Calling His Bluff

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “Let’s focus here, shall we?” She broke in. Clearly, it was important to keep the rules at the forefront. “The waltz and the cha-cha—”

  “Are allowed, I get it. But no salsa.”

  “I have issues with salsa. It’s safer to avoid it completely.”

  He pictured Sarah stomping on his foot and flushing with embarrassment and was almost tempted to make one of the dance clubs on the Strip their first stop. Of course, given the continued weakness of his leg, it was more likely that he’d be watching from the sidelines, nursing a drink. Which might be the safer way to go, actually.

  “Noted. And finally, under no circumstances, no matter how much you beg—which is difficult to imagine, mind you, since I can hardly picture you even saying please at the moment—am I to let you within twenty yards of a high-stakes poker game.”

  J.D. looked at Sarah. Her long, sleek dark hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail. She was wearing cream khakis, a white turtleneck and a tailored black velvet jacket that seemed to have invisible little hooks up the front, since he couldn’t see buttons or a zipper. Black lace-up flats. A little lip gloss, maybe. She looked very nice, clean and conservatively stylish.

  Not exactly like a woman who had issues with salsa dancing and high-stakes poker. He couldn’t imagine that he’d have a hard time following her rules. Maybe bringing her with him was enough of an apology. He could drop her off by the pool and go find that up-and-coming actress from the last film he’d documented. The one who kept asking him to show her his darkroom as if digital had never happened, what was her name…something Italian, Donatella…

  Beatrice, which she pronounced in the Italian way, Bay-ah-tree-chay. Despite knowing no more Italian than ciao. Beatrice from Boise, with a body that was putting some L.A. plastic surgeon’s kid through college. Her number was still in his cell phone, he’d bet. Although he’d need to make sure to “forget” his camera, if he wanted to avoid being asked to shoot porn photos.

  A harrumph broke into his fantasy of stripping Signorina Beatrice out of her Juicy Couture faster than she could say, “I really admire your art.” Sarah was glaring at him with a look that would have done his battleship of a third-grade teacher proud. What the hell were they talking about?

  Right, poker.

  “Don’t worry, slick. No tournament poker action for you.” Maybe he rolled his eyes just a little.

  “I’m serious, Damico.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve been to Vegas before. You don’t know what I’m like.”

  He mirrored her gesture, kicking his feet up on the low table in front of them. “Tell me this, Ms. Tyler. What kind of stakes did you bring with you?”

  “For the weekend?”

  “Yeah.”

  She grimaced and looked pained. “Three hundred.”

  “Dollars?”

  “No, pesos. Of course dollars.”

  “What are you gonna do? Play the quarter slots all weekend?” He meant to be insulting. Only a fool thought three hundred bucks would last for three days of gambling in Sin City.

  She shrugged him off and turned back to her magazine. He might have heard her mutter under her breath, “I’m going to try, anyway.”

  The captain came over the PA system to announce that they’d be landing shortly. J.D. was past regretting his impulsive invitation to Sarah and actively planning how he could avoid spending the whole weekend babysitting her. At least getting out of Chicago would mean he’d be away from Lana for a few days. Despite being shacked up in the ritziest hotel Michigan Avenue had to offer, she still found excuses to come by his apartment almost every day. A few Lana-free days in Vegas would be a relief. Sarah was packing up her magazines and snacks in that bag she clutched to her side like a security blanket, with a special pocket for every little item. She’d probably clean up her own trash for the flight attendant.

  Ms. Obey the Rules. He’d have to bring her to the awards ceremony, since he’d invited her, but otherwise she could park herself poolside for the weekend for all he cared.

  No kissing. No salsa. No big money poker.

  Piece of cake.

  * * *

  By the time they were checking in at the Bellagio, standing under a canopy of Chihuly blown-glass flowers, he was ready to throttle the woman.

  Not that she wasn’t being nice. Oh, no. You could never meet anyone nicer than Sarah Tyler, her little act seemed to be proclaiming. Pleasant and helpful and so chatty that he could hardly get a word in edgewise. But this Sarah was running the show, and she had no intention of allowing any uncomfortable topics of conversation to pop up of which she did not approve.

  And he’d remembered her as such an easygoing girl.

  Not so much these days, it seemed.

  He’d never forgotten Sarah, the same way that he’d always remembered the smell of her mother baking peanut butter cookies, the kind with the grid scored on top by the tines of a fork. Visceral memories. The Tylers had subtly taken him in, never pushy or condescending, but always there with a casual invitation to stay for dinner or come by early for breakfast on the way to school. For a year, for the worst year, when his dad was spiraling out of control and his mom was focused on trying to save him, J.D. had practically lived with the Tylers. He’d stop at his family’s house occasionally, for clean clothes or to reconfirm his continued existence and good health, but home had become the Tylers’ house.

  And although he and Tyler were best buddies, there was also no avoiding the Tyler daughters. The Tyler women, as they took to calling themselves shortly after puberty overtook Maxie, the youngest.

  Addy was the bossy one, the older sister who was more than happy to have a second younger brother to order around. Maxie was creativity personified, a never-ending stream of crazy ideas, strange clothes, weird hats and goofball plans. And Sarah…well, Sarah was the calm in the eye of the storm.

  Tyler was his brother-in-arms, his coconspirator in everything from concealing mirrors on the high school grounds—it was a surprisingly scientific effort to use the principles of light refraction to peek into the girls’ locker room—to cutting school to attend the Chicago Cubs’ home opener every spring, a tradition adopted by Tyler’s father as a boy, which they’d heard about and were determined to continue. In his first true act of courage, J.D., who still considered the sight of blood a personal affront and a deliberate attempt to make him nauseous, stabbed his index finger with a distressingly dull penknife when he was ten years old to become blood brothers with his best friend, Christopher Robin Tyler.

  He’d made Tyler confess to his real name before agreeing to the bloodletting. It seemed a fair bargain and was useful for a lifetime’s worth of blackmail material. Tyler was his best friend, his brother. But when J.D. had been angry and frustrated at the world, as only a young man can be, he would wander the Tyler household, looking for the quiet slim girl with long dark hair, hoping to round a corner of the staircase and find her sitting on the steps with a hardcover book in her lap. She was always so focused that he could take a dozen pictures of her before she noticed him. Then she’d look up with an open smile and a ready hello and invite him to sit down next to her. Sometimes she’d tell him about what she was reading, but more often she’d just dig into one of her pockets, pull out a piece of cherry licorice and pass it to him. She would read next to him while he chewed, and J.D. remembered it feeling like he’d managed to call a big time-out on the world.

  Sarah was his peaceful place to rest before heading back out into the loud, mad craziness of life. Sooner or later a shout would reach him—Tyler calling for him, maybe—and he’d jump up and run off, half the time forgetting to say goodbye to his quiet companion.

  But this Sarah…

  When she shut her hotel room door in his face with a chipper, “Later!” it was only the presence of the other hotel guests in the hallway that kept him from using one of half a dozen Italian gestures he knew that meant “Piss off!” at the door.

  The fact that manners required him to
return in an hour to escort Sarah down to the casino floor, where he would swiftly park her at the heady excitement of the quarter slots, was nothing but a further example of the poor judgment call he’d made by extending this invitation.

  But he grinned as he grabbed the do-not-disturb sign off her neighbor’s door, flipping it so that Sarah’s room now requested “Service, Please.” If there was any justice in the world, someone would walk in on her in the shower. That would be payback, barely, for listening to her nonstop chatter all the way here from the airport.

  Or, even better, maybe she’d walk out of the bathroom naked, with just a towel wrapped around the masses of her wet, dark hair, and then when she saw someone in the room, she’d give a little scream and press a hand to her breastbone before whipping the towel off her head…

  Jesus, what was the matter with him?

  Why the hell was he picturing himself standing at the foot of her bed, watching as she realized who was staring at her so intensely?

  J.D. shook his head sharply and strolled down the hall toward his own room. Too much celibacy after all those weeks in the hospital and his past month of house arrest in Chicago, mixed with the close proximity of a decent-looking woman, even one as overbearing as Sarah Tyler, was messing with his brain. He needed to end the dry spell, clearly.

  And he knew just who to call.

  * * *

  “Holy hell.”

  He wondered if he’d hear the thump of his brains hitting the floor behind him after they finished falling out of his skull.

  Red.

  Fire-engine, flaming-hot, the-devil’s-come-to-call red.

  A woman who could not possibly be Sarah Bearah had her back to him as she tugged Sarah’s hotel room door shut, tucking the keycard into a miniscule beaded bag that looked like it would be hard-pressed to hold a lipstick and a condom, much less anything else.

  The trailing ends of a halter-top dress skimmed between ivory shoulder blades before brushing gently against the small of a bare back. Half a moment after the dress started covering what was clearly a backside worth watching, it stopped again, leaving a mile of pale, shimmering leg between a hemline that would make a hooker blush and four-inch red spike heels that sculpted calves and thighs to perfection. When the woman stepped away from the door, her hip bumped into his.

  He jumped back into the middle of the hallway as if he’d been grazed by a branding iron.

  He certainly felt burned.

  As the woman turned to face him, the long dark waterfall of hair she’d pulled over one shoulder swung free, a curtain of silk that moved like india ink, strands sliding over each other slickly.

  She crossed herself, pressed a kiss to her fingertips and tapped them on her door over her shoulder.

  One thing was clear. He hadn’t lost Sarah, although it was still up for debate whether or not he’d lost his mind.

  She took his blank stare for one of inquiry, and looked back over her shoulder to where she’d tapped the door. The gesture did interesting things to the drape of the dress. He lifted his eyes from the chest of his best friend’s little sister and tried to tell himself he wasn’t going to hell.

  “Old gambling superstition.” She nodded at the door. “You pray you still have enough money to pay for the room by the time you come back to it.”

  “Ah. I see.” He willed the heat out of his eyes as he let his gaze run—platonically, he hoped—over her dress one more time, trying not to swallow his tongue. “Are you sure you don’t want to step back in that room for just a minute and grab something to wear over that dress? Like a sweater?”

  She started to turn toward him, eyes framed in gunmetal-gray liner and big dark fringes of lashes, when she dropped her little jeweled clutch. As she sank gracefully into a crouch to retrieve it, the skirt rode up even more and he felt himself get hard. He broke out in a sweat.

  “And maybe some pants.”

  “What?”

  Sarah was still kneeling at his feet, looking up at him in confusion as she adjusted a skinny, crystal-encrusted strap across the bridge of one foot. Her mouth was a slick of cherry-red gloss that shined like the paint on a newly waxed Corvette.

  Then she licked her lips, her face hovering around knee-level.

  “Will you get up?”

  He hauled her to her feet with a grip on one arm that he released the moment he didn’t think she’d fall down. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets. Took them out and buttoned his jacket, feeling grateful that it wouldn’t occur to Sarah to give him the same once-over he’d given her.

  Or, at least, the old Sarah wouldn’t even consider glancing at his crotch. Who knew what this Sarah would do?

  “Ready?” she asked and began stalking toward the elevators, smoothly shifting her weight with each long stride she took on those impossibly high heels.

  She’d already stabbed the elevator call button by the time he caught up with her.

  “Sarah, wait. Don’t you think you’re a little bit overdressed?”

  Which was the first time in his life he’d ever tried to get a woman out of a dress like that without trying to get his own pants off at the same time.

  “No way, baby. This is Vegas.”

  “Most of this town consists of retirees in velour tracksuits.”

  “Not in my Vegas.” The elevator doors slid open noiselessly in front of them. J.D. didn’t miss the appreciative twinkle in the eyes of the gentleman standing with his lady companion in the back of the car. The man was ninety if he was a day and had a pair of pants belted up over his round belly, but that didn’t mean he was blind. “In my Vegas, Dean-o or Frank could be waiting right around the corner, striking up a match just in time to light my cigarette.”

  He leaned away from her in shock.

  “You smoke?” Was the world coming to an end?

  “No.” She grinned up at him. “But in my Vegas, I just might. Thank you, sweetie, but it’s early times yet.” This last was to the Romeo behind her, who had immediately whipped out an old-fashioned cigarette case and flipped it open at Sarah’s elbow. “Maxie taught me how to play the game.”

  “Knock it off, Phil.” Romeo’s snow-haired Juliet whacked him with her handbag.

  He relaxed. Sarah’s sister Maxie lived most of her life in worlds that existed only in her imagination. And in her costumes and uncannily accurate accents. She was a theater person through and through and only rarely condescended to play the part of an early twenty-first century woman.

  “I get it. So it’s like make-believe.”

  She rolled her eyes at him, winking at the old man as they all stepped out of the elevators onto the casino floor.

  “Yes, and tomorrow I’m inviting my dollies and teddy bears to a tea party. Would you like to come? I’m not five, Damico. The world is what you want it to be. And I want Vegas to be glamorous and exotic. So for me, it is.”

  Whatever. She could call it anything she liked, but if she was pretending, playacting, imagining, that meant that underneath all that smoky sex and come-hither attitude she was still just Sarah Tyler. Hardworking, low-key, regular Sarah Tyler.

  Thank god.

  “So, the slots for you, right?”

  “That’s right. The slots for me. Slots for me. Slots for me…”

  She kept it up as a running mantra as they strolled through the casino. He would have expected her to look around and ooh and aah, or even smile and flirt in her new persona, but instead she simply stared at the carpet scrolling beneath her feet as he led her by the arm to the slot machines.

  “The slots for me. The slots for me…”

  She didn’t seem to care which machine they stopped at, so when he reached the middle of an endless row of Red, White and Blue slots, he pointed her toward one. She sat down mechanically and stared at it as if she didn’t know what to do next. He pulled the roll of quarters he’d changed before going to her room from his pocket and presented it to her with grand formality.

  “I’ll check in on you in a little whil
e. I have to call some people.”

  She smiled up at him. But she looked a little grim doing it.

  “Right. Great. And if I’m not here, check the blackjack tables. I might try a hand or two.”

  He patted her absently on the shoulder, his thoughts already on the luscious Beatrice.

  “Okay, I’ll look for you there.” He started to walk away when a jerk on the back of his coat yanked him to a halt.

  “That was a test, Damico.” Sarah glared at him. The sudden sirens and flashing lights from the row of slots behind them heralded another Vegas success story. “You’re supposed to say, ‘No, Sarah, why don’t you just stick with the slots.’”

  “Ooookay.” It appeared that the inmates were running the asylum today. With exaggerated care, he repeated, “No, Sarah, why don’t you just stick with the slots.”

  “Bah. You’re useless.” She faced the machine and scanned the information printed next to the screen.

  Feeling distinctly like he’d let the team down, J.D. turned again and walked away. He didn’t go two steps before he turned back to check on her again. She looked a little lost, sitting by herself in that spectacular dress, clutching a roll of quarters in one hand and staring at the dozen spinning icons of fruits and numbers in front of her.

  “Want me to send you a drink? Glass of champagne?” he asked.

  “God, no. This is hard enough without throwing liquor in the mix,” was her cryptic answer. She touched a fingertip to the screen and shook her head as the mix of pictures came up wrong.

  She’d be fine. And J.D. could finally…clear his mind.

  Two hours later, he was biting back curses as he stood on a balcony overlooking the casino floor, hands clutching the guardrail. Beatrice had not been at all pleased with him when he bailed on her before she could so much as hook a finger in his belt loop and tug him close, but he hadn’t been able to shake his worry that Sarah was in over her head. Spread out before him like one of the dozens of cheap buffets in this town were all the opportunities a neophyte could ask for to lose every penny in his or her pocket. Slots, blackjack, poker, baccarat, craps, roulette, bingo, sports-book betting—any way you wanted to give them your money, Vegas was happy to take it.