Bet Me

by Catherine Mann

That certainly drove another nail in the woman’s coffin. Luke was going to be very disappointed in his friend.

  “I will handle this one more carefully,” Sergio said without the slightest hint of humility.

  The door to the stall they shared opened.

  Clarissa tensed.

  “I hope so,” Russo said, her tone pointed.

  “Stay out of my personal business, woman. You are not in charge.”

  Who was in charge? Clarissa would really like to know the answer to that.

  Water running muffled their voices. She heard snippets. Something about moving forward. And three months.

  Was this business they conducted done on a quarterly basis? Fuentes had said he came here every three months.

  When the main door whooshed closed behind them, Clarissa dared to slip out of her stall. She moved to the door and hesitated. Going back out immediately wouldn’t be a good idea. Anyone noticing her exit from the corridor would know she had been in here at the same time as the other two.

  She would wait.

  The minutes dragged past like hours. Luke was probably wondering where she was.

  Three minutes. That should be long enough.

  First, she eased the door open one millimeter at a time until the slightest crack appeared, allowing her to see into the corridor.

  The air evacuated her lungs.

  A man waited in the dimly lit hall, not ten feet from the door.

  Weldon.

  Slowly, a millimeter, then two…until the crack disappeared, she closed the door.

  Damn it.

  His being out there could be coincidence but how could she take the chance that it wasn’t?

  She couldn’t.

  A distraction was the only way to get out of here and even then it might not work.

  Moving away from the door, she tugged her cell phone from her purse and entered Luke’s number. She would have some explaining to do later, but right now the important thing was getting out of here.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  The concern in his voice sent another of those ridiculous giddy feelings surging through her. She was not accustomed to enjoying the whole macho-guy thing. This whirlwind assignment had evidently affected her equilibrium, certainly her good sense.

  “There’s a man in the corridor outside the ladies’ room. I need you to distract him so I can get out without his knowing I was in here.”

  His silence told her that her request sounded just as bizarre to him as it did to her, perhaps more. But there was no help for it.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Luke finally replied.

  She put her phone away, moved back to the door and eased it open once more in those infinitesimal degrees. Luke’s voice announced that he had arrived to do his part. Weldon turned toward him, his back to her position now.

  “You have a light?” Luke asked, a cigar tucked between his lips.

  Weldon dug a lighter from the pocket of his elegant trousers and mumbled something about there being complimentary matches available.

  Now or never. Clarissa pulled the door open far enough to slide out. She couldn’t head back toward the main room since Weldon was facing that direction and there was no place for her to have come from except the restroom.

  If he glanced over his shoulder he would see her. She had to move.

  Men’s room.

  There was no other choice.

  Clarissa walked backward, one step, then two.

  Luke, thank God, kept his attention glued to Weldon. If he glanced her way, even briefly, Weldon would know someone was behind him.

  Her fingers found the door frame. She eased closer and pressed against the door with her full body weight.

  Don’t let him look back.

  She pushed into the men’s room and let the door close in the same manner as she had the door to the ladies’ room, slowly, silently.

  Once the door was closed, she sucked in a deep breath. She braced her forehead against the door and let the tension drain to a more tolerable level.

  Close. Too damned close.

  The door moved.

  She stumbled back.

  Luke pushed into the room.

  Relief made her knees weak.

  “What’re you doing?” she whispered. He was supposed to distract Weldon, not follow her.

  “I told him someone was waiting for me.” He moved away from the door, forcing her to take a few more steps backward. “How else were you going to explain being in here?”

  “You were supposed to distract him,” she muttered.

  He shrugged those silk-clad shoulders. “The man wasn’t going anywhere. Absently, he’s waiting for someone.” That he said this with a pointed look at her warned he understood she was the someone.

  Might as well acknowledge his stellar move. “Good save.”

  “Now.” He stepped directly into her personal space. “How about telling me what this is all about.”

  The door opened.

  Her gaze collided with Luke’s.

  There was only one thing to do.

  She grabbed him and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  He pulled her body into his, and then everything else vanished.

  Time. Place. Whoever the hell had walked into the men’s room. All of it melted away.

  There was nothing but the feel of his lips on hers.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LUKE COULDN’T HIDE what she was doing to him. Whoever had entered the room didn’t matter. It only mattered that he could feel every contour of her body pressed against his. The taste of her lips, like white wine and hot female, was driving him out of his mind. Her arms were around his neck, her fingers prowling restlessly through his hair.

  He wanted more than just this kiss…more than this erection caused by her touch and her taste.

  She drew back just enough to catch her breath. “Sorry about that,” she murmured.

  His tongue slid out to savor the taste of her on his lips. “Don’t be.”

  A toilet flushed and his head snapped up.

  “We should get out of here,” she whispered, the words urgent.

  He wrapped his fingers around her hand and led her out of the male domain. He didn’t stop until they were back in the main gaming room.

  “I need a drink.” As much to brace himself as to wet his throat. That kiss had done a number on his head.

  She nodded. “Me, too.”

  He had some serious questions for her, but those would have to wait until they were in neutral territory. Definitely not here. And not now.

  “Scotch,” he told the bartender.

  “Wine,” she said in response to his glance in her direction.

  With the drinks in hand, they mingled amid the crowd a moment, then settled in a less populated area of the room.

  “You okay?”

  She took a hefty swallow from her glass and nodded. “I’m okay.”

  “We’ll need to talk about that later,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  She agreed but didn’t look at him.

  He liked that she wore her hair down tonight. The luscious red mane draped her shoulders in sexy waves that begged to be touched. When they were kissing, he’d been too busy enjoying the sensual landscape of her body to think about her hair.

  Next time.

  “I…” She glanced up at him. “I have to talk to someone.”

  Before he could respond she had darted into the crowd. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when she cozied up to Fuentes.

  What the hell was going on with this lady?

  CLARISSA WOULDN’T BE getting out of some direct questions from Luke later, but right now she had a job to do and he would just have to deal with it.

  “Ah, señora, I wondered where you had gotten to,” Fuentes said as he draped an arm around her waist.

  Clarissa could still smell Russo’s perfume on his shirt.

  “I had to take care of my husband.” She smiled, let him assume what he would.
>
  “We all have our obligations,” Fuentes said with a glance at Russo. “Sometimes pleasant, sometimes not.”

  Sounded like Fuentes was tired of some of his.

  “That’s all the more reason to take the good times whenever you can, wherever you can,” Clarissa suggested.

  “Yes.” He settled that dark gaze on her. “You are so right, Cris.”

  Clarissa noticed Shannon Bainbridge watching her. The woman hardly made it difficult.

  “I think there are some in the room who don’t like our new friendship,” Clarissa said frankly. Might as well push the envelope and see if she could get an invitation to the man’s suite again.

  “Perhaps you would like to join me for a more private drink.” He shot a sidelong look at Luke, who lounged at the bar. “We were going to give your foolish husband a lesson in appreciation.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Fuentes took her hand. “Then let us go.”

  “Wait.” When he’d met her eyes once more, she said, “I never did get to see how the private booths work.” She gestured to the closed doors on the other side of the room. “You promised to show me everything.”

  Fuentes grinned. “I would not want you to miss this, señora.”

  He led her to an unoccupied booth, ushered her inside, then closed the door, separating them from the crowded room. “There is not so much to see.”

  Nothing but a table and chair and a laptop computer.

  “You press this button—” he indicated a red button on the table “—if you require assistance or service.”

  “What kind of gambling is done like this?” She gestured to the laptop. “I don’t see the fun in this.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her backside against his pelvis. He was hard already. She resisted the impulse to shudder in disgust.

  “Here, señora, you can order anything your heart desires. Anything.”

  Amping up the risk, she turned in his arms and peered up at him. “I’m ready for that private drink now.”

  He held her gaze a long moment, backing out of the embrace. She followed him from the club without sparing a glance in Luke’s direction. She didn’t want to see the question on his face. The explanations would have to come later.

  They took the elevator down one floor. By the time they reached his room, his hold on her hand had become a crushing vise.

  “What is your pleasure?” he asked as soon as they were beyond his closed door. He tossed his room key onto the nearest table and shouldered out of his jacket and tossed it aside. “Wine?”

  “Yes.” She surveyed his room, noting the papers were gone. Probably packed away in the briefcase that still sat on the credenza. The laptop was closed. He must have realized how irresponsible he’d been leaving his documents lying about so carelessly.

  He arrived at her side with the stemmed glass in hand. She accepted the drink. “Thank you.”

  After a long swallow of his whiskey, he wiped his mouth and set his gaze on hers. “If we hurry, we could enjoy each other before your husband becomes too annoyed and comes to collect you.”

  Clarissa wasn’t sure Luke would come at all. She knew how leaving with Fuentes must have looked to him. There was a possibility he would insist on backing off on the whole pretend marriage. That wasn’t a problem really—in a few hours it would be over, anyway. And she had her in.

  But the bereft feeling that speared through her at the thought refuted her every assertion, startling her. Oh, come on! What was wrong with her here?

  “You’re right,” she said to Fuentes. “But…” She moved in close to him. “When we have sex, I don’t want to hurry. I want it slow and thorough.”

  He kissed her. Supreme willpower was required for her to react as he would expect when gagging was her first and strongest impulse.

  Drawing back, he murmured, “I have something for you.”

  A forced smile pushed up the corners of her mouth. “I love surprises.”

  “Don’t move,” he ordered.

  When he disappeared into the adjoining bedroom, she went straight for his jacket. His cell phone was in the interior pocket. Praying he wouldn’t come back into the room and catch her, she synchronized their phones and sent the top five numbers stored in his to hers. She had barely gotten the phone closed and tucked back into his pocket when she heard him coming.

  She pressed her phone to her ear and rushed back to the middle of the room where she had been standing when he’d disappeared into the bedroom. “I promise,” she whispered, forcing annoyance into her tone as she carried on the one-sided conversation. “Yes.”

  Huffing in frustration, she shoved the phone into her purse. “He ordered me back to our suite.”

  “First,” Fuentes said, “you must have this.”

  He gave her a long, narrow, velvet box.

  Velvet meant jewels.

  She shook her head. “I can’t accept this.”

  “Accept it,” he insisted. “Or I will be mortally wounded.”

  She opened the box and gasped at the diamond bracelet. “Sergio, this is—”

  “Yours.”

  He took the bracelet from the box and fastened it around her wrist. “Now go. Take care of your husband. I have some business to attend to. Perhaps we may have breakfast in the morning.” Those dark eyes bored into hers. “Here. In private. Where we will have all the time we need.”

  She tiptoed to reach his cheek and kissed him. The approval in his expression told her she’d made the right move.

  He placed the key to his room in her hand. “I’ll be waiting.”

  She nodded, then rushed toward the door.

  “Sweet dreams,” he called out behind her.

  Clarissa didn’t look back. She exited his room and hurried down the four flights to the twenty-first floor. She didn’t know if Luke would be back at the room, but she needed to check in with Pearson and see if he had anything on that number yet.

  She’d just tucked her key card into the door slot when her cell phone vibrated. That was something else she needed to do—send those five phone numbers to Pearson.

  Speaking of which, he was her caller. Working more overtime.

  “Rivers,” she said in greeting.

  “I found something on that number.”

  “Let me get into my room.”

  He paused while she unlocked her door and pushed into the room. She kicked off her shoes. “Okay, give it to me.”

  “It’s a serial number for a weapon.”

  The image of those columns of numbers on the pages in Fuentes’s briefcase flashed through her mind.

  “Handguns?”

  “Worse. Military weapons. This is now officially a federal case, Rivers. We’re going to need to call in ATF to take control.”

  Clarissa blinked, the reality penetrating the final layer of cognitive processes.

  Weapons. Stolen. Probably the shipment he had guaranteed Russo would be delivered in three days.

  “Does that mean I’m off the case?” Her heart rammed against her ribs as she waited for his response. She hated like hell to get this close to a case and then have to back off because it became federal jurisdiction. Especially after LVMPD had done all the grunt work.

  “You stay put until I tell you different.”

  More of that bone-weakening relief she had been experiencing tonight.

  “Just one thing,” Pearson instructed.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Keep you head low, Rivers. This one may get ugly.”

  “Don’t worry, Cap, I’ve got it under control. I’ve got some telephone numbers to send you. Check your e-mail.”

  “Do I want to know how you got those numbers?”

  “Nope.”

  “Send ’em.”

  Clarissa ended the call and quickly went through the numbers, sending each one to Pearson’s inbox. As she sent the final number, the connecting door between her suite and Luke’s burst inward. He strode into the ro
om, anger radiating from every square inch of his tall, athletic body. No amount of silk could disguise it.