High-Stakes Affair. Gail Barrett

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