What was happening? What was happening here, now, with this man who had drawn her eyes like a magnet as he’d approached her, and from whom she had run, fled, sensing an imperative that she must if she had any sanity obey, because he was only a fantasy, could only be a fantasy, nothing more? And yet he had come after her, followed her here, now…and she did not know why…
‘I just knew that I had to run…’
Her voice was still low, strange even to her ears.
He took another step towards her.
‘You don’t have to run from me,’ he said.
Eve looked at him. The shadowed light was still etching his face, the moonlight glinting off his eyes. There was something in his eyes…
He murmured something. She did not understand it. It was not French, or English. There had only been a few words, and she could not identify the language. Then he was speaking again, this time in English.
‘Who are you?’
Expression flickered in her face. Her lips parted, but she did not speak. She did not want to speak. Did not want to tell him who she was. It didn’t matter whether this man had or hadn’t heard of her father—and anyway, why should he have? There were a lot of rich people in the world and they did not all know each other. It was because suddenly, urgently, she wanted to be…someone quite different. A woman who could, if she wanted, walk out under the Mediterranean sky and gaze into the eyes of a fantasy come to life…
Prevarication came to her.
‘Why do you think I’m English?’ she answered, sticking to French.
The smile indented at his mouth again, and yet again she felt her breath catch.
‘Aren’t you?’ he mocked, very gently, keeping to English.
His words, accented as they were, with that strange, elusive accent, resonated through her. She gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders.
‘You’re not French either,’ she returned, still in that language.
‘No,’ he agreed, but said no more.
Eve knew why. Like her, he did not want this moment to be encumbered by nationalities, identities, categories and classifications. Like her, he wanted it to be—pure. That was the word that formed in her mind. Pure.
Out here, in the clean, fresh air, with the wind from the sea soughing so gently in the tall pine trees, in the clear moonlit night, it was nothing to do with the luxury world of the hotel, with its high-stakes casino, its three-star Michelin restaurant, its marina for multimillion-pound yachts, and its car park full of deluxe cars for deluxe people.
Nothing to do with the world of her father. Beyond the reach of his long, malign shadow.
She knew she was being foolish. She couldn’t escape from being who she was, what she was. Nor could this man here, who might possibly be some kind of impostor, interloper, but who was, she knew, with the deep recognition and experience of the world she had been brought up in, one of the rich men of the world.
But for this short space of time they would both escape from who they were, what they were.
‘Why did you follow me here?’ She spoke in French still. She didn’t quite know why.
He smiled again, not a mere indentation of his mouth, but almost a laugh, lifting his face, showing the whiteness of his teeth.
‘No Frenchwoman would ask that!’ The mockery was there again, but it was conspiratorial, not cruel.
She gave an answering, unwilling smile, acknowledging her mistake.
‘And no woman,’ he went on—and his voice had changed, the timbre deepening, sending the heat seeping through her veins again, ‘as beautiful as you need ask that question.’
For a moment he held her eyes, then hers flickered away, uncertain. As they did so the breeze freshened over her bare arms, and she gave a slight shiver.
He was there immediately. He stripped off his tuxedo jacket and draped it around her shoulders. The warmth from his body was still in the silk lining. Eve felt her throat tighten. It was so intimate a gesture. She felt her heart-rate flutter again.
His hands were still on her shoulders as he stood half behind her. She twisted her head back.
‘Thank you.’ Her voice was low, almost breathless.
His face was close. Far too close. Far, far too close. The world disappeared. Simply ceased to exist. Only his eyes existed, looking deep into hers. Moonlight reflected in their depths. A pulse beat at her throat. She felt her hand move, reach up, and with the lightest touch her fingers traced his jaw. She felt it tense beneath her feathering touch. Saw the pupils of his eyes flare. Heard the intake of breath in his throat. Caught the heady, masculine scent of him.
Then her hand fluttered free, and her mouth dried at what she had just done. Touched a complete stranger like that. Instinctively, impulsively, she pulled away, stepping forward to seize the balustrade again.
‘I’m sorry!’ The apology rushed from her in a low, abashed voice. Her head lowered, and she gazed unseeingly down at the wavelets lapping on the rocks below the terrace. She bit her lip.
‘You apologise?’ She could hear his accent. It shivered down her spine, rippling through her blood. Setting her body resonating finely, so finely…
He had stepped close to her again, was standing behind her now. And once again she felt the pressure of his hands on her shoulders, through the fine material of the jacket he’d draped around her. The pressure seemed to anchor her to the earth, the turning earth.
‘There is no need to apologise.’ She could hear amusement in his voice, but something else ran beneath the amusement.
He turned her around. Her back was against the balustrade, and he was standing right in front of her. His hands slipped to either side of her face, long, strong fingers sliding into her hair. He was tall, taller than her, looking down at her. His hair was sable in the night.
She gazed at him. Helpless. Motionless.
She did not breathe. Did not do anything, anything at all, that might break this moment. Might shatter the reality of what was happening. She was standing here, in the moonlight, by the sea’s edge, and this man, whom she did not know, could never know, held her face in his hands and looked down at her.
He kissed her.
She saw his head start to lower, realised in that fraction of a second what he was going to do. Realised, in that same fraction of a second, that she would let him. That she would rather die than not let this man kiss her here, now, like this, in this moment out of time, out of reality. Out of sanity.
She closed her eyes.
Closed her eyes and let him kiss her. A stranger whom she would never know, whom she could never know. A stranger she would walk away from. She would never have this moment again.
But she would have it now. Just for these few, precious seconds. An eye-blink in time.
But hers now. Here.
And nothing, no one, could take it away from her.
Her lips parted.
He kissed her slowly, like honey, grazing her with a velvet touch, moving over her mouth like softest silk.
Then his head lifted away, his hands dropped from her face.
She opened her eyes.
His face was different somehow, his eyes different.
And at that moment something tremored through her. The world went still again. So still.
Then, into the stillness and the silence, she heard the sound of a motor boat intrude, coming out of the marina on the far side of the hotel and heading out to sea, towards one of the rings of lights that marked the presence of a motor yacht moored in deep water.
Her eyes flared. Reality flooded back. The world started up again.
‘I have to go!’
She slipped out from where she was, undraping the tuxedo jacket as she did so, and thrusting it towards him.
‘Wait—’
It was a command. She obeyed. Her breath was tight in her chest.
‘I have to go,’ she repeated.
Her hand lifted, almost as if to reach to touch his sleeve, so short a distance away. Then, her eyes flaring again, she whirled around, gathered her skirts, and ran.
Like Cinderella from her ball.
But leaving behind no glass slipper.
Alexei watched her go. This time he let her run. He didn’t want to. He wanted to stride after her and seize her back. Stop her running. Keep her.
Hold her.
Fold his arms around her and hold her very close.
Instead, he let her go. He had no choice, he knew.
Reality had flooded back. The reality of what his life was about.
And what it was about was not this. Not holding in his arms a woman who had taken his breath away, who had been, for these few brief, fleeting moments, like a sip of purest spring water after stagnant dregs. Whose lips had touched his and in that touch touched more. Touched something deep inside…
No. Grimly he shrugged on his tuxedo jacket again. This was just some fantasy he could not afford. Not now.
Reality was waiting for him. Waiting for him as it had waited all his life. Hard and unyielding. And there was no escape from it.
He headed back to the hotel.
CHAPTER TWO
EVE walked back into the casino. The heat, the constant murmur, the smell of wine and cognac, the fumes of cigars and cigarettes, the heavy perfumes and scented air, oppressed her instantly. But she ignored it. Steadily, she threaded her way towards her father. The pile of chips at his side had diminished. So had the level of cognac in his glass. There was the stub of a cigar in the ashtray, and another was between his thick fingers as he pushed more chips onto a square.
Silently, she took her place behind him. He acknowledged her resumed presence only by a low, perfunctory admonition.
‘You took your time.’
‘I needed some fresh air,’ she said. Her voice was very calm, her manner composed. After all, what else was there for her to be? What else was there to do but what she had been brought here to do, to be a social foil for her father?
Who else was there for her to be except her father’s daughter? Eve Hawkwood.
She wasn’t anyone else. She wasn’t a woman who could weave dreams about a man she had seen for no more than a few minutes walking towards her, who’d made her body still, her heart race, her breath stop. She wasn’t a woman who could kiss that same stranger in the moonlight. It was a fantasy, nothing more, conjured by her own longing for escape.
For a second, piercing and anguished, she felt again what she had felt as she had lifted her mouth to his, felt again the cool slide of his hands to cup her face, long fingers grazing in her hair, felt again her eyes start to shut…
No. Rigidly she held them open again. Made them look, with her habitual composure, her inexpressive indifference, at the scene in front of her, at the spinning whirl of the roulette wheel, the chips conducting their remorseless dance around the table, from player to chequered cloth, to croupier to player. Hypnotic in its remorselessness.
Then, with an awareness of her father’s mood that her instinct for survival and self-preservation had honed since childhood, she saw his shoulders tense.
She looked up from the table.
Blackness drummed in on her. Her hand groped automatically for the back of her father’s chair. Vision blurred, then cleared.
The man she had just kissed was walking towards the roulette table.
For one blazing, incandescent moment, Eve’s heart leapt. Then, like a slow draining, she realised that he was not looking at her.
Not looking for her.
And even as she realised that, she realised too that somewhere, buried deep inside, there had been a hope—frail, pathetic, but there all the same—that the man who had turned her limbs to water with a single glance from his dark, compelling eyes would not let her run from him. Would not let that single, momentary kiss be enough. The slow draining of that frail pathetic hope was complete.
He had not even seen her. Had not even registered her presence.
She was invisible to him.
He had kissed her so short a time ago, but now he did not know her. Did not see her.
But even as she let go of the last remnant of her futile hope, leaving a dry, drained emptiness inside her, she realised why he was not looking at her.
And as she did, a dark, ominous foreboding began to gel inside her.
He was not walking towards the roulette table. He was walking towards her father.
And something about the way he was walking sent a chill down her spine.
Controlled. Purposeful.
Deadly.
The word formed in her mind, and she could not unform it. It hung there, making her stomach pool with cold.
She tensed in every muscle.
Hawkwood had paused in his play. Alexei saw his hand still a moment, before continuing to position the next batch of chips he was pointlessly sacrificing to his own arrogant bluff—the bluff that said he could afford to lose, and go on losing, the way he was tonight.
Alexei knew better. Giles Hawkwood could not afford to lose a penny more. His yacht, his properties, every possible asset, had all been securitised to raise cash to buy up his own company shares wherever he could find them. But he was too late. As of this morning, AC International had agreed to acquire—in a very friendly and mutually profitable merger—an Australian company that just happened to possess a sufficient number of Hawkwood shares to give Alexei the undisputed majority holding.
Giles Hawkwood was—finally—in the palm of his hand.
Powerless, and broke.
He just didn’t know it yet.
And Alexei didn’t have any intention of letting him know it yet.
He wanted to savour the knowledge that he would be meeting his prey for the first—and last—time, and his prey did not even know that he was beaten.
He reached the roulette table, and stopped.
Waiting. Waiting for Giles Hawkwood to make his move.
‘Constantin.’
Eve heard her father say the name, but his reason for saying it did not register. All that registered was that the man whom she had thought a fantasy, whom she had kissed in the moonlight, by the sea’s edge, from whom she had run because there was nothing else for her to do, was now standing a handful of metres away from her, on the other side of the roulette table. The people sitting there had automatically, it seemed, made way for him, and now he stood looking across and down at her father.
For a moment he said nothing, yet Eve felt her stomach pool with cold again.
Then, with a slow welling of disbelief, the name her father had addressed him by registered.
Constantin.
Alexei Constantin.
This was Alexei Constantin.
Shock knifed through her. And hollowing disbelief. She felt herself sway, and grip the chair-back as if it alone kept her upright.
Then her father leant back. Instinctively, automatically, she pulled her hand away.
She never touched her father. Never let him touch her.
He was looking across at Alexei Constantin, who was looking back down at him. His face was unreadable, expressionless. But there was something in it, in the controlled stance of his body, that was completely, absolutely different from the man who had walked towards her on the terrace such a short time ago.
This was a different man.
Her father took a deep inhalation from his cigar, then rested it against the ashtray. His eyes never left the other man’s.
‘So,’ he said, ‘an opportune encounter, wouldn’t you say?’
His voice was grating.
Even, to Eve’s ears, baiting.
Alexei Constantin’s expression did not change. ‘Would I?’ he responded.
His voice was different. As different as the man who looked down at her father with that chill, expressionless face.
She realised, with a start of unease, that the play at the roulette table had halted. So had the conversation around the table. Everyone was focussing on the exchange taking place.
It must be obvious to her father as well. His eyes moved dismissively, then he nodded at Alexei Constantin.
‘Come to dinner tomorrow night. On my yacht.’ He lifted his cigar again, and took another leisurely puff from his cigar, relaxing more deeply into the chair carrying his bulk. ‘I’ll send the launch at, oh, say half-eight?’
His eyes, pouched from burgundy and cognac, were heavy.
For the briefest moment Alexei Constantin did not speak. Then he gave the very slightest nod.
‘Make it nine. I like to check the Asia Pacific opening prices. It’s always interesting to see what’s moved.’
Now it was his turn for his voice to be baiting. Eve saw the colour mount fleetingly in her father’s mottled cheeks, then subside again.
‘You do that,’ he contented himself with responding. Then, as if to regain the upper hand, he snapped his fingers at the croupier to resume play, and pushed some more chips onto the table. With a mix of relief and regret that the incident was over, the other guests around the table took their cue, and restarted their conversations.
Alexei Constantin did not move. For a long, oppressive moment Eve saw him continue to look down at her father. He was very still.
The stillness of a predator before it struck…
The cold pooled again in Eve’s stomach.
This man is dangerous…
Deadly.
The words had formed before she could stop them.
Did she move? Did she make a noise, however suppressed, in her throat? She didn’t know.
All she knew was that suddenly, out of nowhere, Alexei Constantin’s gaze shifted.
Lifted to her.
And froze.
Shock ripped through him. Shock and something much, much worse.
He let his eyes rest on her. Deliberately did so. Forcing himself.
He had not gone after her. Had not called her back. Had let her run.
Because it was not the time. Not the place. He was too close, too close to his goal. Too close to the moment he had spent his adult life determined, striving, to reach.
The moment when Giles Hawkwood would be destroyed.
And nothing, nothing on this earth, in this life, could get in the way of that.
Not even a woman whose beauty was like no other he had ever seen, who had drawn him as no other woman ever had, who had touched him as no other had.
Who had kissed him in the velvet night, with moonlight in her hair…
And who had run from him. Unknown. Unnamed.
Until this moment.
The moment that had revealed her for who she was.
Eve Hawkwood. The daughter of the man he was about to destroy.
He went on looking at her. She returned his gaze. It was as blank as his.
Then, as if a knife had cut him down, he turned and walked away.
Eve Hawkwood.
Alexei said the name again in his head. Letting the two words bore through his brain.
It had to be her. Doing the social honours for Giles Hawkwood.
Social honours? Alexei’s mouth twisted savagely. Anger bit through him. Black and roiling. It had been breeding in him since the moment shock had ripped through him as he had looked at the woman behind Giles Hawkwood’s chair and realised who she was.
What she was.
And what she was, he knew, with the black anger biting through him, was good. Very good.
He had to give her that.
Skilful in the extreme.
She had played it with an expertise that was unequalled. Every little touch had been perfect.
The pose by the entrance to the casino, the perfectly timed eye-contact, the pause, and then the equally perfectly timed flight to the romantically deserted garden.
And then…
No. He wouldn’t allow himself to think about ‘and then’.
It had never happened. He had never kissed her. Never kissed her with moonlight in her hair, and cool, soft silk on her lips. Never felt that strange, inexplicable emotion so deep within him that he could not tell what it was, unknown, mysterious, like the woman he’d thought he was kissing…
Who had been someone else entirely all along.
He walked on out of the casino. In the lobby, he cast around.
He needed a drink.
Somewhere dark, where he could be left alone.
Without missing a beat he headed for the broad swathe of stairs that led not up, but down, down to the hotel’s nightclub in the basement. That would do him fine.
Alexei Constantin.
That was who her fantasy was—the man hunting down her father’s company. Bitter irony pierced Eve. Of all the men, in all the world, her dream man was Alexei Constantin…
But even if he hadn’t been it would not have made any difference, she knew, with a sagging of her shoulders in defeat. She would still have had to run, like Cinderella, from a ball she could never go to. Condemned to the only life she had, never to seek escape again.
A voice pierced her bleakness.
‘Cherie, you are not thinking about me—I can tell. If you were, you would look happier.’
Eve gave an apologetic moue.
‘I’m sorry, Pierre. I’m not very good company tonight.’
‘Tant pis—I shall make you smile, and then I shall take you to bed.’
A reluctant twitch formed at Eve’s mouth. Pierre Roflet had been trying to take her to bed ever since she’d known him, and right now she was glad of his company. He’d sauntered up to the roulette table half an hour ago, exclaiming at finding Eve here in the South of France unannounced, and swiftly removed her to the nightclub below the casino. Her father had turned briefly, seen who it was, and nodded his permission.
Eve had gone with Pierre with relief. She’d wanted only to return to the yacht, but she knew her father would not permit it until he was ready to go, and that could be some hours away. His luck, so it seemed, had finally turned at the roulette table.
So instead she was whiling away the time to the throb of music in the dimly lit nightclub, with Pierre to distract her. He was amusing, very lightweight, but not unkind. And right now she could do with some amusing, kind and lightweight company.
She’d let Pierre dance with her once, then retired to a table set among armchairs, letting Pierre rattle on with gossipy anecdotes and bestow over-the-top compliments on her. She’d sipped coffee and felt some of the bleakness drain from her.
Yet even so, now, when Pierre had abandoned her to order another coffee and a cocktail, she felt it returning. Blankly, she gazed out over the crowded dance floor. So many couples—some permanent, most temporary. While she…
For a few pointless moments she let her imagination go where it wanted. To the fantasy that had her in its grip. Out over the dance floor, to where she would be, her hands at the nape of his neck, her head resting on his chest, his hands resting lightly, oh so lightly, at her waist…
Sharply, she set aside her fantasy. Indulging it would only feed it, and what was the point of that? None. None at all.