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—