Calling His Bluff (13 page)

“Ah.” For the first time, she saw his face light up as his mouth tipped into a broad
smile. Here was a true believer in romance. “Las Vegas. Wonderful things happen here.”

“Wonderful, indeed,” she said and watched the elevator doors close.

* * *

“Okay,” J.D. said to the empty hotel room. “That didn’t go well.”

He strolled over to the marble-topped bistro table by the window and drummed his fingers
against it. The fountains were dancing again outside the window, some thirty floors
down, although it almost seemed as if they could shoot this high. The jets of water
dipped and swayed and shimmied in a hypnotic fashion.

He still wasn’t exactly sure where he’d gone wrong.

Okay, yes. Telling a woman that you’d prefer for her to go talk to a couple of event
promoters rather than tear up the sheets with you for the rest of the night was, he
could admit, not the most romantic move.

But hadn’t she spent half of dinner talking about poker like another woman would talk
about falling in love with a man? Hadn’t he seen the excitement and passion and sheer
life that lit up her face as she told him stories of cliffhanger hands she’d won on
her way to playing the big times?

And forget that business about this being something she only did when in Vegas, about
her not wanting to play high-stakes poker anymore. Even if that were true, this was
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to beat an old cliché with a heavy stick, and he
didn’t think she should act like he was the bad guy for suggesting that she might
not want to miss it.

The door to Sarah’s large armoire was partway open. He looked inside without thinking.
Her clothes were hung neatly in well-defined categories: pants, shirts, evening wear.
He tugged open a drawer. Yup, just as he’d thought. Even her underwear, unexpectedly
sexy as it was, was folded and neatly put away. As someone who could stay in a hotel
room for two months without unpacking his suitcases all the way, just yanking things
out and shoving cleaned items back in as needed, the type of person who would go to
all this effort for a two-day stay was baffling to him.

And that was another thing: Sarah confused the hell out of him.

He had not for one damn moment stopped wanting to peel that little red dress off her.
With his teeth. But while she was having her little encounter in the hall with the
floor manager, who clearly had the hots for her, by the way, maybe J.D.
had
stepped back for a moment and tried to figure out just how they’d gotten there. To
the point of peeling dresses. Because Sarah, newly exposed personality traits aside,
had never struck him as an impulsive kind of person. This was a woman who folded her
underwear and hung up her jeans, for crying out loud.

Not exactly a one-night stand kind of girl.

And he wasn’t looking for anything more than one night. Right?

When he thought about it, though, he couldn’t actually remember any other time he’d
been the one to stomp on the brakes when it came to sex.

This was different.
Sarah
was different, and he wasn’t at all sure he liked how twisted around she made him
feel.

How had this happened?

Of course, attempting to think about Sarah in any kind of logical way immediately
required that he think of her brother. His best friend. The man who was going to look
him in the eye upon their return to Chicago and ask the question, “So, how was your
trip?”

The man who also, mind you, kept a baseball bat behind the counter of his bar. The
crowd at Tyler’s establishment might be considerably more upscale than the places
where he’d worked as a young, up-and-coming bartender, but Sarah’s brother believed
in being prepared for all possible disasters.

J.D. was absolutely, positively certain that his friend would look upon what had almost
happened between Sarah and him as a verifiable disaster.

But he was willing to risk it. Willing to risk the baseball bat, and the possibility
that this chemistry that had thrown him like a sucker punch to the gut might turn
into something that lasted more than one night—a thought that scared him not a little
since the bust up of his marriage. He was even willing to take the chance that he
might end up ruining a good friendship that he’d just rediscovered after all these
years.

“I just said that maybe we should think about it for an hour,” he complained to the
empty room, and shut the armoire door. Then he turned and stalked from the room.

He’d told her he had an errand to run. It was something he’d thought of earlier, something
that might make Sarah laugh. Well, he’d do it anyway, even if he had to get that floor
manager to pull some strings for him to pull off the surprise. He made for the elevators.

Thinking time was over.

* * *

“Absolutely not.”

Sarah wagged a finger at the two men across the table from her and tried to infuse
some authority into her voice. It hadn’t worked the last three times she’d tried,
and she had a sneaking suspicion that the fact that she was now, just barely, slurring
her
S
s was not helping matters.

She didn’t even
like
ouzo, goddamn it.

“But, Sarah, we must honor the spirits of our fathers. Nikos! Hideko! Michael!”

Even though she’d been “accidentally” jostling her shot glass for the last five minutes,
spilling as much of it as she could onto the napkin beneath it, there was enough ouzo
left in there for it to sting going down.

Another shot, however, and she wouldn’t be able to feel the sting anymore.

Who would have guessed that two of the poker event’s backers, a middle-aged Japanese
man and an older Greek gentleman, would end up bonding over a love of strong liquor
and even stronger family ties?

When she’d joined them at their table in the lounge, which overlooked the Bellagio
lake and featured a particularly jumping Kansas City–style blues band, they’d seemed
like pleasant yet sober businessmen. They’d lost no time getting down to details with
her: her personal history, background with poker, future availability for promotional
efforts if the unthinkable happened and she did well enough to get press from this
tournament. And then after business was settled, they’d insisted on buying her a drink
to celebrate their good fortune in coming across one another.

She had gladly joined them for the first drink, not really expecting it to be a shot
of 80-proof liquor, but willing to go along. She’d still been pretty pissed at J.D.
at that point, and a strong drink had sounded appealing. Now, of course, a strong
drink seemed more and more likely to make her slide right out of this slick leather
chair.

The trouble came when both men had claimed the privilege of making the first toast.
The older gentleman had deferred to his younger business partner, who announced that
he always made his first toast of the evening to his father, who had died too young.
Shock and macho backslapping ensued as the Greek man revealed that
he
always made the same toast with his first drink. Sarah, who wondered how much these
two guys drank that they always needed “first” toasts, made the mistake of revealing
that her father had also died when he was young, while she was just a toddler.

After which, nothing would do but that they have three separate toasts, one for each
father.

And then, of course, they must toast their mothers, those wonderful women who had
held their families together with their strength and love.

Their grandparents, who still mourned the loss of their sons, cut down in the prime
of their lives, must be honored, too.

Their fathers again, who would have loved each other so well, had they been fortunate
enough to meet one another.

Sarah knew she was a grown-up. She knew that no matter how many shots of ouzo or bottles
of Sapporo beer or glasses of scotch—it was sweet of them to want to include her booze
heritage, too—were placed in front of her, she was not obliged to drink them. But
somehow it seemed rude to decline to toast someone else’s dead father, even more so
your own. So she kept trying to spill her drinks or dump them over her shoulder onto
what she sincerely hoped was not an expensive carpet. But even so, she was getting
more than a little bit loopy.

She was pretty sure that if her hosts managed to come up with one more family member
whose loss they all needed to toast, she’d be tipsy enough to track down J.D. and
tell him exactly what she thought of him.

She’d probably find him plastered all over some surgically enhanced blonde.

Ha.
She could tell that blonde a thing or two.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sarah announced to the table, catching herself as she slid
off her seat a little. “That’s what I’d tell her. You can’t count on that Mr. J.D.
Damico for anything. Not even a little sex. Plus, he’s still married!”

Her hosts, although bleary-eyed and swaying almost as much as the fountains reflected
in the lake behind them, perked up a bit at her words.

“Tha’s right. Let me tell you a story,” she demanded and struggled to sit up straight.
She opened her mouth to begin when a heavy hand fell on her shoulder.

“Let’s save you the embarrassing memories tomorrow,
Mrs.
Damico.”

It couldn’t be.

The corner of a pale blue box tied with a white ribbon poked her hard in the thigh
as it bounced onto her lap.

“What’d you say? ‘Don’t marry a man in Vegas. They’re always promising the ring will
come later’?”

The gentleman across from her simply stared at her.

“First of all, I wouldn’t change my name to yours for a royal flush in Texas No-Limit
Hold’em,” she said and twisted in her seat to glare up at J.D. Damn, the man looked
good. Even when she was pissed, and piss drunk to boot. “And third of all, Mr. I-want-to-get-in-your-pants,
no-wait-I-don’t, oh-yes-I-do—”

“What about your second?”

“Second what?”

“Of all. You had a first and a third. What’s your second of all?” He flashed a smile
at her, which threw her off guard for a moment.

She rallied. “Second of all, my brother’s gonna kick your ass when we get home.”

“You’re getting married?” This from across the table, where the two men had been following
their exchange like courtside spectators at Wimbledon.

“No.”

“Newlyweds.”

Their voices fought to override each other. J.D.’s, perhaps more completely under
his control, won out.

“We just got married. Yesterday.” He paused for a beat. “Her mother doesn’t approve.”

“She’s not the only one,” Sarah said as the men traded congratulations and nuptial
warnings. Wasn’t it just like the man to add completely unnecessary details to a story,
a
lie,
that no one should be listening to in the first place?

“Then we must toast!” A bottle of ouzo had long ago been bought for the table, making
the pouring of shots a breeze. Anise-flavored liquor sloshed over the rim of her shot
glass yet again. “To Sarah and her new husband…”

“J.D.,” the man in question supplied helpfully.

“To Sarah and J.D.!”

God, just the thought of more ouzo made her want to puke. But when she picked up the
glass and prepared to sling the contents over her shoulder, onto the spreading puddle
on the rug behind her, J.D. stopped her with a hand on her wrist.

“Do you think that’s wise?”

Which was maybe the only thing in the world someone could have said to make her drink
it.

She downed the shot, coughed and slammed her glass to the table.

“Gentlemen!” Enough was enough. “I bid you good night.”

Her inability to stand marked the only flaw in her plan to make a dramatic exit. J.D.
tried to help her stay upright, but with her clutch in one hand and the little blue
box in the other, she couldn’t hold onto him. Or to any other stationary surface that
might slow down the spinning of the room.

“Up you go!” J.D. slid an arm beneath her knees and another around her shoulders,
picking her up and carrying her out of the lounge. She waved over his shoulder at
her new friends. This wasn’t too bad. At least now when she felt herself swaying,
she knew it wasn’t the booze.

Two minutes later, after watching the staring eyes and pointing fingers that followed
in their wake as J.D. strode through the casino, she had changed her mind. This was
the most embarrassing experience of her life. She buried her head in J.D.’s collar,
her brain still functioning well enough to tell her that struggling to get down and
then falling flat on her face would be even more humiliating. Shutting her eyes and
groaning softly, she shook her head.

“That’s right.” J.D.’s cheerful voice rumbled through his chest and into the bones
of her skull. Couldn’t he keep it down? “You are going to hate yourself in the morning.”

“Your fault,” she said into his collar.

“What’s that, honey?”

She lifted her mouth off his lapel but kept her eyes closed. She wanted this whole
night to go away.

“It’s your fault.”

“How do you figure?”

She really was getting incredibly sleepy. Even the casino noise at this late hour
was a quietly grumbling, pinging lullaby to her intoxicated ears. She tightened her
arms a little around J.D.’s neck and squirmed to get more comfortable. She yawned.
Maybe she was sleeping, and this whole entire night had been a dream.

That would be great.

“You didn’t want me, so I had to go drink ouzo, gallons of ouzo, with those guys.”
She knew that wasn’t exactly true. There might have been some other details, a few
minor steps in the middle, but that’s what it felt like. Beneath her cheek, J.D.’s
chest lifted on a deep inhale and then sank as he let out a long sigh.

“Listen, Sarah, that’s not…”

She tried to pay attention to what J.D. was saying, but he was speaking from so far
away that she could barely hear him. Tucking her head back under his chin, Sarah curled
up tighter in his arms and drifted away.