.
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