Rich Man's Revenge: Dealing Her Final Card / Seducing His Opposition / A Reputation For Revenge

Biting her lip, she looked away, scrubbing the floor harder with her sponge. But he was making so much noise, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.

He grabbed homemade bread from the cupboard and ripped off a hunk. Tossing it onto a plate, he chopped through it with a big knife, like a grim executioner with an ax. She gulped, watching in bewilderment as he added cheese, chicken, even mustard and tomato. He opened the fridge and added a bottle of water and then a linen napkin to the tray. His Italian leather shoes were heavy against the marble floor as he came over to her, holding out the tray with a glower.

“Your lunch,” he said coldly.

Her belly rumbled in response. She’d had nothing to eat since a cheerless Christmas dinner yesterday, a bologna sandwich eaten alone at the end of her housekeeping shift. Sitting back on her haunches, Bree wiped her sweaty forehead and looked up at him.

Unlike her, Vladimir had taken a shower, and looked sleek, urbane and civilized in a freshly pressed black button-down shirt and black trousers. His tanned skin glowed with health, smelling faintly of soap and sandalwood.

While she …

She wasn’t feeling so pretty. She’d peeled off her boots to work barefoot on the wet floor. Her long blond hair was twisted into a messy knot at the back of her head, to lift it off her hot neck. Her T-shirt was sweaty all the way through, and in the humidity of Hawaii, even with air-conditioning she knew she looked like a swamp creature from a 1950s horror movie.

She narrowed her eyes. If he thought she was going to lick his boots with gratitude for the simple courtesy of lunch, he had another think coming. His serf!

She looked at the tray. He waited.

“I don’t like tomatoes,” she said pleasantly.

Vladimir dropped the tray with a noisy clatter on the floor beside her. “Tough. I have no desire to cater to you, and Mrs. Kalani decided to take the rest of the day off.”

Bree looked up at him, and a slow grin lifted her cheeks. “She gave you a hard time about me, didn’t she?”

“Enjoy your lunch.” He pointed to an immaculate section of the floor. “You missed a spot.”

Vladimir had thrown the tray down as if she were the family golden retriever. Rising to her feet after he left, she washed her hands, then took the tray to the dining table like a civilized person, ready for a fight if he came back to give her one. Somewhat to her disappointment, he didn’t.

Once she’d removed the tomatoes, the freshly baked bread made the rest of the sandwich delicious. Honey mustard was a nice touch, too. And the cold, sparkling water was just what she’d wanted. She wiped her mouth.

He was still a brute. Her eyes narrowed as she remembered his cold words.

For the rest of your life, you will work for me, Bree. For free. You will never be paid, or allowed to leave. Your only goal, until you die, is to serve me and give me pleasure.

He didn’t know who he was dealing with. She finished off the cold water and tidied up the tray. He thought a little housecleaning would kill her? She’d been training for this for the past ten years.

She was going to escape this captivity. As soon as she could formulate a plan.

As the afternoon wore on, Bree scrubbed her way fiercely up the stairs and then cleaned five guest bedrooms, which had already been as sparkling clean as the rest of the house. But as she reached the master bedroom, the sun was starting to lower in the western sky, and her whole body ached. She couldn’t stop yawning. Looking at the four-poster bed, she was tempted to take a short power nap. Vladimir would never know, she told herself. Climbing onto the large, soft bed, she closed her eyes—just for a few minutes.

With a gasp, Bree sat up suddenly in bed. The room was now dark. She looked over at the clock. It was almost seven o’clock. Dinnertime.

She’d slept for hours.

Feeling sweaty and gross, her body aching, Bree rose stiffly from the still-made bed, stretching her arms over her head. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. So where was her slave driver? Why hadn’t he discovered her napping? Tsar Vladimir the Terrible must be hard at work, she decided, planning a new way to humiliate her, or dreaming up some nefarious new attack on his brother. When she’d been cleaning his home office, he’d been talking rather intensely in Russian on the phone. But even then, his smoldering gaze had slowly wandered over her backside as she scrubbed the floors on all fours.

Fine. Let him look.

With a deep breath, Bree closed her eyes. As long as he didn’t touch. As long as she didn’t have to feel his lips, hot and hard against her own, as he held her so tightly against his body …

“You’re awake.”

At the sound of Vladimir’s husky voice from the doorway, she jumped, whirling around. “You—you knew I was sleeping?” she stammered.

His gaze was intense as he came toward her. “Yes.”

She felt suddenly very small as his tall body loomed over hers. She licked her lips. “So why didn’t you wake me up and start bossing me around?”

Reaching out, he brushed a tendril of hair out of her eyes. “Because you looked like an angel.”

His voice was low. Sensual. Bree’s eyes widened as she looked up—no, not at his lips! His eyes! Trembling with awareness at how they were once again alone in his bedroom, she tightened her hands at her sides. “Um. Thanks. For letting me borrow your bed.” She edged away from it. “I should probably be getting back to work….”

His eyes glimmered. “Our bed.”

“What?”

Vladimir’s large hand wrapped around the post’s polished wood. “You called it my bed. It is ours.”

Her lips parted. Then she folded her arms protectively against her chest. “Look. Whatever our wager was, you can’t actually expect me to …”

“Expect you to what?”

“Sleep with you.”

“You were serious when you offered it as a prize.” He looked down at her. “‘My skills at cards are nothing compared to what I can do to you in bed,’ you said.” His tone was mocking. “‘A single hour with me will change your whole life,’ you said!”

Shivering, she looked away. “I was bluffing,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know how to do those things.” Her cheeks colored, and shame burned through her as she looked at the marble floor. “I’ve never been with a man before. I’ve never even kissed a man—since …” She bit her lip and muttered, “Not since you.”

He stared at her. “You’re a virgin?”

His voice dripped disbelief. A lump rose to her throat, and she nodded.

“Right,” he said scornfully. “You’re a virgin.”

She lifted her head in outrage. “You think I’m a liar?”

“I know you are.” His cool blue eyes met hers. “You lie about everything. You can’t help it. Lying is in your blood.”

Lying is in your blood. Before Bree’s mother died, her parents had been regular law-abiding citizens, childhood sweethearts married at eighteen, high school teachers who mowed the lawn in Alaska’s short, bright summers and shoveled snow through eight-month winters. Her mother had taught English, her father science. Then, at thirty, Lois Dalton had contracted cancer. Newly pregnant with her second child, she’d put off chemo treatments that might risk her baby. Two months after Josie’s birth, Lois had died. Jack Dalton lost his wife, his best friend and, some said, his mind….

He’d quit his job as a teacher. He left the new baby with a sitter. And every day, after he picked up Bree from first grade, he took her to backroom poker games. First in Anchorage, and then to ports where Alaskan cruises deposited new tourists each day. With each success, his plans had grown more daring. And they’d worked. At first.

Pushing the memory aside, Bree shook her head. “I’m not lying. I’m a virgin!”

“Stop it. You made the bet. You made your bed.” Vladimir lightly trailed his hand above her head, along the carved wooden post. “Now you will sleep in it.”

She glared at him, setting her jaw. “I only made that bet because I was desperate—because I had nothing else remotely valuable to offer! For Josie—”

“Josie was safe. You had more than enough.”

A sudden thought struck Bree, and she caught her breath. “Did you … let me win?” she whispered. “Is that why you kept raising the stakes—why you egged me on during the game? So that I could cover Josie’s debt?”

His jaw tightened. “I thought she was some innocent kid that Hudson had lured into the game. Not like you.” His eyes flashed as he looked down at Bree. “You could have walked away. But when I offered you the one-card gamble, you accepted. There was no desperation. It was pure greed. And it told me what I needed to know.”

She swallowed. “What?”

“That you hadn’t changed. You were still using your body as bait.”

She took a deep breath and whispered, “I never thought in a million years that I would lose that game.” Exhaustion suddenly swamped her like a wave. Tears rose to her eyes. “And if you were any kind of decent man, you would never expect me to actually …”

“To what? Follow through on your promise?” He gave a hard laugh. “No, what kind of monster would expect that?”

Bree exhaled. “How stupid can I be, appealing to your better nature?”

“I won. You lost.” He folded his arms, staring at her with his eyes narrowed. “You have many, many faults, Bree Dalton. Almost too many to count. In fact, your faults are like grains of sand on a beach that stretches across the whole wide world …”

“All right, I get it,” she muttered. “You don’t exactly admire me.”

“… but I never thought,” he continued, his eyes glinting, “that you’d be a sore loser.”

Bree stared up at him mutinously. Then, setting her jaw, she turned away and stomped over to the bucket of cold water. She snatched up the scraggly sponge and held it up like a sword.

“Fine,” she snapped. “What do you want me to scrub? The bottom of your Lamborghini? The concrete around the pool? A patch of mud by the garden? I don’t even care. But we both know your house is already clean!”

His sensual mouth curved at the edges. Gently, he took the sponge out of her hand and dropped it with a soft splash into the bucket. “You can stop cleaning anytime you want.”

She searched his eyes. “I can?”

He put his hands on her shoulders, looking down at her.

“Come to bed with me,” he said quietly.

Flashes of heat went up and down her body. His hands on her shoulders were heavy, sensual, like points of light. With an intake of breath, she ripped herself away from him.

“Dream on,” she said, tossing her head with every ounce of bravado she possessed.

He shrugged. “Then I’ll have to find some other way to make you useful.”

Bree started to reach for the bucket and sponge, but he stopped her. “No. You are right. Enough cleaning.” He gave a sudden wicked grin. “You will cook for me.”

Her jaw dropped. He must have forgotten the last time she’d cooked for him, taking a romantic date idea from a magazine. It had been romantic, all right—she’d nearly burned the cabin down, and then the firemen had been called. “You can’t be serious.”

Vladimir lifted a dark eyebrow. “Because you’re still a terrible cook?”

She glared at him. “Because you know I would poison you!”

“I know you won’t, because we will share the meal.” He leaned forward and said softly, “Tonight I am craving … something delicious.” She saw the edge of his tongue flick the corner of his sensual lips. “Something sinful.”

Even though he was talking about food, his low voice caused a shiver of awareness down her spine. She swallowed.

“Well, were you thinking chicken noodle soup from a can?” she suggested weakly. “Because I know how to make that.”

“Tempting. But no.” He tilted his head. “A goat cheese soufflé with Provençal herbs.”

Her mouth dropped. “Are you kidding?”

“Try it.” His lips turned up at the corners. “You might like it.”

“I might like to eat it, but I can’t cook it!”

“If you cook it, I will allow you to have some.”

“Generous of you.”

“Of course.” Innocently, he spread his arms wide. “What am I, some kind of heartless brute?”

“You really want me to answer that?”

He gave a low, wicked laugh. “It’s a beautiful night. You will come out onto the lanai and cook for me.”

“Fine.” She looked at him dubiously. “It’s your funeral.”

And so half an hour later, Bree found herself on the patio beside the pool, in the sheltered outdoor kitchen, struggling to sauté garlic and flour in garlic oil.

“This recipe is ridiculous!” She sneezed violently as minced thyme sprinkled the air like snowflakes, instead of coating the melted butter in the soufflé pan. “It’s meant for four cooks and a sous-chef, not one person!”

Vladimir, who sat at the large granite table with an amazing view of the sunset-swept Pacific beyond the infinity pool, sipped an extremely expensive wine as he read a Russian newspaper. “You’re exaggerating. For a clever woman like you, surely arranging a few herbs and whipping up a few eggs is not so difficult. How hard can it be to chop and sauté?”

She waved her knife at him furiously. “Come a little closer and I’ll show you!”

“Stop complaining,” he said coldly, taking another sip of merlot.

“Oh,” Bree gasped, realizing she was supposed to be whisking flour and garlic in the hot olive oil. She tried to focus, not wanting to let Vladimir break her, but cooking had never been her skill. Supervising a kitchen staff? No problem. Cracking the eggs herself? A huge mess. She suddenly smelled burning oil, and remembered she was supposed to keep stirring the milk and white wine in the pan until it boiled. As she rushed across the outdoor kitchen, her bare feet slid on an egg white she’d spilled earlier. She skidded, then slipped, and as her tailbone slammed against the tile floor, the whisked egg yolks in her bowl flew up in the air before landing, wet and sticky, in her hair.

Suddenly, Vladimir was kneeling beside her. “Are you hurt, Breanna?”

She stared at him. She felt his powerful arms around her, protective and strong, as he lifted her to her feet.

Trembling, Bree stared up at him, wide-eyed. “You called me Breanna.”

He stiffened. Abruptly, he released her.

“It is your name,” he said coldly.

Without his arms encircling her, she felt suddenly cold and shivery and—alone. For a moment she’d seen an emotion flicker in his eyes that had made her wonder if he …

No. She’d been wrong. He didn’t care about her. Whatever feelings he’d once had for her had disappeared at the first sign of trouble.

Right?

Bree had certainly never intended to love him. The night they’d met, she’d known him only as the young CEO of a start-up mining company, whose family had once owned the land her father had bought in trust for Josie a few years before. “Promise me,” Black Jack had wheezed from the hospital bed, before he died. “Promise me you’ll always take care of your sister.”

In her desperation to be free and keep Josie safe, Bree had known she’d do anything to get the money she needed. And the best way to make Vladimir Xendzov careless about his money was to make him care about her. To dazzle him.

But from the moment they’d met, Bree had been the one who was dazzled. She’d never met a man like Vladimir: so honest, so open, so protective. For the first time in her life, she’d seen the possibilities of a future beyond the next poker game. She’d seen she could be something more than a cheap con artist with a rusted heart. He’d called her by her full name, Breanna, and made her feel brand-new. I love you, Breanna. Be my wife. Be mine forever.

Now she blinked, staring up at him in the deepening twilight Vladimir was practically scowling at her, his arms folded, his blue eyes dark.

But the way he’d said her name when he’d held her … His voice had sounded the same as ten years ago. Exactly the same.

Vladimir growled a low Russian curse. “You’re a mess. Go take a shower. Wash the food out of your hair. Get clean clothes.” He snatched the empty saucepan from her hand. “Just go. I will finish this.”

Now, that was truly astonishing. “You—you will cook?”

“You are even more helpless in the kitchen than I remembered,” he said harshly. “Go. I left new clothes for you in the bedroom upstairs. Get cleaned up. Return in a more presentable state.”

Bree’s lips were parted as she stared at him. He was actually being nice to her. No matter how harsh his tone, or how he couched his kindness inside insults, there could be no doubt. He was allowing her to take a shower, to change into clean clothes, like a guest. Not a slave.

Why? What could he possibly gain by kindness, when he held all the power? “Thank you.” She swallowed. “I really appreciate—”

“Save it.” He cut her off. Setting down the pan on the granite island of the outdoor kitchen, he looked at her. “At least until you see the dress I’ve left on your bed. Take a shower and put it on. Afterwards, come back here.” He gave her a hard, sensual smile. “And then … then you can thank me.”

Vladimir should have known not to make her cook.

He’d thought that Bree, at age twenty-eight, might have improved her skills. No. If possible, she’d grown even more hopeless in the kitchen. The attempt had been a complete disaster, even before the raw yolks had been flung all over—perhaps a merciful end before they could be added to the burned, lumpy mess in the sauté pan.

Cleaning up, he dumped it all out and started fresh. Forty minutes later, he sat at the table on the patio and tasted his finished soufflé, and gave a satisfied sigh.

He would not ask Bree to make food again.

Vladimir knew how to cook. He just preferred not to. When he was growing up, his family had had nothing. His father tried his best to keep up the six-hundred-acre homestead, but he’d had his head in the clouds—the kind of man who would be mulling over a book of Russian philosophy and not notice that their newborn calf had just wandered away from its mother to die in a snowdrift. Vladimir’s mother, a former waitress from the Lower Forty-Eight, had been a little in awe of her intellectual husband, with his royal background. Her days were spent cleaning up the messes her absentminded spouse left behind, to make sure they had enough wood to get through the winter, and food for their two growing boys. It was because of their father’s influence that Vladimir and Kasimir had both applied to one of the oldest mining schools in Europe, in St. Petersburg. It was because of their mother’s influence they’d managed to pay for it, but in a way that had broken her husband’s heart. And that was nothing compared to how Vladimir had found the money to start Xendzov Mining OAO twelve years ago. That had been the spark that started the brothers’ war. That had caused Kasimir to turn on him so viciously.

Vladimir’s eyes narrowed. His brother deserved what he’d gotten—being cut out of the company right before it would have made him insanely rich. He, Vladimir, had deserved to own the company free and clear.

Just as he owned Bree Dalton.

He had a sudden memory of her stricken hazel eyes, of her pale, beautiful face.

You called me Breanna.

Rising from his chair, Vladimir paced three steps across the patio. He stopped, staring at the moonlight sparkling across the pool and the ocean beyond.

She really must think he was a fool. She must have no respect whatsoever for his intelligence, to think that she could look at him with those beautiful luminous eyes and make him believe she’d actually loved him once. It would not work. They both knew it had always been about money for her. It still was.

I’ve never been with a man before. I’ve never even kissed a man since you.

Reaching for his wine glass, he took a long drink and then wiped his mouth. She was a fairly good liar, he’d give her that. But he was immune to her now. Absolutely immune. Except for her body.

He’d enjoyed watching her scrub his floors, watching the sway of her slender hips, of her backside and breasts as she knelt in front of him. He’d wanted to take her, then and there.

And he would. Soon.

Their kiss had been electric. He still shuddered to remember the softness of her body as she’d clung to him. The scent of her, like orchids and honey. The sweet, erotic taste of her lips. He’d intended to punish her with that savage kiss. Instead, he’d been lost in it, in memory, in yearning, in hot ruthless need.

Gritting his teeth, he roughly tidied up the outdoor kitchen, slamming the dirty pans into the sink. No matter how he tried to deny it, Bree still had power over him. Too much. When he’d seen her slip and fall on this floor, her cry had sliced straight through his heart. And suddenly, without knowing how, he’d found himself beside her, helping her to her feet.

You called me Breanna.

Irritated, he exhaled, setting his jaw. He glanced up toward the house. It had been almost an hour. What was taking her so long?

He grabbed a plate and served her a portion of the soufflé, then took a crystal goblet from the cupboard on the lanai. He carried them both over to the tray on the granite table, beside the open bottle of merlot. He looked out at the shimmering pool, at the crashing waves of the dark ocean below the cliff. He tried to relax his shoulders, to take a deep breath.

After he’d nearly died in the car crash on the raceway, his doctor had arrived from St. Petersburg and told him he needed to find a less risky way to relax. “You’re thirty-five years old, Your Highness,” the doctor had said gravely. “But you have the blood pressure of a much older man. You’re a heart attack waiting to happen.” So Vladimir, wrapped up in bandages over his broken bones, had grimly promised to give up car racing forever, along with boxing and skydiving. He’d bought this house and started physical rehabilitation. He’d done yoga and tai chi.

Or at least he’d tried.

He hadn’t made it through a single yoga class. The more he tried to calm down, the more he felt the vein in his neck throb until his forehead was covered with sweat. The pain of doing nothing, of just sitting alone with his thoughts, left him half-mad, like a tiger trapped in a cage.

He’d done extreme sports because they made him feel something. The adrenaline stirred up by thinking he might die was a reminder that he was still alive. The never ending sameness of his work, of one meaningless love affair after another, sometimes made him forget.

And yoga was supposed to relax him? Vladimir grumbled beneath his breath. Stupid doctors. What did they know?

He’d already had twelve weeks of twiddling his thumbs, “healing” as ordered, while knowing his brother was in Morocco, tying up various gold and diamond sources in underhanded ways. When his leg had healed enough for him to drive, Vladimir had bought the new Lamborghini to go to the weekly private poker game at the Hale Ka’nani Resort. Then he’d found Bree, who drove him absolutely insane. Even more than yoga.

But what the hell was taking her so long? The dinner he’d made was growing cold. Scowling, he looked up at the second-floor bedroom balcony. How long could it take for a woman to shower?

“Bree,” he yelled. “Come down.”

“No,” he heard her yell back from the open French doors of the balcony.

He set his jaw. “Right now!”

“Forget it! I’m not wearing this thing!”

“Then you won’t eat!”

“Fine by me!”

This dinner wasn’t going at all as he’d envisioned. Growling to himself, Vladimir left the dinner tray on the table and raced inside. Taking the stairs two at a time, he went down the hall and shoved open the double doors to the master bedroom, knocking them back against the walls.

Bree whirled around with a gasp.

Vladimir took one look and his mouth went slack. His heart nearly stopped in his chest.

She stood half-naked, wearing the expensive lingerie, a pale pink teddy and silk robe he’d had a servant buy for her in Kailua. “Make it tacky,” Vladimir had instructed. “The sort of thing a stripper might wear.”