High-Stakes Affair (3 page)

“Wait here,” he said. Before she could ask what he intended, he strode around the truck and disappeared.

Still struggling to breathe normally, she glanced around. Fire trucks rumbled in the parking lot below them. Smoke from the bomb blast lingered in the air, the acrid smell permeating the night. She walked to the end of the alley and scanned the well-heeled people milling around the casino entrance, commenting on the power outage and fire.

Suddenly two guards burst through the emergency exit behind her. Her heart galloping, she moved deeper into the shadows, afraid they would mount a search. But the men just stood on the loading dock for a moment, peering at the commotion outside the casino, then gave up and went inside.

Paloma exhaled. She’d dodged one bullet, at least. But then the shadows beside her swirled, and she whipped around. “It’s me,” Dante said, emerging from the darkness.

She pressed her hand to her chest. “You scared me. I thought you were a guard.”

“Sorry.” He stepped closer, moving into a circle of light, and she caught the tension lines bracketing his mouth.

Her belly tightened again. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. Let’s get out of here first. My car’s at the edge of the lot.”

Not seeing an alternative, she fell in beside him, but her anxiety ratcheted up a notch as they went across the lot. Something had put that worry in his eyes, but what?

Still mulling that over, she wove behind him through the rows of parked cars. People streamed around them, chattering about the night’s events. Paloma ducked her head, hoping no one recognized her—a complication she didn’t need.

Dante stopped beside a dinged-up hatchback. “Get in. It’s not locked.”

Surprised at his choice of cars, she climbed inside. While she buckled her seat belt, Dante grabbed a knapsack from beneath a nearby shrub and tossed it into the back. Then he slid into the driver’s seat and fiddled with some loose wires under the dash.

She blinked. “You stole this car?”

“I was trying to stay anonymous.” He shot her a pointed look. “A lot of good that did.”

She dragged her gaze to the windshield as the old car stuttered to life. She’d definitely fouled up. Getting caught on camera with Dante would create exactly the kind of publicity she’d hoped to avoid—and put innocent people at risk.

Including him.

Although
innocent
hardly described Dante Quevedo. She cast a glance at his profile as he drove through the gravel lot. She skimmed his dark, stubbled jaw, his big hands grasping the wheel, the heavy bones of his wrists. And that restless feeling quivered through her, that primitive, carnal awareness he’d evoked in her from the start.

Determined to ignore it, she turned her gaze to the blackened forest as they left the grounds of the casino and whizzed down the mountain road. Dante disturbed her, all right. And she never should have enlisted his help. Now he was mired with her in this muddled mess—and it was up to her to get them out.

He shifted to a lower gear. The car slowed abruptly, jerking her against the seat belt, the engine protesting with a high-pitched shriek. He hit the brakes, slowing them even further, and steered the car off the road. The beams from the headlights bounced across the trees as they bumped over the rocky ground.

“What are you doing?” She braced her hand against the dashboard as the car lurched through a rocky ditch. “Why did you leave the road?”

“They’ve set up a roadblock closer to town.”

“How do you know that?”

“I overheard some people talking in the parking lot.”

She frowned. “You think they know that Gomez is dead?”

“No. They’re looking for you. Your bodyguard got a good look at me before the lights went out. When he woke up and couldn’t find you, he probably figured I’d kidnapped you.”

Oh, God. Dante was right. That was exactly what Carlos would think. She sank back against the seat, fastening her gaze on the passing timber as the implications sank in. Her father would act at once. He’d scour the countryside, mobilizing the military and mounting an all-out search.

Her forehead suddenly throbbing, she pressed her fingers to her temples and tried to think. “I’ll straighten this out as soon as I get home. I’ll call my father and let him know that I’m all right.”

“He’s not going to believe you.”

“Why not?”

Dante swerved again. “They saw us together in the hall, and we were running away from the guards. How are you going to explain that?”

“I’ll say I was lost, that you were helping me find my way out. And we ran because…because we didn’t know who they were. We thought the guards were someone else, maybe La Brigada raiding the casino. And you were trying to keep me safe.”

“It still won’t work.”

“Of course it will. Once I explain—”

“I’m a thief, Paloma. I’ve got a criminal record. It won’t matter what you say. They’ll assume that I coerced you and throw me back in jail.”

“Not without proof, they won’t.”

“Proof?” He shot her an incredulous look. “What planet do you live on? Since when do they need proof to arrest someone?”

“That’s awfully cynical. Our laws—”

He barked out a bitter laugh. “Laws. Right. That’s why they tossed me in jail before—with no lawyer, no contact with the outside world, no chance to fight the charges, whatever the hell they were.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Then you’re either stupid or naive.”

She frowned at his angry profile, his bitterness bothering her. True, she hadn’t found his arrest papers. And she knew the system wasn’t perfect, that some of the older guards were corrupt. But Dante made the country sound medieval. And while her father might be high-handed, he’d never tolerate abuses like that.

“I don’t know what happened with your arrest,” she admitted. “So I can’t argue with you about that. But you don’t have to worry about tonight. I’ll make sure my father knows that you didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll talk to him in person and prove that I’m all right.”

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

“What?”

“
I
don’t believe
you.
”

The car hit a rut, and she clutched the seat. 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.”

“Your word?” he scoffed. “You’ve been lying to me from the start. There isn’t a chance in hell Gomez was blackmailing you with the reputation you have.”

She flushed and crossed her arms, unable to deny the truth. “The reason I need that disk 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 we’re through.”

Outraged, she clamped her jaw. Then she turned her gaze to the side window, where the wind whistled through a crack.
Wonderful.
She’d thought the night couldn’t get much worse. But she’d been wrong.

Because now she had to worry about
him.

Chapter 3

D
ante had to hand it to the princess. She’d lived up to her bad reputation and totally screwed up his night.

Furious over the debacle she’d landed him in, he stopped on a cobblestone street in the heart of the ancient city and parked. Darkness enveloped the car. A dog barked from a nearby house, its sharp, high-pitched yaps adding to his foul mood.

Paloma had embroiled him in a disaster, all right. The police were hot on his trail. They would assume he’d abducted the princess and would probably shoot him on sight. They’d definitely connect him to that bomb blast—and possibly the casino owner’s bizarre death.

And until he could extricate himself from this unholy mess, he wasn’t letting her escape. She was the only hope he had to clear his name and keep himself out of jail.

“Where are we?” she asked.

He turned his head, barely able to make out her features in the predawn light. She hadn’t spoken for the last half hour as they’d worked their way down the forest trail. She’d sat with her arms folded tight, her sultry lips compressed, upset that he didn’t trust her, no doubt. Well, too damned bad. He needed answers. And he intended to get them, even if her feelings got hurt.

“A property I’m restoring,” he hedged. “No one will find us there. We can talk, make plans.”
Figure out what had gone wrong.

Still seething over his predicament, he climbed out, grabbed his knapsack from the backseat and did a visual check of the car, making sure he hadn’t left incriminating evidence behind. Then he led the way up the cobbled lane into the oldest part of the city, a once-lavish section that bordered the fortified wall.

The barking abruptly stopped. The cold wind gusted in the sudden silence, sending a plastic bag skittering over the stones. Dante glanced at Paloma walking beside him, the light from a wrought-iron lantern casting a silver sheen over her hair.

She hadn’t set out to harm him; he’d give her that much. His friend Rafael Navarro never would have agreed to help her if she had. And given her reaction to Gomez’s corpse, she also hadn’t expected to find the casino owner dead.

But her blackmail story still stank. Why would anyone threaten to expose her with the wild reputation she had? Unless she really was protecting someone else…

Dante slid her a speculative look. She stared straight ahead, her profile blurred by shadows, her long hair fluttering in the breeze. Who else could she be shielding? Her father? Her brother? Anticipation roared through him at the thought. If she was protecting her brother, that blackmail evidence could be the proof he needed to finally destroy that bloody murderer—hell, the entire royal family—including the spoiled princess at his side.

His conscience twinged, but he beat back any qualms.
No mercy.
The nobles sure hadn’t shown any to the hapless people of País Vell. For centuries, a few powerful families had controlled the country’s wealth while the impoverished masses struggled to survive—scrabbling for medical care and food, working to put a decent roof over their heads.

And anyone who dared protest was mowed down in a hail of bullets—like his desperate mother, shot point-blank while her two terrified children looked on.

Dante steeled his jaw, beating back the fury, knowing he had to keep his agenda under wraps. Because no matter how innocuous Paloma seemed, she was a royal, his sworn enemy. And he couldn’t risk tipping her off.

He reached the medieval stone cross that had once marked a pilgrim trail and turned down the cobbled lane. Halfway down the block, he reached a thick wooden door in the high stone wall and stopped.

Paloma came to a halt beside him, then peered up at the escutcheon above the door. “This is the Palacio de los Arcos.” Named after the impressive arches that lined the courtyard inside.

“Yeah, so?”

She turned her gaze to his. “This used to be in my family. I came here a few times when my great-aunt Pilar was still alive. I tried to convince my father to buy it after she died, but he said it needed too much work.”

“It was a mess, all right.” So bad, in fact, that he’d bought the condemned estate for next to nothing, barely more than the price of the lot. But what he’d saved on price he’d paid for in labor. It had taken him a year just to stabilize the building and keep it from collapsing.

“And you’re doing the restoration?” she asked.

He’d bought the property under a sham corporation so the police couldn’t connect it to him—but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “That’s right.”

He swung up the iron knocker, tapped a code on the hidden keypad, then pulled open the heavy door.

“That’s clever the way you hid that,” she said.

“I didn’t want to ruin the look of the door.” He stood back to let her through.

She stepped inside, her subtle floral scent twining around him like a lover’s embrace. Disgusted that he’d noticed, he followed her into the courtyard, but the swing of her slender hips, the thick mass of chestnut hair tumbling down her back accelerated his pulse.

He clenched his jaw. No way. He wasn’t going down that futile track. She wasn’t his date. She was a means to an end, nothing more.

She stopped beside the fountain, then slowly turned around, gazing up at the three-tiered gallery of arches towering on every side. In its heyday, the once magnificent palace had hosted a variety of foreign dignitaries, including the monarchs of France and Spain.

Which perfectly illustrated the chasm between their lives.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “You’ve done all this work?”

“Yeah.” Bit by bit, in between his charity heists and legitimate stonemasonry jobs. And he still had a long way to go. He scanned the boards piled against one wall, the scaffolding stretched across the courtyard, the mountain of paint cans and saws.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “I love the way you’ve preserved the original features. It’s modern, but still antique.”

He met her gaze, impressed that she understood. “That was the point.”

“Well, it worked. It’s really lovely, just amazing. You do fabulous work.”

Despite his resolve to keep his distance, her frank admiration burrowed beneath his defenses and evoked a glimmer of pride. He’d spent years working on the sixteenth-century palace, staining the chestnut beams, piecing together the damaged frescoes, painstakingly repairing the terra-cotta tiles. Shoring up the dilapidated, graffiti-marred structure to create a home for his baby sister and fill the void in her troubled life.

But Paloma wouldn’t understand that. She’d been raised in an opulent castle, surrounded by every luxury, worlds apart from his hardscrabble upbringing, where he’d had to steal to survive.

“This way,” he said, hardening his voice. He strode into one of the few rooms he’d finished and snapped on a high-powered lamp. The harsh light flooded the room, banishing the feeling of intimacy she’d sparked. Still clutching the laptop and bag of disks, Paloma sank onto the leather sofa and glanced around the room. He settled in the opposite chair.

For a minute, he simply watched her, studying her full, pouty lips, the sooty lashes rimming her hypnotic eyes, the shimmering fall of her chestnut hair. Her undeniable beauty washed through him, the feminine lines of her face, the creamy glow of her skin jump-starting his heart. Had she been anyone else…

But she wasn’t anyone else. She was Paloma Vergara, the princess. A member of the family he planned to destroy.

He braced his forearms on his knees. “All right. Let’s take this from the top. What were you after back there? And I want the truth this time.”

She hesitated, her apparent unwillingness to confide in him irritating him even more. “Look, Princess. Thanks to you, I’ve got the royal guards gunning for me. If I’m going to get arrested, I deserve to know what for.”

She pushed her hands through her hair, the honeyed highlights shimmering like gold in the light. Her weary sigh filled the air. “You’re right. It’s my fault you’re in this mess. But I really did tell you the truth—most of it, at least. I’m looking for blackmail evidence.”

He cocked a brow. “And?”

Setting aside the bag and laptop, she rose. She paced to the still-dark windows, then turned and faced him again. “What I’m about to tell you… You can’t tell anyone. You have to promise. Because if the media finds out…”

“Forget it. I’m not promising anything. Not until I know what this is about.”

“But—”

“I said to forget it.” He stood and stalked toward her, stopping so close beside her she had to tilt back her head to meet his eyes. “I agreed to get you into that penthouse, and I did my part. Now it’s time that you came clean.”

Her lush mouth flattened, her eyes flashing with annoyance at his hard line. But after several tense seconds, she released her breath. “All right. The truth is… It wasn’t me Gomez was blackmailing. It was my brother, Tristan.”

Dante’s gut stilled. Excitement leaped inside him, sending adrenaline surging into his veins. He’d guessed right. And this was exactly what he needed—information that could incriminate the prince.

“He gambles,” she continued with a little shrug. “Nothing major. He’s not addicted or anything. He just goes to the casino a couple times a month. It’s not a secret.”

“I’ve heard that.” According to his sister, who’d worked as a waitress at the casino, the prince gambled regularly in the high-roller rooms. “So what happened?”

“The last time he was there, he gambled with a man he’d never met before. Someone from the Middle East. He didn’t think much of it at the time. But he found out later that the man was a terrorist, a member of the Third Crescent, an al Qaeda offshoot. And apparently the surveillance camera caught them together.”

“So? What’s wrong with that? If he didn’t know who the man was…”

“You’re right. Normally no one would care. But my father just signed an international agreement, promising cooperation in the war on terror. Tristan’s heading the committee in charge of that, so pictures of him partying with a terrorist…” She grimaced. “The timing couldn’t be worse. It would make us look corrupt, especially with the reputation for smuggling that País Vell has.

“And you know what the mood in the country is like. People are angry at my family right now. Any hint of scandal will only add to the unrest. And if people start protesting again, someone else could get hurt.”

Dante rubbed his jaw, his morning beard stubble scraping his palm. “Even so, just gambling with a terrorist doesn’t seem that bad. It’s hardly worthy of blackmail.”

“It will be by the time the tabloids get finished with it. They’ll distort and exaggerate the story until Tristan looks like a terrorist, too. Just the appearance of doing something wrong is enough. Believe me, I’ve learned that the hard way over the years.”

He angled his head, her obvious resentment taking him aback. And for the first time he wondered if he’d misjudged her, and if there was more to her than he knew. Because if the tabloids had exaggerated her behavior, painting her in an unfair light…

Shocked by the direction of his thoughts, he cut them off. He didn’t care what she was like. She was a tool, a means to avenge his sister’s death, nothing more.

“So Gomez tried to blackmail your brother?” he prodded, steering his thoughts back to the prince.

“Yes. He told Tristan to pay up, or he’d expose the surveillance footage.”

“And when was this?”

“The gambling trip? A couple of weeks ago, on a Thursday night.”

Dante’s heart missed several beats. It took every ounce of effort he had to keep his expression blank. His sister had died that night. And there wasn’t a chance in hell it was a coincidence, not with the prince involved. Whatever had happened in the casino
had
to be connected to her death.

His excitement rising, he paced across the tiles. Lucía had worked the late shift at the casino that night. Just after her shift had ended, she’d phoned him in a panic, her voice so slurred and incoherent, and hiccupping so badly, he could hardly make sense of her words. She’d claimed that the prince was trying to kill her, that she’d witnessed something dreadful—something involving shootings or shots.

Of course, that last part didn’t make sense. She hadn’t suffered a gunshot wound—only a needle mark on her arm. The coroner had ruled her death a massive heroin overdose, which Dante refused to believe.

But assuming the prince had killed her, the question was
why?
She might have seen him gambling with the terrorist—but what difference would that have made? She wouldn’t have recognized anyone from the Middle East.

Unless the “shots” referred to a murder. If the prince had killed someone—maybe the terrorist—and Lucía had witnessed the crime, he’d have a motive to shut her up.

But then what about Gomez? How did his death figure into this? What was that weird-looking rash about?

Dante stopped by the entrance to the kitchen and turned around, his gaze traveling to Paloma again. She still stood by the window, her full lips pursed, her wary eyes on his. He didn’t know who or what had killed Gomez, but he did know one thing. Whatever had happened to his sister that night, that blackmail evidence
had
to hold the key.