Gail Barrett: High-Stakes Affair

“I’m a thief, Paloma. It won’t matter what you say. They’ll assume that I coerced you and toss me back into jail.”

“Not without proof, they won’t.”

“Since when do they need proof to arrest someone?”

“I don’t know what happened with your arrest,” she admitted. “But you don’t have to worry about tonight.”

Dante slanted her a glance. “There’s still one problem.”

“What?”

“I don’t believe you. ”

He didn’t believe she’d stand up for him? “Why not?”

“Why should I?”

“Because I said I would. And my word is good.”

“You’ve been lying to me from the start.”

“The reason I need that tape doesn’t matter.”

“It matters. I’m in this mess as much as you are, so you damned well owe me the truth. And until I get it, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Princess. You’re stuck with me until I decide I’m out.”

Dear Reader,

I love edgy heroes. The more cynical, disillusioned and bitter they are, the more they fascinate me. That’s why I invented the Stealth Knights—heroes who straddle that murky line between right and wrong, who are neither all-good nor all-bad, and who prove that nothing in life is as clear-cut as it seems.

The hero of High-Stakes Affair , Dante Quevedo, is one such complicated man. A modern-day Robin Hood, Dante dedicates his life to righting the injustices done to his downtrodden people, albeit through unorthodox means. But when circumstances force him to team up with his sworn enemy, Princess Paloma Vergara, he discovers she isn’t the frivolous royal he believed—and that the woman who once seemed completely wrong for him might instead be exactly right.

I hope you enjoy this latest installment in the STEALTH KNIGHTS miniseries.

Happy reading!

Gail Barrett

GAIL BARRETTalways knew she’d be a writer. Who else would spend her childhood grinding sparkling rocks into fairy dust and convincing her friends it was real? Or daydream her way through elementary school, spend high school reading philosophy and playing the bagpipes, and then head off to Spain during college to live the writer’s life? After four years she straggled back home—broke, but fluent in Spanish. She became a teacher, earned a master’s degree in linguistics, married a coast guard officer and had two sons.

But she never lost the desire to write. Then one day, she discovered a Mills & Boon ®novel in a bookstore—and knew she was destined to write romance. Her books have won numerous awards, including a National Readers’ Choice Award and Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart.

Gail currently lives in western Maryland. Readers can contact her through her website, www.gailbarrett.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dedication

To Liz and Amanda, for making my sons so happy.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank the following people for their enormous help with this story: Loni Glover for her emergency brainstorming sessions; Ken Archer for providing me with accounting details; Elle Kennedy for her much-needed encouragement; Judith Sandbrook and Mary Jo Archer for their invaluable critiques; and last, but not least, my husband, John, for not complaining when I went AWOL to finish this book.

If there was one thing Dante Quevedo knew intimately, it was revenge. He’d lived it, breathed it and plotted it for twenty years. And tonight it would finally be his.

He pressed the trigger on the remote control detonator, then watched as a potent mixture of C-4 and diesel fuel exploded, shooting brilliant orange flames high into the midnight sky and rumbling the ground beneath his feet. With a quick surge of satisfaction, he slid the detonator back into his knapsack, then slipped through the inky shadows to the machinery shed where the casino’s emergency generators were housed.

The bomb’s fire leaped and roared in the darkness. Security guards rushed past, shouting into their radios as they raced toward the rocketing blaze. Dante crept around the shed, the thick smoke shielding his movements from the surveillance cameras mounted on the walls, and paused at the metal door. Using his custom-made stainless-steel diamond pick, he jimmied the lock and stepped inside.

He glanced at his watch. Sixteen minutes. Not much time to disable the backup generators and get himself in place. Then the hacker would work his computer magic and cut the main power to the casino, allowing Dante to break into the penthouse, the aristocrat who’d hired him in tow.

Misgivings stirred inside him, but he shook them off. He’d agreed to the deal—his release from prison in exchange for getting the unknown woman inside. Her reasons, her goal—hell, even her identity—didn’t matter.

Only Dante’s chance for vengeance did.

Resolve fisting deep inside him, he strode to the generators’ control panel, located the power switch and turned it off. Then he sawed through the fuel lines with his wire cutters and opened the drains on the tanks to buy more time. Diesel fuel poured out, the harsh fumes stinging his nostrils and watering his eyes. Knowing time was dwindling quickly, he returned to the door and peered outside.

Smoke still billowed past. A cacophony of sirens pierced the air as emergency vehicles sped up the Pyrenees mountain slope. His adrenaline rising, Dante stepped from the shed and locked the door, then melted into the night.

Picking up his pace now, he jogged to the stolen hatchback he’d parked at the periphery of the gravel lot. Nine minutes. He opened the trunk, tugged a crisp white dress shirt over his T-shirt, then yanked on his jacket and tie. Still hurrying, he stuffed his lock-picking tools into his pocket, brushed the leaves and twigs from his suit trousers, and stowed his knapsack beneath a nearby shrub. If all hell broke loose, he didn’t want any evidence traced to him.

Moving slower to avoid attention, he strolled casually past the valet parking and up the casino’s wide stone steps. Located in a medieval fortress, País Vell’s opulent playground attracted high rollers from around the world. Dante nodded to the uniformed doorman, stepped into the chandelier-studded lobby and paused.

The domed ceiling soared above him. Huge marble columns shouldered the mezzanine, its gilded railing glinting in the refracted light. Bells jangled from the adjacent gaming pit, the cheerful noise razoring through him like a garrote to his heart. His sister Lucía had died in this casino. She would never laugh, never hear those sounds again.

He steeled his jaw against a rush of emotions, guilt over his failure to save her bludgeoning his heart. Her death haunted him, all right. He couldn’t stop reliving her final, frantic phone call—that she needed him to help her, that the prince was trying to kill her, that she had witnessed something dreadful during her waitressing shift and had to leave. Dante had raced to the casino, only to find her body dumped in the parking lot like discarded trash. Bloody. Mutilated.