Olivia Gates - One Night In…

Anna’s chin shot up. ‘How do you know it isn’t mine?’

Saskia laughed. ‘A Cavalli? Out of your league, Delafield. I hear that Ifford Park is having to throw itself open to parties of schoolchildren again this year. Sad, really.’

Noticing the storm clouds gathering in Anna’s eyes, Fliss stepped in quickly.

‘Love the hair, Saskia! It looks astonishingly real.’

Saskia looked smug. ‘It is real. Swedish, apparently. Feel. The Sunday Tribune paid for it. I heard that they asked you to do that article too, Anna. Pity they didn’t devote a bit more of the budget to you. But then—’ she paused, flicking one long, sugary-pink acrylic nail ‘—I suppose you should think yourself pretty lucky you were asked to do it at all as it’s an article about the daughters of the aristocracy. Trade Descriptions Act, and all that.’

The colour drained from Anna’s face and beside her Fliss gave a shocked gasp.

‘Anyway, must go. So many eligible bachelors to dance with, so little time. Enjoy the party, darlings.’ She gave a little smirk as she teetered off and then turned back, her long hair swishing out like a pale vampire’s cloak.

‘Isn’t it your birthday any day soon, Anna? I think I remember that it was pretty close to mine.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you having a party this year? Do let me know if you are—I’d love to come.’

‘Oh, she is such a cow. Anna! Wait!’

Fliss’s voice reached Anna over the heads of the crowd as she pushed her way through but she didn’t slow down. She knew it was stupid to let Saskia’s barbed comments upset her, but as usual they had flown with unerring accuracy right to her rawest nerve.

She had been stupid to come.

Flinging herself through an unmarked door, she found herself in the merciful quiet of a dimly lit corridor. Heart hammering, she leaned back against the scarlet damask-covered wall and closed her eyes, waiting for the demons that snapped at her heels to retreat.

A moment later Fliss appeared, her face creased with concern.

‘I’m sorry, Anna. I’d forgotten how poisonous she is. Or how jealous of you.’

‘Jealous?’ Anna gave a harsh laugh. ‘I doubt it. She’s mummy and daddy’s little princess, rich and spoiled and pampered. What on earth has she got to be jealous of me for? I’m nothing. Nobody. As she likes to remind me whenever we meet.’

Gently Fliss took her arm. ‘Don’t. Come on. Let’s go and get that drink. We may as well get tipsy at her expense.’

‘No.’ Anna pulled away. ‘I’d rather drink cyanide. And I’m not going back in there either. Sorry, Fliss. I’m going to head back to the château—but I really should go and change out of this dress first.’

Fliss shook her head. ‘It’s fine. Keep it—it was pretty much made for you. Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

‘Absolutely.’ Anna looked around for a way out. Several doors led off the dingy corridor and she made for the nearest one. ‘Get back to the party and I’ll call you soon.’

Without looking back, Anna pushed open the door and slipped through.

The room she found herself standing in was dark and smelled of cigar smoke and maleness spiked with excitement. And danger.

She’d found the casino.

Recklessly she strode forward, any hesitancy driven away by the adrenalin rush of fury and the persistent, painful drumbeat of desire in the cradle of her pelvis.

The beat of the music from the party was just discernible, but in here all was hushed. At the tables men in dinner jackets eyed each other through clouds of cigar smoke and spoke only when necessary. Standing behind them, women in evening dresses looked on, mentally spending the money their partners were winning or watching their plans evaporate in a disappointing hand, a luckless spin of the wheel. Their mask-like painted faces gave nothing away.

The tension in the air matched Anna’s own pent-up feelings. Taking a glass of champagne from the tray held out by a waiter, she walked slowly past the roulette tables, trailing a hand along the backs of the velvet-upholstered chairs. She paused. A croupier was swiftly and impassively raking piles of chips off the emerald baize and Anna watched, fascinated, as the men seated around the table replaced them with more. The numbing warmth of the champagne started to steal down inside her, obliterating the pain of Saskia’s venom.

‘Any more bets?’

There was a further flurry of activity. In the halo of light cast by the Tiffany lamp hanging low over the table Anna could see beads of sweat breaking out on foreheads as men moved innocuous-looking piles of chips around.

How much money was represented on that table? she wondered idly. Enough to secure the future of the château?

She felt horribly restless.

The glass of champagne in her hand was deliciously cool against her feverish skin and she pressed it to her cheek, but it couldn’t damp the fire that seemed to smoulder somewhere deep inside her. The back of her neck fizzed and tingled, each hair seeming to respond to some invisible stimulus, and she turned round.

He was standing a few feet away from her, the bright pool of light from one of the low-hanging lamps over the roulette table falling on his mane of dark blond hair and turning it into a halo of gold. One hand was thrust into his pocket, the other was loosely around the slender waist of an obscenely elegant blonde in a scarlet dress. Completely at ease, squinting through the smoke with narrowed eyes, he looked like a particularly wicked fallen angel—beautiful, but menacing. And utterly compelling. The expensively groomed, formally dressed men around him seemed like shadows, or bit players in the presence of his raw, charismatic sexuality.

She heard her own unsteady breath, felt the panicky race of her heart and the searing wild-fire heat of desire scorching through her veins.

And then he looked up.

Angelo drained his glass of champagne and forced himself to focus on the game.

It was one of those nights when he could do no wrong, and the chips on his side of the table were amassing at a rate that had the other men around the table sweating with fear. But he was bored.

When winning came too easily it was time to look elsewhere for excitement.

The man at the head of the table held up his hands in defeat and moved away as the croupier moved his depleted pile of chips away from him. His departure caused a little ripple of unease to go around the table, and the space he had left was not filled.

Angelo looked down at the table. Everyone else was playing cautiously now, and he idly considered walking away and leaving them while they still had something. But the black dog of his old despair was shadowing him and he knew he would keep going. Keep playing. Keep pushing himself to feel something.

Anything.

‘Place your bets now, gentlemen, please.’

There was a rush of last-minute activity around the table as everyone placed their chips.

The blonde pouted and placed a perfectly manicured hand on one silk lapel. ‘Chéri? Rouge, I think this time, don’t you?’

A smile lifted one corner of Angelo’s mouth, but his narrowed eyes were as blank and expressionless as ever. He looked down, moving a towering pile of chips across the baize, pausing as he reached the solitary green marker. Considering.

Green.

The stack of coloured counters represented several hundreds of thousands of pounds, but around them his hands were perfectly steady. Green. It would be like making a bet with himself that he hadn’t been wrong about her or who she really was. The odds might be outrageously, overwhelmingly against him, but there was a spark in the dark, dark, self-destructive heart of him that urged him onwards. The money was easily dispensable, easily replaceable …