Bought by the Rich Man

Three hot heroes who are wealthy, autocratic and in charge!

Three glittering, passionate romances from three bestselling Mills & Boon authors!

In February 2009 Mills & Boon bring you two classic collections, each featuring three favourite romances by our bestselling authors…

BOUGHT BY THE RICH MAN Taken by the Highest Bidder by Jane Porter Bought by Her Latin Lover by Julia James Bought by the Billionaire by Myrna Mackenzie

AT HER LATIN LOVER’S COMMAND

The Italian Count’s Command by Sara Wood The French Count’s Mistress by Susan Stephens At the Spanish Duke’s Command by Fiona Hood-Stewart

Jane Porter grew up on a diet of Mills & Boon® romances, reading late at night under the covers so her mother wouldn’t see! She wrote her first book at age eight, and spent many of her school and college years living abroad, immersing herself in other cultures and continuing to read voraciously. Now Jane has settled down in rugged Seattle, Washington, with her gorgeous husband and two sons. Jane loves to hear from her readers. You can write to her at PO Box 524, Bellevue, WA 98009, USA. Or visit her website at www.janeporter.com

Bought by the Rich Man

TAKEN BY THE HIGHEST BIDDER

by

Jane Porter

BOUGHT BY HER LATIN LOVER

by

Julia James

BOUGHT BY THE BILLIONAIRE

by

Myrna Mackenzie

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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TAKEN BY THE HIGHEST BIDDER

by

Jane Porter

CHAPTER ONE

SAMANTHA VAN BERGEN’S husband was missing in action. Again. And unfortunately, Sam knew where he was.

She knew where to find him when he didn’t return home for days at a time, and she knew what to expect.

Disaster.

This was a battle, she thought, drawing her gray velvet cloak closer to her evening gown as she swiftly climbed the stairs to Monte Carlo’s grand Le Casino, a battle she was losing.

Johann had always been a compulsive gambler but he used to win more. He used to walk away from the table when it turned ugly. But he didn’t do that anymore. He just sat there, losing. Losing. Losing.

They’d already lost so much. Their savings. The chic penthouse. The Ferrari—not that Sam had ever driven it.

What was left? She wondered, climbing the casino’s marble steps.

In Le Casino’s VIP card room, Cristiano Bartolo lounged at his favorite table when the door to their private room opened. Annoyed by the interruption, he glanced up, but his irritation eased as he recognized beautiful, blond Samantha van Bergen, or more commonly known as the baroness van Bergen.

It was, he thought, mouth curving faintly, such a huge, stately title for such a young blushing English bride.

He played his card, then looked up to watch her unfasten the top hook on her velvet cloak, letting the dove-gray velvet fabric fall back over one shoulder revealing her white evening gown beneath.

She fascinated him. He didn’t know why. He’d only seen her once before, but she’d made such an impression that night six months ago he knew he’d never forget her.

The first time he’d seen her had been here, at Le Casino, as well. Then, as now, he’d been sitting at the exclusive high roller tables, and then, as now, every head at the table had turned. Cristiano turned, too, to see what had caught every man’s attention.

No wonder every man stared.

The baroness was small, slim, beautiful. She had a delicate oval face framed by blond ringlets, long loose curls that gave her a decidedly angelic appearance, although her eyes, slightly tilted at the corners, were not completely innocent.

Beautiful girls were a dime a dozen, but she touched him; with her serious expression, her dark brown brows pulled, the deep furrow between arched brows.

Cristiano watched now as the young baroness stood just inside the door, not nervous or uncertain, just focused. She wore a look of utter concentration, an expression of grave concern, and Cristiano was certain this is what Joan of Arc must have looked like before battle as she moved to Johann van Bergen’s side.

Cristiano had never liked Johann, would never like Johann, and had deliberately sat at this table so he could play the baron. Cristiano had discovered months ago that Johann van Bergen didn’t know how to play cards, couldn’t gamble and hadn’t a clue how to walk away from a game even when he was being bled. And he was most definitely bleeding tonight.

Bleeding out.

Bleeding dry.

Cristiano scooped up a handful of chips, moved them forward, upping the ante by two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It wasn’t a small bet, but neither was it huge. Over five million pounds had already been wagered tonight. Johann’s loss to Cristiano’s gain.

Eyes narrowing, Cristiano watched as Samantha approached the table, watched one long loose blond tendril slide forward on her shoulder, dangle across her breast. He envied the curl. Longed to take it, twine it around his fingers and then dip it between her full breasts.

Cristiano reached for his whiskey, sipped it, let the heat and fire warm him, wanting Samantha. She made him feel—curious, carnal, intent on possession.

She crouched now at Johann’s side, her velvet cloak pushed back on her shoulders, her slim bare arms extended, her hands on Johann’s thigh.

Her hands didn’t belong on Johann’s thigh.

Her hands belonged on his.

Cristiano’s gaze moved from her bare arms to her shoulders to her deep cleavage revealed by the plunging neckline of her white evening gown. Leisurely he let his gaze travel up, along the smooth column of her throat to her firm rounded chin and jaw, the curve of cheekbone and the worry in her blue eyes. The worry was also there in the faint line between her perfect arched brows, as well as in the press of her lipsticked mouth, her beauty delicate and yet painfully pinched.

Angels shouldn’t be so tormented, he thought, finding his chair suddenly uncomfortable, just as his body felt too hard and tight.

He imagined kissing her full mouth until it softened beneath his, saw her lying naked in his bed, her slender limbs stretched out beneath him, her delicate gold necklace the only thing she wore.

But his blond Joan of Arc was on a mission, and she was oblivious to all but Johann as she spoke to him, her voice but a murmur of soft sound. Cristiano couldn’t hear what she said to Johann van Bergen, but the baron made no effort to lower his voice. “Go,” Johann told her, tone cold, blunt. “Go back home where you’re supposed to be.”

But she didn’t go. She continued to crouch at Johann’s side, whispering urgent words only the baron could hear, words that only angered him further. “I don’t need a mother,” he said, slapping his cards down. “I already had one. And I don’t need you. You’ve done nothing for me.”

Two dark pink blotches stained her cheeks. Silently she regarded him, face flushed, chin lifted, painful dignity. Then without another word, she slipped off her cloak, handed it to the gentleman at the door and took a chair, sitting behind Johann.

During the next hour and a half Cristiano watched her. He liked watching her. She’d been beautiful six months ago but she was even more stunning tonight. He’d have her. Soon. Very soon. Even if she was another man’s wife.

Cristiano folded his cards, tossed them onto the table and leaned back, content to use the time to watch his woman. Because she was his. She was everything he wanted—young, sleek, sexy and unavailable. The unavailable aspect he found especially seductive.

It was good to feel tempted. Seduced. It felt good to want something, someone. It made him feel, period, and God knows, he didn’t feel much of anything anymore.

Lashes lowered, he watched Baroness van Bergen now as again she whispered more urgent words to her husband. But her husband was ignoring her.

Foolish man, Cristiano thought derisively. Foolish man to marry such a woman and then ignore her. Because there was beauty, and then there was beauty, and Johann’s young blond wife wasn’t your run-of-the-mill beauty, but something finer. Rarer.

Cristiano called Johann’s bluff, forcing the baron to show his cards. Nothing.

It was all Cristiano could do to hide his contempt. Johann was gambling his life away. What a fool. A gambling man understood risks, and took them. A gambling man understood wins and losses. But Johann wasn’t a true gambler, he didn’t understand risk, and he didn’t understand loss.

But Cristiano did. He knew what it was to win, and he knew what it was to lose and he didn’t like losing. So he didn’t. Not anymore. Hadn’t lost in so long that he’d almost, almost, forgotten the bitter taste.

Almost.

But not quite.

And that faint but bitter taste of loss still burned his tongue as it burned his heart and made him take. Risk. And win.

It was conquering. It was plundering. It was—he reached for the cards just dealt him—revenge.

Sam sat behind Johann, her gaze fixed on his new hand of cards, seeing what he was seeing, wondering if he was as nervous as she. He had terrible cards. Absolutely nothing in his hand and yet he was sitting there playing as if he held only aces in his hand.

God, Johann, what are you doing?

What are you thinking? Playing?

Stomach in knots, hands folded on her knee, Sam drew a deep breath, her white jersey dress with the gold spaghetti straps pulling tightly across her shoulders.

The villa was gone.

The bank account emptied.

There was nothing left to wager.

With a cry of disgust, Johann tossed his cards onto the table, showing what he had. Nothing. Three sevens.

Sam bit the inside of her cheek to hide her shame. Three sevens. He’d bet and lost their home with his three sevens. God forgive him. Where was his common sense? His survival instinct? What kind of fool was he?

“I’m out,” he said, sitting back, running his hand across his darkly tanned face. Johann, an Austrian baron, playboy and fixture on the Monte Carlo scene, diligently maintained his deep tan by sunbathing daily on the pool terrace, usually with a stiff cocktail at his side. “I’ve nothing else, Bartolo.”

Thank God, Sam thought, eyes burning, body alternately hot and cold. He was done. It was over. Let them go home now and figure out what they were going to do. “Johann—”

“Be quiet,” he snapped.

She flushed, bit her tongue, knowing the man called Bartolo watched and listened to everything. She knew Bartolo had watched her tonight, too, had felt his gaze rest on her repeatedly, and each of his inspections grew longer, heavier, more personal until she thought she’d scream for relief. He made her feel strange.

He made her feel alone. And hopelessly vulnerable.

It wasn’t a way she wanted to feel. Not now, not ever.

But now Bartolo smiled lazily as he lay down his own cards. “You were on a winning streak for a while.”

“I nearly had you,” Johann agreed, signaling for another round of drinks.

Sam’s hands tightened on her knee, convulsively squeezing her kneecap. No more liquor, she prayed, no more liquor tonight. Let’s just go, Johann. Let’s leave here…

“So close,” Bartolo said.

Sam hated Bartolo then, realizing for the first time that he had been expertly baiting Johann tonight, egging him on. But for what purpose? He’d already stripped Johann of everything—house, wealth, respect. What else was there to take?

Johann nodded. “So close.” He paused, studied the other man. “One more hand?” he proposed, taking the bait.

The air bottled inside Sam’s chest and her nails dug into her hands. Damn Bartolo, and damn Johann. Johann couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t possibly think he’d win, not playing Bartolo, and certainly not after drinking. “Johann.”

“Shut up,” Johann said without looking at her.

She flushed with fresh shame but she wasn’t going to shut up, wasn’t going to let this slaughter continue. Bartolo was amoral. But she knew what was right, and this wasn’t right. “Come home with me now, Johann. Please.”

“I told you to shut up,” Johann snapped.

The heat scorched her face. It was humiliating being here, humiliating running after a man, begging a man to stop, think, pay attention. But she’d do what she had to do. She’d do anything for little Gabriela.

“Johann,” she pleaded softly.

Johann ignored her. But Bartolo looked at her, a long measured look that went straight through her. A look that said he was merciless and proud, hard and unforgiving. Ruthless. Savage.

Bloodthirsty.

She leaned forward, touched Johann’s shoulder. “Johann, I beg you—”

Johann reached up, shoved her hand off. “Go home before I ask that hotel security walk you out.”

“You can’t continue,” she whispered, face, body, skin aflame. She was mortified, and terrified. The future had never seemed as dark as it did that moment.

Johann looked up, nodded at the plain suited security guard standing just inside the VIP room’s door. “Could you please see the baroness out?” he asked, even as he took the fresh cocktail from the waitress. “She is ready to go home.”

All eyes but Johann’s were on her but she didn’t move, didn’t even flinch despite the plainclothes security guard at her elbow. “This isn’t right,” she said out loud.

But no one answered her and she felt Bartolo’s eyes. His gaze burned, seared. Punished.

The guard bent his head, murmured, “Madame, please.”

Madame, please leave without making a scene. Madame, go home while your husband loses everything and everyone…

Furiously, reluctantly, Sam stood, her gown’s white jersey fabric falling in long elegant folds. “If you can’t think of me, Johann, can you please think of Gabby?”

He didn’t answer her. He didn’t look as if he’d heard her. Instead he was drinking hard, throwing back his cocktail even as the dealer was dealing a new hand.

Escorted by hotel security, Sam walked silently through the casino overwhelmed by the clink and bells and whistles of the one-arm bandits edging the casino floor. She hated casinos, hated the noise, the garish colors and lights, the artificial glamour that seduced so many.

Fortunately the security didn’t touch her, push her or rush her. There was no hurry. She, like the hotel staff, knew what happened now was beyond her control. No one would stop a gambler, not even a compulsive gambler. Monte Carlo had been built on the backs of those with deep pockets and a dearth of self-restraint.

Back at the small town villa in the historic district, Sam collected a sleeping Gabby from the neighbor’s house, carried her home, put her in her bed and after a lingering glance into the little girl’s simple bedroom, shut the door.

Sam curled in a chair downstairs in the living room, a blanket pulled over her shoulders. The house was chilly but Sam couldn’t turn up the heat. There wasn’t money to pay for such extravagances. There wasn’t money for anything.

Tears started to her eyes but she pressed a hand to her face, held the tears back. Don’t cry. You can’t cry. Tears are for children.

But some tears fell anyway, escaping from behind her hand, from beneath the tightly closed eyelids.

It was all too bitter, too brutal, too lonely. She’d tried so hard to give Gabriela a better life. That’s why she’d married Johann, that’s why she put up with his abuse. Sam had done everything in her power to help things here, improve things for the child. But none of it mattered. Johann was determined to gamble and drink, no matter the cost.

Much later she finally fell asleep, still huddled in the armchair and didn’t wake until she heard Gabriela bounding down the stairs.

“Where’s Papa?” Gabby asked, nearly five years old and endlessly enthusiastic.

Gabby had already dressed in her school uniform and even in her dark gray uniform with the white piping, Gabby was beautiful. A day rarely passed without someone stopping Sam to comment on Gabriela’s stunning looks, and Gabby was stunning.

Gabby’s mother had been a model from Madrid. She’d done some small films in Spain and hoped to go to Hollywood to try her luck there, but died tragically a year after Gabby was born. The details about Gabby’s mother’s death were all a bit sketchy, but Gabby had inherited her mother’s Spanish beauty with her classic features, her dark hair, and those green-gold eyes bordered by shamefully long, jet-black lashes.

“Good girl, you’re all ready,” Sam said standing and folding the blanket. “And your papa’s out but he’ll be back later,” she added, trying to look unconcerned, trying to look as if she hadn’t spent the night crying in a threadbare overstuffed armchair worried sick about a future that looked increasingly bleak and chaotic.

“He hasn’t been home in days,” Gabby complained. “And you’re still wearing your fancy dress.”

It was Sam’s one and only fancy dress. Sam checked her smile, knowing it was brittle, and false. “I fell asleep reading,” Sam fibbed, refusing to worry Gabby. “But let’s have breakfast now and then we’ll do your hair for school.”

Sam kept Gabriela chattering until she’d walked her to school a quarter mile away, but once Gabby ran into the building, leaving Sam on the pavement, Sam felt her defenses crack and fall.

What were they going to do? How were they going to manage? No home, no money, no food, no tuition for Gabby’s school…

Sam had nothing of her own, not even a bank account. When Johann married her, he stopped paying her a salary and what little Sam had saved over her years as a nanny had been spent on Gabriela. Johann had never understood that little girls quickly outgrew their clothes and even much beloved dolls eventually wore out.

As she walked the eight large city blocks back to their villa town house, Sam struggled with the reality of their lives. In the four years she’d been with the van Bergens, things had gone from bad to worse, and worse to nightmarish. If she had family, she’d take Gabby and go there now. But Sam had no family, had spent most of her childhood and teenage years in the orphanage in Chester.

She’d left school at seventeen, and with the help of a parish scholarship, attended Princess Christian College in Manchester, but even with the scholarship she’d had to work several jobs to pay her bills.

Money had always been very tight. Sam had never been spoiled. And yet even living frugally, and even knowing how to scrimp and save, Sam knew her situation now was far more dire than it had ever been. Sam knew she could fend for herself. But what about Gabby? How would Sam take care of Gabby if they had no home, no income, no place to go?

Climbing the four steps of the town villa, Sam entered through the front door and was just about to unbutton her coat when she heard Johann call to her.

“If you could spare a moment, Baroness. I’d like to speak to you.”

If she could spare a moment? Oh, that was rich, Sam thought, following the sound of Johann’s voice to the living room.

Late-morning light flooded the windows, patterning the wood parquet floor in great sheets of light, the 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 was an alcoholic, a gambler, a womanizer and the father of the most amazing, beautiful, and once lonely little girl in the world. “What happens to Gabby?”

“I don’t know. She never came up.”

“Well, I won’t leave her here with you. If I go, I take Gabby with me.”

Johann took another great gulp, draining his glass. “I don’t think that’s up to you. It’s not up to me anymore. It’s his decision. He’s the one that owns you.”

Owns you. Owns. Like meat. Or a piece of property. Real estate in the Côte d’Azur. Eyes burning, her throat swollen, Sam swallowed the pain. Intellectually she knew Johann had never loved her, never wanted her, had only married her to keep Gabby’s mother’s family from taking her, but still, his coldness, his indifference and cruelty cut.

“You’ll use Gabby to force me into another man’s bed?” Sam sank down onto the edge of the couch.

“Well, you were no use in mine.”

Sam felt a moment of panic, pure unadulterated panic. At twenty-eight, she knew who she was, and what she was, and Johann was right. She wasn’t a sexual woman, not even a sensual woman. Despite the wedding ring on her finger, she had no knowledge of men, of sex, or desire. And she was content to leave it that way. A woman didn’t have to be sexual. A woman didn’t need a man. She’d been alone for years but she wasn’t alone anymore. She had Gabby. She loved Gabby. “I’ll do this…go to him…settle your debt, on one condition. You let me adopt her.”

“It’s out of my hands.”

He acted as if Gabby was nothing more than a tennis ball. He’d just throw her in any direction, toss her where it suited him. “Impossible! You’re her father, her legal guardian—”

“But I told you, Sam. God, I do wish you’d listen.” Irritably Johann pressed the crystal tumbler to his temple. “Cristiano is coming for you. He wants you. You. Understand?”

She heard him, but she didn’t understand.

The idea of a man wanting her was more than she could comprehend and she stared at Johann so long it hurt her eyes, her mind, her heart.

Baron van Bergen was handsome and dissolute. Selfish. Impulsive. Immature. And the father of the most gorgeous child with the most beautiful heart. Sam had been a nanny for some of the wealthiest, famous families in the world and she’d never met a child like Gabriela van Bergen before.

“I want to see him,” she choked. “I want to see him now.”

“He’s coming later, Sam.”

“I won’t wait. I must see him now. I must speak to him now—”

“And tell me what?” The voice drawled from the doorway and even without looking Sam recognized the voice. Cristiano Bartolo. The devil had arrived.

CHAPTER TWO

AN ICY heat washed through Sam. Skin prickling, she turned on the sofa’s arm to face the door and was immediately struck by heat, a dark heat that seared and burned from all the way across the room. “How did you get in?” she demanded.

Cristiano held up a key ring. “My key.”

“Your key.”

His broad shoulders twisted and he smiled that same mocking smile he’d smiled last night. “My villa.”

It wasn’t much of a villa, not in its current state of shabby disrepair. When Sam first met Johann, he had a larger, finer villa on the Rock, close to the royal palace, tucked in an elegant old square, set off by equally elegant old fountains, but as his financial picture changed, so did their accommodations.

“You’re mad,” she said, digging her hands into the couch, looking at Johann, heart racing, adrenaline surging through her in sickening fashion. “You’re both mad. You don’t wager homes. Wives. Families.” But Johann’s eyes were closed, his empty glass cock-eyed in his lap and Sam’s glance swung wildly back to Bartolo. “You can’t take someone’s wife.”

“You can if she’s wagered.”

Sam swayed on the arm of the sofa, swayed and laughed. She had to laugh. She didn’t know what else to do. This was absurd. This was a farce. It had to be. Johann was trying to scare her, trying to make a point. Obviously he was in over his head. Obviously he’d lost a great deal of money last night. “Exactly how much do we owe you?”

The man stood several inches taller than Johann, but was twice as thick through his shoulders and chest. Broad shouldered and powerfully built, he wore his dark hair long so that it brushed the collar of his black leather coat. “Nothing now, Baroness van Bergen. Your husband has settled his debt.”

She ignored the dart of pain inside her chest. Johann had settled the debt by giving her away. She knew her husband didn’t love her, or like her, but still, to be traded, bartered, it was so brutal it wounded. “I’m obviously not for sale, Mr. Bartolo. It’s a mistake—”

“No mistake,” he interrupted almost gently. “We’ve met with lawyers, signed papers, sorted things legally. I’ve absolved him of his debt. Therefore, you leave with me.”

“Leave with you,” she repeated dumbly.

“Yes. You might be married to Johann, but you’re not his woman anymore. You’re mine.”

Anything she was about to say slipped from her lips. How to answer that bold, arrogant, appalling assertion?

Silent, she looked up at him, and what she saw filled her with fresh fear.

He was calm. Relaxed. Completely in control.

She struggled to match his calm. “Mr. Bartolo, if you’ll tell me what we owe you, we can get this sorted out.” She tried to look him square in the eye, wanting to demonstrate her strength, but it meant tilting her head back and now, with her neck exposed, she felt even more vulnerable than before.

“You think?”

Sam didn’t like looking up at him, didn’t like the expression on his face, in his eyes. He was like a wolf alone with a penned lamb.

But she wasn’t a lamb. And she wasn’t an ingenue, either. She’d lived for twenty-eight years, had been a nanny for nearly ten. She carried no false illusions about life. Or men. Perhaps there were a few good ones, but most were very selfish and none were saints. “What do we owe you?” she repeated crisply.

“This isn’t about money, Baroness.”

“It’s always about money, Mr. Bartolo.”

Deep grooves bracketed his mouth. His eyes, neither green nor gold, warmed. “You don’t think it could be about love?”

She tried to laugh but it came out broken, strangled. She’d been in love once, years ago, and it had ended so swiftly, so tragically she knew she’d never love again. “You don’t even know me, Mr. Bartolo.”

“I know what I see.”

“Hair? Eyes? Face?” She snorted contemptuously. “That’s not love. That’s…” And her voice faded as his gaze met hers and she saw in his eyes something so intense, so explosive…fear lapped at her, hot, dangerous, deadly.

His eyes never left hers. “What, Baroness?”

Her limbs went weak, so weak it was as if she were swimming in cold, dense, murky water. Her head spun. Her legs felt close to collapse. “Indecent,” she whispered, the only word coming to mind. And it was indecent. His thoughts. His actions. His words.

“And maybe it is.” Still smiling faintly, he glanced at his watch, then shook down his sleeve. “It’s nine now. I’ll send my car for you at four. That should give you enough time to pack, say your goodbyes and do whatever it is you need to do.”

She looked away, vision blurred, mind equally fogged. Sam had nothing to pack but it was the goodbyes that tore at her, the goodbyes she feared most. She loved Gabriela as if the child were her own. “You really intend to do this?”

“Baroness, your husband owes me over ten million pounds. What do you expect me to do?”

The faint, hysteria-tinged laughter was back. She felt her eyes burn, her throat seal closed. She turned to Johann who was slumped in his chair, eyes closed, jaw slack, oblivious to the world. “Forgive and forget?” she suggested huskily, hopefully.

Cristiano made a short sound, rough, impatient and yet his half smile hinted at amusement. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“Should I?” Even as she asked the question, she searched her memory, seeking some clue to his identity but his name still meant nothing to her.

Although she’d lived in Monaco for nearly four years, she’d paid scant attention to the principality’s golden crowd. Having nannied in the past ten years for some of the most wealthy and famous people in the world, she was neither impressed nor influenced by those with money and fame. In her experience, the rich were rude, and the famous forgettable.

“No. The only thing you need to know is that I’m not a good loser.” His hazel-green gaze fringed by jet-black lashes met hers and held. His gaze was steady, too steady. “I hate losing. So I don’t.”

He walked out then, heading straight for the front door, and for a moment Sam remained where she was, frozen on the arm of the sofa like one of La Palme d’Or’s ice sculptures.

Then the ice shattered as she thought of leaving Gabby, saying goodbye to Gabby, and grabbing her coat, Sam raced out of the house down to the front where Cristiano was climbing into a low red Italia Motors sports car.

She reached the side of his car, opened the passenger door and leaned in. “You can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’ve Gabby—”

“She’s not your daughter.”

Sam looked at him where he sat in the driver’s seat, dark hair rakish, deep hazel eyes intense and she shook her head, denying his words, denying what they represented, when she knew the truth. Gabby was her daughter, the daughter of her heart anyway. “I won’t leave her.”

“Baroness, I have places to be, a meeting at the Hotel de Paris in ten minutes—”

“Then give me those ten minutes.” Sam pulled on her coat. “Take me with you and talk to me while you drive.”

“I won’t have time to bring you back.”

“Fine.” She climbed into the passenger seat, closed the door. “I’ll walk back. I don’t mind walking. But we must talk about Gabriela. It’s important.”

Cristiano shot her a long, hard look before starting the car and pulling away from the curb. “Talk,” he said as he swiftly merged with traffic. “You’ve ten minutes.”

Sam bunched her hands in her lap, watching Monaco’s picturesque streets flash by. Her heart was pounding and her hands were shaking and she had to draw a deep breath to steady her nerves. Thank God Gabby was still in school for the rest of the morning. Maybe, just maybe, this nightmare could be fixed before Gabby returned at three.

But before she had a chance to talk about Gabby, Cristiano’s phone rang and after checking the number, he took the call. It was a relatively long call and he was still on the phone when he slowed in the driveway approaching the Hotel de Paris. Tourists filled the elegant square, spilling from tour buses and vans onto the different plazas, snapping photos, posing for pictures, clustering outside the historic Café Divan inspecting the menu.

Sam took in and dismissed the throngs. Monaco was always crowded. Daily tourists, from all over the world, overran the tiny principality eager to visit the fabled home of Prince Rainer and his late wife, the former American film star, Grace Kelly.

What she wanted, needed, was Cristiano’s attention. What she wanted, needed, wasn’t going to happen.

As valet attendants came forward to take the car, Sam fought tears. He hadn’t even given her the time of day.

Stepping from the car, Sam smoothed her coat over her dress and waited in front of the Hotel de Paris while Cristiano finished the call.

Anger burned in her, anger and indignation. What kind of man took a woman from her family? What kind of man would accept a wagered wife?

It disgusted her, horrified her, and her hands clenched helplessly inside her coat pockets, her gaze fixed on the hotel’s belle epoch architecture. Be calm, she told herself, be calm. Losing control won’t help anything.

She focused on the hotel’s architecture instead. The Hotel de Paris and Le Casino were both constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century on a square overlooking the sea. She’d read somewhere that the square had once been an untidy wasteland, overgrown with dense vegetation, hiding deep in the cliffs near seawater-filled caves.

Apparently the famous Monte Carlo Le Casino had been built first, and the hotel second, the hotel just steps from the casino. Once the hotel was finished, stables were added to house horses and carriages, then a fountain designed, and finally gardens landscaped with imported palm trees to create an exotic tableau to lure winter weary Parisians.

Sam was no Parisian, but she was weary. Very weary.

He had to let her explain about Gabby, had to listen to Gabriela’s situation. Gabby couldn’t be left with Johann. Johann might be her father but he wasn’t to be trusted, especially not with a vulnerable child.

Abruptly Cristiano finished his call and put away his phone. “I’m sorry—”

“No. No,” she said fiercely, hands bunching into fists inside her coat pockets. “I won’t go.”

“Baroness—”

“You don’t understand. This isn’t about me, it’s about Gabriela.”

His hard expression briefly eased. “I’m not sending you on your way, Baroness.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I was going to say, I’m sorry I had to take the call, but I’ve taken care of my meeting. There’s nowhere I have to be for the next hour. We’re free now to sit down and discuss Gabriela.”

Sam felt relief and embarrassment wash through her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I thought…assumed…you were giving me the brush-off.”

His eyes, hazel green and gold, warmed. “Give you the brush-off? Baroness, I’ve just spent ten million pounds to make you mine. The last thing I want to do is give you the brush-off.”

His. There was that possession again. His, to be his, to belong to someone. To belong to a man.

It was odd, she thought, nerves twitching, her body so tense she felt like the tightened strings on a violin, but she’d been married twice and had never belonged to a man. And now Cristiano Bartolo talked about possession and yet there’d be no marriage.

Life was strange. No, make that impossible.

“Shall we go in?” Cristiano said, gesturing to the hotel.

“Mr. Bartolo?”

“Yes, Baroness?”

Something in his voice made her blush, and she took a step back, her skin tingling, a fire burning from the inside out. He was hard, male, confident. Strong.

Very, very strong.

And that’s what unnerved her most. Sam wasn’t used to male strength, hadn’t experience with a man like Cristiano Bartolo. Yes, she’d been married twice, but neither husband had been strong, or male, like this. Neither husband commanded attention, seized control, shaped the world to suit them. “I haven’t agreed to anything,” she said breathlessly, “you do realize that, don’t you? I’m here to talk—that’s it.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a faint, mocking smile. “You do know the moment a woman throws up walls and restrictions, a man’s determined to destroy them?”

The tops of her cheekbones burned. Even her ears felt hot. “I’m not trying to be provocative.”

“But that’s the charm, Baroness. You’re provocative just by being you.” And turning, he climbed the hotel’s marble steps giving Sam no choice but to follow.

Sam noticed how the doorman jumped to attention, and while he nodded politely at both, he murmured a warm welcome to Cristiano.

Sam glanced back at the doorman as they entered the hotel’s grand domed lobby. “He addressed you by name,” she said.

“I’m a fixture here.”

“You have quite a few meetings here, then?”

“If you want to call them meetings.”

A cryptic answer, but one she understood perfectly well. Maybe she hadn’t had sex, but she knew what it was. “So you meet women here?”

“I have a room here.”

“Always?”

“When I feel the need to entertain.”

When he wanted to sleep with a woman. She turned away, stared across the lobby feeling ridiculously old and prudish. She’d never thought she’d end up twenty-eight and celibate. When Charles proposed, she’d thought she’d have such a different life. She’d be a wife, lover and mother. Instead fate intervened and she’d become this. Tired. Worried. Worn.

“I can show you my suite, if you’d like,” he offered.

They were standing in the hotel’s grand lobby now, almost directly beneath the vast blue glass dome and Sam flashed him a look of disdain. “No, thank you.”

Cristiano laughed, softly, seductively. He liked that flash of fire in her. It was a relief to know she wasn’t always so grave and serious. And yet already the spark in her was gone, replaced by more quiet worry, the line of which was almost permanently etched between her fine brown eyebrows.

Last night she’d looked regal, a conquering warrior, and yet today in the morning light, dressed in her simple, sturdy tweed coat, her fair English complexion tinged pink and her blue eyes wide, round, he thought she looked very young, very English, and very scared.

Cristiano liked women, enjoyed women, but he didn’t enjoy them scared.

He wanted Samantha, wanted to own her, possess her, but not trembling like a frightened puppy in his bed. He wanted a woman, a strong woman, with spirit.

“Well, you will see it,” he said lazily, “the question is just—how soon?”

Sam was listening to him, she was, and yet his words didn’t penetrate her brain.

Instead she watched his mouth move, the lips parting, shaping, and she found herself fascinated by the shape of his mouth, the hard lines of his face. He had a strong jaw, strong straight nose, fiercely black eyebrows and then there was that cleft in his square chin and two deep grooves on either side of his firm mouth. His eyes, thickly lashed, were neither green nor gold, but hazel, what ought to be an ordinary hazel but there was so much heat in his eyes, so much spirit and intelligence his eyes fairly snapped with energy. With life.

Again it struck her that he was awake. Alert.

Alive.

Had she been with Johann so long she’d forgotten what it was like to speak to a man that really looked at her? Listened to her? Had she been so isolated these past four years she’d forgotten how men behaved?

“How soon until you see it, Baroness?”

Samantha blinked, knew she’d missed whatever question or point Cristiano had just said. “I don’t know,” she stammered.

He inclined his head, then turned, and walked through the hotel’s grand lobby toward one of the sitting areas at the far end of the room.

Sam had to hurry to catch up with him as he walked. He was tall, broad shouldered, and his steps, long but measured.

“We must talk,” she said breathlessly, trying to keep up with him.

Cristiano barely turned his head to look at her. “About what?”

She nearly sputtered in surprise. “You know perfectly well what I’ve come to discuss. It’s barbaric. Inhumane. You don’t gamble with people’s lives, much less children’s lives.”

He slowed his pace as they reached the low velvet couches upholstered in royal shades of purple, red and blue. “I don’t gamble with lives. I prefer cash. Stocks. Real estate. Unfortunately your husband had just you left so he offered you up.”

“You didn’t have to be unscrupulous, Mr. Bartolo! You could have taken the higher, moral ground.”

Cristiano’s eyebrows lifted, one black eyebrow arching slightly higher than the other, and Sam thought he looked exactly the way the devil would, if the devil played cards. “And why would I want to do that, Baroness?”

Samantha’s breath caught in her throat as she stared into Cristiano’s face. He was tall, big, broad. Taut. He’d walked with a long even step, his arms loose at his sides, apparently at ease, but she was far from relaxed. His very ease unnerved her. “Because you’re a gentleman, Mr. Bartolo.”

The corner of his mouth curved, a brief mocking smile. “You shouldn’t make assumptions. They’re usually wrong.”

Then he sat down, a slow drop into the low upholstered sofa. Sam remained where she stood, her mouth open with disbelief. He was mad, she thought, nearly as mad as Johann. “And what about Gabriela? What about her?”

He shrugged, stretched a long arm out over the back of the sofa. “What about her?”

“She can’t be left with Johann. He’s not a fit parent.”

“Then surely she has another relative who could take her, someone better suited to parenting a young child?”

“She might, but I don’t know of anyone. I think her mother’s family wanted her once, there was going to be a custody trial, but that was years ago. I don’t even know where to find her mother’s family now.”

He studied her for a long moment, hazel gaze assessing. “Why didn’t her mother’s family win the custody battle?”

Sam swallowed, plagued by guilt even two and a half years later. “I married Johann. To give Gabby—and prove to the court that she had—a stable, loving family.”

“Even though you knew it was a lie?”

Sam ducked her head, didn’t answer. She knotted and unknotted her fingers before finally sitting down in a chair opposite him. “I did it for Gabby, to protect her. The court did award us custody, and Gabby trusts me, Mr. Bartolo. She depends on me. I can’t let her down.”

“She’s not even your daughter and yet you’re so very protective of her.”

“I have to be. Someone has to be.”

Cristiano’s eyes narrowed as he studied her tight expression. “You love her.”

Without a doubt. “Yes.”

“And your husband. Do you love him this much, too?”

Sam’s eyes closed and she sagged inwardly, exhausted, overwhelmed. She’d never loved Johann even though she’d tried initially. She’d thought maybe her kindness, her compassion might save him…that her love could maybe make them a family but she’d been wrong. Naïve.

Opening her eyes, the fatigue weighed even more heavily on her. She felt as if she’d been battling to save Johann for far too many years now. She didn’t know how to keep fighting for him, for the family, for security any longer. The task had become too great, the toll too much. Living with Johann had drained her. “I’ve done my best to protect him.”

“And is that the same thing as love?”

Her lips curved grimly. “It is what it is, Mr. Bartolo.”

Cristiano’s expression didn’t change, and yet Sam felt something shift—her? Him?—and when he spoke again, the mood somehow was different. “I don’t like your husband,” he said. “I have never liked your husband, but I like him even less now.”

“Because he wagered me?”

“And then tried to sell his child, the very child he refused to give to her family.”

Her mouth went dry and she felt like a marionette doll, odd, gangly, all wooden arms and legs. “He wouldn’t sell Gabby.”

“He tried. It wasn’t enough he’d settled his debts with you. He thought perhaps he’d buy back some of his lost property, an even exchange, the town villa for his daughter.”

“No.”

“Yes, indeed.”

Sam looked past Cristiano to the creamy marble columns supporting the ornate stained-glass dome. “And what did you say?” she whispered, her mouth so dry, her throat scratchy.

“I don’t buy children, Baroness.”

She shook her head, shocked. She knew Johann was selfish and a drunkard, a gambler, and a player—but this…it was repulsive. “Do you see why I can’t leave her there? Do you see why I must protect her?”

“Baroness, I have no authority over her. I can’t take her. Only the courts—”

“But I can!” Sam clasped her hands together, leaned towards Cristiano, hands pressed as if in prayer. “I’m still her stepmother.”

“Johann won’t allow it. Not if he thinks he can get me to pay for her.”

“How much?” Sam whispered. “How much does he want?”

“Three million. The price of his town villa.”

Her eyes burned and she smiled bitterly to hide her pain. “I was ten million and his child was only three?”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Sam ground her teeth together, panic growing on the inside. Panic at the future, the present, panic that she was losing her grip on reality, panic that it seemed she was going to lose Gabby.

“Sit back,” Cristiano said. “Breathe. You look as if you’re going to faint.”

She shook her head, woozy and nauseous all over again, and struggled to speak, but couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t even shape her lips. Her face felt stiff, frozen. Her whole body trembled.

Cristiano reached out, touched her arm. “Do you need water?”

She shook her head again. “No,” she croaked, but she did feel terrible. Terrible, horrible, devastated. It was as if her world had been a little snow globe and it had been dropped, shattered.

For a moment Sam did nothing but concentrate on breathing, in and out she breathed, deep slow breaths to ease the pain inside her. But just breathing didn’t help. If she breathed in, it hurt. If she exhaled, it hurt. Nothing would change the pain.

“She’s not your child,” Cristiano said quietly.

Anger rolled through Sam, hot and wild, cutting through her fog. “But she feels like my child, and I’ll protect her like my child, and I will worry about her, and I will worry for her. You can be selfish and cold but I won’t be.”

“No, I know you won’t be. That’s why I wanted you. That’s why I played hard for you. You didn’t fall into my hands by chance.”

If he hoped to reassure her, he was failing, miserably. Every word he spoke only heightened her unease and the sense that everything was changing—quickly, dramatically, drastically—and Samantha resisted change, particularly if it was beyond her control. “You wanted this?”

“Very much so.”

“You can’t take another man’s wife.”

One of his strong black eyebrows lifted quizzically. “You do if she’s neglected.”

Dazed, she gave her head a slight shake and Cristiano merely smiled, a cool smile, much like the glittering light thrown off by the huge chandeliers overhead. Neither his smile nor the bright light above them warmed his eyes now.

“Doesn’t it grate you, Baroness,” he said after a slight pause, “that while you’ve scraped and struggled to pay bills, your husband sat in the casinos for months losing thousands a night?”

It did, oh God it did, but she couldn’t find the words, or the protests. She blinked, held back the tears. “He stopped for a while.”

“Not very long. I know. Because every time he lost, I won. And everything he offered, I took.”

“So this is your fault.”

“He’s a compulsive gambler.”

“It’s a sickness.”

“So I discovered.”

“And could you show no mercy?”

“No.” And his expression slowly changed, jaw firming, cheekbones jutting beneath hard eyes. “I am not a merciful man.”

CHAPTER THREE

CRISTIANO SENT SAM home in a taxi and traveling back home, she glanced at her watch constantly. Two minutes later, five minutes, eight.

She felt obsessed with time. Driven by time. It was a quarter to noon now. Cristiano had said the car for her would arrive at four, which meant she now had less than four hours to pack and arrange her life, less than four hours to say her goodbyes. Which really meant saying goodbye to Gabby. Four hours to say goodbye after four years of being together…

Sam couldn’t fathom it, couldn’t get her head around it. The situation boggled her mind, not because Johann had gambled and lost his entire fortune, but the fact that she’d been dragged into this. Johann and Cristiano’s gambling had nothing to do with her, or Gabriela. If they wanted to gamble, let them live with the consequences. She and Gabriela shouldn’t have to suffer for their poor decisions.

And Gabriela would suffer if Sam left her. Gabby wasn’t even five, and yet how many homes had she known? How many different guardians and adults had drifted in and out of her life? How many had actually helped her? Considered her needs before their own? How many had given love?

Love, Sam silently repeated, stepping from the taxi, there was a concept. But it was love Gabby needed, not things. Love, not money. Love, not power or control or whatever it was men seemed to think made the world go round.

And facing the tired villa in need of repairs and refurbishment, Sam knew what she needed to do. She needed to take Gabriela away from here, far from the brittle glamour of Monte Carlo, the selfish, greedy games Johann and Cristiano had played, the shallowness of people who cared more for money than a child. She’d been pushed too far this time.

Johann was wrong and so was Cristiano. Sam refused to let Gabby be hurt yet again. Once Sam knew what she needed to do, she also knew where she’d go. The moment Gabby came home from school they’d be gone.

Upstairs, Sam checked the bedrooms and discovering Johann still passed out facedown on his bed, she quickly packed, knowing they didn’t need much for their trip—clothes, yes, and Gabby’s favorite toys but there weren’t many toys, there hadn’t been money for toys in the past year.

Quietly Sam opened the drawers in Gabriela’s dresser, scooped up the small shirts and skirts, tucking them into the smaller of the two suitcases Sam had brought with her from her last job in Seattle.

Then Sam went to her room—she and Johann had never shared a bedroom—and packed her own suitcase. It would be cold in England this time of year, far colder than it was in Monaco and the south of France, but it would be safe. Cristiano wouldn’t know to look for them there.

Suitcases packed, Sam double-checked that she’d put all her documents in her purse, their passports and the other things she’d need once they reached England, then called a taxi.

Inside the door to Gabriela’s bedroom, Sam paused, glanced one last time around the room that had been a nursery when Sam had arrived three and a half years ago.

The room was still pale green and white, a scheme that should have been garden fresh but just looked severe thanks to Johann selling the carpet, furniture and artwork out from beneath everyone’s feet whenever money grew tight. And with Johann’s gambling problem money always grew tight.

But now Johann and his problems would soon be behind them. In less than an hour she and Gabby would be on their way to a new life far from Johann’s drinking, indifference and abuse.

By the time Sam had finished packing, it was time to meet Gabby. On her way out the front door, Sam set their two suitcases just inside the door, ready to be carried to the taxi the moment it arrived.

Sam spotted Gabby as the little girl skipped down the school’s front steps and Sam lifted a hand in a wave. Gabby waved back eagerly. Bless the child. What a love she was. In all her years Sam had never met anyone—child or adult—so ready to love, and be loved. Gabby’s heart was pure gold.

Gabby burst through the school gate, threw herself at Sam’s knees.

“How was your day, my pet?” Sam asked, hugging her.

“Very good. But I forgot I had sharing today. I didn’t take anything.” Gabby’s eyes, a lovely green-gold, darkened briefly with emotion before brightening. “But then Mademoiselle said we could tell a story, and I told a very funny story about a mouse that lived in Daddy’s pocket and the adventures the mouse has at Le Casino.”

Sam blanched, set Gabby on her feet. “You told a story about your papa at the casino?”

“No, Sam, not Papa, but the mouse in Papa’s pocket.”

“And did the mouse stay in your papa’s pocket?”

“No. He played cards with Papa at the casino. But he was a very clever little mouse and he didn’t lose. Not like Papa. And everyone wanted the mouse because the mouse won so much money he bought us a big new house and a car just for you and me so we could go driving whenever we want.” Gabby took a breath and beamed up at Sam. “Isn’t that a good story?”

Sam felt sick inside. “You are a very clever girl, Gabriela Grace, but you know that, don’t you?”

Gabby just laughed, and they walked hand in hand back to the villa, but the closer they came to the villa, the more Sam worried. How was she going to break the news to Gabby that they were leaving? How was she going to tell her they were going to live apart from Johann in a country Gabby had never even been to?

Oh God, none of this was easy.

And reaching the old town villa not far from the Place de Casino, it only got harder, as parked in front of the villa was Cristiano’s red sports car.

Cristiano, dressed in the same black slacks and thin cashmere sweater he’d worn earlier, appeared as they entered the house. “Good afternoon, Baroness.”

Gabby looked at him, not at all shy. “Who are you?”

Sam struggled to think of an answer and it was Cristiano who smoothly replied, “A friend of the family’s.” He extended his hand to Gabriela. “I’m Cristiano Bartolo. What’s your name?”

“Gabriela Grace van Bergen.”

“A big name,” he said dryly.

“I’m a big girl,” she answered smartly.

Cristiano’s smile turned wry. “Out of the mouth of babes.” He turned to Sam. “I see you’ve packed.”

Again her heart sank. “Yes, but I—”

“Is Papa here?” Gabby interrupted, tugging on Sam’s hand.

“He’s upstairs sleeping,” she answered woodenly, as Gabby dropped her hand and charged up the stairs. How could Cristiano persist with this? Maybe he wasn’t a gentleman, and maybe he wasn’t merciful, but cruel?

With Gabby gone, Sam took a step toward Cristiano, dropping her voice. “You can’t do this to her. Please think it through, please try to see it from her perspective. I’m the closest thing to a mother she knows.”

Suddenly Gabby was running down the stairs again, her long dark braids flying. “Sam, Sam! Papa’s gone. He’s not in his room. He’s not even here.”

Sam wasn’t sure if she felt fear or relief. Unbuttoning her coat she faced the stairs where Gabby was charging down. “Maybe he went for a walk.”

“No, Sam, he’s gone. His clothes, his coat, everything’s gone.” Gabby jumped down the last three steps, going forward to her knees before catching herself with her hands. She righted herself, stood. “He must have gone on a trip without us.”

Relief, fear, hope, panic—they pummeled Sam one by one. If Johann was gone, then Sam couldn’t leave Gabby behind. But if Johann was gone, and Cristiano didn’t want Gabby, then Gabby would be placed in government care until Johann was found.

Stricken, Sam looked up, straight into Cristiano’s face. This was his fault, Cristiano Bartolo’s fault. He was the devil himself, smiling, playing cards, buying drinks for Johann. Sam knew he’d deliberately gotten Johann drunk, too, upped the stakes, challenged Johann, pushing him out of his comfort zone until Johann was playing over his head.

But then, Johann always played over his head.

Sam couldn’t look away from Cristiano’s hard impassive features. He looked perfectly neutral, even indifferent. And she may have disliked him before, but she hated him now. Hated his confidence, his arrogance, the power he thought he had over them.

“Isn’t that amazing,” she spit contemptuously. “You sit down to play cards and next thing you know, you’ve inherited someone’s family.”

He said nothing, just looked at her with his hazel eyes, so focused, so alert, so watchful.

“It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense!” Sam crossed her arms over her chest, knuckles pressed to her ribs. “What do you want with us?”

“Maybe I’m a generous man with a sympathetic heart.”

“Heart?” Sam heard the word burst from her lips, cold, icy. “No, I don’t think that’s it at all. There’s something else happening here, something far more—” She broke off, bit back the word that crowded her mind. She couldn’t say sinister in front of Gabby, couldn’t alarm Gabby. Instead she shook her head, swallowed her fury and fear and reaching out, placed her hand protectively on the top of Gabby’s head.

“I’m going to go upstairs,” she said more calmly. “Check and see if Johann left me a note. I’m sure he did. I’m sure he’ll have us join him as soon as he reaches wherever he’s gone.”

Cristiano’s eyebrows lifted. “If you think so.”

“I think so,” she snapped, but of course she didn’t think anything of the sort. She wouldn’t be surprised if Johann had just fled. It was in his nature to run from problems.

Cristiano pursed his lips but held his tongue. He didn’t think Johann was coming back. Not now. Not ever.

Sam hurried up the stairs with Gabby scampering at her side. Johann’s room was dark and empty. Sam opened the closet, the four wide bureau drawers, and finally the small drawer in the night table but everything was empty save for a drawing Gabby had made him lying in the middle dresser drawer.

Sam took the crayon drawing out, looked at the picture which was one of the childish drawings where everyone is a stick figure either wearing a triangle dress or rectangle pants. The picture was meant to be Johann, Sam and Gabby all down at the beach, as if that was the way they were. A family.

They were no family. They’d never been a family, despite Sam’s best efforts.

Sam didn’t hear Cristiano come up behind her and when he spoke she jumped. “That’s a lovely picture of the van Bergens on holiday,” he said.

Eyes burning, face flushed, Sam quickly folded the picture and put it in the pocket of her lavender cardigan. It was that or cry, and she wouldn’t cry, hated crying, having spent far too many years as a little girl in tears. If she’d learned anything, it was to present a confident face to the world. No one needed to know what she was thinking, or feeling. No one needed to know the truth. “Gabby’s a very talented artist.”

“And optimistic,” he added mockingly.

She was just turning to walk out when she spotted an envelope on the bed, propped against Johann’s pillow. Her name was written on the envelope.

Her hand shook ever so slightly as she ripped the envelope open and shook the papers out. Birth certificate, and a paper-clipped set of legal documents slid out. The birth certificate and papers were Gabriela’s.

He was leaving her, Sam thought, suppressing horror even as it mixed with hope.

She unfolded the note, read Johann’s wildly slanted scrawl.

Sam, I’m finished, gone, going home to Vienna. I thought together we had a good chance to beat Bartolo, but the game’s up. Bartolo plays to win, and he’s won. If it’s any consolation, Gabby’s yours. You know better what to do with her than me. I’ve lost it all now. Best of luck. You’ll need it. Johann van Bergen.

“What is that?” Cristiano asked.

A miracle, Sam thought, heart racing, eyes stinging. She blinked, turned the note around, held it up for him to see. “Read it.”

He did, then silently handed it back.

“She’s mine.” Sam said quietly, fiercely, heart so full of emotion she wasn’t even thinking. Just feeling. Gabby, gorgeous little Gabby was finally safe, finally hers, finally out of harm’s way.

All these years…

All the worrying, the struggling, the praying. She’d prayed for a miracle and she’d finally got one.

Gabby was hers. Johann had left and left Gabriela Grace to Sam.

“So what happens now, Mr. Bartolo?” she asked, knowing this had to change things, knowing he couldn’t possibly take both of them. It made no sense. He wouldn’t want them both. Obviously other plans had to be made.

He shrugged. “We have tea.”

“Now?”

“Then we’ll get you settled at the Hotel de Paris until we make more permanent arrangements.”

“So Gabby goes with me?”

His eyes narrowed fractionally. “For now.”

Sam shot Gabby a protective glance but the little girl had left the room, wandering down to her own bedroom. “She’s mine.” Sam’s voice dropped, her inflection hard, flinty. “We stay together. Like it or not.”

They had tea at the Hotel de Paris restaurant, Cote Jardin, a virtual indoor garden and terrace with a spectacular view of the harbor.

The service wasn’t slow, but for Sam every moment felt endless. It didn’t help, either, that their meal was interrupted repeatedly by strangers who stopped at their table to wish Cristiano well.

Although polite, Cristiano didn’t encourage conversation and when the strangers moved on, didn’t explain what he’d done to earn such enthusiastic well wishes. But after the last couple moved on, Sam wanted to know more.

“So you live here in Monaco?” she asked, stirring milk into her tea.

“I have a penthouse here, yes.”

“But this isn’t your primary home?”

The corner of his mouth curled. “I split my time evenly among my different residences.”

She glanced at Gabby who was glued to the window watching the boats enter and leave the harbor. “How many residences?”

His smile deepened. “Enough that I never get bored.”

Sam set her spoon in the saucer with an irritated clink. “Do you enjoy being enigmatic?”

“Not at all. I don’t know what you want to know.”

“I want to know everything.”

“Everything?”

He was smiling again and she didn’t understand it. Everything she said seemed to make him smile. How could she possibly be so amusing? “Yes, everything. I want to know where you live. I want to know what you do. I want to know who you are, how you spend your free time, the kind of friends you have.”

“A character assessment.”

“Yes.”

He shrugged, leaned back in his chair, the sunlight playing across his features, intensifying the green in his hazel eyes. “I can’t do that for you. You’ll have to use your own judgment regarding my character, but I can tell you basic things. I live here and on the Côte d’Azur. I have a home in Brazil on the coast but I don’t go there often anymore. I have my own company. I’m successful and financially solvent. Is that what you want to know?”

No. That wasn’t what she wanted to know. She didn’t care about his things, she wasn’t the least bit materialistic, and it annoyed her how easily people were impressed by money.

Money was useful, bought things, made certain decisions easier—even more convenient—but money as an end to a means? No. Never. Money ruined people. Changed everything. Sam didn’t know if it was greed or a weakness in human nature, but too many people respected—admired—the wealthy simply because they were wealthy and had fatter bank accounts. But fat bank accounts don’t make a person interesting and fat bank accounts don’t make a person kind, considerate—valuable.

Sam glanced at Gabriela who was now talking to the waitress and pointing out something she’d seen in the harbor. “It’s not your bank account that interests me, Mr. Bartolo, it’s your heart. And that’s what worries me. I don’t know if you have one.”

“I don’t know, either,” he agreed mockingly. “But hearts are overrated. Far better to be coldly pragmatic, to do what needs to be done, rather than what one feels like doing.”

Sam’s head shot up. “And what does that mean?”

“You feel attached to Gabby, so you’ve laid claim to her, but think about it: you’ve no legal claim to her, no biological tie—”

“Johann wants me to raise her.”

“Does that make it right?”

“Yes.”

“What about her mother’s family? Wouldn’t a blood relative be better than a stepmother?”

“Love isn’t about biological ties.”

“No?”

“No.” Sam stared at him, hating him. He had a beautiful face, a face of a fallen angel, and yet his heart was so black and selfish. “I love Gabriela and she loves me. Love is a gift. You can’t buy it, win it, or barter it. I wouldn’t trade her love for anything in the world.”

“Not even three million pounds?”

“Are you trying to be funny? Because I find that rather insensitive considering our situation.”

Cristiano’s hazel eyes narrowed, lashes dropping, concealing his expression but from the tilt of his lips she could see he was amused. “You know, Baroness, there are many funny people in England. The greatest comics are all British and I’ve watched every Monty Python movie that exists. But you, sadly, lack a sense of humor.”

“What about our situation do you find amusing?” She demanded tersely, refusing to acknowledge that he’d hit a sore spot. She’d never been able to laugh at herself. There hadn’t been a lot of fun in her life growing up, or many occasions to tease and play. Life for an orphan was serious. “Our lives are changed forever and you’re making jokes!”

“Not all change is bad, Baroness.”

“In this case it is.” Sam clasped her hands together in an effort to stay calm. “Please don’t move us from the villa. Please don’t take Gabby from the only home she knows.”

“It’s not much of a home.”

Sam’s cheeks burned, her temper spiking. “That’s not the point.”

Cristiano looked at her, long and level. “Then perhaps it should be.” Abruptly he signaled to the passing maître d’hôtel that he wanted the bill. “Let me see you to my suite and then I’ll work on locating Johann.”

Still feeling feverish, her gaze met his. “And just what do you intend to do with a woman and her little girl? Use us as a tax write-up? Fight some archaic inheritance law?”

“I think you’re actually trying to be funny.” He dropped cash on the table and stood. “Shall we go?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t think I have to.”

She wasn’t going to budge, wouldn’t leave until he gave her a straight answer. She was sick of being pushed and pulled and jerked around. “What are you going to do with us?” she repeated in a low, unrelenting voice.

He stood over her, gazed down at her. “I’m going to find Johann—”

“Why?”

“I want to make sure everything’s legitimate.”

“He gave me her papers, wrote a note—”

“And I can’t help wondering if it’s all legal? Can one just really give away a child like that?” Cristiano’s brow creased, his eyes narrowed. “First he tries to gamble Gabby, and then he abandons her. Seems highly suspect if you ask me.”

His answer stayed with Sam, haunted Sam as he led them to the elevator that whisked them to his hotel suite.

It didn’t matter what Cristiano found out. She wouldn’t give Gabby back to Johann. She wouldn’t give Gabby to anyone. Gabby was hers. She needed someone who loved her. Period.

Cristiano gave them a brief tour of the suite, pointing out the two bedrooms with ensuite baths, the sitting room connecting the two bedrooms, the small bar and refrigerator in the sitting room where they’d find cold drinks and other refreshments. “You’ll be comfortable here,” he said, with a glance at his watch. “Watch movies, television, whatever you like while I return a few phone calls. Once I’m off the phone we’ll proceed from there.”

Sam watched as he shut his bedroom door and then without even hesitating, she went to the second bedroom where their suitcases had been delivered and then with suitcases in hand, hustled Gabby to the elevator.

Taxis were already lined up in front of the hotel and it took just minutes to be seated and off. And yet despite their quick departure, Sam still held her breath much of the trip to the Nice airport. It was essential they catch the next British Airways flight to London-Heathrow, and from there they’d connect to Manchester.

In the back of the taxi, Sam wrapped her arm more snugly around Gabby.

Hard to believe they were running away like this.

Even harder to believe she was really going back.

It had been eight years since she’d left Cheshire, eight years since she’d fled the Rookery determined to never return.

But what was the old expression? Desperate times called for desperate measures? Well, Sam was nothing if not desperate now.

They didn’t reach Chester until very late that night. The taxi driver had tried to discourage them from traveling so late from Manchester to Chester, but Sam insisted. She didn’t have enough money for a taxi ride and hotel. They had to go to Chester. They had nowhere to sleep.

“Your address,” the taxi driver said as they approached Chester’s city limits. “It’s not in town, is it?”

“No. It’s actually closer to the village of Upton. It’s called the Rookery.”

Sam saw the driver look into the rearview mirror, his eyes briefly meeting hers. “Isn’t that the orphanage?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” the driver said more kindly. “I know the place.”

Fifteen minutes later, the driver took a left at a lane cut between two dark overgrown hedges. It was a long private driveway and everything gave an impression of neglect with tall, dead straggly weeds lining the dirt road while the road itself was muddy and full of potholes.

The whole area looked terribly forlorn and unkempt, but as the car headlights shone on the Rookery at the end of the driveway, the neglect was even more apparent.

The Rookery’s main hall dated back to the late seventeenth century, but through time and need, rooms and wings had been added to the original stone keep. Tonight the Rookery was dark, and the bright car beams bounced off the leaded windows on the second and third floors, while the first floor windows were all boarded over.

The taxi driver parked, but left the engine running. “It’s vacant,” he said.

Indeed, it was. No cars, no lights, no people, no sign of life anywhere.

“Were you expected?” he persisted.

Sam slowly shook her head, unable to find her voice. She’d counted on the Rookery, counted on Mrs. Bishop, the head housekeeper, and Mr. Carlton, the groundskeeper. She was certain they’d still be here. They’d been here forever. The Rookery was their home.

“Did you use to live here?” the driver asked, squinting up through his windshield to get a look at the rampart high above. It was the only feature of the old keep that remained. The rest had been softened and changed in renovations.

“Yes.”

It was all Sam could say. It was impossible to say more. If Charles had lived, things would have been different, of course, but Charles hadn’t lived and now the Rookery was closed, and she and Gabby had no money and nowhere to go.

Which meant they’d stay here. She’d find a way in, or better yet, try to break into the gamekeeper’s cottage to the far left of the old hall.

“So where can I take you?” The driver asked. “Into Chester? There’s some decent hotels and inns in town.”

Sam shook her head, opened the car door. “No, thank you. We’ll be staying here.”

The driver shook his head, obviously not pleased with her decision, but unwilling to intervene. He accepted his payment and drove away and as the taxi disappeared down the driveway, and Gabby shivered next to her, Sam realized just how late, and cold, and dark it was.

She’d made a mistake coming here. She should have gone with the taxi while they could.

But it was too late for regrets or remorse. They needed to get inside the gamekeeper’s cottage and once inside, Sam would build a fire and they’d be warm.

The old stone cottage was tucked to the left of the Rookery, and although small, contained two bedrooms, a simple kitchen and a great room with a large stone hearth. Sam knew it would be chilly inside the cottage—dark, too, because obviously there wasn’t even electricity anymore—but surely there’d be candles or lanterns, something to provide light.

Standing on tiptoe, Sam reached above the door, felt for a key not expecting to find one, and yet to her surprise, her fingers brushed cold metal. Thank God. The cottage key’s hiding place had at least remained the same. Sliding the key off the door frame, Sam tried the dead bolt and it turned.

“We’re in,” Sam said, forcing cheer into her voice. “Let’s see if I can’t make us a proper fire now.”

Nearly two hours later Sam was still trying to make a fire—she couldn’t find matches in the dark, couldn’t find anything to give her light—but thankfully Gabriela had fallen asleep on the old feather-stuffed couch, wrapped in thick blankets. At least Gabby was warm, Sam thought with a sigh as she sat back on her heels.

She was still contemplating the cold black hearth when she heard the purr of a motor outside, and then saw the wide arc of headlights flash through the dark cottage’s unshuttered windows.

Someone was here.

But Sam felt anything other than relief as she heard the car come to a stop, the headlights shining directly on the small neglected cottage. This wasn’t the taxi driver returning to check on them. And no one knew they were coming here.

Nervous, Sam went to the window overlooking the driveway. The car out front was a large sedan, a dark colored Mercedes. None of the locals who’d worked at the orphanage would drive a Mercedes, and to reach the Rookery, one had to drive a good quarter of a mile off the main road. Besides, it was late now, close to midnight.

Sam’s fingers curled into her palms. This was no accidental call. Heart in her mouth she watched the door on the driver’s side swing open. Cristiano Bartolo stepped out.

Sam stared at his tall shadowy figure in disbelief. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. Despite the distance, the flights, the taxis and the borders, he’d found them already. It’d taken him just hours.

CHAPTER FOUR

LOCKED inside the cottage, Sam listened as he knocked once on the cottage door, then twice.

Three times.

And each time he knocked, it was harder, louder.

She glanced back to the living room where Gabriela still slept, but if Cristiano continued pounding on the door, he’d wake her soon.

“Open the door, Baroness.” Cristiano’s deep voice, although muffled by the dense wood door, still reached her.

He sounded angry. Angrier than she’d ever heard him. In Monte Carlo he’d been cynical, mocking, terse—but never angry.

He must have leaned closer to the door because when he spoke next, his voice was perfectly clear. “I’ll give you to the count of three before I break the door down.”

She said nothing. He had to be bluffing. The door was thick, old, it would be impossible to break down.

“Baroness, I don’t make promises I don’t keep. Keep that in mind as I start counting.”

A shiver raced down her spine as she stood in the dark icy cottage. She craved light, and heat, craved safety but there was no safety for them now, not with Cristiano Bartolo on the other side of the door.

“One.”

Sam held her breath, nerves stretched to a breaking point.

“Two.”

“Wait!” Sam pressed her face to the door. “You can’t break the door. It’s hundreds of years old. It’s been here longer than any of us has been alive—”

“Then open it now, before I say three.”

Hell. Sam’s hands trembled as she struggled to unbolt the lock, but it wasn’t just her hands that shook as she swung the door open. The cold air rushed at her, surprised her. She hadn’t realized the temperature had dropped so low.

“What are you doing here?” Sam faced Cristiano on the step outside. Moonlight outlined his profile, lit his dark hair, and yet it was his features that captured her attention. His jaw jutted, his full mouth pressed thin, and his dark eyes blazed. He was very unhappy with her at the moment.

Cristiano gave her a long hard look. “That’s a silly question.”

“You better go before I call the police.”

“You don’t have a phone, Baroness. And apparently, you haven’t any gas or electricity.”

He’d already figured that out, had he?

Sam shivered, hugged her arms closer to her chest. “You have a phone, and I’ll call the police.”

“Good. And then we can have a nice little chat with your Cheshire police about child smuggling.”

“Child smuggling! I have her passport, her birth certificate—”

“That doesn’t give you permission to take her out of the country. You’re not her legal guardian yet. You haven’t gone through the proper channels at all. The fact is, you broke so many international laws, Baroness, you’ll be spending years behind bars. Now, move.”

He was tall, so tall, that she had to tip her head back to see his face. “No.”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Then I’ll let myself in.”

Cristiano stretched an arm over her head, pushed the door open and lifting her in one arm, carried her into the cottage where he kicked the door shut and dropped her none too gently onto her feet. “Where is she?”

“Who?”

In the dim light she could see his expression and it wasn’t pleasant. “For an intelligent woman, you’re shockingly naïve.”

He gave her yet another shadowy, contemptuous look. “I’m here, Baroness, in your Cheshire cottage. I’ve traveled the same route you did, having spoken with numerous people at airport ticket counters. So where is she?”

Sam swallowed, nodded with her head. “On the couch in there. She fell asleep while I tried to get the fire going.”

“Which you couldn’t do.”

“I couldn’t find matches in the dark.”

“So what was your plan? To stay out here and freeze?”

Sam looked away, rightly chastened. It had been foolish coming here. Foolish and dangerous. “I’d hoped in the morning to find the matches.”

“And what were you going to eat? I’m certain you haven’t gone to a store for groceries.”

“No.”

He shook his head, looked as if he’d say more but changed topics. “Have you a fire laid then?” he asked, peeling off his coat.

“Yes. Logs and kindling.”

Aided by moonlight, he walked into the main room with its great stone hearth. The cottage was several hundred years old, with a low, beamed ceiling that once warm, kept it snug. Crouching next to the hearth, he shifted some of the split logs around, piled the dry kindling higher at the base of the logs then used a lighter from his pocket to spark the kindling.

It took a few minutes before the kindling really caught, but soon the fire was blazing. Sam gratefully held her hands to the fire’s heat. “It was cold,” she confessed. “And I was worried. Thank you.”

“You can ask for help,” he said.

Her head lifted and she shot him a dubious look. “From you?” She rubbed her hands together before extending them again over the flickering gold flames. “The one that intended to return Gabby to Johann?”

“I didn’t say I’d return her. I said I’d do what’s right.”

“You must see that having Johann look after Gabby isn’t right. You must see that for yourself, you must see what he is—”

“I do.”

Her gut burned. “Then spare her heartbreak. You don’t have to care about me, or my feelings, but care about Gabriela’s feelings. Please don’t hurt her.”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t think taking a child from her home isn’t traumatic?”

“But haven’t you just done the same? Haven’t you taken her from Monaco, the only home she’s ever known, dragged her across the English Channel, plopped her in a car, driven her for miles to where? Chester? Upton? Wherever we are?” He shook his head, expression grim. “From her perspective, this frozen gray place must seem like Timbuktu.”

“It’s England, not Timbuktu.”

“For an Italian child it’s the same thing.”

Sam stood, straightened. “Her mother was Spanish, not Italian.”

“Catalonian, actually.” Cristiano’s lashes dropped, concealing his dark eyes. “And I knew her mother quite well, so let’s avoid a who-knows-more competition.”

They were both sitting close to the fire, speaking in hushed voice but this last pulled Sam up short, and she stared at Cristiano, mouth open. “You knew her mother?”

“Yes.”

Sam sucked in air, a great gulp but it didn’t fill her lungs, didn’t help, did nothing to dull the throbbing in the back of her head. “Before Johann?”

“Yes.”

Sam couldn’t look away from Cristiano’s taut features. “What happened?”

“Life happened.” His expression was utterly blank, no emotion in his face or tone. “Gabriela’s mother moved on. But that’s not the issue now. The issue is you, running away with Gabriela—”

“I took her on a trip. I can do that. I’m her stepmother.”

“That’s right. Baroness van Bergen.” And he smiled, his teeth flashing white, but it was such a hard, unforgiving smile that Sam shivered inwardly.

Cold or fear, she wondered? Or maybe it was more dread, because that’s what filled her stomach in hard heavy bricks. “I wish you wouldn’t call me Baroness anymore.”

“What then?”

“Samantha will do.”

Cristiano’s head tipped and in the yellow-gold light of the fire he studied her through narrowed eyes. “You’re such a contradiction, Samantha. On one hand, you’re so very prim and proper, and then on the other you’ve this fierce spirit—”

“Can you tell me more about Gabriela’s mother? Gabby used to ask about her. I never knew what to tell her.”

“She was a film actress.”

“Not that. More like, her personality. What was she like?”

“Mercedes?” He paused, reflected. “Beautiful. Lively. She was a great deal of fun.”

“Is Gabby very like her?”

“I think Gabby’s a mix of her mother and father.”

Sam turned, looked at Gabby where she slept on the couch cocooned in blankets. “I’ve wished for years that Gabriela had a different life. I’ve wished it were more stable, more predictable. I tried to give her everything. It’s one thing for an adult to struggle, but it’s another for a child.”

“Has Gabriela suffered?”

“I’m sure she has. We both have to a greater or lesser extent. There’s never enough money. Johann’s rarely home. He may be Gabby’s father, but he’s shown her little love and even less attention.”

“Was he so different before you married him?”

“No.”

Cristiano watched her. “But you thought you’d marry him anyway, marry into a life of privilege?”

“It’s never been a very privileged life. I worked hard.”

“And I bet you just hated being a baroness.”

“Yes, I did. It was false.”

“False?”

“Johann didn’t love me and I didn’t love him. It was a marriage of convenience, that and nothing more.”

“Nothing more?”

Her own lips curved, in an equally hard cynical smile. She’d changed so much since Charles died, he wouldn’t even recognize her if he was alive now. “Nothing more.” Shivering, she held her hands up to the flames to try to warm herself. “I was convenient to marry.”

She leaned closer, stared into the flickering fire with its red and gold flames feeling the weight of years of secrets and silence on her. “You see, Mr. Bartolo, before I was the baroness, I was the van Bergens’ nanny.”

“The nanny?” He sounded shocked.

Sam looked at him, lips twisting wryly. “I’ve never told anyone before. Johann forbid me from telling people. He didn’t want anyone to know I’d been the hired help, but in private he never let me forget. It was one of the ways he ridiculed me—I was just a working girl, not an aristocrat like him.”

“You should have left him,” Cristiano said flatly.

“And what? Leave Gabby?” Sam drew a breath, her chest tender and glanced down at her hands bare of any rings. Johann had bought her a ring but he’d asked for it back when money got tight. “I couldn’t do that. Not then, not now, not ever.”

“Why are you so devoted?”

“I don’t know. I suppose Gabby needed someone to love her, and I—” She broke off, aware of how close she came to saying the words, and I needed someone to love. She finished the thought differently. “I like to be useful.”

“Johann found you useful?”

“I did what he needed me to do.”

“Including keeping Mercedes’s family away.”

Sam winced. “A mistake. I thought I was keeping a family together. I thought I’d be a good wife.” A good mother.

His eyes, dark in the firelight, met hers and for a long unblinking moment he just looked at her, as if he could see into her. “We all make mistakes,” he said at last.

Something in his voice nearly moved her to tears. He sounded almost sympathetic and that was unbearable. She bunched her hands in her lap, fighting emotions she didn’t know how to manage. Her life, like Gabby’s, hadn’t been easy, and in her life there had been few people looking out for her. Just Charles, and then Charles was gone as suddenly as he’d come into her life.

“Whatever happens,” she said hoarsely, thinking she shouldn’t have come back to the Rookery, shouldn’t have returned here at all. “Do not pity us. We don’t need your pity.”

“I don’t think I mentioned pity.”

Her teeth scraped together. She dropped her voice lower. “Maybe not. But I can see what you’re thinking.”

He dropped his voice even lower and leaning forward, he caught her chin in his hand, tilting her face up to his. “Then I need to buy you some glasses, Samantha, because apparently you can’t see a damn thing. You can’t see what’s in front of you—good or bad—and that’s a problem. Not just for you, but Gabriela.”

His hand burned where it touched her chin, her skin flaming hot, hotter. His touch was firm, sure, a finger at her chin, his thumb beneath, close to her throat. She shuddered a little. Everything was wrong. Nothing was right anymore. Her entire world had upended and she felt as if she were standing on top of her head. “I didn’t think you cared about Gabriela.”

Abruptly he released her, sat back. “It’s late,” he said shortly, “nearly two in the morning. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

She nodded, confused by his rapid mood change but too worried about antagonizing him to ask for an explanation. “There are two bedrooms, but they’ll both be cold.”

“Are the beds made up?” he asked, standing.

“Yes. There are extra quilts in chests at the foot of each bed.”

“Which room is yours?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m just going to sleep in here near Gabby.”

He started to leave and then stopped in the shadowed hall. “Maybe you weren’t the wife you hoped you’d be, but surely Johann wasn’t the husband you’d hoped for, either.”

Sam’s eyes burned. She’d never admit it to Cristiano, but she hadn’t really expected much from Johann. She’d worked for him before they’d married. She knew who he was, and what he was, and maybe that’s why she accepted his proposal. It was a paper marriage, was meant to be a loveless marriage. She knew she’d never love anyone the way she’d love Charles…and quite frankly, didn’t think she deserved love after losing Charles.

“Isn’t there a saying,” she said softly as the fire fizzed and popped, “be careful what you wish for?” Sam looked up, met Cristiano’s hooded gaze. “It’s true. I learned that one the hard way, too.” She grimaced, wrapped her arms tighter around her knees. “Anyway, it is late. Good night. Sleep well.”

Cristiano was right, morning did come early, but the fire never died out and Sam found out later, when she woke, it was because Cristiano had gotten up repeatedly during the night to add more logs to keep the cottage warm.

Gabby, for her part, was delighted to discover they had company. “You!” she said, bounding out of her bed on the couch as she spotted Cristiano entering the house, carrying a stack of firewood. “You came to see us in England!”

“I did.”

Gabby grabbed one of the blankets and wrapped it around her shoulder as he stacked the split logs next to the hearth. “You played cards with Papa.”

Sam turned sharply towards Gabby. “How do you know that?”

“He did, didn’t he?” she asked innocently. “And he took Papa’s money, too.”

“Gabriela!”

The girl looked from one to the other. “Didn’t he?”

Cristiano tossed a log onto the fire. “Yes,” he said bluntly as sparks hissed and shot from the fire. “He wasn’t a very good cardplayer.”

Gabby nodded thoughtfully and she chewed her lip. “That’s what Sam says, too.” And then her expression cleared. “Maybe you can play some cards with me.”

Sam nearly choked on her tongue. “I don’t think he plays the kind of games we play, Gabriela.”

“I can teach him,” Gabby answered. “Go Fish and War is easy.”

“I think I remember how to play.” Cristiano smiled faintly as he brushed his hands off. “In fact, I used to be very good at War.”

“Really?” Gabby’s tongue poked out, touched the corner of her mouth giving her a slightly naughty look. “I bet I’m better than you.” She leaned forward, said in a stage whisper. “I beat Sam. I beat everyone.”

Sam blushed with embarrassment but Cristiano laughed, a deep masculine sound that rumbled from his chest.

“You are your father’s child, aren’t you?” he said, but he wasn’t looking at Gabby as he spoke. He was looking right at Sam.

And suddenly Sam understood even though she didn’t want to. Last night she’d ignored the facts, but this morning she couldn’t play ostrich. It was all beginning to make sense. The card games, the high stakes, the ruthless moves, the seizing of family and assets…

She was forced to ask questions now, forced to piece it together bit by bit.

Perhaps this wasn’t just a gambler’s impulse move…

Perhaps all along Cristiano had ulterior motives…

Perhaps Cristiano, not Johann, was Gabriela’s father…

But those fragmented thoughts were forgotten as Gabby scrambled to the window and announced, “Someone’s coming! It’s a lady and she looks mad.”

Sam tucked a blond curl behind her ear and exchanging swift glances with Cristiano, headed for the door. But on opening the door, Sam froze as she caught sight of the white-haired woman bundled in a thick gray wool. “Mrs. Bishop,” she whispered, rooted to the spot.

The elderly woman looked equally stunned, her annoyance giving way to shock. “Samantha?”

Sam closed the distance and gave the older woman a swift hug. “What are you doing here?”

Mrs. Bishop clasped her hands on Sam’s shoulders. “I should ask you the same! You gave us all quite a scare. I’d heard there were lights here last night, and I insisted Gilbert, my son-in-law, drive me over.” She paused, tilted her head back, searched Sam’s face. “It’s been so long, my girl. Where have you been?”

“Away.” Sam tried to smile but couldn’t. Suddenly the past was rushing back, painful memories she didn’t want, couldn’t bear. Charles had died eight years ago and yet suddenly it seemed as if it were just yesterday. “How is everyone? And where is everyone? When did the Rookery close?”

“Not long after you left.”

“I see.” Sam bit her lip, and she did see, she knew exactly what had happened. Without Charles to run things there probably wasn’t funding, or the management, to keep the orphanage open. “Would you come in?”

Mrs. Bishop nodded, and followed Sam back into the cottage but her expression fell as she took in the cottage’s deplorable conditions. “You can’t possibly mean to stay here. The cottage is a wreck. There’s no water, heat, plumbing. What are you thinking?”

Sam smiled, but tears filled her eyes. “I don’t know.”

Mrs. Bishop saw the tears and shaking her head, clucked, “It’s not been easy, has it, my girl?”

Mrs. Bishop’s kindness would be Sam’s undoing and yet Sam knew she couldn’t break down here, not in front of Gabby, not with Cristiano standing just a stone’s throw away, listening to everything being said. Which reminded her, she ought to make introductions. She couldn’t very well pretend Gabby and Cristiano weren’t here.

But Mrs. Bishop had spotted Gabby already. She clapped her hands, bent low. “And is that your little girl?”

Gabby scampered to Sam’s side. “Um, yes.” Sam put an arm around Gabby’s shoulders. “I’m her…her…nanny.”

“And my mum. My stepmum,” the little girl corrected. “You see, she married my dad. Johann van Bergen. But he left us. There were problems with money.”

Mrs. Bishop’s head shot up and she stared aghast at Sam. “Is this true?”

Sam flushed. “More or less.”

“And is that why you’re here?” Mrs. Bishop continued worriedly. “You’ve nowhere else to go?”

Put like that it sounded absolutely appalling. A desperate Sam dragging a little girl across the continent to a derelict orphanage in Cheshire.

Her mouth opened, her throat worked, but there was no ready answer. Just the sting of tears she wouldn’t cry, and the bite of memory, the ache of heartbreak.

She’d grown up here, gone to school here, and would have lived here as Charles’s wife if he hadn’t died. No wonder she’d run here when she didn’t know where to go. Until she was eighteen, the Rookery was her entire world.

“We’re in transition,” she said, finally finding her voice. “But I thought until we were more settled, it’d be nice to visit.”

Mrs. Bishop’s light blue gaze, though watery, missed little. “Are you in trouble, my girl?”

Sam’s cheeks burned and she shook her head swiftly and before she could stumble her way through another feeble protest, Cristiano moved forward.

“Samantha wanted us to see her home,” he said, sliding an arm around Sam, his hand resting lightly, and yet provocatively, on her hip. “She thought it was important we knew where she came from.”

“Yes, of course.” Mrs. Bishop was nodding and clucking again. “You’ve heard then all about her life. So much tragedy for one so young.” She regarded Sam with a look of tenderness. “I was the head housekeeper when she came to stay with us at the Rookery. It was a very difficult time but we loved her and she adjusted, although there were many nights we heard her crying.”

“Mrs. Bishop,” Sam remonstrated, going hot and cold. Mrs. Bishop’s shared memories were nearly as painful as Cristiano’s arm against her lower back, his hand warm on her hip, her body exquisitely sensitive.

“I know it’s hard, Samantha,” Mrs. Bishop said, reaching out to touch Sam’s cheek. “But if he loves you half as much as we do, he’ll want to know everything.”

Sam shuddered. “He knows enough.”

“So you’ve told him all about Charles, then?” Mrs. Bishop’s expression gentled even more. “Ah, that was a tragedy no one’s forgotten—”

“Mrs. Bishop.” Sam’s voice came out strangled.

But Mrs. Bishop so engrossed in her memories and stories seemed oblivious to Sam’s agony. “It was horrific. No one could believe it, no one knew what to do. Our beautiful Sam, a bride and a widow all in the same night.”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE silence that followed didn’t last long, no more than any other silence following a difficult remark, but for Sam, it felt endless.

She’d never told anyone about Charles, had never spoken about her brief marriage that ended less than eight hours after the ceremony.

Sam stepped away from Cristiano. “With the Rookery closed, where do you live now, Mrs. Bishop?” Her voice was crisp, and she did her best to look firmly in control. Best thing to do now was quickly move forward. Act as if nothing had been said. “I know you had family in the area.”

Sam succeeded in distracting the elderly woman and Mrs. Bishop nodded. “That’s right. I broke my hip a number of years ago and it’s slowed me so I live with my daughter, and her family now.” Mrs. Bishop glanced down at Gabriela. “In fact, I have several granddaughters very close to your age. They’re twins.”

Gabby beamed. “I’m almost five. I’ll be five February 16th.”

“Well today is Saturday, the perfect day for a tea party.”

Sam smiled, smoothed Gabriela’s dark hair back from her brow. “That sounds like fun. Maybe later Gabby can meet the girls.”

“Why doesn’t she come home with me now?” Mrs. Bishop said stoutly.

“We haven’t even had breakfast.” Sam felt the panic return, the sensation like little needles in her stomach and brain. She couldn’t be alone with Cristiano, couldn’t be here with Cristiano, didn’t want Gabby gone and Cristiano looking at her, talking to her, having anything to do with her.

Mrs. Bishop waved away the protest. “She can have breakfast with the girls, and we’re just down the lane, not even a mile away. If she wants to come home, we’ll call you and zip her right back.”

“Can I go?” Gabby tugged on Sam’s hand. “Can I? I bet they have dolls and lots of toys.”

And gazing down into Gabriela’s eager little face, Sam realized all over again how much Gabriela had been deprived of these past four and a half years. Not just toys and pretty dresses, but parties and playdates. Friends. Johann wouldn’t let anyone ever come to the house, and overtures made by parents at Gabriela’s school had been immediately rebuffed by Johann. “You’re not afraid to go?” Sam asked softly.

“No! I’m not afraid of anything.”

It was true. Just last summer Gabby had leaped off the high dive at a local swimming pool—a diving board so high that most nine-and ten-year-old girls avoided it—but Gabby had loved it. Gabby said when she grew up she wanted to be an astronaut, or a fireman, as long as she could go fast and jump out of tall buildings.

Sam had never understood where Gabby got her thrill-seeking personality from, but now it was beginning to make sense.

Sam looked at Cristiano, hesitated. “You don’t mind if she goes, do you?”

“Not if you’re comfortable,” he answered evenly. “And I can give Mrs. Bishop my mobile number. That way she can call the moment Gabriela gets tired or the girls stop having fun.”

Sam nodded gratefully. “Good idea. Then we can just run down and pick her up.”

“Or I can bring her back.”

While Mrs. Bishop and Cristiano exchanged phone numbers, Sam went to locate Gabby’s coat, and then using her fingers, did her best to comb Gabby’s hair smooth before pulling it into a long ponytail. “Be good,” Sam whispered into the little girl’s ear, walking her from the primitive bathroom back to the cottage door. “Don’t cause any trouble.”

Gabby flashed an impish smile. “I never do!”

And it crossed Sam’s mind, as Mrs. Bishop trundled a beaming Gabriela toward the car, that nothing must dim Gabriela’s quick smile and bright eyes. Gabriela mustn’t ever grow up quickly. She should remain a child as long as she was a child. Sam was only six when her own parents died and life had never been the same. Everyone at the Rookery had tried to step in, patch things together, but mothers and fathers were never replaced. And Sam’s parents, although working class, had been solid and loving. Dependable.

And that’s what Sam tried to be for Gabby. Solid, loving. Dependable.

As Mrs. Bishop shut her own door, she rolled down the window and leaned out. “Sam I nearly forgot. I have the key to the Rookery. Why don’t you stay there? It has a generator in back, and a proper kitchen with working appliances.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sam said, glancing at the cottage behind her. It was small, and rustic, but it was also quaint and cozy in a way the old rambling Rookery would never be.

“Take the key anyway.” Mrs. Bishop extended her hand, held a key ring out to her. “Just return it to me when you leave.”

Sam was conscious of Cristiano standing behind her as she stood in the driveway watching Mrs. Bishop slowly make her way down the lane, her small blue car bouncing in the potholes just like the taxi did last night. The lane was a mess, the sides of the road a jungle of weeds and blackberry thorns, so different from how Sam remembered it as a child.

“You don’t let her out of your sight very much, do you?” Cristiano said, his voice a deep rumble.

Sam shivered at the bite of cold air. It was chillier this morning than it had been last night when they arrived. “No.” Reluctantly she turned to face him, her hands burrowing in her coat pockets, fingers stiff. “I worry about her when she’s gone.”

“Why?”

“Things have happened in the past,” she said evasively, unwilling to go into detail about the kidnapping attempt several years ago that had put Sam in the hospital and given Gabby nightmares for months. It had been three years since the kidnapping attempt—someone had obviously thought Baron van Bergen had more money than he did—but the terror was still very real to Sam.

She still didn’t know who had targeted Gabriela, and the Monaco police had never come to any conclusions. In the end they concluded it was a random attack. They’d told Johann how lucky it was that Sam was there, and that she fought as hard as she did to defend Gabriela, otherwise the perpetrator would have succeeded.

But Sam didn’t feel lucky. The police’s conclusions did little to comfort Sam, and until the case was solved, Sam believed that Gabby remained a target.

“What things?” Cristiano asked.

Sam shrugged uncomfortably. She didn’t like talking about bad things, didn’t want to dwell on that which was frightening or out of her control. Funny, she thought, how much she didn’t let herself think about, or feel. “Something happened years ago that’s made me extra protective toward Gabby. Nothing’s happened since, but I still worry.”

Cristiano’s brow furrowed and he looked down the lane where the blue car had gone and then back to Sam. “But you trust Mrs. Bishop?”

“Oh, yes.” Sam mustered a smile, knowing she was being silly and yet old habits were so hard to break. “Mrs. Bishop was like a surrogate mother to me when I lived here—she’d do anything for me, and I know she’ll take good care of Gabby. She’s a very kind woman.”

“So why are you so uneasy?”

Because I’m stuck with you, that’s why.

He made her uneasy. There was no other way to put it. And she didn’t want him here in the small cottage. She didn’t want to be alone with him. He was too big, too intense, too different.

Her eyes met his, and as if he could read her mind, his lips curved in a faint sardonic smile. Heat exploded in Sam’s middle, her face flaming, her limbs going weak.

She didn’t like him. Didn’t want to like him. Didn’t want him anywhere near her, but somehow she knew he wasn’t going away, and he wasn’t going to be leaving her—or Gabby—alone.

“It’s hard being back here,” she said, as much as she could, or would say. If there’s anything she’d learned it was the value of silence, of avoiding conflict and controversy. As a child she’d waited years to be adopted, hoping against hope that she’d someday be placed with a real family, praying she’d eventually be wanted somewhere. It never happened. But the years of trying so hard to please, the years of waiting to be accepted, wanted, adopted, had left a lasting impression. Don’t make waves. Avoid conflict. Try to keep peace. Make others happy.

No wonder she became a professional nanny. The only thing she was good at was making others happy.

Sam squeezed her hand inside her pocket, the Rookery’s key ring now warm in her palm. Again she wondered why she thought this was the right place to go. Again she regretted her decision to return.

“I would have thought you’d be anxious to leave this morning,” she added, aware of Cristiano’s scrutiny, knowing he was watching her, measuring, evaluating.

“I am. But there are things we should discuss, things Gabriela shouldn’t hear. Now would be a good time for us to talk.”

Sam nodded, doing her best to ignore the sense of trepidation weighting her limbs. Immediately she flashed to Johann and Mercedes, or was it Cristiano and Mercedes? Is that what Cristiano wanted to tell her? That he and Mercedes had been lovers? And if Gabby was his child, then what would happen next?

What would happen to her? Why had he bought her?

Cristiano suggested they drive into Chester, have breakfast and buy some groceries in case they stayed one more night.

“If we’re to stay another night, shouldn’t we stay in a hotel here in town?” Sam asked as they settled into a booth at a Chester restaurant, the ceiling low in the historic half-timbered building, the interior dark, the booths hard and high, uncomfortably like church pews.

Cristiano barely glanced at the menu before setting it aside. “And give you another chance to run away? I don’t think so.”

“You couldn’t have been comfortable last night.”

“That’s kind of you to worry about me,” he drawled, leaning back in the booth. “But it’s not necessary. I may look delicate, but I’m surprisingly tough. And no, it wasn’t the best night’s sleep, but at least I knew where you were.”

Sam felt heat creep up her neck, into her cheeks. “What if I promised you I wouldn’t go anywhere—”

“Wouldn’t believe you.” He smiled at her but the smile was hard, fixed. “I don’t trust you.”

Her hands twisted beneath the table. “Anything I’ve done—”

“Yes, I know, you’ve done for Gabriela. But I don’t buy that, Samantha. This is about you. You don’t want to lose Gabriela. You don’t want to be without her.”

“And why should I be? I’ve spent years with her, years loving her.”

“But you’re not her mother, or her father. You’re not her family—”

“Neither are you!”

His dark gaze held hers in a long, timeless moment. “Are you sure?”

Sam’s stomach churned. It had come to this. No more running away from the inevitable.

“She’s a Bartolo,” he said, slowly, deliberately. “I’ve been trying to get her back for years.”

“But the gambling…Johann…”

“Why would I buy her? She’s mine, belongs with me. I knew if I took you Gabby would follow. I could have only taken Gabby if I destroyed Johann first.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Come on, Sam. Don’t play ostrich now.”

She sat still, one hand kneading the other, seeing but not seeing, thinking but not thinking. If what he said was true…if Gabriela were indeed his child…Sam had no place in Gabriela’s life anymore. It was Gabby he’d wanted all along, not her. Johann’s letter giving Gabby to her meant nothing. It was just another sick joke on his part. One last stab at her.

She felt close to throwing up.

Sam pressed a hand to her middle. “You’ve had a DNA test?”

“Yes.”

Her mouth was so dry it hurt to swallow. “And the evidence?”

“Conclusive.”

Dazed, she shook her head, unable to think clearly. Her thoughts were too wild, her fear and confusion too great. “But then, why isn’t she with you? Why didn’t the court appoint you her legal guardian?”

“The courts eventually will, but I don’t want to wait any longer. My patience had run out. I’ve missed out on the first four and a half years of Gabby’s life as it is. I won’t miss any more.”

A new thought came to her, a new, more frightening thought. She sat taller, stomach in knots. It took all of her courage to get the question out. “Were you behind the kidnapping attempt three years ago?”

“No.”

But he knew about the attempt, she thought, heart racing. He wasn’t surprised by her question. He was familiar with the incident. “What do you know?”

“I know you were hurt.”

Sam looked at him quickly, and then away. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“You were in the hospital for a week.”

She smiled grimly, remembering how Johann proposed while she was still in the hospital. Johann had said he needed her, and Gabby needed her and that by marrying him, Sam would make him a better man.

It didn’t work out that way, of course. After the wedding, and as soon as Sam had fully recovered from the beating, she assumed even more household responsibilities than before. She wasn’t just the nanny now, but the cook, the housekeeper, the bookkeeper, the gardener, the seamstress, the laundress because, Johann, citing financial difficulties, had let all hired help go.

“How did you find out?” she asked, knowing that even though the workload was exhausting, by that point she was so attached to Gabby that she couldn’t imagine leaving.

“I’ve been keeping my eye on van Bergen.”

She felt a shiver of apprehension. “You’ve been spying on us?”

Again he fell silent, and his silence was somehow more effective than other peoples’ words. His silence conveyed tremendous strength and power, as well as calm. The word, unflappable, crossed her mind.

She looked at him where he sat across from her in the oak booth, his long legs out and braced before him, his hands resting lightly just below his hipbones. Something in his stillness, something in his pose—his hands resting just so—reminded her of a gunslinger from one of the old cowboy movies she used to watch with her father late at night when there was nothing else on the telly.

“I’d prefer to call it investigating,” he said, speaking slowly, carefully. “I was intent on gathering facts. Evidence. Making sure Gabriela was safe until I could get her in my care.”

“So you’ve tried going to court?”

“We’ve been in court for years—but it takes so long. I expect a legal decree soon—”

She felt dangerously close to hysteria. “So why the poker games?”

“Revenge.” Cristiano’s upper lip curled. “I wanted to make him suffer. He made me suffer. It seemed only fair.”

“Suffering is never fair.”

“You’re such a good girl, Samantha.”

She wouldn’t be baited, not this time. “So I wasn’t important. You never wanted me—”

“Not true.” He cut her off. “I wanted you from the beginning. I gambled on the fact that once I had you, Gabriela would follow.”

“That’s illogical.”

“Sam, you married Johann for Gabriela. If you came to me, you’d bring Gabriela. And I was right.” He smiled at her but his smile was predatory. “You’ve protected her from the beginning. I don’t hold that against you. In fact, I appreciate the fact that you love her for her—not for her bank account.”

“She has a bank account?”

“A huge trust fund. She’s a Bartolo.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Cristiano’s lashes lowered and he studied her as though she were a curiosity, something he’d uncovered in a dusty secondhand shop. “It means she’s rich. It means she will always wonder when she grows up if men love her for her, or if they love her money.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That’s reality.”

She pursed her lips, trying to digest this and everything else she’d learned. “And that’s what you want for her? Some harsh reality where her life is ruled by money, not love?”

“Sam, life is what it is. I’m not going to sugarcoat it for Gabriela, you, or anyone. But I’ve been observing Gabriela. She’s a bright girl. She’s confident and assertive. There’s no reason she can’t be rich, and be loved.”

Somehow Sam felt the inequities very much. She—who’d tried so hard for so many years—had neither love nor money. “Do you have both? Are you rich?”

“Yes.”

“Loved?”

He laughed, cool and mocking. “No. But that’s my choice.”

Sam had never met anyone like Cristiano Bartolo, didn’t understand anyone like him, either. “Why wouldn’t you want love?”

“Love’s complicated. It involves layers of emotion including guilt and fear. I’m happier without it.”

“Without love.”

“As I said, I’m happy as I am.”

She shook her head, perplexed. “So why do you want Gabby?”

He hesitated for the briefest second. “Because she’s a Bartolo. She should be raised by a Bartolo.”

He was making her sick. She couldn’t stand his way of thinking. It was harsh, horrible, selfish. “This isn’t why you take a child—”

“It is for me,” he cut in sharply before lifting the menu. “Do you know what you’re going to eat?”

Sam couldn’t imagine eating a bite after that but when the waitress appeared at their table, she ordered toast and tea, thinking she had to put something in her stomach if she was going to survive the day.

They sat in virtual silence while they waited for their breakfast to arrive until Sam couldn’t stand the miserable tension a moment longer. “So what are you going to do? How exactly does this work?”

“In the morning we’ll fly back to Monte Carlo. On Monday Gabby will begin at her new school.”

“A new school?”

“Yes.”

Sam stared at him aghast. So upset she ignored the waitress when she brought Sam her pot of tea. “You’re out of your mind.” And he was. He had to be to think he could just rip Gabriela from everything she’d known and loved. “Maybe adults understand moves and shifts, maybe adults can be relocated overnight, but not children—”

“I’m not asking you, Samantha. I’m telling you this. The decision is made. It’s no longer your concern.”

She shuddered, knowing he was wrong, knowing Gabriela would always be her concern. She might not be her nanny anymore, might not even be her stepmother, but Gabby was part of her heart, her life. “What is the rush?”

“I’ve lost enough time trying to get her home. I refuse to lose anymore.”

The hopelessness of the situation wrapped hard fingers around Sam’s throat. “And what about Gabby? What about all she loses?”

Cristiano’s eyes narrowed. “She’ll thank me one day.”

“Maybe. And maybe not.”

He shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Sam felt as if he were splitting her heart and head wide-open. How could he do this? How could he even talk this way? How was it possible to be so callous…much less about your own child? “Why can’t you give her time,” Sam pleaded. “At least let her finish the school year where she is. Don’t change everything on her overnight. She’s so young. She’s been through so much. Give her time to understand what’s happening…time to adjust.”

He leaned back as their breakfast plates were carried to the table. “She’ll have time,” he said. “She’ll have the next fifteen years to adjust.”

She swayed on her seat. “What kind of man are you?”

His steady gaze held hers, and the way he studied her made her skin prickle, her body tingling with alarm. “The kind who gets what he wants.”

“And what about what other people want?”

“Not my concern.”

Sam’s stomach rose, nearly upending. “God, that’s cold.”

“Yes, but damn practical.”

Conversation finished, Cristiano concentrated on eating his bacon and egg breakfast while Sam tore apart her toast, heartsick.

Sitting there, Sam wished she could do something, wished she could intervene even as she’d foiled the kidnapping attempt three years ago by hurling herself at the kidnapper. She’d used her own body to shield Gabby, and it had worked. Sort of.

Sort of.

Sam’s lower lip quivered and she bit into it ruthlessly. She wasn’t going to let him see how much he upset her, wouldn’t let him have the upper hand again.

She waited until he’d finished his meal and then gathered her coat and purse. “Can we go get Gabby now?”

“You haven’t taken a bite of your toast.”

“Not hungry,” she answered, chilled on the inside. Three years ago she’d saved Gabby, three years ago she’d been brave, heroic. Why couldn’t she find a way to save Gabby today?

It felt bitterly cold outside, the sky like an endless sheet of metal, and Sam shivered on the way to the shop where they bought milk, bread and groceries for dinner. It was a relief to reach the car, where Cristiano immediately turned on the heat. They didn’t speak though, and as Cristiano drove, Sam stared intently out the window, trying not to obsess about Cristiano’s plans for Gabriela, but it was impossible to think of anything else.

“I’ll need your help,” he said abruptly. “I brought the school admissions packet with me, and there’s quite a long list of things she’ll need. Proper uniform, wardrobe, essentials.”

“Cristiano.”

“I’d initially planned on leaving her in her current school,” he continued as though she’d never spoken. “But I was naïve. I thought you could continue taking her to school in the morning, and then picking her up again after, but obviously that’s not going to work, not if I can’t trust you with her.”

“You can.”

“I can’t, and I travel a great deal with my work. Which is why I’ve decided the best place for her is Ludwin’s—”

“Ludwin’s? That’s a boarding school!”

“One of the best in Europe. The waiting list is long. I was lucky they accepted her.”

Sam leaned forward to get a good look at his expression, thinking he was joking, thinking he had to be joking. “Gabby’s not even five yet.”

“She’ll be five next month.”

“Yes, and she thinks she’s having a circus party and has been helping me plan it.”

“I’ll take her to the Monte Carlo’s Royal Circus instead.”

Sam’s mouth opened, closed. She couldn’t make a sound. How could he even consider sending her away? “Have you looked at her, Cristiano? She’s a tiny thing still. Far too young for boarding school. She could be picked on by other children, tormented, and then all the rules, the infractions and punishments—”

“It’ll toughen her up.”

Tears burned the back of her eyes. “No. Toughening up isn’t what you think it is. Toughening up is having your heart broken and your hopes shattered. Toughening up breaks a child down before it builds her up. Don’t do it to her, Cristiano.”

“I’ve been to boarding school. I survived.”

“Yes, survived. But surviving isn’t living. I know. My parents died when I was six. I grew up in a boarding school for orphans. That’s what the Rookery is. A place where children live because they have nowhere else to go, but Gabby has somewhere to go. She has you, she has me—”

“You’re not part of the equation anymore, Samantha.” He shot her a hard look. “I don’t trust you.”

Cristiano felt a twinge of remorse as Sam blanched, her face paling, her eyes huge and dark with pain. He didn’t enjoy hurting women and children. He was a competitor, a fighter, but not malicious, especially not toward those weaker.

He could see the effect his words were having on her. She was in torment, but it was the same torment he’d known these past four and a half years as he battled to get Gabriela back. At first he’d tried to go the legal route, do everything above-board, but Johann had blocked his every move, dragging the custody battle into an endless tangle of court appearances and appointments. He wanted to get his hands on Gabby’s money.

“So why did you want me,” she whispered, looking at him, her blue eyes bruised, her expression wounded. “Why take me from Johann?”

He hesitated for a split second, then realized at the very least, he owed her an honest answer. “There were three reasons. One, I knew wherever you went, Gabby would go. Two, you’re the one that’s kept me from Gabby—”

“Me?”

“If you hadn’t married Johann, Gabby would have been mine years ago.”

“I didn’t know—”

“It doesn’t matter.” The years of waiting for Gabby, and the endless legal wrangling, had taken a toll on his patience. He was done with playing nice. Done with accommodating others at his—or Gabriela’s—expense. “Fortunately I have her back now and I’ll do what needs to be done.”

“Do you love her?”

“She’s my family. She’s a Bartolo.” He was determined to make Samantha understand she wasn’t in charge of Gabriela’s future any longer. She had to accept him as Gabby’s guardian.

“You know her sizes,” he continued calmly. “I’ll give you the list Ludwin’s sent me, all her requirements are there. I imagine she’ll want something from home for comfort, too. A blanket or stuffed animal. If Gabby has one—”

“She has a doll she loves.”

“Then send that with her.”

“You’ll crush her, Cristiano.” Sam’s voice broke, her words all but inaudible. “She’s a little girl that’s lost her mother, and the man she thinks is her father. How can boarding school with Spartan dormitories be the answer?”

“The school has an impressive reputation. They’ve assured me they’ll do everything in their power to help her adjust.”

“But they don’t know Gabby, or care about her. But I do. And I know you must or you wouldn’t have worked so hard to get her back.” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “Hate Johann, hate me, hate our lives, the world we inhabit, the truth, the lies, but don’t play God, and you can’t say you aren’t when you’re already planning on sending her away.”

“But what are my options? I can’t leave her with you—not if I can’t trust you.”

“But you can. I’m telling you. I’m making a promise—”

“I can trust that?”

“Yes.”

He was silent, then sighed. “I wish I could believe you, but I can’t. I was lucky you came here, fortunate you brought her to Chester. I knew from the private investigator’s report that you’d been raised in Cheshire. He said if you ever ran away, you’d probably return here, but in the future you won’t come here. And then what? Where do I find Gabriela then?”

“I won’t take her away from you. I promise.”

He steeled himself against the anguish in her voice, refusing to let her needs usurp his own.

Sam still pleaded her case. “I’m an honest person, and fair, Cristiano. If I give you my word—” Her voice broke and she pressed her hands together against her chest, held them there as though her heart hurt. “I’m as straight as they come. If you take the time to get to know me, you’ll see I’m trustworthy.”

He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t let the agony in her voice touch him. She was emotional now, but later she’d see that he was right. Later, when she remarried and had a family of her own, she’d be grateful he’d taken Gabriela back. “Forgive me, but you know the expression, once bitten, twice shy.”

She ducked her head but he saw the first tear fall. “Please.”

Don’t think about her, he told himself, don’t look at her. This isn’t about her. It’s about family, his family, the family that didn’t exist anymore. Gabby was all there was left. Gabby was the last Bartolo. He had to have her back. He needed her back. That was all there was to it.

“This isn’t personal,” he said after a moment as another tear fell. “And it’s not a punishment.” He softened his tone, tried to comfort her, if such a thing was possible.

It was silent for a few minutes as Sam stared out the window and he concentrated on the road. There wasn’t heavy traffic, just a few cars and trucks and they were all traveling very slow.

“You said three,” she said as he overtook a car. “You said there were three reasons.”

He glanced at her, saw the bruised softness at her mouth, the terrible sadness in her eyes and it cut him. In the beginning, maybe he had wanted to hurt her. Maybe in the beginning he’d been driven by revenge, but he didn’t know her, had thought she was one thing—a cool, impervious blonde—but that wasn’t Samantha. Beneath the beautiful blond exterior was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman—warmth, tenderness, intelligence and loyalty.

“You’re stunning,” he said bluntly. “And I wanted you for myself.”

CHAPTER SIX

HE TOOK her because he wanted her.

It was inconceivable to Sam that anyone could desire her that much. She didn’t feel desirable. Didn’t feel like a woman should feel.

And yet with him sitting so close, his large, powerful body crowding the car, she couldn’t help but be aware of him, aware of the words he’d just spoken, and the nuances still humming in the air.

The back of Sam’s neck tingled. Her stomach somersaulted. Her body felt odd all over—too sensitive, too aware. She didn’t like the feeling at all, and she didn’t want him to want her. She didn’t want anything to do with him. Not now, not ever.

Reaching into his leather coat pocket, Cristiano retrieved his phone and after pushing a couple of buttons, handed it to her.

“Call Mrs. Bishop,” he said calmly, “her number’s right there. Let her know we’re on our way to pick up Gabriela.”

In no mood to argue, and missing Gabby, Sam dialed the number and Mrs. Bishop answered. They chatted for a moment but when Sam said they were getting close to the house to pick up Gabby, Mrs. Bishop protested. “Oh dear, that’s a shame. The girls are planning a puppet show. I’m helping them with the costumes now.”

Sam felt a pang. At the Rookery she’d played with the same puppets. They were Mrs. Bishop’s, from her own childhood and she used to bring them to the orphanage on wet weekend afternoons so the children could play. “You’re not making new costumes, are you?”

“But of course. New plays need new costumes.”

Sam smiled, remembering Mrs. Bishop’s needle wizardly. Mrs. Bishop was the one who’d taught Sam to cook and sew, which had been very useful skills when Sam reached the nanny college in Manchester. “Gabby must be having a ball.”

“She is, Sam. She’s a lovely thing and the girls are having such a good time together. Do let her stay until dinner. There’s no hurry getting her home, is there?”

“Let me speak with Gabby then.”

Gabby howled when she took the phone from Mrs. Bishop. “You can’t pick me up now! We’ve made up our own play. It’s our own story and we’re making costumes and everything!”

“But you’ve been there for hours, Gabriela.”

“But I don’t want to go! We made cookies and had a tea party and Mrs. Bishop is helping us with the puppets. They have a puppet stage with red velvet curtains and we’re going to do our play in it.”

Sam glanced at Cristiano, covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “Gabby wants to stay and play longer. They’re going to have a puppet show.”

“She’s doing well, then?”

“Yes. She’s having a great time.”

“Then let her stay until later this afternoon. I can pick her up before dinner.”

Sam told Gabby and then Mrs. Bishop what Cristiano had said, and then, call finished, Sam hung up and handed the phone back to Cristiano.

“I’m glad she’s having fun. Except for school, she doesn’t get to play with other children all that often,” Sam said, although on the inside she felt torn. She was glad Gabby was having fun but for Sam it was awkward and uncomfortable being alone with Cristiano. “Johann wouldn’t let her go to other people’s houses, and her friends from school weren’t allowed to come home.”

“Why?” Cristiano asked.

She looked at him, and then away, and glancing out the window, Sam noticed the first snowflake fall, and then another, and another. The flakes were scattered, slow, as if indecisive about what they were going to do. “I don’t know. But Gabby used to cry about it. Johann and I fought about it. It didn’t matter. He never changed his mind.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am, too.” Maybe it was the delicate snow flurries, or the pale silver and pewter sky, but Sam felt a rush of emotion so strong she had to bite her lip to keep the tears from filling her eyes again.

She missed so much right now.

She missed virtually everything. Her parents. Charles. Even Gabby, although Gabby wasn’t gone yet. “I love her,” she whispered, concentrating on the view outside the car window where the snow was coming down faster and thicker now in dense white flurries. Some of the snowflakes were so big they looked like bits of lace dropping from the sky and yet they were weightless, and temperatures must have continued to drop as the snow was sticking to the ground. “Even if you take her from me, she’ll always be my girl.”

“Then make the transition easy on her.” Cristiano’s voice sounded as cold and hard as the bare limbs of the trees outside. “Help her adjust. Don’t pull her in two.”

It was still snowing as they reached the Rookery, and the small gamekeeper’s cottage never looked smaller or darker. Sam couldn’t imagine spending the rest of the afternoon alone in the dark cottage with Cristiano.

As he parked “I think I’ll go to the Rookery and see if I can’t locate some candles for tonight,” Sam said. “The pantry used to be full of them. Every now and then we’d lose electricity and we depended on candles and kerosene lamps to get us through until the backup generator came on.”

“Do you know where the lamps are?” Cristiano asked, carrying the last of the groceries into the kitchen.

“They should be in the pantry, near the candles. It’s where we kept the emergency supplies.”

“I’ll go with you, see what we can find.”

It was dark inside the Rookery. Power to the abandoned orphanage had been shut off, but once Sam got the back door open, she didn’t need lights to find her way around. She’d grown up here, spent over fifteen years here. The Rookery, for better or worse, was home.

Just as she thought, she discovered boxes of candles, matches and three old kerosene lamps in the pantry off the kitchen.

“I’ll take the lamps back to the cottage,” Cristiano said.

Sam nodded. “I’ll just have a quick look around. I’ll be back soon.”

With a candle to light her way, Sam walked through the Rookery’s high arched hallways. The old Persian carpets were threadbare and covered only portions of the stone floor and every now and then her footsteps echoed, a too-loud clatter that bounced off the vaulted ceiling.

Nothing had changed, she thought. The furniture was all here, just a few pieces like the piano and the Georgian sofa in the parlor were covered. Everything else was exactly as she remembered. The large oil landscapes still covered the walls. The back room facing the garden was still lined with tables and chairs. That was the room they studied in, reading and writing papers and doing homework.

She’d thought the house would be dustier, dirtier, but everything was fairly tidy, and although a few cobwebs clung to the corners, it wasn’t the mess she’d imagined.

Mrs. Bishop must still come in and clean, Sam thought, climbing the first of the stairs, and knowing that Mrs. Bishop still made an effort hurt more than even desertion did.

It was brighter upstairs. The windows on the second floor hadn’t been boarded over and Sam’s breath caught in her throat as she glimpsed the oil portrait hanging at the top of the stairs.

Reverend Charles Putnam.

Her Charles. Sam looked—his handsome face, his gentle expression, the kindness in his brown eyes—until she couldn’t look any longer. He’d been her prince, her knight on a white stallion. He’d been better than she deserved.

Turning away, she pushed open one of the bedroom doors and crossed to the tall multipaned window. In this bedroom Sam could believe that time had stopped.

Nothing had changed from the night eight years ago when the world as she knew it ended and a new life began.

She’d been standing here, not far from this very window, when word had come that Charles had been killed.

She’d just begun to undress, to change from her wedding gown into her going away outfit.

Sam exhaled in a short, hard painful puff. Her fingers curled into her palms. Twice a bride, she thought, and still a virgin. But to lose Charles, the way she had…

Sam reached out to touch the windowpane. The glass was chilly, slick, a stark contrast to the lush plum velvet curtain panel, the velvet curtain the same fabric draping the bed.

God how she hated this room. And loved this room. It was Charles’s bedroom, the room they were to share when they returned from their honeymoon trip to Bath.

Swallowing hard, around the thick lump filling her throat, Sam pressed her fingertips against the glass and then let her hand fall away.

Without a last look around, Sam left the bedroom, closed the door and was hurrying toward the staircase when she remembered the candle she’d left in the hall.

Sam was just returning for it when she saw Cristiano on the stairs. “Having a look around?” he asked.

She nodded, praying he didn’t see the sheen of tears in her eyes. Her past was private. She didn’t discuss it with anyone and she refused to give Cristiano another reason to mock her. “I’m done, though. I’ve seen enough.”

“You haven’t been to the third floor yet.”

She was desperate now to get out, to escape the Rookery and its press of bittersweet memories. “I know what’s up there. I used to live up there. All the children slept upstairs.”

“Is it just one big room?”

“Yes, filled with dozens of beds, dozens of children who grew up without their mothers and fathers.”

Back in the cottage, Sam put the kettle on the fire Cristiano had laid again this afternoon in the old cast iron stove. She stood at the kitchen window as she waited for the water to boil and watched the dense white flurries coming down. It was so quiet, so beautiful, she thought. The snow was thick and still and it covered everything in every direction.

Footsteps sounded behind, slow measured steps on the wooden floor. Sam immediately tensed, jittery all over again. Her stomach flipped. Her breasts felt tight. Goose bumps covered her skin.

She hated his effect on her.

Hated that she was so aware of him.

She didn’t know why he did this to her.

She glanced over her shoulder. His arms were piled high with firewood for the stove. She had to concede he’d been quite dedicated when it came to keeping the fire burning, the wood bins filled, and the cottage warm. “Thank you.”

He nodded.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked, trying to cover her awkwardness.

“No. Thank you.”

She turned back to the window. The snow wasn’t letting up. It just continued to fall, adding to the white mounds blanketing the walls and ground outside, making the late afternoon unnaturally bright.

“It just keeps coming down,” she said, all pins and needles as Cristiano arranged the wood in the bin by the stove. Her hands tightened on the edge of the farmhouse sink. Be strong, she told herself. Be confident.

“We don’t get many storms like this,” she continued, feeling a perverse need to fill the silence. She’d never been much of a talker, usually preferred to let her young charges chatter, but right now she felt like a high-strung child herself. “But when we do get a storm, all of England shuts down. We don’t know what to do with the snow. No one’s prepared, you see.”

It hadn’t snowed like this in Cheshire in years or she would have heard about it. And this was a true storm, the snow coming down in thick silent flurries and the snow stuck, forming dense white drifts on top of the barren window box, the bench in the garden, along the old stone wall. The whirling snow nearly obscured the great oak trees standing guard beyond the garden wall, the trees just dark hulking shadows in silent fields. It just kept falling.

He was rising, moving toward her, and he had such a leisurely way of walking, as if he had all the time in the world and there was something about his easy confidence that unnerved her even more. She’d never felt that confident about anything in life. She’d always been fearful, always afraid.

He stood next to her at the window over the sink to see what she saw. He wasn’t even looking at her but she could feel him, his heat, his energy, his strength. He was so big and imposing, that it was almost as if he’d covered her world with his.

Nothing was the same since she’d met him.

Nothing about her felt the same, either.

Her emotions were all over the place. Her fears had never been stronger. She was on the edge of tears constantly but even then, she couldn’t let go and cry, not really. Yet it would be such a relief to give in to the tears, such a relief to just let go of all the hurt she kept locked tightly inside of her.

But her feelings were too deep, the losses in the past too stunning, that even now, she teetered between pain and nothingness. It was as if she’d shut down somehow, somewhere, given up. Given up hope. Given up life. Given up anything that didn’t have to do with Gabby.

“It was hard for you visiting the Rookery,” Cristiano said now.

His observation was as unexpected as it was accurate. “Yes.”

“How old were you when you were brought here?”

“Six.” Just a year older than Gabby. Sam bit into her lip, fought the wave of dark emotion, the fierce undertow of grief. She couldn’t think, couldn’t let herself be overwhelmed. Stay numb, she told herself, stay in control. Maybe if she hadn’t lost her parents and Charles both she’d be a different person today, but she had lost them, and she couldn’t change the past. She was who she was. She was what she was.

A woman who worked for others.

A woman who only lived for others.

“It doesn’t look like a bad place.”

“It wasn’t,” she whispered, hearing the catch in her voice, hating that she sounded so fragile, as if she could be easily broken. But she wasn’t fragile. She’d been toughened, by time and loss. She wasn’t going to break and she’d get through this. One way or another. She’d manage. She always did. That was the beauty of it. Pain didn’t destroy you. It just made you stronger.

But it hurt like hell until you got to the other side.

She felt Cristiano’s gaze rest on her. “How long has it been closed up?” he asked.

“Years,” she answered softly, the white porcelain sink smooth beneath her fingers. “At least eight.”

He wasn’t even pretending to look outside anymore. He was looking at her, only at her, and the weight of his inspection made her shiver. “How long have you been widowed?”

Sam sucked in air, flinching at the pain. Talking about the Rookery was hard. Talking about Charles—impossible. Her fingers flexed convulsively against the sink’s edge. “Eight,” she said, looking anywhere but at him. Eight long endless years.

To cover her anguish, Sam turned toward the cupboard, reached for a cup and saucer. Her hand shook as she set them on the counter.

She could still feel the weight of his gaze, knew he was watching her, sensed he was remembering what Mrs. Bishop had said this morning about Sam being married and widowed in the same day, and she turned suddenly, faced him defiantly, daring him to speak about something so personal and private it still devastated her eight years later.

Her gaze clashed with his but there was no pity in his eyes, nothing in his eyes, just intense focus.

He continued to look at her with that same long, hard inspection and air bottled in her lungs. Holding her breath, she looked back at him and had never felt so vulnerable, as though she were full of holes and hurts.

Holes and hurts and broken hearts.

If only she could cry, she thought. If only she could let some of this pain out. But it was impossible. The pain was buried too deep, the loss too significant.

Inexplicably emotion flickered in Cristiano’s hazel eyes. His hard jaw gentled a fraction. “You have lost a great deal in your life, haven’t you?”

His sudden tenderness was too much. Sam felt a wall of ice inside her crack and fall, and behind that wall Sam glimpsed a child crying.

She didn’t think she’d made a sound but Cristiano cupped her cheek, then gently sliding his hand down, over her jaw, toward her chin and across the front of her throat. “Hush,” he said. “Things always work out.”

Tears flooded Sam’s eyes and reaching up, she caught his hand in her own and held it tightly. “You’re not helping,” she choked, even as her fingers curled into his. She didn’t understand it. She hated his power, feared his strength, and yet somehow she craved that power and strength, too.

His head dropped and she felt his breath against her face. For a split second she thought he was going to kiss her and then the kettle whistled and he abruptly pulled back.

Sam felt his hand fall away. She took a step in the opposite direction even as she felt a shiver race through her, awareness, tension, desire.

“Your water’s boiling,” he said.

She turned, searched for a towel or hot pad, something to grab the kettle’s handle with and when she turned around again, Cristiano was gone.

Outside Cristiano returned to chopping wood. He’d been pouring his anger and aggression into splitting logs before he entered the cottage. He should have never stopped splitting logs. Shouldn’t have carried an armful into the kitchen, not when Sam was there, not when she looked so completely and utterly alone.

He wished he hadn’t seen that…that he could go back and erase her expression from his memory, the one he saw as she stood at the sink staring out the window. She’d looked so lost.

Goddamn it. She reminded him of Gabriela.

He lifted the ax, swung it high overhead and let it slam down. The impact of metal against wood shuddered through him, rippling from his arms to his shoulders and through his torso.

She wasn’t alone, he told himself, yanking the blade out and turning the log, repositioning it for another swing. She was young. She was an adult. She had friends. She didn’t need Gabriela. Gabriela was her job, not her life.

But, maledizione! The look in her eyes. The grief.

He swung the ax over his head again, a huge powerful arc before he brought it down, crashing into the wood. He felt a jolt through his shoulders even as the wood split and cracked. She wasn’t his responsibility, he told himself, tossing the split pieces into a pile at his feet as he grabbed another large log and placed it on the chopping block. She’s not my problem.

But later, as Cristiano waded through the dense snowdrifts back to the cottage, arms loaded high with freshly cut firewood, he knew she was his problem.

He’d destroyed her world, taken what little security she had away from her. At first she’d simply been a tool to get what he really wanted. But he couldn’t very well leave her alone in the world—no money, no protection, no stability. If he was going to provide for Gabriela, the least he could do was provide for the one person who’d given Gabby love and affection.

Whether he liked it or not, Samantha was his responsibility, too.

He dumped the logs by the hearth in the main room, and returned outside to get one last load so they’d have enough wood for the night.

But wading back through the snow, he grit his teeth at the shooting pain in his right leg. His legs had been aching all day. At first this morning he’d thought it was the lack of sleep, but now knew it was the change of weather. Whenever there was a pressure change, his legs became hypersensitive—both skin and muscle full of stabbing pain, but he never complained, never told anyone that he hurt. He knew the dangers of his profession when he started out. He could blame no one but himself.

He swore as he hit an unanticipated patch of black ice beneath the snow. His right leg caved, nearly giving out.

Cristiano stopped, took a breath, steadied himself blocking out the searing pain. He made sure he’d found his footing before continuing on again. His rehab had covered numerous situations but walking on slick surfaces hadn’t been one. But then, Monaco and the Côte d’Azur were famous for sun, not ice, so learning to cope with ice and snow had not been a priority.

Loaded down with more firewood, he turned, started back to the house and then was forced to slow, even rest, as he hit the same damn patch of ice. He had no traction in his shoes, and before his accident, ice wouldn’t have been a problem, but his legs weren’t the same. Nothing about his legs was the same.

The doctors had said he should always use a cane, that his weaker right leg needed the support but Cristiano was damned if he’d advertise his weakness to others. He’d never let another man know he wasn’t as strong. His business was so competitive, so cutthroat, that one had to be tough—always. Not just physically, but mentally. So instead of leaning on a cane to support his weight, Cristiano had learned to compensate by walking more slowly, more deliberately. And usually it worked.

Usually.

Cristiano glowered as his right foot slipped again. Damn.

But he wasn’t going to drop the wood. And he wasn’t going to quit. And he wasn’t going to focus on the hot sharp lancing pain that streaked through his legs now.

He’d just dumped the last load of wood by the hearth when his phone rang. Knocking bits of bark and moss off his hands, he took the call.

It was Mrs. Bishop. She’d called to say that they’d tried to drive Gabby back but the car had slid off the road, spinning out into the field. No one was hurt but there was no way to get Gabby back, at least not with their car. As Mrs. Bishop talked, Cristiano went to the front door to check his rented Mercedes. Snow was piled a good foot high on the hood. Looking past the Mercedes he saw the entire lane was covered, no sign of road or field, fence or wall. Everything was just white, powdered white.

“I can try to drive down there,” he said. “My rental car doesn’t have four-wheel drive, but it might be okay.”

“It might be okay,” Mrs. Bishop answered anxiously, “but it might not be. Gilbert, my son-in-law, is already shaken up. Maybe it’s best if Gabby just stayed here tonight, and then tomorrow we can see if one of the farmers will help us tow Gilbert’s car out of the field and maybe plow the road.”

Cristiano caught sight of Samantha from the corner of his eye. She must have heard the phone ring and she’d been following the conversation. “What’s wrong?” she whispered. “Is Gabby all right?”

He nodded before finishing the call. “Then keep her there tonight, Mrs. Bishop, no reason to take any more risks. Tell your son-in-law I’ll pay for his car to be towed, and do give us a call in the morning once everyone’s up.”

Hanging up, he turned to face Sam who hovered in the background. “The roads aren’t drivable. Mrs. Bishop’s son-in-law tried to bring Gabby home but lost control and ended up in a field or a ditch—I’m not sure which.”

“Is Gabby okay?”

“Yes, but she is going to stay at the Bishops’ tonight.”

Sam nodded and blushed all at the same time. She’d counted on Gabby returning. But Gabby wouldn’t be back tonight. Instead it would just be her and Cristiano.

Alone.

In a small cottage.

Far from neighbors.

With no electricity and no music, television or diversion.

What in God’s name were they going to do for the next twelve hours?

CHAPTER SEVEN

DINNER was a simple toasted cheese sandwich served with bowls of tinned tomato soup. Not a glamorous meal but it met the need for warm food and drink.

They ate in front of the fire in the sitting room because it was the warmest spot in the cottage. Once finished, Sam stood to carry their plates and bowls to the kitchen, but as she reached for Cristiano’s dishes, his eyes met hers, his gaze boring into her, the hazel-green depths warm and flecked with gold. “Leave the dishes,” he said. “I’ll do them later.”

“That’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“I do. Leave them.”

Nervously Sam stacked the dishes in the sink before running her hands down the front of her dark gray slacks, her palms damp.

The cottage was so small. There was nowhere to go. And the bedrooms, even if she wanted to hide in there, were too cold.

But the idea of returning to Cristiano, to sitting with him near the fire filled her with dread.

He made her so jumpy. Just being near him her heart raced, her pulse pounded. She felt hot and cold at the same time, jittery, scared, uneasy.

Why was she so afraid of him?

Why did everything in her scream for her to run? Was it survival instinct? Common sense?

Glancing out the window yet again, Sam felt discouraged by the snow still falling. “We’re stuck,” she said, returning to the sitting room.

Cristiano made a rough sound. “You’ll survive.”

Sam grimaced, sat down in one of the armchairs near the fire. “I know. Unfortunately so will you.”

Cristiano surprised her by laughing, a rough deep sound that was as masculine as it was seductive. “You’re really not comfortable with me, are you?”

“No!”

“Finally,” he mocked, leaning back in his chair. “We get a little honesty.”

“I haven’t been dishonest.”

He made a soft, rough sound in the back of his throat. “No. I understand. You’re English, and you’ve cultivated through years of practice and self-denial this wonderful British stiff upper lip to keep others from knowing what you want, or need.”

“That’s not true. The only thing I want or need is Gabby, and I’ve been quite open about my feelings with regards to her.”

He studied her in the red and gold firelight, his lashes lowered, his mouth firm. For a moment there was just the crackle and pop of the fire and the acrid smell of smoke. “Someday you’ll marry again,” he said surprisingly gentle. “You’ll have children, and a family, of your own.”

If he’d hoped to soothe her, his words had the opposite effect. Her throat, chest and stomach hurt as if she’d just chewed and swallowed glass. “I won’t,” she answered. “I’ll never marry again. And I don’t want children of my own.”

“But you’re good with children.”

“I’m a nanny. My job is to look after other peoples’ children. I hope I’m good with them.”

“But don’t you want more for yourself?”

“More, how?”

“A lover, a partner. Someone to share your life with.”

She felt herself blush and she shook her head, amazed at how quickly he could fluster her. “No. I’m content.” She ignored the twinge inside of her, the twinge of conscience that said she was not being entirely truthful. Truly there were times she needed more, times when she felt alone, but everyone felt lonely and alone at times. Everyone had needs. She wasn’t unique that way. “My life’s good.”

“You’ve been married. How can you not miss the physical comforts? Sex? Intimacy?”

He didn’t realize she didn’t know anything about sex, or intimacy, and maybe that’s what kept her from ever becoming more intimate with anyone. People didn’t know that while on one hand she had this colorful, crazy life, on the other she was still hopelessly sheltered. Her emotions had been through hell while her body remained untouched.

Sam found it deeply embarrassing that at her age, approaching thirty, she knew as little about men and sex as she did at eighteen. Somehow a decade had come and gone and left her like one of those Dresden shepherdesses on a shelf. But she was all shattered inside.

Her mouth was so dry, her lips felt as if they were cracking. “I’m content,” she repeated huskily.

“You say that, but you’re not. I see it in your eyes, Samantha. I see it in the way you talk and smile. Forgive me, but you’re a martyr looking for a cause.”

Sam didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until her head started spinning. She forced herself to exhale and then inhale, trying to clear her head. “I’m no martyr. Some people have more heartache in their lives, some people have less.”

He rose from his chair and went to the fire where he took a poker and pushed the fire around a bit before adding more fuel. “There are things I need to tell you. And I’m not sure how to tell you.”

“It’s bad?”

He made a rough sound. “It’s not good.”

Sam stiffened, not wanting more bad news. Bad news in her life had been very bad. There was no in-between news, no disappointing news, just bad as in tragic, bad as in shattering, bad as in nothing will ever be the same.

But Cristiano remained standing in front of the fire and Sam felt his gaze travel slowly over her face, his thick black lashes lowered, and yet even without seeing his expression, she felt his inspection in every muscle and every bone. “What do you have to tell me?” she begged, terrified with suspense, just wanting whatever he had to say, said, so this could be over.

“It’s about Johann. I’ve learned things that will hurt, maybe even embarrass you. But you have to know the truth.”

“Embarrass me, more than he already has?” Sam laughed mockingly. “How could he possibly embarrass me more?” She laughed again, slightly breathlessly, thinking she’d made a silly joke, and anticipating his laugh.

But Cristiano didn’t smile and she suddenly felt out of breath.

“He has another wife.”

Sam just stared at him. She didn’t know what to do, how to react. “He has another wife?”

“Yes.” There was no hesitation. “He still lives with her, part-time in Vienna. They were married ten years ago. He’s never divorced her.”

“That means…”

“Your marriage isn’t valid. You’re not legally van Bergen’s wife.”

Sam shook her head slowly. “I’ve never been his wife?”

“No.”

“I’m not Baroness van Bergen. The wife in Vienna is.”

“Yes.”

She felt as though he’d taken a sledgehammer to her head and she looked up at him where he stood silhouetted by the fire, dazed. “So what am I?”

Cristiano didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

Sam was nothing. Just the nanny, always just the nanny. Forever the hired help.

Sam lifted a hand, touched her forehead. “Does he have children with her?”

“No.”

Thank God. “But he still sees her?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know about me?”

Cristiano shook his head slightly. “I don’t think so. She doesn’t leave Vienna. She doesn’t go out much with him.”

“Neither did I.” Sam laughed unsteadily. “I guess we made it convenient for him. It must be easy having two wives if you don’t take out either.”

“I know it’s a shock, Samantha. But you’re better off without him—”

“Of course I am!” She interrupted fiercely, surprised by the depth of her rage. “I didn’t love him. How could I love him? He was petty and selfish, vain and self-absorbed. He was horrible to Gabriela, horrible to me, but—” And then her voice broke, and the past four years hit her and she felt devastated, betrayed. “He didn’t even pay me!”

She looked up at Cristiano, alternately icy and feverish. “For three years I cooked and cleaned and sewed and gardened and received nothing. No allowance, no salary, no money, no income. Not even kindness.”

She wasn’t going to cry, she wouldn’t cry, it was so silly. So she laughed instead and turned away, looking toward the window, hiding the fact that her eyes were burning and her heart ached. Johann had treated her abominably. And she’d let him.

Let him.

In some ways it was a relief to discover she wasn’t Johann’s wife, but in other ways it was mortifying. Hurtful. Shameful.

All these years she’d worked so hard. She’d scraped, scrimped, selling everything she owned to help support Johann in his decadent lifestyle. My God. He must have been laughing all the way to the bank.

“That’s why he could gamble me away,” she choked. “I was nothing.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. At least to Johann.” She shook her head, not wanting sympathy, never wanting sympathy, and yet she didn’t know what to do with the wretched feelings inside. “You must think me silly, but all I can think about is how he took my wedding ring back—said we needed it to pay bills. And how he insisted I cut Gabriela’s hair myself since we didn’t have money. And yet, he was the baron van Bergen and everyone loved him. Everyone fawned all over him while Gabby and I struggled just to get by.”

“Gabby’s lucky she had you, Samantha.”

Her lungs burned, her eyes stung but she didn’t let the tears fall. She sat up taller, straighter. “How long have you known?”

“Awhile.”

“And how long is that?”

“Longer than you’d like.”

She nodded jerkily. “So Johann never married Mercedes.”

“They had an affair, and were still living together in Monte Carlo when Mercedes died. Johann kept Mercedes’s baby.”

“But why? Why did Johann want to adopt Gabby?”

“If I’m being generous I’ll say sentimental reasons, but I’m not generous and I think his motives were purely financial. He was greedy. He thought if he adopted Gabby, he’d have access to her trust fund.”

“But he wouldn’t?”

“No. I’m not her guardian but I’m the trustee. Gabby doesn’t even have access until she’s twenty-five.”

“You were right,” Sam said after a moment, teeth chattering from shock not cold. “Gabby’s not even five yet and already men want her for her money. It’s so wrong, too. Gabby’s beautiful, and smart, and funny. But even better, she has a gorgeous heart. She should be loved, and loved for herself.”

“But isn’t that what everyone wants?” Cristiano countered softly.

He was right. It was what she wanted, it’s what she’d always wanted. She blinked back tears but Cristiano saw them. He swept the tip of his finger beneath each of her eyes to catch her tears, and she grabbed his hand, wrapped her fingers around his, and held on.

He tugged her to her feet and brought her toward him. Sam stared up into his face wide-eyed. With one hand he tilted her face to his, and the other he slid down her back, his hand so hot against her skin, his hand settling low in her back, pressing against her, melting something inside her, heating a part of her that had never been warmed.

She could feel his thighs nudge hers, feel his deep chest expand as he took a breath and then his head dropped as he cupped her face in his hand and covered her mouth with his.

As if he could feel her stiffen and resist, Cristiano gentled the kiss, stroked her cheek, her resistance melted.

Slowly he deepened the kiss, opening her mouth persuasively beneath his and Sam sighed as Cristiano’s tongue slid across her tingling lower lip.

Her brain was telling her no but her body was melting into his.

And then even her brain was melting as his tongue touched hers, and his hand briefly covered her breast, his palm firm against her nipple, and she trembled, and helplessly she moved closer, wanting more, wanting him.

His kiss, and the caress, electrified her. She’d never felt anything like it. And when he eventually lifted his head, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. All she could do was look at him with wide, bemused eyes.

Seeing her confusion, he smiled grimly and dropped his head, pressed another kiss to her jawbone near her ear, and whispered, “I’ve no morals. Don’t trust me. Don’t think I’m a good guy. I’m not. I will never be.”

He walked out of the room, out the front door in nothing but shirt and slacks. And it wasn’t him walking out that shook her, but her response to him, her response to the kiss.

She’d never felt anything like that before and it dazzled her, made her realize he was even more dangerous than she’d thought.

But it was only a kiss, she reminded herself. Cristiano had kissed many, many women in his life and Sam was sure they didn’t all fall head over heels in love with him. And she wasn’t head over heels in love, either.

But he had rocked her.

She’d liked the kiss, wouldn’t have stopped the kiss, wouldn’t have stopped him.

Her skin still tingled and tightened across her cheekbone. Her mouth felt soft, her lower lip quivering. Even her body felt warm, pliant.

She wanted him, more of him, more of whatever he could give her.

Cristiano left the cottage, stepping out into the still white landscape.

The moon was high, the snow had briefly stopped and the light shone on a distant oak tree, turning the ancient gnarled limbs into a glittering ice sculpture.

They needed to get back to Monte Carlo, he thought.

He didn’t want to be here anymore. He felt increasingly trapped here. It was time to get home, get back to work, get on with his life.

Sam wasn’t part of his life. He’d take care of her financially, especially since she had no money, no family, nowhere to go. He’d set her up in a little house, help her find work…

Christ, who was he kidding?

He didn’t want to set her up in a little house somewhere and find her work.

He wanted to drag her into his bed and take his sweet time making love to her.

But if he took her, made love to her, kept her in his life it would ruin everything, at least complicate everything for Gabby. Because relationships ended. Love affairs didn’t last forever. And then how would he explain the fallout to Gabriela?

He couldn’t. She wouldn’t understand. Gabby was just a child and she doted on Sam, depended on Sam, and Sam was just as devoted to Gabby.

No. Desire—attraction—stopped here. Sam was right. Gabby had to be put first. Gabby couldn’t be hurt, not by the adults she trusted, not by those who’d sworn to love her, protect her.

And he did love Gabby. He loved her dearly. And he’d been fighting for her for years, since the night of the accident when the two formula one cars slammed together in balls of red fire.

He could see it all again. It never left his mind, playing and replaying in exquisite slow motion.

And slow, slow the car came up on his right to overtake him and there, ahead of him, was his teammate’s car, and Cristiano did what any aggressive ruthless driver would do. He blocked for his teammate, for his teammate’s win.

But the driver on his right was even more aggressive and cut left, and then right, and somehow lost control, careening out of control.

And that was how it always began, the slow motion movie rolling in Cristiano’s head, the car from the other team slamming into Cristiano’s teammate and then sliding back toward Cristiano’s car.

When you race, you travel at speeds beyond belief. Speed that’s like flying.

There’s no time to do anything. You can’t prepare. Not even react.

It just happens before your eyes.

Slow, slow, a movie one never forgets.

Cristiano’s teammate slams into the wall after being hit by the careening car and Cristiano, trapped by flying debris, can only go forward into his teammate’s car. Into the car he’d been trying to protect, a car already in pieces.

It was his teammate—his father—one and the same.

And that’s where it all ends and all begins.

The fire everywhere. Cristiano couldn’t see—guided only by the smell of burning petrol and exploding flames. The only reason he survived was because God, or an angel somewhere, plucked him from the fiery inferno and willed him to live.

The first thing Cristiano knew on awakening at the hospital forty-eight hours later was that his father was dead.

The second was that his legs had been crushed and burned so badly he’d never walk again.

The third was Mercedes at the hospital weeping and screaming, How in God’s name can I have this baby now?

Cristiano learned to walk again because a baby waited, needing a father.

He even learned to drive again because somewhere there was a baby Bartolo who’d need a strong man in his or her life, a man who wouldn’t quit and wouldn’t complain and would always believe that good prevailed.

Cristiano breathed deep, held the air in his chest and silently mocked himself. Don’t cry, you bastard. You’re a man, you can’t cry.

But God, the pain. The memories. The regrets.

And to think that Gabby, who was the good, should suffer again was the worst injustice of it all. For God’s sake, she’d already lost her mother, had an ass of a stepfather. How could he not do everything in his power to make Gabriela happy?

To make her life complete?

Santo Cielo, he’d do anything, absolutely anything for her.

The cottage door opened and Sam stepped out. She’d bundled up in one of the wool coats from the cottage closet. “Hey.”

He nodded, features hardening, hiding all that he felt. He was so good at disguising what he felt.

“Do you mind company?” she asked, clapping her hands together and blowing on her fingers.

“You’ll freeze.”

“You haven’t.” Her blue eyes flashed up at him. “And you’re not even wearing a coat.”

“I’m a man.”

She laughed, bless her, and he almost smiled. “That’s funny?” he asked.

“Just when you say it.” She glanced up, looked at the icicles above their heads, and reached up to try to break one off but couldn’t. “So when are you going to tell her?” Sam asked, and her wide blue eyes, cornflower-blue, stunning blue, pierced him. “About Johann, and you and school…”

Something in her gaze set fire to his heart. And he knew about fire. He knew what it was to be burned. “That’s a lot to tell a little girl,” he said.

She nodded, no longer smiling, and her sober expression reminded him of the night just days ago when she’d arrived at the casino to try to convince Johann to go home.

A woman on a mission. A golden haired Joan of Arc.

“Soon,” he said, shifting his weight, easing the pressure off his left leg, which had been the more severely damaged of the two. The cold weather was making all the scar tissue tight and itchy and he couldn’t seem to get comfortable. “As soon as the time seems right.”

“Tell me before you talk to her. Just let me know, okay?”

But he didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no, he just looked at her. And as he stared into her blue eyes, his lashes drifted lower, and his gaze settled on her mouth, on the softness and fullness he’d finally kissed after waiting so long to touch, and taste. And the wait had been worth it. Her mouth was perfect. She tasted and felt divine.

Reaching out, he pushed back one of her long blond curls. “You don’t hate me as much as you used to.”

Even in the moonlight he could see her blush. “I never hated you,” she answered, but her cheeks were crimson and she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“You didn’t like me.”

Fresh color swept her cheeks, and she laughed softly, and it was a surprisingly deep husky laugh for someone so slight. “I questioned your morals and values.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“You did encourage Johann to gamble.”

“Of course I did.” He couldn’t resist touching her flushed face, couldn’t help touching what he’d craved for so long. “If it meant I could get what I wanted…”

“That’s what made me uncomfortable. You have to have ethics, Cristiano. You can’t just do whatever you want because you want something.”

Now it was his turn to laugh. “Oh, yes, you can,” he said, pushing the door open and steering her back in.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AFTER the kiss, Sam was sure that something would happen, but after returning to the fire, Cristiano lost himself in some reading he’d brought with him and Sam sat in her chair, feeling nervous and excited, rather like a girl going to her first dance.

But nothing else happened. It was as if the kiss had never occurred.

Cristiano focused on his reading and Sam sat feeling like a wallflower.

He must regret kissing me, she thought, chewing on her thumb. Or he kisses so many women it’s really nothing.

She had a sneaking suspicion it was the latter.

Finally it was time for bed, and Cristiano slept in one of the bedrooms while Sam carried blankets to the couch in the sitting room.

It took her forever to fall asleep and when she woke up stiff and cold in the morning, her mood was not much better.

Her mood didn’t improve later, either, when during breakfast she felt him watching her.

Sam did her best to ignore him, just like she struggled to ignore the buzzy butterflies in her middle. He doesn’t even remember the kiss, she told herself sternly. You can’t dwell on it, either.

But it was hard to forget, especially after such a sleepless night where she lay awake for hours, thoughts tormented, body hot, and empty, craving satisfaction.

Breakfast over, Sam attacked the few dishes, scrubbing the plates that had nothing more than crumbs on them. Cristiano came up behind her to set his cup on the counter and she jumped as if somebody had touched her with a hot wire.

Just the knowledge that he was near her, behind her, made her acutely sensitive. And when he leaned past her, to pick up a dish towel and dry the dishes she’d washed, she felt a coil in her middle that actually hurt.

If this was desire it was awful.

It wasn’t fun. It was fierce. Hot. Angry.

She felt maddened by it, by want, by the unknown.

She must have sighed or made some sound because Cristiano looked down at her, one black eyebrow lifting. “Something bothering you today?”

She tossed the scrub brush down, faced him, one hand gripping the sink. “Yes.”

His hazel gaze slowly traveled the length of her, resting provocatively on her throat, her breasts, her hips. “Tell me what it is. Maybe I can help.”

“You can’t help. You’re the problem.”

“I’m the problem?”

She shook her head in exasperation. Why did she say that? It was dumb to say that. No, he wasn’t the problem. She was the problem. This—the attraction, the situation—it was her problem. She couldn’t handle her feelings, or her response. He’d kissed her—big deal—but God help her, she wanted more.

And the intensity of her feelings made her feel like an ignorant schoolgirl. She’d loved the kiss. But she wasn’t a schoolgirl. She was a spinster. A spinster leveled by a kiss.

“You haven’t told me why I’m the problem,” he said.

Sam glanced out the window toward the driveway as if Gabby would just magically appear and save her from this. “Ignore me. I’m being irrational.”

“You’re the least irrational woman I’ve ever known. Tell me. Let me try to help.”

Then that would require kissing me again, she thought, looking up at him, into the hard angles of his face and eyes that held her, mesmerized her. “Please don’t be charming,” she whispered, only half-jesting. “I don’t think I can handle it. Not from you, not today, not after last night.”

“What about last night?”

So he didn’t even remember. The kiss hadn’t meant anything, or made an impression.

Sam whimpered, she hadn’t meant to, she couldn’t keep the hurt in.

But suddenly he was closer, or she was closer, and the heat between them was scorching. Sam felt hot, her clothes too tight and suddenly she couldn’t breathe anymore.

And then he was reaching for her, his arms wrapping around her, pulling her against him creating a riot of sensation. Just that one touch of his body against hers and it was like New Year’s and fireworks, sparks exploding everywhere. She felt him everywhere, too—chest, ribs, hips, thighs. He was hard, strong, male, and it was the most delicious feeling in the world, her body alive, her body aware of his, her body feeling warm and real and good.

His hand was in the small of her back, urging her even closer and she felt the throb of him against her, his body’s heat and how his body strained.

She’d thought when it came to this, she’d be afraid. She’d thought if a man ever held her so close, teased her with his body like this, made her aware of his desire, she’d thought she’d panic. Hate it. Run.

Instead she wanted to slide her hands beneath his shirt, feel the warmth of his skin beneath her palms, reach for his waistband and let the clothes fall away.

And then she did reach for his belt and waistband, fumbled with the clasp, gave up to touch his flat abdomen and the warm firm muscle banding his ribs.

His hands were against her hips, shaping her, caressing her, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to have him touch her.

I think I could love him, she thought, wrapping one arm around his neck, standing on tiptoe. I think I could love him. And maybe it was only lust, but it felt right and honest and for the first time in years she felt right, too.

She’d finally given in to need, to want, to hunger. She’d finally admitted she craved touch, love, pleasure. And as Cristiano stroked down the outside of her thigh, and then up the inside, his fingers between her legs, touching her where she was most sensitive, she knew that in this respect at least, Cristiano had been made for her.

He was the right man to take her virginity.

He was the right man to teach her about making love.

A loud horn sounded outside, not a normal car horn but a beeping blaring sound that jolted Sam and Cristiano apart. They jumped and looking up they saw the yellow tractor and Gabriela bundled in borrowed winter clothes, jumping down.

Gabby was back and for the first time ever, Sam wished the little girl could have stayed away another hour.

Gabby came bursting into the house, laughing and breathless while the white-haired farmer climbed off his tractor to follow Gabriela.

Sam and Cristiano met the farmer on the doorstep. “We got you your girl back,” the farmer said, cheeks ruddy with cold. “Later today we’ll try to get your driveway plowed.”

“When you’ve time,” Cristiano said, thanking the farmer and sliding a folded bill into his hand.

The farmer nodded, pocketed the twenty-pound note and turned away before turning back. “She told me you’re Cristiano Bartolo,” the farmer said, indicating Gabby. “And I wondered if maybe you’re not Bartolo’s boy. You sure look like him. Italian, and all.”

Cristiano smiled. “I am.”

“Well, I’ll be.” The farmer clapped Cristiano on the shoulder once. “You’re a good man. I like you.” He nodded at Sam, chucked Gabriela under the chin and headed back to his tractor.

But before Sam could organize her thoughts, before she could ask Cristiano what the farmer had meant, Gabriela was dancing around them. “It’s like a fairyland outside,” she cried, jumping from one foot to the other. “Come see, Sam. It’s like The Nutcracker ballet. It’s magic!”

It was indeed magic, Sam had to agree, standing with Gabby at the open cottage door.

The great oak trees were covered in white. Icicles glistened from the edge of the cottage roof. Bright powdery snow glittered beneath bright blue skies and sunlight that had never been clearer or more golden.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Gabby cried, still bundled in her borrowed winter clothes.

Actually a walk sounded exactly like what Sam needed and she went to get her coat while Gabby waited out front.

Gabby looked like a puffy blue marshmallow as she smiled up at Cristiano. “Are you coming with us?”

“For a walk?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “No. I’ll skip the exercise.”

“Exercise is good for you,” Sam said, sliding her arms into her coat. She didn’t have the warm clothes Gabby did but a brisk walk should help warm her up.

“So is a toasty fire,” he answered dryly.

Sam made a face at him then extended a hand to Gabriela. “Suit yourself. We’ll be back in a little bit.”

Outside, the air was biting cold and the snow deep and powdery. They set off for the Rookery, but walked around the back of the old building to what had once been the kitchen garden.

Almost immediately they sank knee deep into a chilly white mound. Gabby gasped even as Samantha did.

“It’s freezing,” Gabriela said breathlessly.

“Look,” Sam said, pointing to the edge of the roof where melting snow had frozen into long spinning strands of ice. “Isn’t that the most gorgeous icicle? Looks like a waterfall.”

“Like in Switzerland,” Gabby agreed, as they tramped further on, slow quiet steps that required lots of concentration on Gabby’s part.

Sam glanced down at the top of Gabby’s head. “You remember that trip?”

Gabby’s fingers tightened. “We went for a ride in a carriage and had bread in melted cheese for supper.”

Gabby wasn’t even three yet then. “That was two years ago.”

Gabby’s hazel eyes narrowed. “It was fun.”

Sam’s chest squeezed with emotion. “It was fun,” she agreed softly. The visit to Bern had been the first—and last—trip Sam had taken with Gabby and Johann. Johann had said he had business in the city and while he attended meetings, Sam and Gabby played tourist, taking a horse-drawn carriage through the city and then stopping later on the way back at a chalet-style restaurant where they sat outside beneath a heat lamp and dunked chunks of crusty bread in a golden cheese fondue.

They were huffing a little as they reached the back garden where dormant rosebushes looked like snow-flecked sculptures.

Sam brushed snow off one of the benches and she and Gabby sat. Almost immediately Sam could feel the chill from the bench seep through her pants.

“Has he come to take me back with him?” Gabby asked, touching Sam’s sleeve.

Sam covered Gabby’s mitten with her gloved hand. For a moment she couldn’t bring herself to speak, not trusting her voice.

“I heard him,” Gabby added. “That first night he was here when you thought I was sleeping.”

Sam tried to sound severe. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop. Because the problem with eavesdropping,” she added more gently, “is that you don’t always hear the whole conversation and you miss the meaning of what is being said.”

“So he’s not going to take me home?”

Sam lifted Gabby’s mitten hand, pressed a kiss to her fuzzy palm. “Not without me, he isn’t.”

Cristiano stood at the kitchen window watching Samantha and Gabriela make their way back to the cottage. They made a picture, he thought, teeth scraping as he bit back the hot emotion rushing through him.

Fair, pink-cheeked Samantha, her long loose spiral curls dusted with snow, bent down to hear whatever it was Gabriela was saying, and Sam looked exactly the way he imagined a snow angel would look. And Gabriela, with her long dark hair escaping her cap in wisps, black tendrils clinging to her cheeks that were rosy from the cold, looked so vibrantly alive that it made Cristiano’s heart hurt.

Gabby should always look so healthy and happy.

He’d do everything in his power to ensure her health and happiness.

As he watched, Sam impulsively wrapped her arm around Gabby’s shoulders, giving her an affectionate squeeze and he smiled reluctantly. Sam and Gabby looked nothing alike and yet they suited each other perfectly. And Sam, even though she’d been employed as Gabby’s nanny, was more mother than any mother he’d ever seen.

He left the doorway, went to the fireplace in the living room, held his hands over the heat.

It was difficult being here with them when they were together. They had such a long history together and even though he was Gabby’s family, he felt like the outsider.

He was the outsider. And that hurt.

The front door opened and voices and light filled the cottage. Cristiano blinked at the brightness of the light and yet welcomed the warmth they brought to the cottage. Sam and Gabriela literally lit up a room.

“Cristiano,” Gabby called from the doorway, still wheezing from laughing and running in the snow. “Come play with us.”

Play in the snow? Cristiano grimaced. Maybe as a child he’d loved to ski, but since his accident, he avoided snow and ice. “How about a card game instead?” he suggested.

Gabby appeared in the living room, cheeks red, light hazel eyes fringed by long black lashes. She clapped her gloved hands sending little snow flurries across the room. “But it’s beautiful outside!”

“And cold.”

“Pssh,” she said dismissively, waving one gloved hand in his direction. “You’re not that old. Come out and play. It’ll be fun. It’s snow.”

He wasn’t that old.

Bene, grazie, he thought. Great, thanks. And yet he was amused. Women chased him. He was never short of female company, most adored his wealth, his looks, his celebrity status, and yet here he was, sequestered with two who seemed impervious to his charms.

And then as Cristiano looked down into Gabby’s little face, her dark eyes so much like his, his heart ached. “I don’t play in snow very well,” he said gruffly.

“That’s okay. All you have to do is try your best.”

What a minx. She was certainly her father’s daughter. “Is that all?” he drawled, mocking her.

“Yes.” She reached for his hand, tugged on it, leading him toward the door. “Do you need your coat? It’s chilly out.”

It was as if she’d taken his heart in her small fingers, instead of his big calloused hand. He bit down on the inside of his cheek to hide the intense emotions filling him. He’d spent his life wanting family, craving a traditional family, but it had never been his to have. His father wasn’t the sort to settle down. His father wasn’t the sort to want anything but speed. Risk. Danger. Cristiano had it in his blood, too, but not to the extent his father did.

And Gabriela…

Cristiano shook his head, amazed by her bright eyes, quick mind, unflinching nature. He knew he’d never actually send her to boarding school, especially not after the miserable experiences he’d had. But Samantha didn’t have to know that. Let Sam think he was a brute. Let her think the worst. He didn’t need her approval, and he didn’t need her to like him. He just needed Gabriela to come home.

Sam blew on her fingers as Gabby led Cristiano out of the house by the hand. He, like Sam, didn’t have warm winter clothes, and she supposed she could have dug through the closets and bureau drawers at the Rookery to find heavier coats and caps and gloves, but it seemed wrong. The Rookery had been shut up so long, closed after Charles died, it felt more like a shrine to Charles than a place orphan children had once lived.

But Cristiano, even gloveless, tackled the snowman with Gabby, helping pack big snowballs and then stack the balls to form the snowman’s body. Together they hunted up sticks for arms and ransacked the kitchen for a carrot for the nose, but sadly all the carrots were used in the shepherd’s pie, but they finished with stones for the eyes and mouth and then Gabby’s cap and scarf.

Sam was just about to warm milk for hot cocoa when Cristiano and Gabby returned. They were laughing, shivering and discussing the merits of their snowman they’d named most originally, Mr. White.

“Let’s get out of your wet clothes,” Sam said, taking Gabby’s cold, damp hand in hers. “I think you’ll need a warm bath, too. You’re frozen through.”

“But it was fun!” Gabby cried, turning to look at Cristiano for affirmation. “Wasn’t it?”

He nodded, and his thick dark hair, worn long, formed inky ringlets on his brow. The curls hadn’t been so prominent earlier and Samantha suspected that tramping about in the snow had brought the curls to life.

And Gabby smiled broader, dimpling with pleasure. She couldn’t look away from Cristiano, her gaze riveted to his face.

He was very handsome, Sam admitted silently, reluctantly. With the chiseled features, the very strong nose, and dark lashed eyes, Cristiano was good-looking in that hunky Italian film star way, but Sam knew that’s not why Gabriela adored him.

Gabriela adored him because he talked to her, listened to her, made her feel important. And with a pang Sam realized Gabby had never had this before, not from a man anyhow.

Johann had spent very little time with Gabby, and the time they did spend together inevitably revolved around Johann’s mood, Johann’s temper, Johann’s problems. Tragically Gabby had been lost in the shuffle and it was only now that Sam began to understand how much the little girl had craved attention, and needed love, from a father. Gabby might have called Johann Papa, but Johann had never been her father. Not in name, not in word, not in deed.

“You’re not leaving now, are you?” Gabby asked him, as Sam tugged on her hand, trying to steer her toward the small bathroom.

For a moment Cristiano said nothing and then he shook his head slowly. “No.” His voice was sober. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

Gabby’s smile returned, and it was bright, all light and happiness. “Good. And we’ll take Sam with us when we go.”

We’ll take Sam with us when we go.

Gabby’s innocent words echoed in Sam’s head while Sam prepared the makeshift bath. Sam had essentially said the same thing to Gabby on their walk earlier in the afternoon, but it was different coming from Gabby.

Once Gabby was out of the bath and dry, Sam dressed her and towel-dried her hair, and let her sit close to the fire while Sam combed her wet hair. “I’ll bring your cocoa in here,” she said to Gabby. “Don’t sit too close to the fire, though. I’ll be right back.”

And even though Sam wasn’t gone more than a couple minutes, by the time she’d returned with the cup of hot chocolate, Gabriela was out, sound asleep in front of the fire, a fistful of old tin soldiers in her hand.

Sam covered Gabby with a blanket and went to hang up the towels and wet winter clothes to dry. Cristiano was still in the bathroom so Sam headed into his room first but on opening the door she discovered she’d been mistaken.

Cristiano wasn’t in the bathroom anymore. He’d already finished his bath and she’d caught him with his back turned toward her just starting to dress. Sam stopped short at the sight of a naked Cristiano. His back was broad and tan, his hips narrow, his buttocks muscular, hard, but paler than his back and legs. But it was his thighs that caught her attention. His thighs, though thickly muscled, were heavily scarred.

Burns, she thought. Burns and more. A long incision indicating he’d been cut. Surgery, yes. But whether for setting broken bones or a skin graft, she didn’t know.

Cristiano had heard the door open and he turned suddenly, covering his lower belly with his towel. “Thank God you’re not Gabby.”

She made a soft incoherent sound. His chest was as tan and muscular as his back, his biceps knotted with muscle but the front of his thighs were like the back—scarred, disfigured with scars that ran down his hard, carved quadriceps toward his knees.

He saw she was staring and she flushed, looked away and then up into his face. His gaze met hers, and he gave her a long level look but said nothing.

“I was going to dry Gabby’s wet things in here,” she said awkwardly. “They’re still so wet.”

“Leave them on the bed. I’ll do it.”

She nodded, a hasty embarrassed nod, before dropping the clothes and leaving.

But back in the living room Sam couldn’t forget what she’d seen. Cristiano’s skin, so tan and gorgeous above his hips, looked nothing short of tortured below. He’d obviously been badly hurt, burned in a fire. But how and when?

Cristiano reappeared moments later, dressed, his black hair combed, the curls tamed, the sage linen shirt open at the throat, the tails out over his sturdy khaki pants. He was so tall, so male that Sam found herself wanting to move toward him, to touch him and see if he was as warm and hard as he looked.

It was a crazy thought. It made no sense because she didn’t trust him, didn’t want to like him, and yet she was also so drawn to him, like a fly to sticky paper.

Her attraction, as well as her ambivalence, scared her. She hadn’t been attracted to a man in years and years…since Charles, actually, and yet as much as she cared about Charles, she’d never felt this kind of curiosity or interest. She’d never really thought of Charles as a man. In her mind, Charles was always just a good person—kind, compassionate, saintly—but not physical, and certainly not sexual.

“When did she fall asleep?” Cristiano asked, gesturing to Gabriela who was curled up on the floor.

“Right after her bath. I went to get her hot cocoa, and when I came back she was out.”

“I worry about her sleeping so close to the fire. I’ll carry her to bed.” Cristiano crouched down and scooped Gabriela into his arms as though she weighed nothing, and yet as he stood, she saw his jaw tighten, an almost imperceptible tensing of the muscles in his jaw.

He still hurt, she thought.

Funny, if she hadn’t seen the actual burns on his thighs, she wouldn’t have known he’d been injured. He compensated well, but now she could see things she hadn’t seen before, the adaptations he’d made to compensate for loss of agility, probably even muscle weakness. Like his slower walk. She’d thought it was arrogance, confidence. Instead it was practicality. And when he sat, he nearly always chose a chair with arms, sitting down by leaning on the chair’s right arm, and then dropping into the seat.

As he returned to the living room she studied his walk more closely, saw for the first time the slight hitch in his step, how he put a little more weight on one leg than the other.

Probably playing with Gabby in the snow hadn’t helped, she thought. He didn’t have boots and in his leather dress shoes he wouldn’t have had much traction.

He casually took a seat in one of the old leather chairs facing the fire. And he did just what she remembered: he leaned on the chair’s right arm, dropped his right hip onto the leather cushion and then the left. His thick hair, now nearly dry, looked glossy in the firelight and the dark beard shadowing his jaw emphasized his straight nose and his firm expressive mouth.

And Sam, who’d felt such conflicting, ambivalent things for Cristiano, felt something new. Tenderness. Admiration.

Despite everything, she liked him. But she had no desire to complicate an already complicated situation, so any attraction she felt would have to be suppressed. Gabriela came first. Gabriela’s stability was everything.

“I’m sorry I walked in on you,” Sam said, taking a seat on the couch. “I should have at least knocked.”

“It’s fine. I’m sure it’s not the first time you saw a naked man.”

She nodded, blushing a little, thinking there was no point in telling him that she actually hadn’t seen that many naked men. He probably wouldn’t believe that she was still a virgin at twenty-eight.

She waited a moment, hoping he’d say something about the burns she’d seen, but he didn’t, and it really wasn’t any of her business.

If change was required, it was on Sam’s part. Sam knew she was too sensitive, too shut-down, too controlling. She’d thought it was her nanny training, but it wasn’t the two years spent at nanny college that had made her so disciplined. It was fear.

Sam was afraid of life. Afraid of death. Afraid of everything in between.

“I don’t even know what you do,” she said breathlessly, trying to regain some sense of control. “Who are you?”

Grooves formed on either side of his mouth as he fought his smile. “Cristiano Bartolo—”

“Yes. I know your name. But who are you? Why do people know you? And people do know you—that night at dinner in Monte Carlo—people approached you. Gave you their blessings. Even Johann thought I should know you. What do you do?”

His head tipped, thick lashes dropping, before he looked up at her. “I’m a Formula 1 driver.”

He said it simply, no arrogance in his voice or answer. In fact, his voice was expressionless but he was watching her closely. “Do you know what that is?”

“You race cars.”

Sam suddenly wished she hadn’t asked the question. “Isn’t that terribly dangerous?”

She could have sworn he smiled but then the smile was gone and his features were so hard he looked like someone else altogether. “Can be,” he said coolly.

When he didn’t elaborate, Sam realized that was all he was going to say.

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