Jennie Lucas - Dealing Her Final Card

“Well, well. Bree Dalton.” Greg Hudson licked his lips, looking at her with beady eyes in his florid, sweaty face. “So. Did you bring the hundred thousand dollars your sister owes me?”

“You know we don’t have that kind of money.”

“Then I’ll send my men to take it out of her hide.”

Bree’s knees shook beneath the table, but she did not feel fear. Her body might feel whatever it liked, but she’d disconnected it from her heart. Crossing her legs, she leaned back in her chair. “I will play for her debt.”

“You!” He snorted. “What will you wager? This game has a five-thousand-dollar buy-in. You could scrub the bathrooms of the entire Hale Ka’nani Resort for years and not have that kind of money.”

“I offer a trade.”

“You have nothing of value.”

“I have myself.”

Her boss stared at her, then licked his lips. “You mean—”

“Yes. I mean you could have me in bed.” She looked at him steadily, feeling nothing. Her skin felt cold, her heart as frozen as the blue iceberg that sank the Titanic . “You wanted me, Mr. Hudson. Here I am.”

There was a low whistle, an intake of breath around the room.

Bree slowly gazed around the table. She had everyone’s complete attention. Without flinching, she let her gaze taunt each man in turn, all of them larger, older and more powerful than she could ever be. “Who will take the gamble?”

“Well now.” Looking her over, the Texas oil baron thoughtfully tilted back his cowboy hat. “This game just got a lot more interesting.”

In the corner of her eye, she saw a dark, hulking shadow come around the table. A man sat down in the empty chair on the other side of the dealer, and Bree instantly turned to him with languid eyes. “Allow me to join your game, and I could be yours….”

Bree’s voice choked off midsentence as she sucked in her breath.

She knew those cold blue eyes. The high cheekbones, sharp as a razor blade. The strong jaw that proclaimed ruthless, almost thuggish strength. So powerful, so darkly handsome, so sensual.

So impossible .

“No,” she whispered. Not after ten years. Not here. “It can’t be.”

Vladimir Xendzov’s eyes narrowed with recognition, and then she felt the rush of his sudden searing hatred like fire.

“Have you met Prince Vladimir?” Greg Hudson purred.

“Prince?” Bree choked out. She was unable to look away from Vladimir’s face, the face of the man she’d dreamed about unwillingly for the past ten years.

His cruel, sensual lips curved as he leaned back in his chair.

“Miss Dalton,” he drawled. “I didn’t know you were in Hawaii. And gambling. What a pleasant surprise.”

His low, husky voice, so close to her, so real, caused a shiver across her skin. She stared at him in shock.

Her one lost love. Not a ghost. Not a dream. But here, at the Hale Ka’nani Resort, not six feet away from her.

“So what’s on offer? Your body, is it?” Vladimir’s words were cold, even sardonic. “What a charming prize that would be, though hardly exclusive. Shared by thousands, I should imagine.”

And just like that, the ice around her heart exploded into a million glass splinters. She sucked in her breath.

Vladimir Xendzov had made her love him with all the reckless passion of an innocent, untamed heart. He’d made her a better person—and then he’d destroyed her. Her lips parted. “Vladimir.”

He stiffened. “ Your Highness will do.”

She didn’t realize she’d spoken his name aloud. Glancing to the right and left, she matched his sardonic tone. “So you’re using your title now.”

His blue eyes burned through her. “It is mine by right.”

She knew it was true. His great-grandfather had been one of the last great princes of Russia, before he’d died fighting the Red Army in Siberia, after sending his wife and baby son to safety in Alaskan exile. As a poverty-stricken child, Vladimir had been mocked with the title at school. When he was twenty-five, he’d told her that he never intended to use the title, that it still felt like a mockery, an honor he hadn’t earned—and was worthless, anyway.

But apparently, now, he’d found a use for it.

“You didn’t always think so,” Bree said.

“I am no longer the boy you once knew,” he said coldly.

She swallowed. Ten years ago, she’d thought Vladimir was the last honest man on earth. She’d loved him enough to give up the wicked skills that made her special. When he’d held her tight on a cold Alaskan night and begged her to be his bride, it had been the happiest night of her life. Then he’d ruthlessly deserted her the next morning, before she could tell him the truth. When she needed him most, he’d stabbed her in the back. Some prince . “What are you doing here?”

His lip curled. Without answering her, he turned away. “The table is full,” he said to the other players. “We do not want her.”

“Speak for yourself,” one of them muttered, looking at Bree.

Looking around, she jolted in her chair. She’d forgotten the other men were there, looking at her like hungry wolves at a raw mutton chop. The beautiful, sexily dressed women standing in a circle behind them were glaring as if they would like to tear her limb from limb. Perhaps she’d taken her act a little too far.

Feel nothing , she ordered her shivering heart. I have ice for a heart . She looked away from the large, powerful men and sharp-taloned women. They couldn’t hurt her. The only man who’d ever been able to really hurt her was Vladimir. And what more could he do, that he hadn’t done already?

One thing , a cold voice whispered. Ten years ago, he’d taken her heart and soul.

But not her virginity.

And he never would, she told herself fiercely. Bree didn’t know what Vladimir Xendzov was doing in Honolulu, but she didn’t care. He was ancient history. All that mattered now was protecting Josie.

To save her little sister, Bree would play cards with the devil himself.

With an intake of breath, she lifted her chin, ignoring Vladimir as she looked around the table. “It is for this first game only that I offer my body. If I lose, the winner will get me, along with all the money in the pot. But if I win—” when I win, she amended silently “—I will only bet money. Until I possess the entire amount of my sister’s debt.”

As she spoke, her heart started to resume a normal beat. Bluffing, playing card games, was home to her. She’d learned poker when her father had pulled her up to their table in Anchorage and taught her at the tender age of four. By six, shortly after her mother had died two months after giving birth to Josie, Bree was a child prodigy accompanying her father to games—and, when he saw how much money she could make, his partner in crime.

Leaning forward, she looked at each man in turn, ignoring the death stares of the women behind them. “What is your answer?”