by Alyssa Kress
It was a good theory, a great one, but Cashmere strode right past the empty seats at the bar. His steel-colored eyes rose to lock on hers.
No. She couldn't believe he was looking at her. Why would he do that?
She whirled to face her drink. With her heart thumping, she made a few more stabs in her Margarita with the straw. But she could feel him coming toward her. He stopped at the stool next to hers.
As Valerie stared at her drink, disbelieving, she felt a nudge against her right shoulder. Her eyes popped wide and her head whipped around.
He was looking directly at her. His beautiful mouth was curved in a smile of easy familiarity, as if they already knew each other. Right. As if he'd just found a good friend and had given her a playful shove.
"Hey." His voice was as smooth and rich as the rest of him. "You going to buy me a drink?"
Valerie choked. "Excuse me?"
He seated himself on the stool next to hers. "Buying me a drink is the least you can do after making me lose the last two hands."
Valerie's jaw dropped. "I didn't make you lose!"
"Sure you did." He glanced away from her to give a nod to the bartender, then looked back, smiling. "You distracted me."
An automatic scoffing sound came out of Valerie's mouth. Meanwhile her brain felt like scrambled eggs. His eyes, his build — it was all right next to her, talking to her, focused on her.
It wasn't that she never got approached by men. It was that she'd never been approached by a man as good-looking as this one. Certainly not by one she'd just been mooning over.
"You're a menace, you know that?" he went on. "They shouldn't allow you out on the floor."
"Please." His flattery was over the top, but still, it was flattery. He was going to that much trouble for her. How incredible was that?
"Hey, look." He drew one shoulder back so that he could reach into his trousers pocket. "Two dollars." He pulled forth a couple poker chips and held them out. "After you — well, now that's all I've got left."
"Oh, come on. You're a pro."
He halted then, as if she'd surprised him, which was when she discovered her accusation had been correct. He was a card shark.
He smiled and tossed the poker chips on the polished counter of the bar. The smile creased his cheeks with two long crescents. "You think? And yet, I'm broke."
Oh, sure. Broke. Meanwhile the bartender came over and set a drink of clear liquid and ice next to the poker chips on the counter. It could have been anything from bottled water to vodka.
"Thanks, Julio," the man said to the bartender, then turned back to Valerie. "And since I'm out of money, and it's your fault, I figure it's up to you to entertain me for the rest of the evening."
Valerie blinked. Whoa. This was more than flattery. This was — an invitation to spend time with him. From Cashmere, the wolf, essence of all her feminine dreams.
And yet, she was in a bar in Las Vegas and she didn't know this guy from Adam.
Something shifted in his gaze. A micron of his predatory heat cooled. "Oh," he said, in a different, and somehow less awe-inspiring, tone. "Since we're going to be spending so much time together, I suppose I should tell you my name. I'm Roy. How do you do?" Then, with a smile that almost made him safe, he reached his right hand past his glass of mystery liquid.
Valerie found herself lifting her hand. She found her mouth saying, "I'm Valerie. How do you do?" And then they shook hands.
His flesh was warm and dry, his grip firm but gentle. Jeez, even his handshake was the stuff of dreams, sending an amazed shiver down her arm to her belly.
But the fact remained: he was an absolute stranger. She let go abruptly. "Um, I think you should know. I'm not into — I mean, even though this is a bar, and I am sitting here alone..."
His brows drew down and he tilted his head. Valerie felt like a dolt. Here he was playing this subtle, sexual game, and she was fumbling about, blurting blatant truths. And not even managing to blurt them, actually.
But his expression smoothed. "Oh. I think I know what you mean. But I'm not expecting anything like that. Actually, I was feeling pretty flush you shook my hand and told me your name. That is your name, isn't it?" He smiled.
Valerie stared. She couldn't believe she'd just heard that. He was surprised he'd got this far? And the ease with which he'd come out with his admission, as if it hadn't cost his ego a thing. "Yes," she told him. "Valerie's my name."
His smile widened. "Good."
"And Roy is yours?" she thought to ask.
"Mm hm." His gray eyes seemed warmer now, definitely less threatening.
"But the two dollars." His small admission had given her enough courage to tease. "That isn't really all you have left."
A strange look crossed his face. "Let's just say, it's all I have left for tonight."
"Uh huh." Valerie supposed it was possible. She'd heard stories about gamblers who went up very high one night and were broke the next. But —
"Now, don't worry on my account." He smiled again. "In fact, I changed my mind. I'm not asking you to entertain me. I'll entertain you." He tapped the two poker chips on the counter. "With this."
"Excuse me?"
He took a sip of his drink. "Perfectly aboveboard. Nothing illegal or illicit. Or even...the other thing you mentioned before. I bet I can provide you with a full evening's entertainment for...less than two dollars."
Valerie didn't want to tell him he could entertain her just by sitting there. "Hm," she said, doing her level best to sound cool. "Define a full evening."
With his eyebrows lifting, he stretched out his left arm and looked at a remarkably Rolex-looking watch. "It's eight o'clock now. I'll bet I can give you a full night's entertainment, not a minute of boredom, all the way until midnight."
"Midnight, hm?" Inwardly, Valerie gawked. A man who looked like this, tough and suave and knowing, actually wanted to spend four hours with her?
Doing what? She was just an ordinary woman, no femme fatale. If this guy offered to spend four hours in her company, he anticipated getting something out of the business — probably sex — no matter how self-deprecating he'd sounded.
"You're looking worried," he observed.
Damn. He was perceptive, too.
"I'm not on the make," he claimed.
Very perceptive. "Well, I..." what? She — what? She was going to say yes to his proposal? Because of course he was on the make. And she wasn't going to — to engage in a one-night stand, no matter how yummy he was. But on the other hand...
On the other hand, this was her dream, wasn't it? Her deepest, most secret fantasy. He was looking into her eyes as if she were the most fascinating creature alive. If she spent the next four hours with him, she could pretend she was, in fact, such a creature: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Angelina Jolie. She could pretend she was the kind of woman who could take a man to his romantic knees.
Instead of the kind of woman who got dumped for Cindy Parker.
He leaned his forearm on the bar. "Well, you — what?" he asked.
Well, she thought she was crazy for even considering the notion. He was an operator, totally smooth, an expert.
And yet — and yet — this was her chance. On top of which, he was so surprisingly nice.
"Well, I guess that would be fun," she said. "Less than two dollars. Let's see if you can do it." A blush heated her face as the words came out of her mouth. She was going to do this, take a chance, live a dream — have fun!
A long, happy crescent curved each of his cheeks. "Yes, let's," he agreed, and cupped one of his hands, strong and firm, around one of hers.
CHAPTER TWO
Her hand was small and delicate in his. He took hold of it at the bar in Mandalay Bay, hoping to distract her as, already cheating on his two-dollar bet, he nodded a signal to Julio to put both drinks on his tab.
After that, he didn't want to let her hand go. He liked the sensation of fragility in his own big grasp. The few minutes he'd spent talking to her a
t the bar had confirmed every assumption he'd made about her via his perusal from the poker table. She was a drop of clean Ivory soap in a vat of cloying French perfume. She was a tree of fruit-producing wholesomeness in a garden of stunted hothouse orchids.
She was, like the low stakes game, completely unlike Roy's usual. And yet, he found he wanted to stick close.
So he laced his fingers with hers and acted like it was the most natural thing in the world for them to walk thusly joined as he steered her out of Mandalay Bay, as if they were great pals already. More cheating. She didn't really know him; she thought he was broke!
But Roy put that out of his mind as they walked out onto the sidewalk and into the chill February night. The black pyramid of the Luxor loomed ahead. "Have you been to ancient Egypt?" he asked.
"Have I — ? Oh, you mean the Luxor. No, I haven't gone through that one yet."
Her sweet, nervous smile twined around him as delicately as her fingers twined through his. He smiled back and curled their fingers more snugly together. "Good."
In the Luxor, she explored the Egyptian museum and laughed at the mummy robot who rolled up to her. The robot, remotely prompted by an electronics freak who knew Roy, warned Valerie to leave Roy, who was definitely poison, and stick by him instead.
She glanced over at Roy then, her dark eyes alight, the mischief in her like a fleeting, elusive butterfly.
Roy noted that, the potential for playfulness in her, and some primal compartment of his brain jumped. The sexual awareness that had been humming under the surface shot into the open. As he looked at her bright eyes, curving lips, and lithe body, he suddenly wondered what it would all be like against him, beneath him...playful.
Quickly, he cached the idea, hiding it somewhere private. He didn't want his secret musings to ruin their good time. She'd made it clear she was skittish. A good girl. And he wanted the full four hours.
He took her to visit the lions at the MGM. The animals were awake and prowling in their natural nocturnal rhythm. After that he made her wait on the castle walls to see the dragon emerge from his lair in the moat at Excalibur. By then, he was no longer surprised by her laugh of delight. The way she clutched his arm, though, almost pressing against him, bumped the sexual idea into the open again. Lord, she felt sweet.
Too sweet for the likes of him, no doubt. She was meant for guys in pinstriped suits with white picket fences on their minds. He was built for women with experience under their mini-skirts and dollar signs in their eyes. Half of him wanted to sweep her to him. The other half knew he ought to run the other direction. It was like the gas pedal and the brakes.
Roy did his best to use the brakes as they made their way up the Strip and he pointed her toward quaint, free amusements. She laughed and commented, clearly able to take joy in the little things in life. It made Roy want to laugh, too. Something deep inside of him felt tugged and drawn. It was a strange sensation, but a pleasurable one.
Before he knew it, it was eleven-thirty. Dismayed, Roy glanced away from his watch as they stood outside the lagoon at the Mirage, waiting for the volcano to blow. Only half an hour left to their bet and their allotted time together. Half an hour until he bid her goodbye.
Her warm, brown eyes glanced up at him. "Is something wrong?"
An expert at bluffing, he was surprised she'd been able to read his expression. "No, nothing's wrong, except...I can't believe you haven't already seen this."
"I haven't," she claimed, laughing. Over the course of the evening, her shyness had turned to ease. "I keep telling you. This is my first time in Las Vegas."
"That's right, that's right." He raised his chin, musing. "You've never before bothered to drive the few miles to Vegas from — what was the place again?"
She didn't even hesitate. "Palmwood. And I've only lived there about a year, so it isn't so terrible I haven't made it yet to Vegas. Not to mention it is a three hour drive."
Palmwood. Roy was pretty sure that was over the border in California. He'd been gleaning little bits like this all evening, though what he intended to do with them he didn't know: where she lived, where she worked, if there was a man in her life. The answers he had so far were Palmwood, a pediatric clinic he'd yet to get the name of, and no.
Though there'd been a man, she'd tossed out, as if it hadn't been very important. He'd recently become engaged to somebody else.
This last piece of information should not have bothered Roy at all. Her romantic history, no matter how recent, had nothing to do with him. He wasn't embarking on a relationship here. They were saying goodbye at midnight.
Yet he'd taken it in, processed it, and wondered just how much of the attention she'd been giving him was a reaction to her recent rejection.
She tilted her head. "And what about you? Do you live right here in Vegas?"
"I don't live anywhere."
Her eyebrows lifted.
"Nowhere permanent," Roy amended. "Right now I'm in Vegas. I could easily hop a plane tomorrow. I can find a good poker game almost anywhere in the world."
"Ah." She nodded. "A true roamer."
"Yeah, I'm a roamer." Roy resolved to sound and, indeed be, his true self. "As a matter of fact, everything I own, I can pack in one suitcase."
She laughed. "That would certainly make it easy to take off on a moment's impulse."
"Ah..." Impulsive. His trips had never been that. They'd always been carefully planned with the end goal in mind. Which venues stood him the best chance of making the most money? He had a lot to make in a relatively short amount of time. It hadn't even mattered when the reason for making all that money had up and died. Roy had felt the need to prove himself to his father, even posthumously.
He wrapped his hand more firmly around Valerie's. No, he wasn't impulsive, but for similar reasons he avoided responsibility. He didn't want to be bound by any kind of tie, even to material objects: houses, cars, stereos. He had to be free to drop everything in order to hustle to wherever the most lucrative game happened to be.
For some reason, he felt the need to explain this to her. "Haven't you ever wanted to do something — and not worry about the consequences because there wouldn't be any? That's what I do, make sure there aren't any consequences."
As her eyes gazed into his, her smile faded. It took Roy a minute to realize he'd just delivered a come on. He'd asked her to consider going forward with him — just because. No consequences.
And she was thinking about it.
The jump in his sexual readiness became a leap. His skin heated. She was thinking about it.
Or at least for a minute she was thinking about it. Then she turned abruptly, drawing her hand out of his. "So, what about this volcano?" She took hold of the iron rungs of the surrounding fence and squinted at the fake mountain. "Do you think it's ever going to blow?"
"Oh, sure." Roy cleared his throat. "Just you wait."
She turned.
Their eyes met. He could feel his inner conflict: want versus good sense. It now occurred to him the same conflict might be going on inside of her.
Then lights blazed, illuminating the concrete volcano. In a sudden, powerful burst, water began gushing forth. Valerie whirled back to watch.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling. "Look at that! Can you believe — " She broke off to laugh delightedly.
Her innocent joy was like a physical blow. Roy felt pummeled. Beaten. Needy.
Oh yes, he should keep his distance, stay out of any deeper involvement. But something other than caution warned he'd regret it forever if he let this get away without a taste.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Valerie slowly turned to look at him.
"Yes," Roy answered, looking back at her. "It's beautiful." There were twenty more minutes left until midnight. Twenty more minutes he'd promised to behave himself.
After that — Well, after that, for once in his life, he was not absolutely sure what he was going to do.
~~~
Valerie was certain he wanted to kiss h
er. As she stood there watching the gushing volcano instead of Roy, she could feel the desire in him like a physical thing.
All evening she'd been asking herself if it was merely her own desire she sensed buzzing in the air between them. But after catching the gleam in his eyes a moment ago, she knew this wasn't coming from her alone.
Her heart went beat, beat, beat as water splashed and streamed down the sides of the make-believe volcano. This handsome, desirable man wanted to kiss her, at the very least. Should she let him?
Of course not. They'd met in a bar! On the other hand, she'd been having a great time, better than any time she'd ever spent with Peter, to be frank. Roy was easy to talk to. He seemed to understand her and, oddly enough, she felt she understood him, too.
Valerie watched the waterfall and privately shook her head at herself. Roy probably knew how to make himself seem so understanding. It was part of his professional training to set another person at ease, preparatory to fleecing that person at the card table.
Was it naïve of Valerie to believe he wasn't going to fleece her, too?
Or would it be more accurate to say, was it naïve not to mind if he did?
Valerie's eyes widened at her own thoughts. Was she considering...letting him come on to her? Giving in if he did?
Oh, surely not. That would be reckless, and she was never reckless.
The last of the water drained down the concrete valleys and gullies of the 'volcano.' The other people who'd stood watching the show began to clap. Valerie clapped, too, if only to delay having to deal with Roy.
But then she couldn't clap any more. She had to turn.
He was looking down at her with a soft and dreamy expression, something she wouldn't have expected to see on his face. Yes, he almost looked...like he was the one being seduced.
In a low voice, he claimed, "I'm not done yet."
Valerie's breathing hitched. "What?"
"I know it's almost midnight, but I'm not done with the entertainment." He paused. "There are still the fountains at Bellagio."
Valerie swallowed down her nerves. He was only talking about the fountain show in the big lagoon in front of the Bellagio hotel. "Oh, yes." She cleared her throat. "We passed them on the way up here, but it wasn't the right time for the show."