by JoAnn Ross
“Mine, either. Perhaps we can be each other’s good luck charm. My name’s Ben Houston, by the way. From Dallas, Texas, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, I know, but I couldn’t help where my pappy decided to settle. Old Sam Houston was a kin of mine.”
Not understanding this reference, either, Sasha gave Ben Houston another longer, more judicial look. He was in his mid-fifties, with silver hair beneath the red-tasseled fez and friendly blue eyes. She could see nothing dangerous in his smiling gaze.
Besides, she reminded herself, it wasn’t as if they were alone. The room was filled with people, all of whom seemed to be having a wonderfully carefree time. There was an energy here like nothing she’d ever felt.
It had been so long since Sasha had truly enjoyed herself, she found it impossible to resist the offer to do so now.
“I’m afraid you will have to teach me what to do. I have never gambled before.”
“Sure you have. Life’s a gamble. We risk getting run over by a bus every morning when we leave the house. And, hell, do you have any idea how many people are struck by lightning every year?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. But it’s a lot. The thing is, Sasha, honey, most days, we manage to beat the odds. Take my pap for instance. When he graduated from Texas A&M on the G.I. bill after World War Two, he was just another dirt-poor wildcatter with a degree in geology and a yen to get rich. Drilled twelve dusters before he hit lucky number thirteen. And never looked back.”
Sasha was Russian enough to find such fatalism appealing. “I think I would like to try my luck, Mr. Houston,” she decided.
“That’s the girl! And the name’s, Ben, honey. My daddy’s Mr. Houston. Now let’s get rid of this last unlucky damn dollar, then we’ll decide what to play next.”
Sasha put the coin in the slot he indicated, then pulled the lever beside the machine. The reels in the center of the machine spun around, too fast for her to follow the spinning pictures.
Then the first one stopped on number seven. The second one stopped on a seven, as well. Then the third.
Before Sasha could ask the man what happened, bells began to ring, the lights on the machine began flashing and her companion started slapping her on the back!
“Hot damn, sugar!” be whooped. “You won the jackpot!”
“The jackpot?” She had to shout to be beard over the deafening racket as coins started pouring into the tray. “The machine is broken, yes?” she asked as more and more silver dollars flowed into the tray.
“The machine is perfect, yes! ” Ben corrected. “You won, Sasha. This is all yours! Hot damn, I knew a pretty little thing like you would change my luck!”
A crowd had gathered around her, applauding, shouting out encouragement as the money continued to flow from the machine like a sparkling silver waterfall. When it began flowing over the tray, someone handed her a foam cup. And then another. And another, and still the money continued to pour forth, almost faster than she could scoop it up.
A woman clad in a tuxedo shirt, very tight shorts and black mesh panty hose appeared with a tall green bottle and two tulip-shaped glasses.
“For you,” she said, holding one of the glasses out to Sasha. “A gift from the management, with our congratulations.”
Still confused, her hands filled with coins, Sasha looked over at her companion for guidance.
“It’s champagne,” Ben told her.
“Ah.” She nodded. “Shampahnskaye. I know of this wine. But I have never tasted any.” In Russia, the exorbitant cost had made it a drink only high party officials and government diplomats could afford.
“Now that’s a real shame. Because pretty girls should always drink champagne.” Ben took the glass and held it up to her mouth. “Drink up, honeybunch,” he said encouragingly. “It’s celebration time.”
The shimmering gold wine was like nothing she’d ever tasted. It tickled her nose, even as it slid smoothly down her throat. “It tastes like laughter.”
“You called that one right,” Ben agreed, laughing heartily as he downed the contents of the other glass in one long swallow. “Come on, Sasha, let’s go count your winnings.”
She couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be happening to her! Not even in America. Why, it hadn’t even happened to Nicholas Cage in Honeymoon in Vegas. In that movie, she remembered, he’d lost all his money.
“Four thousand dollars?” she asked after the calculations had been completed.
“Four thousand, seven hundred and forty-eight dollars,” Ben corrected.
“This is real?”
“About as real as you can get.”
Sasha thought about what she could do with so much money. She could reimburse Mitch for all he’d spent on her behalf today—the ring, the flowers, the license, the wedding and the luxurious suite. She could pay it all back and still have money left over to hire another private detective to track down her father.
There was only one small problem.
She turned to Ben, who’d poured them both another glass of champagne. “This money belongs to you, Ben.”
Startled, he choked on the champagne. After giving her a long look, he said, “You know, I think you mean that.”
“Of course I do. It was your dollar I put into the machine. So this is rightfully your jackpot.”
There was a murmur from the gathered crowd, as if everyone else was as surprised by her response as Ben was.
“That’s not the way it works,” he insisted. “I’d already given up on that fool machine when I gave you the dollar. You won it, Sasha. Fair and square. All four thousand, seven hundred and forty dollars of it.”
“Forty-eight,” she corrected absently. Her head was swimming from the sight of all that money, the excitement and the champagne.
“Forty-eight,” he agreed with a rough, hearty bark of a laugh.
As generous as he seemed to be, Sasha could not help feeling guilty at the way his act of kindness was turning out. “Perhaps we could share.”
“Honey, so long as the black gold keeps flowing back home, I’ve got so much money that my wife can’t even break me with her damn daily shopping trips to Neiman Marcus,” he assured her. “Gambling’s best when it’s done for fun, and I’m having more fun watching you win than I’ve had in a long time.” He gave her another of those bold friendly grins that had her smiling back.
“So, you want to stop now? Or see if we can make this pile grow even higher?”
This was all new to Sasha, but even so, she knew that a sensible woman would stop now. She’d take her winnings and go back upstairs. Before she ended up like Nicholas Cage, broke and desperate.
But then another part of her, the part of her that had left her homeland and crossed an ocean to find a father everyone told her did not exist, the side of her that had married a man she barely knew, pushed aside the practical, careful Sasha.
“I think I would like to try to make it higher,” she said recklessly.
As the onlookers cheered their approval, she allowed Ben to lead her over to a long table covered with green felt. There were numbers on the felt. And colors. And a black wheel. As she watched, a man in a tuxedo spun the wheel, causing a metal ball to bounce.
“This here is roulette,” Ben said. “You’d have better chances with blackjack, but this’ll be easier for you to understand.”
The wheel stopped. A pile of colorful plastic chips was placed in front of her.
She looked up at Ben. “Now what?”
“Choose a number.”
She shook her head as she stared at the wheel, suddenly all too aware that she was risking real money. “There are too many.”
“No problem. Let’s start with a color. Red or black.”
“Oh, that is easy. Red.” The color of Mitch’s shiny fire truck and his racy Mustang convertible.
She placed a chip on the spot Ben indicated, then held her breath as the banker spun the wheel and the ball started bouncing again.
Time seemed to
pass in slow motion. Just when she thought she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, the wheel stopped and the ball bounced into the number ten slot.
“It is red!” she cried, clapping her hands. “This means I won, yes?”
“It means you won, yes,” Ben agreed as the banker shoved her chip plus another one toward her. “Didn’t I tell you we’d bring each other luck? Want to go again?”
“Yes.” She put both chips on red again.
Ben followed her example, putting an enormous stack of his own plastic chips beside hers.
Feeling more daring than she’d ever felt before in her life, Sasha quickly took a smaller stack of her own chips and placed them on red, as well.
Then held her breath again as she waited for the spinning wheel to stop.
5
MITCH’S FIRST thought when he woke up to silence was that Sasha must have fallen asleep in the tub. A check of his watch revealed that he’d been out for two hours. If she was still in the water after all this time, she’d be as wrinkled as a prune.
Perhaps, he decided, she was taking a nap on that ridiculously sexy waterbed.
He pushed himself off the glove-soft leather sofa, finger combed his hair, ran his tongue over his teeth and wished he’d thought to at least pack a toothbrush. “Sasha?”
There was no answer. The only sound was the pounding beat of music drifting up from the floor below. It seemed that their expensive honeymoon suite in the exclusive tower area of the hotel was situated over a cocktail lounge. Terrific, he thought with disgust.
He went over to the closed bedroom door and knocked softly.
Then again.
And a third time.
Lord, she must sleep like a rock, Mitch thought as he gingerly opened the door.
The bed had not been slept in.
“Sasha?” A prickle of fear had the hair on the nape of his neck standing up. “Are you still in the bath?”
When he received no answer, he crossed the room in three long strides. The bathroom door was open and he was vastly relieved to see that the tub was empty. For a fleeting, terrifying moment he’d pictured her lying beneath the water, having fallen unconscious while he’d been sacked out in the living room.
“Damn!”
Frustration kept him from appreciating the fragrant pink surroundings, although the thought did cross his mind that most honeymooners sharing this suite would undoubtedly discover that the huge tub held vast erotic possibilities.
Her luggage was still in the bedroom, which Mitch took as a good sign. Unfortunately, the sight of her suit draped over the back of a pink velvet chair revealed that she’d changed her clothes. He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to give the police a description of what she was wearing.
The police? He dragged his hand through his hair and asked himself what the hell he was thinking of. Obviously, she’d simply gotten tired of waiting for him to wake up, and had gone downstairs to have lunch by herself.
The note, which he finally found in the living room propped up on the coffee table, where he’d obviously been meant to see it as soon as he woke up, said exactly that. Mitch didn’t think he’d ever felt so relieved, not even when he’d escaped that burning house with a twin baby beneath each arm.
The problem was, Sasha was too damn naive. Too trusting. Hell, he could imagine her opening the door to anyone. If anything had happened to her, Mitch knew he’d have never forgiven himself. And then there was the little matter of what Glory and Jake would have done to him.
As he rode the elevator down to the first floor where the coffee shop was located just off the lobby, Mitch assured himself that the only reason he was actually looking forward to having lunch with his bride was that it had been too many hours since he’d eaten.
“Are you certain you haven’t seen her?” Mitch asked the statuesque forty-something hostess who had the look of a former showgirl. “She’s about this tall—” he held his hand up to his shoulder “—long, dark, wavy hair, dark brown eyes, about one-hundred-and-five pounds—”
“I told you, honey, I haven’t seen her. But you’re welcome to look around”
“I’ve looked around. Hell, I’ve been through this restaurant three times. And I tell you, she isn’t here!”
“If you’d been paying attention, you’d realize that there aren’t any women in here, period. Just a bunch of Shriners wearing hats with red tassels. These are guys who like to have a good time. And a single girl as young and good-looking as the one you’ve described would definitely classify as a good time. Believe me, if she had been here, everyone would have noticed.”
“She’s not single,” he snapped without thinking. “She’s married. As of two hours ago.”
The woman lifted an auburn brow. “And you lost her already? That’s not a real encouraging start to a marriage.”
When a couple of Shriners waiting to be seated laughed at her teasing remark, Mitch began grinding his teeth. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I fell asleep. When I woke up she was gone.”
“Can’t say as I blame her.” The hostess picked up same menus. “So, you want to sit down and hope she shows up?”
The note Sasha had written said she was coming down here. But if she hadn’t arrived yet, obviously something had happened to change her plans. Mitch only hoped she hadn’t been waylaid by a bunch of drunk conventioneers. Although he knew their reputation for good works, Shriners were also renowned for their wild conventions.
“Where can I find the head of security?”
She shook her head. “You’re overreacting, hotshot. She’ll be back when she decides she’s punished you enough.”
“Sasha isn’t the type to play those kinds of games.” Even though he hardly knew her, instinct told Mitch that his bride didn’t have a deceitful bone in her body.
“Every woman plays games,” the hostess corrected flippantly. “It’s the only way we can stay ahead of you men.” With that closing remark, she led the waiting conventioneers to a table that had just been cleared.
Frustrated, Mitch left the coffee shop and was contemplating whether to check out the hotel’s other restaurants first, or to go straight to security, when the sound of familiar laughter coming from the adjacent casino caught his attention.
It was there he found her, seated at a blackjack table. The combination of the tall chair and the short denim skirt she was wearing revealed a distracting bit of firm thigh.
Not surprisingly, she was surrounded by a group of boisterous males, all wearing the familiar Shriner fez. Although most of the men appeared old enough to be her father, something that felt remarkably, uncomfortably like jealousy, stirred in his gut.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She looked up at him in surprise. Then smiled in a way that could have melted all the ice over the North Pole. “Hi, Mitch! Did you have a nice nap?”
Mitch wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “Why aren’t you in the coffee shop? Where you belong?”
“Oh.” She flashed him another beneficent smile, even more dazzling than the first. Her eyes were bright and gleamed like onyx. “I was on my way there, when I noticed this room. So I came in, thinking I would watch for just a moment, when Ben gave me a dollar to play in the slot machine.”
“Ben?” Dammit, it was jealousy, Mitch realized with astonishment. And it had claws.
“Ben Houston,” a deep voice with a Texas twang boomed. A hand the size of a catcher’s mitt was thrust toward Mitch. “From Dallas, Texas. You must be the Mitch we’ve all been hearing so much about. This little girl does go on and on about you.”
“I’m Mitch Cudahy.” Mitch’s tone was hard. “And Sasha’s not a little girl. She’s my wife.”
“She told us all about your wedding,” Ben said, ignoring the warning edge to Mitch’s voice. “Congratulations. You’ve got yourself one sweet peach of a bride.”
There was a wave of enthusiastic approval from the other Shriners gathered around her chair. As he watche
d more than one pair of greedy male eyes practically eating Sasha up, Mitch’s hands curled into fists at his side.
“I thought you were hungry.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened in surprise. “I was.” When she shrugged, the blouse slid off one shoulder revealing a creamy bit of flesh. “But I have been having so much fun, I forgot.”
“Well, I could use something to eat.” Mitch knew he sounded stiff, almost stodgy, and he hated himself for it. And hated her for making him feel like something he wasn’t.
“Oh.” She frowned. “I’m sorry, Mitch. I should have thought of that.”
When the dealer cleared his throat, Sasha treated him to a smile almost as warm and wonderful as the one she’d greeted Mitch with. “I guess I had better stop playing now.”
“You’ve been gambling? All this time?” That idea had never occurred to Mitch. He’d figured she was just keeping this Houston guy company.
Mitch knew she didn’t have any money of her own. Surely, he thought wildly, the house manager wouldn’t have given her credit? But then again, the hotel did have his credit card number. What if she’d used it to get an advance? As his wife, she’d probably be entitled to.
“It didn’t seem so very long,” Sasha explained. “The time went by very fast.”
Terrific. She’d undoubtedly bankrupted him. “So, how much have you lost?”
“Hell, Cudahy,” Ben Houston’s voice boomed again, “your little lady didn’t lose. She’s been beating the socks off the house for the past two hours. From the slots to roulette to blackjack.”
“Ben taught me how to play blackjack.” Sasha grinned up at the oilman standing beside her. “I like it very much.”
“That’s cause you’re damn good at it, sweetheart,” Ben said. He winked at Mitch. “I’ll bet you didn’t know you’d married a gal with a near photographic memory. If she was any better, the management would throw her out of here for card counting.”
“You’ve been winning?”
“Yes!” She waved her hand, drawing his attention to the towering stacks of red, white and black plastic chips in front of her. It was then Mitch also noticed the half-empty champagne flute. “I have been very lucky, Mitch. Ben says I’m his good luck charm.”
