Pitch Black: A Romantic Thriller (Blackwood Security Book 1) (14 page)

“I’m Mark. I’d shake hands, but…”

“It’s fine. You’re staying here?”

“Fortunately not. Have you seen the mess through there?” He inclined his head towards the Hunt Ball.

“It’d be hard to miss.”

“Yeah, you’d have to be deaf. Me and some friends got talked into bringing our kid sisters. They’ve got to be accompanied by responsible adults.” He gave a wry laugh. “My mother thought I fitted the bill.”

“I’m here with friends. And when I say ‘here with friends,’ I mean my job is to shovel them into a car at the end of the night.”

“Nightmare, isn’t it? We learned from last year, so we’ve rented a room.”

“Sounds cosy.”

“Not like that. We’re playing poker.”

The lift arrived and Mark pressed the button for the second floor with his nose. A poker game. That sounded more fun than the debacle in the ballroom. Would they let me stay? I figured I had two minutes to convince them.

As it turned out, that was easier than I thought. I backed through the door, and when I turned around, I found myself face to face with Luke Halston-Cain. The room was more of a suite, and he was sitting at a table with a stack of poker chips in front of him.

“I see you managed to pick up Ash,” he said to Mark.

“Less of that talk—I’m spoken for. Anyway, she was the one who came over to me. It must have been my magnetic personality.”

“Or your inability to carry a round of drinks. I offered to help with the glasses. That hardly translates as wanting to strip you naked and do you over the bar,” I said.

That got a laugh.

“Makes a change from most of the women down there,” the man sitting next to Luke said. I didn’t recognise him.

Mark put his armful of glasses on the table, leaving wet rings on the polished surface. “Yeah, walking into that ballroom would be like taking a shortcut through shark-infested waters on your way home from the butcher’s shop.”

“Although if Luke doesn’t stop eating my crisps I’ll march him downstairs and handcuff him to the bar. The women can take turns,” said another of the men.

“I’ll buy you another packet,” Luke said, then turned to me. “Are you staying? You don’t seem drunk enough to hang out downstairs.”

I grinned at him. “Thought you’d never ask.”

He introduced the rest of the players. As well as Mark, there were four others. Ben was the guy on his left, the one who’d had a dim view of the female partygoers.

His cute dimple distracted me while Luke waved at the other three, so I missed their names. Christ, I never used to lose my focus like that. In my head, I christened the blanks as Huey, Dewey and Louie. That seemed to work. As Ben divvied the chips up, I gathered that they weren’t close friends of the others, anyway, but rather they’d been brought together by a shared desperation to avoid the havoc downstairs.

“Want me to deal the first game?” I asked.

Luke raised an eyebrow. “You know how to play poker?”

Come on, dude, it’s the twenty first century. Women are allowed into casinos.

“I’ve played occasionally.”

“In that case…” He pushed the deck of cards over. “Deal away.”

Game on.

Chapter 14

“ARE WE PLAYING Texas Hold’em?” I asked, naming the variant of the game beloved of casinos and frat boys the world over.

“Yeah,” Luke said.

I shuffled the cards and dealt two to each player, face down. They peeked and betting commenced. Mark tried to hide his smile as he threw a handful of chips into the middle. He had something good.

Huey followed suit. “Come on boys, make me rich.”

Louie tossed his cards down in disgust, muttering, “Did you shuffle these properly?”

“Bad luck, mate,” said Huey, although he didn’t sound sympathetic.

When everyone had bet or folded, I dealt the three cards face-up on the table—that was the flop. Mark groaned. He was terrible at this game. I could read him like a large-print book.

“I’m out,” he said when his turn came.

I dealt the fourth card, and everyone stayed in. Either they all had good cards, or they thought they could bluff their way through. I found myself watching Luke. What was his tell?

I dealt the fifth and final card, and Luke and Huey folded. Dewey leapt up, fist pumping the air, when he won with a full house against Ben’s pair of eights. “Yes, I’m the man!”

That was debatable, considering his choice of drink had been a margarita. As he raked the pile of chips towards him, I gathered the cards up and dealt the next game.

While I wasn’t playing, I had the chance to watch the others. Mark was cautious, and Ben tended towards gung-ho. He thought he could bluff his way through, however bad his cards were. Most of the time it didn’t work.

“Bollocks,” he muttered, as his pile of chips dwindled further.

Huey was the easiest to suss out. When nerves got the better of him, his right foot tapped. I could see the slight movement carrying through to his torso. There it was again—tap, tap, tap. He was bluffing. Players like him were easy to take money off. The game lasted another hour, until Luke’s face lit up in a grin as he won the last of Mark’s chips.

“Hand them over. What were you doing in Vegas last month? Not practising your game, that’s for sure.”

“No, I was hanging with my posse of showgirls,” Mark said.

“And your girlfriend was where?”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Fine, I went to a golf tournament. Anyway, you just got lucky.”

Lucky? I wasn’t sure. Luke played with confidence, and he’d rarely had to show his cards. Maybe he was just good at bluffing? I wasn’t sure. 

“Shall we play again?” Luke asked. The hideous wooden clock on the wall showed it was just after eleven.

There were murmurs of assent.

“You joining in this time, Ash?”

“I’d love to, but I need to check on Susie and Hayley first.” I had visions of them collapsed in a corner somewhere.

“Not a bad idea,” said Dewey. “We should check the kids too. We can pick up another round on the way back.”

“You might want to order the drinks first, if you want them to be ready before morning,” I suggested.

“Good point,” said Mark. “Luke, can you check on Arabella, and I’ll go to the bar?”

Ah, so Mark was Arabella’s brother. Poor bastard. He seemed so normal in comparison.

If anything, the music was louder as we got downstairs. I found Susie and Hayley on the dance floor. Susie was missing her shoes, but at least they were both still upright. Back in the bar, the old-timer was making a meal out of pulling a pint.

“Is he almost done?” I asked Mark.

“You’ve got gin and tonic instead of lime and soda. You’re not driving, right?”

I shook my head. “I’ll live with it.”

While we waited upstairs for the others to come back, I used the bathroom and took a look around. The suite undoubtedly cost more per night than I earned at the stables in a week, but the absence of bags suggested nobody planned to sleep in it. Somebody had money to burn. I suspected Luke, from what I’d heard about him.

When everyone had returned, Huey dealt the cards. Mine were shit. A two and a five, not even in the same suit. I folded. While the others bet, I stacked my chips in colour order. They were cheap plastic ones, the kind you buy for a few quid off the internet, rather than the clay ones used in Vegas.

That was where I’d learned to play poker. On my first trip there, my husband had bought me into a game.

“We’re in the gambling capital of the world. It’d be rude not to have a go,” he told me.

He’d given me a five-minute crash course in the rules while I knocked back a cosmopolitan. It all sounded very complicated.

“So what it boils down to,” I said, “is if the cards have people on them, bet. If they’re the same suit, bet. Otherwise fold.”

“Something like that.”

At the end of the night, I stumbled out the casino with chips overflowing from my handbag.

“I thought you said you didn’t know how to play?” my husband asked.

“I don’t.” I didn’t even know what my last hand was. The cards were too blurry. Then I fell off the kerb and he carried me back to our hotel.

After that, I made an effort to learn the rules. Now when I won it was due to strategy rather than blind luck and alcohol. Whenever I was in Vegas, I played, and the guys at work had a weekly Wednesday night game I joined when I was home. I wondered who was topping the league now? My money was on Dan.

More fun than Vegas were the underground poker games I sometimes played. Men tended to underestimate the pretty girl. I could act like a ditz then wipe the floor with them. That was always entertaining, especially when they got angry. I loved a good fight.

But there was none of that tonight. As the moon rose higher, I won a couple of big pots, and soon I had a nice collection of chips. A red stack, a green stack and a blue stack. OCD city, baby, OCD city.

Ben, Huey and Louie lost their chips and quit before twelve. Lightweights.

“Better go get the brats,” Ben said.

Dewey left soon after them, dividing his chips among Luke, Mark and me. “I promised mother I’d have my sister home by half twelve, and we’re already late.”

What was it with mothers in this part of the world? They kept grown men firmly under their thumbs. Still, it helped me. I knocked Mark out at a quarter to one with an outrageous bluff as his cautiousness came to the fore and he folded.

One to go.

“I’ll round up Portia and Arabella while you guys fight it out,” said Mark, and he disappeared off to search for them.

“You’re not a bad player,” said Luke. “Where did you learn?”

Err, time for another bluff. “My grandma taught me when I was little. We used to play for pistachios. She was a shark.”

“She taught you well. I learned at boarding school, playing for tuck-shop credits.”

“You went to boarding school? Isn’t that a bit old fashioned?” I asked.

“There are still a few of them around. I started there at eight. My father liked the idea of having a son, but not the reality of it. We got on better when I wasn’t home.”

“How about your mother?”

“She wasn’t suited to bringing up a child either.” He rolled his eyes. “You’ve met Tia.”

It seemed Luke’s childhood hadn’t been idyllic either, although his was eased by liberal applications of money. With the cards dealt, we played another hand and Luke managed to take a few of my chips off me.

“Nice bluff.”

“You don’t know I was bluffing.”

He looked away when he answered. He was bluffing. Now there were only the two of us left in the game, it was easier to figure him out. He clenched his teeth when he had a bad hand. It was subtle, but it was there.

When my turn came to deal, I ended with a pair of aces. “Gonna wipe the floor with you, hot stuff.”

“Hot stuff?” Luke asked.

“I’ve met you four times now.”

He chuckled. “You’re finally starting to realise that there’s more to me than an incredibly handsome face?”

“No, I can see you’re self deprecating and modest too.”

I was about to lay out the flop when Luke’s phone rang.

“Mark,” he mouthed, then put the phone to his ear. “Where?… Shit, how drunk are they?… Can they still walk?… Okay, I’ll meet you out front in five.”

He dropped the phone on the table and let out a long sigh. “I’ve got to go.”

“What’s happened?”

“Mark’s found the girls. Since we last checked them, they seem to have got hold of some alcohol. Tia promised she wouldn’t drink, but apparently she can’t stand up, and she’s lost her shoes and handbag.” He got to his feet and shrugged his jacket on.

I got up as well. “I’ll pack up the poker stuff. Where’s the box?”

“Just leave it. It belongs to the hotel. What cards did you have, anyway?”

“Not telling.”

“Oh, come on…”

“Nope. I never give away my secrets.” At least the big ones.

“Fine. A rematch then?”

“When?”

He grabbed his phone and scrolled through it. “Friday. I can get away on time.”

Why not? It wasn’t like there was much else to do in Lower Foxford. “You’re on.”

Luke grabbed my hand and led me into the corridor, his palm hot against mine. The contact was strange—few men in my life would dare touch me in that manner—but at the same time, it was nice for someone else to take control for a change. Fending for myself all the time wore thin.

 
We found Mark and the girls in a hallway downstairs. He’d corralled them onto a window seat where the pair of them were bouncing up and down, talking non-stop. Portia ’s cheeks were flushed, and sweat dripped from Arabella’s forehead. When we got close, Portia leapt up and enveloped Luke in a hug.

I caught his look of shock before it turned to concern.

“She doesn’t normally do that, does she?” I asked. I hadn’t seen much of her, but she’d never struck me as the huggy, kissy kind.

“No, never,” Luke whispered.

Christ. I peered into her eyes. Yup, pupils dilated. I sat next to Arabella, caught her flailing wrist and checked her pulse while she chattered away about how much fun she was having. Her heart was hammering.

“Come on, dance with me.” She got up and tried to pull me with her.

“I’ll pass.”

She grabbed Portia instead, and they started waltzing.

“How much have they had to drink?” Mark’s voice had risen an octave.

“We only saw them an hour or so ago,” Luke said. “They can’t have had that much, surely?”

“Guys, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think this is just alcohol.”

“What are you getting at?” Mark asked.

Luke was quicker on the uptake. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you suggesting my little sister’s been taking drugs?”

I put my hands up. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. But yes, that would be my guess.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap, but I can’t believe she’d do that. She never has before.”

“That you know of.”

“Yes, that I know of. Hell, I should be spending more time with her. Our mother’s worse than useless.”

Luke sat down and put his head in his hands. Portia danced over to him.

“Cheer up, misery guts,” she sang.