Calling His Bluff

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “What do you mean this was my idea? That is not possible,” she demanded, standing over him like his third grade teacher. All she needed was a ruler to slap in her palm.

  He shifted a pillow under his head and leaned back, fingers laced behind his head. Yeah, he was gonna ride this one out for a little while all right.

  “Hey, I just bought you the ring as a joke. You know, after what you said to that woman at the poker table.” Truth was, he didn’t know why he’d bought the ring. And gone to some effort over it, even asking Mr. Fiorentino to arrange for the Tiffany & Co. store to be opened for him at midnight. And he’d felt a ridiculous amount of nerves about choosing the right ring.

  He’d told himself that he wanted only to see the look on Sarah’s face when he dropped the box in her lap and walked away. But then he’d rejected ring after ring for not being right. In the end, he’d selected the delicate yet fiery piece of jewelry with far more care than he’d planned. So when Sarah fell asleep on his shoulder on the way up to her room without even seeing it, he’d been disappointed. He’d put it on her finger after laying her on top of her covers, knowing she’d probably insist on returning it when she woke up and saw it. The thought had made him sad. “You were the one who took one look at the ring when I was trying to carry you up here and decided that we should run off and get married.”

  She took a step back from the bed and looked down at her hand. Twisted the ring around her finger as her eyes lost focus. He could see her trying to remember.

  “I remember you dropping the box in my lap,” she said. After a moment, she shook her head and pressed her lips together. “Why don’t I remember the rest of it?”

  For a moment, he almost caved. J.D. opened his mouth to tell her that absolutely nothing had happened. That he’d brought her back to her room, that he’d only stayed because she kept waking up and trying to open the hallway door, insisting it was the bathroom. The vision of her wandering the casino in her condition had terrified him, so he’d slept there. But he’d kept his shorts on and, more heroically, had made a valiant effort not to look at her when she’d stripped off her clothes and weaved around the room naked. He’d only peeked to make sure she wasn’t making a break for the hallway again, this time in her birthday suit.

  Not a thing had happened between the two of them. And the hurt and confused look in her eyes, the lines between her drawn-together brows, the way she bit at her lower lip, all combined to make him feel like a bit of a jerk for letting this ruse continue.

  “Sarah, don’t worry—”

  “Don’t worry?” She shouted at him and flung her hands in the air. “How the hell am I supposed to explain this to my family? What am I going to tell my mother?”

  “Your mother likes me,” he defended himself automatically.

  “She adores you. As her son’s best friend. But as my husband? Are you crazy?” Sarah flung herself into one of the armchairs by the window and covered her eyes with one hand. “You’re not exactly a stick-around kind of guy, J.D.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  * * *

  Great, now she’d hurt his feelings.

  Sarah peeked out from beneath the hand she’d smashed against her face, in what she assumed was a subconscious enactment of the “if I can’t see it, it isn’t happening” brand of wishful thinking.

  Had she really married him? J.D. had already shown that he was dumb enough to rush into marriage once, but until right now, she would have said that there wasn’t enough ouzo in the world to make her that foolish.

  J.D. was sitting up in bed now, like a living, breathing Rodin sculpture—all muscle and smooth golden skin as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs, his hands twisting the sheet in front of him. He was looking at her like she’d just pulled the tail of his favorite puppy.

  “I just meant that you’re a, you know, globe-trotting Hollywood photographer,” she said, trying to take her eyes off him. Jesus, with his long hair falling in his face and the dark shadow of stubble on his jaw, it was like having a pirate in her bed. But a sexy pirate, one without all those pesky eighteenth-century flaws like scurvy and no bathing. A man who looked a little dangerous, like he might make a maiden walk the plank if she didn’t give up her virtue.

  Focus, Sarah!

  “Look,” she began again, gesturing to him with both open hands. “That’s all beside the point. If we were madly in love and got married in Vegas, none of that would matter. But we’re not, so how the hell did you let this happen?” She stopped him before he could utter the words. “I don’t care if it was my idea. Why would you go along with it?”

  When he grabbed the sheet with one hand and she realized that he was getting out of her bed, she slammed her eyes shut.

  Then cracked one open a second later, a weakness she was sure any woman on the planet would understand.

  Boxer briefs.

  Hmmph. Not quite as good as in the buff, but still very nice. Very nice indeed. And the white cotton showed off the deep golden tone of his skin to good advantage. When he lifted his arms to shove them in the sleeves of his wrinkled dress shirt, she almost swallowed her tongue. What a body. She could have walked her fingers from his shoulders to his waist, stepping from muscle to muscle all the way down to the waistband of the slacks he’d pulled on, and beyond. But the sight of him also deepened her confusion.

  Guys who looked like J.D. simply did not end up in the beds of women who looked like her. And she wasn’t denying her own appeal. Far from it. But men who looked like that ended up with women who looked like, well, his ex-wife for one. The whole lesbian thing aside, she was exactly who Sarah would picture J.D. dating. Blonde, built and visibly sexual.

  Sarah Tyler staring at this naked man in her hotel room simply did not make sense.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Was that what you said the first time you did this?” she snapped. She saw him flinch. Shit. “Sorry. That was an asshole thing to say.” She shut her eyes, closing off the vision of all that lovely male flesh. Taking a deep breath, she tried to remember what they were talking about.

  Right. Getting married. To J.D.

  J.D. and marriage.

  Oh, fuck.

  “A good idea at the time, J.D.? Really? You don’t even know if you’re still married to Lana!”

  He crouched down and looked under the bed, keeping his weight off his newly healed leg.

  “I wasn’t in my right mind either, obviously.” Ouch, now why did that sting? It was no worse than what she’d said. “And I know what Lana wants from me. A crack at a bigger movie role. We’re not married. I’ve got the divorce papers and the cancelled check from the outrageous fee to prove it.” J.D. dragged the other armchair away from the wall and shoved it back. “So, we’ve got some chemistry—” the look he shot her would have curled the toes of a nun “—I like you. You seem to like me. Most of the time. I love your family.”

  He was leaning over her now, peering behind her chair, and she could smell him, spicy and warm. The need to slide her hands up his chest and around his neck was overwhelming. It would certainly make it easier to strangle him. Just what every woman wanted to hear. How much more her man loved her family than he did her. Although that wasn’t exactly a secret with J.D. It had been true for at least the past twenty years.

  Clearing her throat, she tried to find her voice. And sat on her hands.

  “Don’t you have that a little backwards? You’re supposed to love me and like my family.”

  He stepped back from her chair. She resumed breathing. He ran his fingers through his hair and muttered a curse. “Where the hell are my shoes?”

  “Check the floor of the armoire. Left hand side.”

  “Why?” he snapped.

  “Because,” she snapped back, “that’s where an organized person would put them if she stumbled across them in the middle of the night.” He yanked open the door and pulled a pair of men’s dress shoes out of the armoire.
<
br />   “Oh sure, she remembers the shoes.”

  She ignored him and got up to find her cell phone. Just standing up made her head throb again. Digging the razor-thin phone out of her little clutch, she dialed the toll-free number that was conveniently memorable.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The police,” she said, and then decided the morning had been fouled up too much for bad jokes. “The airline.”

  “Why?”

  “You have to ask? I want to go home, as soon as possible.” Stupid recordings. She pushed the zero button repeatedly and tried to bully her way through the system to a real person.

  With a sudden jerk, the phone was wrested from her hand. When she turned, J.D. was pushing the disconnect button.

  “What are you doing?” She made a grab for her phone. “Give me that.”

  He lifted it out of her reach, and held her off with his free hand as she leaped for it like a jump ball at center court.

  “Wait a minute!” Almost shouting now, J.D. snuck an arm around her torso and hauled her up onto his hip to pivot and dump her onto the bed. “You’ve got the tournament, right? And there’s no sense paying to change your ticket. Just stay through tonight.”

  “I need to go home so I can spend the rest of the weekend figuring out how I’m going to explain this to my lawyer,” she bitched as she pulled her legs under her. “She’s always believed me to be such a respectable and sane woman. Until now.”

  “C’mon. There’s nothing we can do before Monday. We’ll drown our sorrows in cheap champagne at the bar before I hit the awards ceremony and you bring the poker table to its knees. We can leave first thing in the morning on Sunday. Crack of dawn, I swear.”

  She’d forgotten about the awards ceremony. Shoot. A twinge of guilt shot through her. The cost to change her ticket aside, it wouldn’t be polite to ditch the man who’d invited her on this little jaunt in the first place.

  Even if that man was responsible for turning her into the butt of a million future family jokes from now until the day she died.

  She’d be lying on her deathbed exchanging tender goodbyes with family members and someone, almost certainly her brother, would be sure to mention that she’d better have her apologies in order for when she met St. Peter at the pearlies. “Especially for that weekend you got drunk in Vegas and came home married to J.D.—a coupla’ Hail Mary’s ain’t gonna cut it for that one!”

  “And being a guy, Peter’ll probably take your side,” she said and slid off the bed.

  “Peter who? Where are you going?”

  Stopping at the door to the bathroom, she swept him an ironic bow.

  “In an effort to ensure that your wife isn’t still reeking of ouzo tonight, I am taking the only possible course of action.” Her smile was a grimace that she held onto with a tight grip.

  “I am going to the spa.”

  She made several phone calls during the long, long walk across the enormous hotel property. Her head was still throbbing and she was bracing herself for one last conversation when disaster struck. It was just her bad luck that she had to pass through the lobby on her way to the spa, which was tucked across from the Chihuly Conservatory. Bad luck and Murphy’s Law, which meant that you’d always run into the exact people you were hoping to avoid.

  Her two drinking buddies from last night were hanging out in the lobby, eyes bleary and hands wrapped around the biggest Starbucks cups she’d ever seen. For a moment, she considered ducking behind a loaded luggage cart as a bellhop pulled it across the slick marble floor, using it as a diversion to slide past them unseen.

  She’d have to call them sooner rather than later, though, so she pulled her shoulders back, acted as if she weren’t sporting beard burn all over her jaw and walked right up to them.

  Only to open her mouth to say hello and realize that she couldn’t remember their names.

  Shoot. She remembered every damn detail about Nikos and Hideko, their gone-but-never-forgotten fathers, right down to military service records and preferences for blondes versus brunettes, but she couldn’t remember for the life of her what the two poker tournament sponsors were named. Her own hangover was crying out for coffee, which didn’t help matters any.

  Then they spotted her and the entire matter was academic.

  “Sarah!”

  Arms held out for the back-thumping hugs of long-lost friends, they advanced on her. The older Greek gentleman, Nikos’s son, leaned in close, careful not to spill his hot drink on her, and she caught a whiff of what was helping him power through the morning.

  “A little Irish in your coffee?” she asked, grinning. Jeez. These two were troopers. She made a note to herself not to hang with them again. Ever. Clearly she couldn’t keep up.

  He winked at her and held a finger up to his lips as the younger man, Hideko’s son, flashed the interior chest pocket of his sport coat, where the silver cap of a flask peeked out.

  “Come. We take you to Starbucks. Fix you up.”

  “Ah, no. But thank you. Really. Very kind of you.” She slid a step back from the elbows they were crooking in her direction. Five minutes of negotiation later, she was crossing her fingers behind her back and swearing on her father’s name to ask for a glass of champagne at the spa in order to assuage their disappointment. She braced herself for further fallout.

  If missing the chance to spike her coffee upset them, they were definitely not going to love what else she had to tell them.

  * * *

  She could still hear their voices in her head, trying to convince her not to drop out of the tournament, as the flawlessly coiffed woman at the spa reception desk escorted her to the changing room. Shrugging out of her clothes, she tried not to let the guilt weigh her down. Her drinking buddies and the players who’d ponied up serious cash to enter the tournament were driven by different motivations than she was. And in the end, the sponsors had hugged her again, kissed her cheek, and made her promise to lift a glass with them again someday, so perhaps they hadn’t been too offended.

  Hours later, after a series of wraps, exfoliations, steam baths and massages, all of which was more punishment than pleasure in her state, Sarah indulged in a little retail therapy at the Dior boutique on the Via Bellagio before returning to her room. There were no remaining traces of J.D., who had cleared out even before she’d left the bathroom to drag herself to the spa. He’d texted her that any appointments she wanted at the spa were a combo gift/apology from him and that he’d meet her at the bar in the center of the casino floor at seven unless she was still schooling the poker whizzes.

  Luckily for her, he didn’t seem inclined to show up to watch her play. With any luck, he’d assume she washed out early and spent the day enjoying what he’d no doubt later refer to as her “wedding present.”

  She hooked her final purchase on its hanger over the door of the armoire and stripped. Shrugging on the pewter robe, she began pulling undergarments from the drawers as she waited for the knock that came on her door minutes later.

  If you were going to go glam, go all the way.

  She opened the door to the stylist and makeup artist she’d booked for a house call.

  “You’ve got two hours,” she announced as she showed them in. “And I want drop-dead gorgeous. I got married by accident last night, and I want him to spend the rest of our soon-to-be-divorced lives thinking, ‘Damn, she looks fine.’”

  The tall, thin man in the lavender silk shirt waved a hand at the younger, shorter man, directing him to the phone.

  “Call for champagne, Glen. A story like that should only be told over bubbly.” He turned to Sarah, gesturing for her to spin around. Nodding, he pointed to the chair they’d brought in with them. “Sit. Now, tell me about this man whose heart we’re going to crush. Is he gorgeous?”

  Exactly two hours later, Sarah stepped up onto the dais that held the raised bar in the center of the casino. She immediately spotted J.D. along the rail, and was certain that her stylists would have agreed with her
.

  Gorgeous didn’t do him justice.

  She didn’t know what it was about him that said so clearly, unknown danger ahead. The elegantly tailored suit that did nothing to hide the muscles of the body beneath it. The too-long dark hair echoing his dark eyes, eyes that truly saw you when they looked at you, like you were always framed in the brutal lens of his camera. Eyes that stripped the clothes off your body, the civilized veneer off your emotions. When J.D. looked at you, you forgot that there was anyone else in the room.

  You’d do anything to keep those eyes locked on you. Even though you knew that sooner or later, when he finally saw everything you were hiding, it would cost you.

  * * *

  When he looked up from his scotch neat to scan the crowd for the tenth time in as many minutes, J.D.’s gaze slammed to a halt, caught on the tall, dark-haired woman who was watching him as if she could reach inside and pull out his soul with her eyes.

  The midnight-blue floor-length dress she was wearing hung in a body-skimming column from twinned straps over each shoulder. The delicate black embroidery that defined the curve of her breasts and descended down one side of the dress was its only decoration. Until, that was, she began to walk toward him and the hip-to-ankle slit that split the embroidery revealed an impossibly long ivory leg with each step.

  All the decoration any dress would ever need was in that walk.

  Every bit of moisture in his mouth dried up, and he recognized the sudden twist in his stomach that he hadn’t felt since asking his first date out for a movie and Cokes. The desperate need to act cool because somehow it was more important for her to say yes than catching your next breath, and you hoped she couldn’t read that on your face.

  When Sarah had announced early that morning that she was going home immediately, J.D. hadn’t understood his own panic. All he’d known was that he didn’t want her to leave, that it was impossible to let her go that way.

  And since it seemed even more likely that if he confessed that they hadn’t gotten married—that there was nothing to worry about—she would be too pissed to stick around, he’d decided the safest course was to sit tight. To tell Sarah that they’d fix it all when they got home and plan on confessing then.