Calling His Bluff

by Amy Jo Cousins

  He still wasn’t exactly sure where he’d gone wrong.

  Okay, yes. Telling a woman that you’d prefer for her to go talk to a couple of event promoters rather than tear up the sheets with you for the rest of the night was, he could admit, not the most romantic move.

  But hadn’t she spent half of dinner talking about poker like another woman would talk about falling in love with a man? Hadn’t he seen the excitement and passion and sheer life that lit up her face as she told him stories of cliffhanger hands she’d won on her way to playing the big times?

  And forget that business about this being something she only did when in Vegas, about her not wanting to play high-stakes poker anymore. Even if that were true, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to beat an old cliché with a heavy stick, and he didn’t think she should act like he was the bad guy for suggesting that she might not want to miss it.

  The door to Sarah’s large armoire was partway open. He looked inside without thinking. Her clothes were hung neatly in well-defined categories: pants, shirts, evening wear. He tugged open a drawer. Yup, just as he’d thought. Even her underwear, unexpectedly sexy as it was, was folded and neatly put away. As someone who could stay in a hotel room for two months without unpacking his suitcases all the way, just yanking things out and shoving cleaned items back in as needed, the type of person who would go to all this effort for a two-day stay was baffling to him.

  And that was another thing: Sarah confused the hell out of him.

  He had not for one damn moment stopped wanting to peel that little red dress off her. With his teeth. But while she was having her little encounter in the hall with the floor manager, who clearly had the hots for her, by the way, maybe J.D. had stepped back for a moment and tried to figure out just how they’d gotten there. To the point of peeling dresses. Because Sarah, newly exposed personality traits aside, had never struck him as an impulsive kind of person. This was a woman who folded her underwear and hung up her jeans, for crying out loud.

  Not exactly a one-night stand kind of girl.

  And he wasn’t looking for anything more than one night. Right?

  When he thought about it, though, he couldn’t actually remember any other time he’d been the one to stomp on the brakes when it came to sex.

  This was different. Sarah was different, and he wasn’t at all sure he liked how twisted around she made him feel.

  How had this happened?

  Of course, attempting to think about Sarah in any kind of logical way immediately required that he think of her brother. His best friend. The man who was going to look him in the eye upon their return to Chicago and ask the question, “So, how was your trip?”

  The man who also, mind you, kept a baseball bat behind the counter of his bar. The crowd at Tyler’s establishment might be considerably more upscale than the places where he’d worked as a young, up-and-coming bartender, but Sarah’s brother believed in being prepared for all possible disasters.

  J.D. was absolutely, positively certain that his friend would look upon what had almost happened between Sarah and him as a verifiable disaster.

  But he was willing to risk it. Willing to risk the baseball bat, and the possibility that this chemistry that had thrown him like a sucker punch to the gut might turn into something that lasted more than one night—a thought that scared him not a little since the bust up of his marriage. He was even willing to take the chance that he might end up ruining a good friendship that he’d just rediscovered after all these years.

  “I just said that maybe we should think about it for an hour,” he complained to the empty room, and shut the armoire door. Then he turned and stalked from the room.

  He’d told her he had an errand to run. It was something he’d thought of earlier, something that might make Sarah laugh. Well, he’d do it anyway, even if he had to get that floor manager to pull some strings for him to pull off the surprise. He made for the elevators.

  Thinking time was over.

  * * *

  “Absolutely not.”

  Sarah wagged a finger at the two men across the table from her and tried to infuse some authority into her voice. It hadn’t worked the last three times she’d tried, and she had a sneaking suspicion that the fact that she was now, just barely, slurring her Ss was not helping matters.

  She didn’t even like ouzo, goddamn it.

  “But, Sarah, we must honor the spirits of our fathers. Nikos! Hideko! Michael!”

  Even though she’d been “accidentally” jostling her shot glass for the last five minutes, spilling as much of it as she could onto the napkin beneath it, there was enough ouzo left in there for it to sting going down.

  Another shot, however, and she wouldn’t be able to feel the sting anymore.

  Who would have guessed that two of the poker event’s backers, a middle-aged Japanese man and an older Greek gentleman, would end up bonding over a love of strong liquor and even stronger family ties?

  When she’d joined them at their table in the lounge, which overlooked the Bellagio lake and featured a particularly jumping Kansas City–style blues band, they’d seemed like pleasant yet sober businessmen. They’d lost no time getting down to details with her: her personal history, background with poker, future availability for promotional efforts if the unthinkable happened and she did well enough to get press from this tournament. And then after business was settled, they’d insisted on buying her a drink to celebrate their good fortune in coming across one another.

  She had gladly joined them for the first drink, not really expecting it to be a shot of 80-proof liquor, but willing to go along. She’d still been pretty pissed at J.D. at that point, and a strong drink had sounded appealing. Now, of course, a strong drink seemed more and more likely to make her slide right out of this slick leather chair.

  The trouble came when both men had claimed the privilege of making the first toast. The older gentleman had deferred to his younger business partner, who announced that he always made his first toast of the evening to his father, who had died too young. Shock and macho backslapping ensued as the Greek man revealed that he always made the same toast with his first drink. Sarah, who wondered how much these two guys drank that they always needed “first” toasts, made the mistake of revealing that her father had also died when he was young, while she was just a toddler.

  After which, nothing would do but that they have three separate toasts, one for each father.

  And then, of course, they must toast their mothers, those wonderful women who had held their families together with their strength and love.

  Their grandparents, who still mourned the loss of their sons, cut down in the prime of their lives, must be honored, too.

  Their fathers again, who would have loved each other so well, had they been fortunate enough to meet one another.

  Sarah knew she was a grown-up. She knew that no matter how many shots of ouzo or bottles of Sapporo beer or glasses of scotch—it was sweet of them to want to include her booze heritage, too—were placed in front of her, she was not obliged to drink them. But somehow it seemed rude to decline to toast someone else’s dead father, even more so your own. So she kept trying to spill her drinks or dump them over her shoulder onto what she sincerely hoped was not an expensive carpet. But even so, she was getting more than a little bit loopy.

  She was pretty sure that if her hosts managed to come up with one more family member whose loss they all needed to toast, she’d be tipsy enough to track down J.D. and tell him exactly what she thought of him.

  She’d probably find him plastered all over some surgically enhanced blonde.

  Ha. She could tell that blonde a thing or two.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Sarah announced to the table, catching herself as she slid off her seat a little. “That’s what I’d tell her. You can’t count on that Mr. J.D. Damico for anything. Not even a little sex. Plus, he’s still married!”

  Her hosts, although bleary-eyed and swaying almost as much as the fountai
ns reflected in the lake behind them, perked up a bit at her words.

  “Tha’s right. Let me tell you a story,” she demanded and struggled to sit up straight. She opened her mouth to begin when a heavy hand fell on her shoulder.

  “Let’s save you the embarrassing memories tomorrow, Mrs. Damico.”

  It couldn’t be.

  The corner of a pale blue box tied with a white ribbon poked her hard in the thigh as it bounced onto her lap.

  “What’d you say? ‘Don’t marry a man in Vegas. They’re always promising the ring will come later’?”

  The gentleman across from her simply stared at her.

  “First of all, I wouldn’t change my name to yours for a royal flush in Texas No-Limit Hold’em,” she said and twisted in her seat to glare up at J.D. Damn, the man looked good. Even when she was pissed, and piss drunk to boot. “And third of all, Mr. I-want-to-get-in-your-pants, no-wait-I-don’t, oh-yes-I-do—”

  “What about your second?”

  “Second what?”

  “Of all. You had a first and a third. What’s your second of all?” He flashed a smile at her, which threw her off guard for a moment.

  She rallied. “Second of all, my brother’s gonna kick your ass when we get home.”

  “You’re getting married?” This from across the table, where the two men had been following their exchange like courtside spectators at Wimbledon.

  “No.”

  “Newlyweds.”

  Their voices fought to override each other. J.D.’s, perhaps more completely under his control, won out.

  “We just got married. Yesterday.” He paused for a beat. “Her mother doesn’t approve.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Sarah said as the men traded congratulations and nuptial warnings. Wasn’t it just like the man to add completely unnecessary details to a story, a lie, that no one should be listening to in the first place?

  “Then we must toast!” A bottle of ouzo had long ago been bought for the table, making the pouring of shots a breeze. Anise-flavored liquor sloshed over the rim of her shot glass yet again. “To Sarah and her new husband…”

  “J.D.,” the man in question supplied helpfully.

  “To Sarah and J.D.!”

  God, just the thought of more ouzo made her want to puke. But when she picked up the glass and prepared to sling the contents over her shoulder, onto the spreading puddle on the rug behind her, J.D. stopped her with a hand on her wrist.

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  Which was maybe the only thing in the world someone could have said to make her drink it.

  She downed the shot, coughed and slammed her glass to the table.

  “Gentlemen!” Enough was enough. “I bid you good night.”

  Her inability to stand marked the only flaw in her plan to make a dramatic exit. J.D. tried to help her stay upright, but with her clutch in one hand and the little blue box in the other, she couldn’t hold onto him. Or to any other stationary surface that might slow down the spinning of the room.

  “Up you go!” J.D. slid an arm beneath her knees and another around her shoulders, picking her up and carrying her out of the lounge. She waved over his shoulder at her new friends. This wasn’t too bad. At least now when she felt herself swaying, she knew it wasn’t the booze.

  Two minutes later, after watching the staring eyes and pointing fingers that followed in their wake as J.D. strode through the casino, she had changed her mind. This was the most embarrassing experience of her life. She buried her head in J.D.’s collar, her brain still functioning well enough to tell her that struggling to get down and then falling flat on her face would be even more humiliating. Shutting her eyes and groaning softly, she shook her head.

  “That’s right.” J.D.’s cheerful voice rumbled through his chest and into the bones of her skull. Couldn’t he keep it down? “You are going to hate yourself in the morning.”

  “Your fault,” she said into his collar.

  “What’s that, honey?”

  She lifted her mouth off his lapel but kept her eyes closed. She wanted this whole night to go away.

  “It’s your fault.”

  “How do you figure?”

  She really was getting incredibly sleepy. Even the casino noise at this late hour was a quietly grumbling, pinging lullaby to her intoxicated ears. She tightened her arms a little around J.D.’s neck and squirmed to get more comfortable. She yawned. Maybe she was sleeping, and this whole entire night had been a dream.

  That would be great.

  “You didn’t want me, so I had to go drink ouzo, gallons of ouzo, with those guys.” She knew that wasn’t exactly true. There might have been some other details, a few minor steps in the middle, but that’s what it felt like. Beneath her cheek, J.D.’s chest lifted on a deep inhale and then sank as he let out a long sigh.

  “Listen, Sarah, that’s not…”

  She tried to pay attention to what J.D. was saying, but he was speaking from so far away that she could barely hear him. Tucking her head back under his chin, Sarah curled up tighter in his arms and drifted away.

  Sometime just after the crack of dawn in hell, where a sadist had positioned her so that bolts of fire shone straight into her eyes, burning to the back of the hollowed-out space where her brain had been before someone scraped it out with a dull spoon, she woke up.

  And wished for immediate death.

  Thrusting a hand under the sheet twisted around her waist—she needed to hide her face against the glare—she tried to pull it up. But her hand kept catching on something, and she couldn’t grip the fabric. She finally tugged her hand free and a ruby glitter caught her eye.

  “What the…” She lifted her hand. Her left hand. A long rectangle of a red stone, wrapped in a delicate silver twist, sat on her ring finger like it belonged there.

  “Where did I get that?”

  Her head was pounding like tiny marching bands were blaring Sousa as they stomped through the veins in her head.

  “What on earth happened last night?” Her voice was raspy.

  “Are you always so noisy in the morning?”

  She shrieked and flew off the bed. The owner of the grumpy, masculine voice rolled into the spot she’d just abandoned. A broad expanse of muscled back, naked muscled back, was only partially concealed by the rumpled sheets of her bed.

  She looked from the ring on her hand to the naked man in her bed.

  “Holy shit. Did we get married last night?”

  Chapter Six

  If her voice hadn’t actually crawled with horror at the idea, J.D. probably would have told Sarah right off the bat that they weren’t married.

  Okay. That was a lie.

  He wasn’t a saint. An opportunity like this didn’t come along twice in a lifetime. But he would have let her believe it for only a few precious minutes of practical-joke bliss before telling her the truth. He would have enjoyed her shock for a moment and then let her in on the joke. They could have laughed about how startled she’d been before heading down to breakfast together.

  Maybe he would have had to explain what he was doing sleeping in her bed, too. That explanation alone could have led to them spending some more time in said bed.

  But after having spent a terrible night getting almost no sleep—between his overwhelming awareness of the naked body in bed next to him and the roof-rattling snores that erupted regularly and with surprising power from such a non-sumo-wrestling-sized woman—he was in no mood to be considerate. Not if she was going to keep going on and on about what an awful, horrible, very bad thing it was to have woken up married to him.

  “This is impossible. There’s no way I got married to you in the middle of the night. I don’t care how drunk I was.” Sarah paced back and forth at the foot of the bed. J.D. was still in it, lying on his side with his head propped up on one hand. He wondered how long he could pretend not to notice she was naked.

  As long as possible, he decided. She had a phenomenal body, long and lean, wit
h just enough curves to keep it interesting. Her breasts were high and small but perfect. Like the Platonic ideal of breasts. A gorgeous curve underneath, with small pink nipples that he remembered responding to the lightest of touches last night, before everything had gone off the rails. And if his eye was normally caught by a woman whose curves filled out her jeans, he was discovering the erotic potential of a body that was streamlined for speed.

  “How could you make me do something like this?” She threw her hands in the air and turned to face him.

  “Hey, it was your idea, babe.” Since he was sure that he was going to confess sooner or later, he saw no point in accepting any of the blame now. There would be plenty of it later.

  “What?” She put her hands on her hips and actually stamped the floor. He laughed at her and prepared to defend himself when she took a step toward the bed. But that was also when she finally noticed that she was buck-ass naked. He could tell because she shrieked again and then grabbed the edge of the comforter from the foot of the bed, trying to toss it up over his head. “Close your eyes!”

  He pushed the heavy blanket away with one hand, still laughing at her. And got a perfect view of her ass as she pawed through the hangers in the armoire, searching for her robe, he assumed.

  “I believe the law’s on my side, honey. I’ve got a legal right to see you naked now.” He ducked his head to avoid being clobbered by an electric-blue spike-heeled sandal. He relented. “Check the bathroom. You brought the robe in there last night to change, but then just came out in what you’re wearing. Or, you know, not wearing.”

  Moments later, she stormed back from the bathroom wearing the short, smoke-gray satin robe, yanking the sash into a knot so tight she’d need to cut it off to get it undone. He’d wondered the night before if the smoky color and sheen of the fabric would make her look like an ice princess, all cool surfaces and smooth curves. As she stomped back to the bed with murder high on her agenda, he was pleased to see that he’d guessed right.