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,
