Calling His Bluff (9 page)

Feeling distinctly like he’d let the team down, J.D. turned again and walked away.
He didn’t go two steps before he turned back to check on her again. She looked a little
lost, sitting by herself in that spectacular dress, clutching a roll of quarters in
one hand and staring at the dozen spinning icons of fruits and numbers in front of
her.

“Want me to send you a drink? Glass of champagne?” he asked.

“God, no. This is hard enough without throwing liquor in the mix,” was her cryptic
answer. She touched a fingertip to the screen and shook her head as the mix of pictures
came up wrong.

She’d be fine. And J.D. could finally…clear his mind.

Two hours later, he was biting back curses as he stood on a balcony overlooking the
casino floor, hands clutching the guardrail. Beatrice had not been at all pleased
with him when he bailed on her before she could so much as hook a finger in his belt
loop and tug him close, but he hadn’t been able to shake his worry that Sarah was
in over her head. Spread out before him like one of the dozens of cheap buffets in
this town were all the opportunities a neophyte could ask for to lose every penny
in his or her pocket. Slots, blackjack, poker, baccarat, craps, roulette, bingo, sports-book
betting—any way you wanted to give them your money, Vegas was happy to take it.

Where the hell was Sarah?

She couldn’t have blown through three hundred dollars in quarters yet, surely. Even
if she never won a jackpot, it still took a certain amount of time to feed twelve
hundred quarters into one of these machines. And since, all protests to the contrary,
she was clearly a novice, he doubted she had figured out that she really needed to
put in more than the minimum bet at one time to hit the big jackpots.

So where was she?

He’d even checked the blackjack tables in case she’d decided to venture into riskier
territory. In between a couple dozen apologies for interrupting various hands, he’d
questioned dealers and a couple pit bosses as well. He’d found one dealer who remembered
Sarah. Apparently she had only played a few hands, but the dealer remembered complimenting
her on her dress. They’d bonded over the imperative of only ever buying hot cocktail
dresses on sale.

Well, a few hands of blackjack could have cleared her out if she’d fallen afoul of
some bad cards. But he’d already tried calling her room and her cell phone, looking
for her poolside and at the spa, and now he was getting a little nervous. Not to mention
pissed off. He’d walked more in the past two hours than he usually did in an entire
day lately and his leg was aching like a bitch. She was a grown woman, but this was
still a town where you could get into some serious trouble without even trying, and
if anything happened to Tyler’s little sister, J.D. would be missing a limb or two
by the time his best friend ran him out of Chicago.

Twenty minutes of polite verbal pushing and a little Hollywood name-dropping later,
he was introduced to the floor manager. Amazing what being a nominee for an untelevised
awards ceremony could get you. He explained his concern, wondering what the odds were
that they’d let a nonemployee into the video security room for a look at the live
feeds. He described Sarah to the man.

“…about five-nine, slim, long straight dark hair, wearing a short—
very
short—red sparkly halter dress. Looks like she could find trouble without going to
any, if you know what I mean.”

“And the guest’s name, sir?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t know her by name. She’s not a regular here. Sarah—”

The man smiled and turned J.D. by the elbow as he began walking down to the floor.

“Ms. Tyler, yes. I thought from your description that you might be speaking of her.”

Ms. Tyler?

“You know Sarah Tyler?” He didn’t mean to scoff at the man, but there was obviously
a misunderstanding.

“Of course. I make a point of paying close, personal attention to guests like Ms.
Tyler.”

The floor manager led him swiftly past the blackjack tables and deeper into the horseshoe-shaped
card tables.

“Let me guess. Beautiful young women?” Though the attitude was unexpectedly unprofessional
for a casino manager, he could hardly blame the man.

The man glanced over his shoulder at J.D., brows drawn together and a frown on his
face. Behind him, in the back of the room, a large crowd had gathered around a poker
table where a hot game was clearly in play.

“No. Guests who are serious card players. Especially when they’re winning.”

“Excuse me?”

Silence fell over the crowd in an instant as they approached, which distracted him
as much as the man’s response. That, and the glimpse of a naked ivory back, perfectly
bisected by a thin red rope that sparkled in the lights shining down on the table.

Piled in front of the woman was a mountain of chips, a mountain
range
of chips. The Colorado Rockies had nothing on this leaning tower of black and yellow
chips. And as he pushed through the silent crowd with a growing sense of horror, he
saw that her hands were braced at the base of the pile, fingers spread wide and palms
scraping the baize surface of the table.

He knew what came next.

“Well, Billy,” the woman said, her voice carrying easily in the quiet, “I’m betting
you dealt me better cards this hand than the last.” The dealer shook his head and
grinned. J.D. could hear the laugh racing beneath her voice, her good humor no doubt
enhanced by whatever had been on the rocks melting in the glass by her elbow. “And
if not, you’ll have to ask Mr. Rossetti here to tip you for me, since I won’t have
a chip left to my name.”

The crowd erupted, nearly drowning out the beginning of the inevitable next sentence.

“I’m moving all—”

He shoved a grandmother in a polyester pantsuit to the side and yanked the high roller
out of her chair, faking a hearty laugh.

“Sweetheart! Here you are!” The multicolored mountain of chips shuddered as he interrupted
her push forward for the classic “all in” bet and then collapsed like a hillside over
the San Andreas fault line, oozing in a landslide toward the already enormous pot
in the middle of the table. Frustrated shouts burst out all around him. “I’ve been
looking for you all over!”

Security men stepped into the corner of his vision. He welcomed their approach and
hoped it would prevent him from being beaten to death by the crowd. But this was Vegas.
There was one thing this town liked even better than gamblers. So he made the only
gamble that was left to him.

“What’s a newlywed gotta do to get five minutes alone with his wife?” he shouted to
the crowd with a grin.

He slicked a hand down her back and over her hip until it rested possessively on her
butt, fisted a hand in her hair, and tilted her face up to his. He only paused for
a split-second to hiss at her, “Sarah, what the hell are you doing?”

Then he crushed his mouth to hers and prayed.

Later that evening, Sarah would explain to J.D. exactly how close he’d come to being
assaulted with a highball glass and five laminated playing cards. The man from Florida
had been losing steadily to her for the past half hour, and when J.D. yanked her out
of her seat, the guy had started to rise, eyes darting furiously between the scotch
and soda he held in one hand and the cards clutched flat against the table in the
other, as if he couldn’t decide which to pitch at J.D.’s head first: the drink that
was numbing him to the pain of his losses or the hand he hoped would turn his losing
streak around.

But although she kept her wits for long enough to remember to leave her cards on the
table before she braced her palms against J.D.’s shoulders—she wouldn’t for a moment
risk the charge of card tampering—what happened after that became a little hazy.

She hadn’t processed anything he’d said, although he was clearly pretty steamed about
something. But his mouth spent only a moment hovering over hers before beginning an
assault on her senses that would have put a lesser woman in the hospital. She parted
her lips, not sure if she were going to protest or say
please,
and his tongue plunged in, forcing her mouth open wider as his hand in her hair pulled
her head back, almost pulling her away from him.

Until she snaked a hand behind his neck and pulled his head down to hers just as hard.

His mouth was rough and hot against hers, his teeth scraping against her lips as his
kiss roamed her mouth, not content with one angle, one taste, one touch. He nipped
at her bottom lip, and then curved his tongue against hers in a long, slow, sliding
dance. She could taste the heat of him, sharp and dangerous against her tongue, not
subtle at all.

Then she shuddered as she felt him scrape a single fingernail delicately across the
bare skin of her lower back, chasing the edge of her dress as it dipped low at the
base of her spine.

The hand in her hair shifted, the clenched fingers spreading wide to wrap more firmly
around her neck and spear deep into her hair, their energy shifting subtly from forceful
to encouraging. She loosened her own hand against the warm, smooth skin of his nape,
and with the other hand smoothed the lapel she’d crushed into a ball of wrinkles.

He was kissing her more softly now, little nipping kisses, as if each time he attempted
to draw his mouth away from hers, he was forced to stop for a second and come back
to her for one last taste.

Slowly, sound was beginning to register again, mostly cheerful-sounding hollers sparked
with one or two irritated voices protesting something. They stood still under the
canopy above the poker table that was there to keep the overhead lights from shining
directly on the players’ foreheads. Studies had shown that such lights were draining
to a gambler’s energy.

Sarah didn’t think that feeling drained was a problem she would have to face for,
say, the next decade or so. Her system was revved, even the slide of J.D.’s palms
down the skin of her bare arms sent electric shocks racing down her spine. She hadn’t
felt this jumpy since the surge of adrenaline that had hit her earlier in the evening
when she thought she spotted J.D.’s ex-wife across the casino floor. A case of mistaken
identity, obviously.

J.D. started to straighten, and then stopped, bending over for one last kiss. She
could hear someone asking her where her ring was—
what ring?
—as his lips slid over hers, his mouth’s gentle suction pulling softly at her upper
lip. When he stopped and stood up, the swoop in her belly as his dark eyes found hers
was enough to keep her speechless for another moment.

Which was just long enough for him to push the long spill of her hair gently behind
one ear, lean forward and shatter the mood.

“Do you have any idea what the hell you’re doing?” he said in her ear. She reared
back in surprise, which is when she noticed that the look in his eyes was less lustful
than worried. He’d shackled her wrists neatly in the tight grip of his hands and seemed
to think that he was going to march her away from the table in the middle of a hand.

A damn big hand. And hers to win or to lose, no matter what her own personal Big Brother
bodyguard seemed to think.

“Hey, buddy, you got the next fifty years to kiss your wife,” her opponent said crankily
as he settled back into his seat. “But first she’s gotta finish with me.”

Wife?

Her brain raced back over the past two minutes, and the details fell into place like
a roulette ball clicking at last into the double-zero slot.

He thought he was saving her.

How sweet.

Condescending and not a little bit obnoxious, but still sweet. Now, at least, she
understood why the bleached blonde at the end of the table was still blathering on
about a ring.

Dredging up a memory from her seventh-grade self-defense class in P.E., Sarah twisted
her wrists against the spot where J.D.’s thumbs overlapped and his fingers touched,
and broke free.

She wouldn’t call him out on his crazy playacting, but she’d be damned if she’d let
him derail her poker hand.

“Never marry a man in Vegas, honey,” she said with a bright smile at crowd, and a
nod to the dealer to let him know that play was in no way interrupted. “They’re always
promising you the ring will come along later.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” the blonde called back, elbowing the man next to her.

With a cocky grin, she patted J.D.’s cheek with one hand and dared a wink at him.
He looked like he’d happily strangle her right then and there. She sat back down in
her seat and crossed her legs, knowing that the movement had her skirt riding high
on her thigh.

She cocked her head back a little and looked up at her “husband.”

“I think I’ve done pretty well by myself so far,
darling,
so if you don’t mind…” She turned back to her opponent. Mr. Rossetti glared at her
over the stub of the cigar he could only chew on because the Bellagio’s poker rooms,
unlike the rest of the casino, were smoke-free. “As I was saying, I can’t match that
last raise, so…”

She pushed every last damn chip into the pot without a word.

Then she leaned back in her seat, raised an eyebrow at the man across the table from
her and called his bluff.

When he slid a thumb under the edge of the cards in front of him and turned them up
just far enough to get a glimpse at them, she knew she would win.

After an hour of matching wits, such as they were—although she felt a bit like whoever
it was who’d once said that they declined to enter a battle of wits with an unarmed
opponent—she knew that Rossetti only double-checked his cards before betting when
he hoped they’d changed for the better since his last look.

Every gambler has tells, and she’d picked up on his after ten minutes.

Mr. Rossetti nodded at the dealer and changed another thousand in chips to match her
bet. When the chips were slid in front of him, he called her bet and clamped down
hard on the cigar with his teeth.