Summer Sins

She stretched her mouth in its usual fake smile, and tilted her head invitingly. From the corner of her eye she saw Jerry, one of the waiters who circulated endlessly with trays of ready-filled champagne glasses.

The man at Lissa’s side straightened slightly, and turned to look at her. For just a second she felt she was being bored right through by a laser beam, and then, just as abruptly, it was gone. Now there was only a veiled look in the dark, long-lashed eyes that she could not look into.

He gave the slightest shrug.

‘Why not?’ he responded, and, glancing past her, beckoned Jerry with a single flick of his index finger, relieving him of two foaming glasses and handing one to Lissa. Carefully she took it, ensuring she did not touch the man’s fingers. Even so she felt her stomach tighten yet again.

‘So, do you think I should try the roulette table?’

His Gallic-accented voice quivered down her spine, upsetting all the toughly held defences she needed in a place like this. Oh, hell—why, oh, why, was this happening? It was just all wrong—all out of place. A man like this, and her in a place like this, looking the way she did, acting out this distasteful farce. She took a gulp of champagne as if it would help her steel her nerves. Forcing herself, she made herself smile at him.

Don’t look at his eyes. Look at him, but don’t see him. Look through him. Pretend he’s just one of the regular punters. Pretend it’s all just normal, perfectly normal.

She could feel her jaw aching with the tension in it as she held her bright, false smile, her gaze, by supreme force of effort, not quite meeting his.

‘Oh, good idea!’ she exclaimed vacuously. ‘I’m sure you’ll win at roulette.’ She lifted her glass. ‘Here’s to Lady Luck,’ she toasted brightly, and took another gulp of champagne. She drank as little as she could while she was working, but right now she felt she needed all the help she could find to get through this excruciating ordeal.

As she lowered her glass it registered that he hadn’t actually drunk anything at all. Given the quality of the champagne, she was hardly surprised—but then why buy it? For the dozenth time she gave a deliberate mental shrug. Nothing, nothing about this man who for some bizarre and inexplicable reason was in this casino, and for some even more bizarre, even more inexplicable reason was keeping her by his side, was of the slightest concern to her. He was a punter—her sole task was to get him to spend money, and that was all.

Carefully, she slid off the high chair, trying not to wince as her tired, sore feet hit the floor.

Roulette proved just as much of an ordeal as blackjack had. Yet again she had to sit beside him, too close, and watch him reach forward, to place his chips on the squares. This time, because roulette was more random—though the odds were always, as ever, stacked in favour of the house—he did win from time to time. But he played carelessly, as if it didn’t bother him in the slightest whether he won or lost. Opposite, Lissa could see Tanya making eyes at him—to no avail.

Finally, when the last of his chips were gone, and with a slight shake of his head he’d countered the croupier’s offer of more, he turned to Lissa.

‘Tant pis.’ He gave a shrug to dismiss his losses.

She made herself smile.

‘Bad luck,’ she said. It was inane, but expected.

An eyebrow rose. ‘Do you think so? I think we make our own luck in life, n’est ce pas?’

Something shadowed in Lissa’s eyes. Did you make your own luck in life? Or was it external, arbitrary—cruel? Did luck turn in the blink of an eye, transforming happiness to tragedy in the space of a few moments?

The swerve of wheels, the speed of a car, minute seconds of inattention. And instant, devastating tragedy—destroying in moments the happiness of everyone. Destroying more than happiness … so much more.

Her eyes hardened.

Xavier saw the change in her expression—the hardness in it suddenly. It stirred an answering hardness in him. Lissa Stephens, like the Russian girl, or any of the others here, would be a woman who made her own luck—and it would be at the expense of men.

But not—his expression darkened—at the expense of his vulnerable, good-hearted brother.

His eyes flickered briefly over the girl’s face. All his forebodings were proving true—the very thought of Armand entrapped by this excuse for a woman in any way whatsoever was abhorrent. As his own revulsion at the vulgar, tarty image the girl presented impacted in his mind, so, too, did the conviction that his brother could not possibly know what this ‘woman of his dreams’ did for a living.

Well … Xavier’s eyes hardened again momentarily. This was exactly why he’d interrupted his own business schedule—why he’d despatched Armand to visit XeL’s key retailers in Dubai, with instructions to fly straight on to New York from the Emirates to do likewise there. So that he would have the opportunity to make a dispassionate, deliberate investigation into what Lissa Stephens was.

And, whilst he was grimly convinced that he now had all the evidence he needed to condemn the girl as fulfilling the worst of his fears, he would, nevertheless, move on to the next stage as he had planned. He shot back his cuff and glanced at his watch.

‘Hélas, I must go. I have an early morning meeting tomorrow. Bon soir, mademoiselle—and thank you for your company.’

He bestowed a smile on her, somewhere between perfunctory and courteous, and moved off. Lissa watched him go. Wearily, she brushed her forehead. A tight band was pressing around it. Tiredness swept over her in a wave—tiredness and depression.

What was the point of her responding to a man like that? None at all. Even if she hadn’t been working in a place like this, looking like a cheap tart, she still would have had no business registering anything about him. Her life had no room, no time, for anything other than what filled it now.

Guilt shafted through her. Oh, God, how could she dare complain about her lot when she had nothing worth complaining about? Nothing whatsoever compared with—

She shut her mind off. The incredibly disturbing Frenchman had achieved one good thing. He had mopped up the rest of her time here, and now she could go home at last.