usual blare of horns and noise from Monte Carlo’s busy streets failed to penetrate the walls and windows of the old villa. The room, she thought numbly, was quiet. Too quiet.
She faced him, hands bunched inside her coat pockets. “Yes?”
“Do take off your coat,” he said irritably. “You make me nervous standing there all bundled up like that.”
Silently she unbuttoned the tweed coat, tugging it off her shoulders before laying it across the couch. “What did you want to speak to me about?”
Johann clasped a drink in his hands, the glass resting on his chest. “I’ve settled my debt to Bartolo.”
The dark gloom hanging over her head immediately lifted. Sam felt almost dizzy with relief. She couldn’t hide her smile of delight. “You did? Excellent! I’m so glad—”
“He’ll be here in an hour to collect you.”
It was too rapid a mood swing, too harshly said. Sam exhaled hard, then breathed in again. “What?”
But Johann didn’t speak. Instead a deathly quiet shrouded the living room. Sam held her breath, not thinking, not understanding, certain Johann would clear the misunderstanding.
Yet he said nothing.
She heard nothing.
Only the clink of ice shifting and melting in his glass.
“Say something,” she choked, feeling as if she were suffocating in the heavy stillness.
“I did. You just didn’t like what I said.”
Little spots danced before her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. She’d heard wrong. Had to have heard wrong. “Then say it again.”
Baron van Bergen’s lashes dropped. “You heard me the first time.”
Sam couldn’t believe it had come to this. He’d been an addict ever since she’d met him but this…this…
This was unthinkable.
Impossible.
The end of reason itself.
Sam took a frightened step toward him before freezing, unable to take another. “You didn’t give me away.”
Johann’s eyes opened briefly, and he shot her a dirty look before slinking lower in his chair and keeping his cocktail tumbler pressed to his forehead, expression increasingly pained.
“I didn’t give you,” he contradicted sourly, eyes closed. “I lost you.”
“Lost me.” Her voice nearly broke, her English accent sharper, more pronounced. Sam balled her hand in a fist behind her back, nails biting into her palm. “How could you lose me?”
“Things happen.”
He was wrong about that, Sam thought, hands tingling, body cold and icy as if her blood had frozen in her veins. Things only happened to Johann van Bergen. “To you,” she said bitterly.
He opened one eye, looked at her, deep wrinkles fanning from his eyes. “Since you’re not doing anything, liebchen, could you get me another drink?”
Liebchen. Liebling. Nothing like good old German endearments he didn’t mean, had never meant. Seething, Sam dug her nails harder into her skin. “No.”
Grunting, Johann rolled the cold tumbler across his forehead. He was obviously hungover. He’d been out all night, had only recently stumbled in. “Explain this to me.”
His lashes lifted, his pale blue gaze slid over her, inspecting her. “Is that a new dress?”
Sam glanced down at her cream brocade dress with rich lavender and purple threads, the hem of the dress edged with silky purple ribbon. The dress had been part of her trousseau two years ago, part of the elegant designer wardrobe Johann had bought for her before she’d discovered he was deep in debt and couldn’t afford groceries much less fine clothes. “No. We can’t afford new clothes, remember?”
He grunted again, rolled the glass in the opposite direction over his brow. “Mein Gott, you remind me of my mother. She was a nag, too.”
Sam didn’t flinch, stooping instead to numbly pick up a gold tasseled pillow that had fallen from the threadbare sofa onto the hardwood floor and tossed it back onto the couch.
Johann could mock her all he wanted. Theirs had been a marriage of convenience. Nothing more, nothing less. She didn’t care now what he thought of her, hadn’t cared for his opinion when she’d married him. The only reason she’d agreed to the marriage in the first place was to protect his child. A child he seemed determined to neglect and reject.
“I’m not going to him,” she said now, “Or with him, or anywhere near him. You’ll have to find another way to settle your debt.”
“Oh, you’re tough now, are you? I wonder if you’d be so tough if I’d wagered my darling daughter instead of you.” He paused. “Gabriela, my beautiful little angel daughter.” He laughed low, mockingly and shook his glass, rattling the ice cubes. “I did consider it, though. More than once. But Bartolo was interested in you. Not sure why. You’ve no money, no education, no connections, no family. You’re British. Boring. And might I add, frigid.”
“It shouldn’t matter if I’m frigid since there won’t be any physical intimacy.”
“Not with me, anyway. But I can’t see him taking you and not taking you, if you get my meaning.”
She did, all too well, and it was all she could do to keep her disgust from showing.
To think that Johann would wager her…
And to think that this Bartolo would accept…
Sam had put up with Johann’s abuse for years and she told herself not to let the insults hurt, told herself his opinion didn’t matter but on the inside she was cold, so cold, as if the December chill had burrowed all the way through her. She was there to protect Gabby, nothing else mattered. “So what happens now?”
“Cristiano comes to get you. You’re his problem now and I wish him all the luck in the world.”
“Johann!”
“Must you talk so loud? I’ve a hellish headache.”
She lowered her voice marginally. “This isn’t funny.”
He slunk lower in his chair. “No, it’s not funny. I’ve lost everything. My cars. My penthouse. Now my villa. It’s all gone.”
Her throat felt raw. She couldn’t disguise her bitterness. “Why do you gamble?”
“Christ, Sam, it wasn’t like I killed someone.” He took a gulp from his glass. “It was a mistake.”
Sam stared at the man who’d been her husband for exactly four hundred and sixty-five days and her employer for two years before that. He
