Taken by the Highest Bidder

“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.