"I'm American. Like you."
"Congratulations," Sean said dryly. "So what?"
"So, I'm on vacation. You know. Sun, sea, sand. Gambling. I really like to gamble, even though I'm new at it."
A muscle flickered in his jaw. "Go on."
"You're right about my name. I was born in Georgia but I live in Louisiana. That's where I learned to play cards. On a riverboat. You know, on the Mississippi? A date took me, the first time." She grinned, hoped it was disarming and that mixing lies and truth proved the ticket to success. "I picked up the game fast. I'm pretty good, if I must say so myself, but I've never played against serious competition. Against, say, a man like you."
Sean lifted an eyebrow. Was this the whole thing? Had she flirted with him just to convince him to take a seat at the same poker table? Anything was possible. Novices approached him all the time. In his own tight little world, he was a celebrity of sorts.
Except, he didn't buy it.
All this subterfuge, so he could beat her pretty tail off in a game of cards? So she could go home and say she'd played Sean O'Connell?
No way.
"I'd be thrilled if you'd let me sit at a table with you, Sean. I could go home and tell everyone—"
"Anybody can sit at any table. You must know that."
"Well—well, of course I know that. But I'm not that forward. I know you think I am, after all that's happened, but the truth is, I wouldn't have the courage to take a seat at a table you were at unless I cleared it with you first."
He still didn't buy it. She wouldn't have the courage? This woman who'd done everything but jump his bones?
"And that's it?"
Savannah nodded. "That's it."
He moved fast, closed the distance between them before she could even draw a breath. All at once, her back was to the wall and his hands were flattened against it on either side of her.
"You took a big risk, sugar," he said softly. "Coming on to me as hard as you did without knowing a damned thing about me except that I play cards. You got me going a few minutes ago. If your luck had gone bad, you might have gotten hurt."
He saw her throat constrict as she swallowed, but her eyes stayed right on his.
"I told you that I knew you were Sean O'Connell. And Sean O'Connell isn't known for hurting women."
"No." His gaze fell to her mouth. He looked up and smiled. "He's known for liking them, though."
"Sean. About what I've asked..."
"Why did you panic?"
"I didn't. I—"
Sean put one finger gently over her lips. "Yeah, you did. I kissed you, you kissed me back, and then you got scared." His finger slid across the fullness of her mouth. "How come? What frightened you?"
"Nothing frightened me."
She was lying. He could sense it. There was something going on he still didn't understand and, all at once, he wanted to.
"Savannah." Sean cupped her face. "What's the matter? Tell me what it is. Let me help you."
Her eyes glittered. Was it because of the moonlight, or were those tears?
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Sean smoothed back her hair. "Just as long as you're not afraid of me," he said gruffly, and kissed her.
She let it happen, let herself drown in the heat of his kiss. She told herself it was what she had to do but when he drew back, she had to grasp his shoulders for support.
"Tell me what you want," he said softly.
Savannah willed her heart to stop racing. Then she took a deep breath and said the only thing she could.
"I told you. I want to play cards. Then I can go home and tell everybody that I played against the great Sean O'Connell."
"And that's it? That's all you need from me?"
His eyes were steady on hers, his body strong under her hands. For one endless moment, she thought of telling him the truth. That she was here to destroy him. That she was in trouble and had no one to turn to for help but herself.
Then she remembered that he was a thief, and she forced a smile to her lips.
"That's it," she said lightly. "That's all I need."
CHAPTER FOUR
Two hours later, Sean was sitting across from Savannah at a poker table in the high-stakes area of the casino and the warning bells in his head were clamoring like bells inside a flrehouse.
The game was draw poker. She was still playing. He'd already folded, just as he'd done half a dozen times since they'd started. His fault, he knew. He'd played with lazy disinterest, underestimated the lady's skill.
And her skill was considerable.
The realization had caught him by surprise. Once it had, he'd played a couple of hands as he should have from the start. She'd folded. He'd won.
That had led to another realization. Goldilocks wasn't a good loser.
Oh, she said all the right things, the clever patter card-players used to defuse tension. She flashed that megawatt smile across the table straight at him. But her eyes didn't smile. They were dark with distress. What she'd said about simply wanting to play him wasn't true.
Just-Savannah needed to win. He decided to let her. There were all kinds of ways to up the ante.
And if she was new to the game, he was Mighty Mouse.
She played with the cool concentration of someone who'd had years to hone her talent. Her instincts were good, her judgment sharp, and by now he'd determined that the cute little things she did when she played, things he'd at first thought were unconscious habits, were deliberate shticks meant to distract him.
A little tug at a curl as it kissed the curve of her cheek. A brush of her tongue across her mouth. A winsome smile accompanied by a look from under the thick sweep of her gold-tipped lashes.
Most effective of all, a sigh that lifted her breasts.
The air-conditioned chill in the casino was cooperating. Each time her breasts rose, the nipples pressed like pearls against the red silk that covered them.
Forget about the odds, she all but purred. Forget about the game. Just think about me. What I have to offer, you'll never get by winning this silly game of cards.
It was hard not to do exactly that. The man in him wanted what she was selling with every beat of his heart. The gambler in him knew it was all a lie. And there it was again. The smile, just oozing with little-girl amazement that she was actually winning.
Bull.
Savannah wasn't a novice, she was an expert. Playing without using any of those distractions, she'd beat every man at the table on ability alone.
Every man but him.
She was good, but he was better. And once he knew what in hell was happening, he'd prove it to her.
Meanwhile, the action was fascinating to watch. Not just her moves but the moves of the rest of the players. Two— a German industrialist and a Texas oil billionaire—were good. The others—a prince from some godforsaken principality, a Spanish banker, a has-been American movie star and an Italian who had something to do with designing shoes—weren't. It didn't matter. The men were all happy to be losing.
Sean didn't think Savannah gave a damn. He'd have bet everything he owned that she was putting on this little show solely for him.
Why? No way was it so she could go home and boast about having played against him. That story leaked like a sieve, especially because he could see past the smile, the cleavage, the performance art.
Under all that clever artifice, she was playing with a determination so grim it chilled him straight down to the marrow of his bones.
So he'd decided to lay back. Win a couple of hands, lose a couple. Fold early. Look as if he was as taken in as the others while he tried to figure out what was going on.
Right now, he and she were the only ones playing. The rest had all folded. She sighed. Her cleavage rose. She licked her lips. She twirled a curl of golden hair around her index finger. Then she looked at him and fluttered her lashes.
"I'll see your five," she said, "and raise you ten."
Sea
n smiled back at her. He didn't bother looking at his cards. He knew what he had and he was damned sure it beat what she was holding.
"Too rich for my blood," he said lazily, and dropped his cards on the green baize tabletop.
The German smiled. "The fraulein wins again."
Savannah gathered in the chips. "Beginner's luck," she said demurely, and smiled at him again.
It wasn't luck, beginner's or otherwise. The luck of the draw was a big part of winning but from what he'd observed, it had little to do with her success at this table.
The lady was good.
He watched as she picked up her cards, fanned them just enough to check the upper right-hand corners, then put them down again. It was a pro's trick. When your old man owned one of the biggest hotels and casinos in Vegas, you learned their tricks early.
Not that Sean had spent much time in the casino. State law prohibited minors from being in the gaming areas. More importantly, so did his mother.
One gambler in the family was enough for Mary Elizabeth O'Connell. She'd never complained about her husband's love of cards, dice, the wheel, whatever a man could lay a wager on, but she also made it clear she didn't want to see her children develop any such interests.
Still, Sean had been drawn to the life as surely as ocean waves are drawn to the shore.
He began gambling when he was in his teens. By his senior year in high school, he bet on anything and everything. Basketball. Football. Baseball. A friend's grades. His pals thought he was lucky. Sean knew better. It was more than luck. He had a feel for mathematics, especially for those parts of it that dealt in probability, combinations and permutations. Show him the grade spread for, say, Mrs. Keany's classes in Trig over the past five years, he could predict how the current grades would play out with startling accuracy.
It was fun.
Then he went away to college, discovered poker and fell in love with it. He loved everything about the game. The cool, smooth feel of a new deck of cards. The numbers that danced in his head as he figured out who was holding what. The kick of playing a hand he knew he couldn't lose or, conversely, playing a hand no sane man would hold on to and winning anyway because he was good and because, in the final analysis, even the risk of losing could give you an adrenaline rush.
By the time he graduated from Harvard with a degree in business, he had a small fortune stashed in the bank.
Sean handed his degree to Mary Elizabeth, kissed her on both cheeks and said he knew he was disappointing her but he wasn't going to need that degree for a while.
"Just don't disappoint yourself," she'd told him, her smile as gentle as her voice.
He never had.
After almost eight years playing in the best casinos and private games all around the world, he was one hell of a player. His bank account reflected that fact. He could risk thousands of dollars on each turn of the cards without blinking.
He didn't win all the time. That would have been impossible, but that was still part of what he loved about the game. The danger. The sense that you were standing on top of the world and only you could keep you there. It was part of the lure. Maybe it was all of it.
Maybe he just liked living on the edge.
He wasn't addicted to cards.
He was addicted to excitement.
And what was happening tonight, at L'Emeraude de Ca-ribe, was as exciting as anything he'd experienced in a very long time.
A blonde with the face of a Madonna and the body of a courtesan was running a scam with him as the prospective patsy, and he was going to find out what she was up to or—
"O'Connell? You in or out?"
Sean looked up. The Texan grinned at him from around the dead cigar stub clamped in his teeth.
"I know the little lady's somethin' of a distraction," the Texan said in a stage whisper, "but you got to make a decision, boy."
"I'm in," Sean said, shoving a stack of chips to the center of the table.
Everyone was in, except for the prince. He dumped his cards, folded his arms and never took his eyes from Savannah. She was, as the Texan had said, something of a distraction.
Soon, only he, Savannah and the German remained. The German folded. He had nothing. Sean had a pair of aces and two jacks. Could Savannah top that? He knew she couldn't. He raised her ten thousand. She saw it, smiled and raised another ten.
Should he meet it? Or should he let her think she'd out-bluffed him, the way he'd done the last few hands?
Savannah began her little act. The tongue slicking across her mouth. The breasts straining against the red silk.
He wondered how she'd look, stripped of that silk. Her breasts seemed rounded, small enough to cup in his hands. Were her nipples as pink as her lips? Or were they the color of apricots? They'd taste like honey, he was certain. Wild-flower honey, and when he sucked them into his mouth, tugged at them with his teeth, her cry would fill the night..".
"Mr. O'Connell?"
He blinked. Savannah was watching him intently, almost as if she knew what he was thinking.
"Are you in or out?"
He looked down at his cards again. The aces and the jacks looked back. What the hell, he thought.
"Out," he said, and dumped his cards on the table. He smiled at her. ' 'You know, you're taking me to the cleaners, sugar."
It was true. He'd lost a lot of money. He wasn't sure how much. Seventy thousand. A hundred. More, maybe.
He waited for her to smile back at him. She didn't.
"You're not going to stop playing, are you? I mean—I mean, it's still early."
She sounded panicked. He'd had no intention of quitting. Now, he decided to pretend that he had.
"I don't know," he said lazily. "Heck, a man's a fool to keep playing when he's losing."
"Oh, come on." She smiled, but her lips barely moved. "One more hand."
Sean pretended to let her talk him into it. He watched her pick up the cards as the dealer skimmed them to her.
Her hands were trembling.
His cards were bad. Evidently, so were those of the others. Some fast mental calculations suggested Savannah's cards were excellent. The others dropped out. Sean raised the ante. Savannah folded before the words were fully out of his mouth.
"You won this time around," she said gaily, but he could hear the edge in her voice. And her hands were still shaking. "Aren't you glad you stayed in?"
Sean nodded and pulled the chips toward him. What she'd done didn't make sense. He was sure she'd had better than even odds on holding a winning hand. Had she folded only to make him want to stay in the game?
It was time to make a move.' Change the momentum and see what happened.
"It's getting late," he said. He yawned, stretched, and pushed back his chair. "I think I've had it."
Savannah looked up. He could see her pulse beating in her throat.
"Had it? You mean you want to stop playing?"
"Enough is enough, don't you think?"
When she smiled, her lips damned near stuck to her teeth. "But you just won!"
"And about time, too," he said, and chuckled.
"Come on, O'Connell." The Texan flashed a good ol' boy grin. "You can't quit when the little lady's beatin' the pants off all of us. Pardon me, ma'am, for bein' crude, but that's exactly what you're doin'."
"And we love it," the German said, chortling. "Come, come, Mr. O'Connell. Surely you won't walk away when things are just getting interesting. I don't think I've ever heard of you losing with such consistency."
"True," the prince said, and nudged the man with a sharp elbow, "but then, I doubt if Mr. O'Connell's accustomed to playing with such a charming diversion at the table."
Everyone laughed politely. Not Savannah. The expression on her face was intense.
"Please. I'd be devastated if you left now." Her voice was unsteady, but the smile she gave him was sheer enticement.
Sean decided to let her think it had worked. "Tell you what. How about we take a
break? Fifteen minutes. Get some air, whatever. That okay with the rest of you?"
It was okay with everyone except Savannah, who looked as if he'd just announced he was abandoning ship, but she responded with a bright smile.
"That's fine," she said, pushing back her chair, too. "No need to get up," she added, when the men half rose to their feet. "I'll just—I'll just go to the powder room."
Sean watched her walk away. They all did, and it annoyed him. Stupid, he knew. He had no rights to her, nor did he want any. Still, he didn't like the way the others looked at her.
"She is a beautiful woman," the Italian said.
The one-time movie star smiled. "That she is."
"You're a lucky SOB, O'Connell," the Texan said, shifting the unlit cigar in his mouth.
Sean grinned. "Lucky to lose so much money?"
"Lucky to have a woman like that interested in you." The prince leaned forward. "I'd be happy to lose twice what I have, if she'd do that little tongue trick with me in mind."
Sean's smile vanished. "I'll be back," he growled, and headed for the terrace.
The terrace was as empty as when he'd been out there with Savannah. Empty, quiet, and a good place to get some fresh air and reconsider the point of letting a woman he didn't know think she was getting the best of him.
He walked to the rail, leaned against it and stared blindly out over the sea. Maybe he was dead wrong about Savannah. He could be reading things into the way she was behaving. Wasn't it possible she'd told him the truth? That all she wanted was to play cards? Those feminine tricks could just be part of the action. She might have used them to advantage back on the riverboat, where she said she'd learned to gamble.
And even if she was lying about being new to gambling, about wanting to play him...what did that change? Not a thing, he thought, answering his own question. He was making a mystery out of something that was probably, at best, simply an interesting situation.
If she was up to anything at all, it might just be scamming him so she could take him, big-time.
So what if he could still remember the sweet taste of her mouth? If her eyes were deep enough to get lost in?
If her hands trembled, and sometimes he saw a fleeting expression on her lovely face that made him want to gather her into his arms and kiss her, hold her, tell her he'd protect her from whatever it was she feared—
The One-Night Wife Page 4