But what if he wasn’t looking for her about the car? What if he still thought she was a working girl he’d decided to purchase for the night? A buzz went through her body at the possibility and she was horrified to find that despite everything she was actually totally attracted to him.
At some point she hoped that she would be able to laugh at the day she’d just had. Some point in the very distant future. Right now, though, she would forget all about her unhelpful hormones and the way his eyes shone like brilliant sapphires against his olive skin and black shirt.
Of course she felt sick the closer she came, her stomach clenching and unclenching like a giant-size fist, and when his gaze swept over her body her confidence completely deserted her.
She stopped directly in front of him but with enough room between them to fit at least two buses. ‘I’m sorry,’ she began a little breathlessly, ‘but this room is invitation only.’
His level gaze raked her face and then he smiled. ‘Ah, the woman whose shoe I broke.’
Cara’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of his rich, deep voice. ‘Well, you didn’t break it exactly.’ She let out a nervous laugh. ‘It was an accident. And you were right. I should have been paying more attention to where I was going.’
‘Generous of you considering it was I who ran into you,’ he said pleasantly. Too pleasantly.
He knows about the car, she thought a little desperately, her eyes searching his. She felt it with every guilty bone in her body.
Hoping her face wasn’t flushed even though she felt like it was pressed against a heating pad she told herself to calm down. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it was her own sense of guilt making her feel paranoid. ‘Please, don’t mention it again.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Now, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you to—’
She stopped speaking and stared up at his bemused expression.
Mr Kelly. Mr Kellllly.
Aidan Kelly?
Like one of the poker machines downstairs that had just hit the jackpot Cara’s brain lit up with where she had seen this man’s face before. Unfortunately he wasn’t some matinee idol; he was the Aidan Kelly of KMG—Kelly Media Group. The founder of some huge network TV station in Australia that had expanded to dominate the US entertainment industry and recently had something to do with British TV, as well. She couldn’t remember what, but she did remember he was as rich as they came and his influence was global. He was also rude and full of himself but … She swallowed heavily. ‘You have an invitation.’ Her voice came out as little more than a squeak and his smile grew.
‘Why else would I be here?’ he asked softly.
No reason, Cara thought wildly, no reason at all. No reason other than to play poker at her table.
She groaned inwardly. The night was ruined. She was dead. He would complain to Christos and then … She had to apologise. Had to admit to her desperate actions at the airport. Admit how late she had been, how desperate, how—
No, she wouldn’t let herself panic and ruin everything. Because what if he didn’t know and she admitted her mistake and made everything ten times worse. No, she would do what her brother Franco had taught her to do in situations like this and play the dead bat—an old cricketing term. Franco would be impressed that she had even remembered.
As plans went it wasn’t the greatest, but it would have to do until she came up with something better.
‘Well then, Mr …’
She let the silence fill between them as she waited for him to provide his name. His mouth kicked up at one corner. ‘Kelly. Aidan Kelly.’
Bond, James Bond had nothing on this man, she thought helplessly.
‘Well, I apologise for the misunderstanding, Mr Kelly, and am pleased to welcome you to the Mahogany Room. My name is Cara Chatsfield and—’
‘I thought I recognised you. Apart from the shoes, of course.’
Cara smiled and her lips felt like they were about to crack. ‘Yes, well. As I was saying, I’m the hostess for the game this evening so if you would like to follow me we’ll get underway.’
He fell into step beside her and Cara slowly released a pent-up breath. Maybe, just maybe, she was going to get away with this.
‘I apologise for being late,’ he said easily. ‘I was …’ Cara glanced up at him when he hesitated. His smile widened and her pulse raced. ‘Delayed at the airport.’
Oh, God. ‘Nothing drastic, I hope?’ she said a little too breathlessly.
‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘Nothing I can’t handle, at least.’ His smile turned lupine and Cara felt dizzy.
She knew her actions in taking his hire car were far from admirable and there was no use pretending she had done it because of a couple of small children. Yes, she had loved being able to get them in out of the cold, but really she’d been beyond desperate and she’d been smarting from his condescending attitude towards her.
The need to admit to what she had done made her stomach feel like it was full of battery acid, but something held her back.
She did plan to apologise. To explain that she had been stressed, upset … a little put off by his gruff manner. None of that was an excuse but … it had happened and she would deal with it. She would pull herself out of yet another mess of her own making. The big question was, when would she learn to stop reacting when someone formed a low opinion of her?
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow she would go to him and apologise. After tonight was over.
‘Yes, it was terribly busy, wasn’t it?’ she said briskly.
Having made her mind up to put off the inevitable, the only option left open to her was to keep pretending that everything was completely as it should be.
Feeling marginally better when he didn’t make another comment, she showed him to his seat on the raised circular dais that held the main table and plastered a serene smile on her face. When he handed her his jacket she reached for it, only to find it suspended between both their hands. The wonderful scent of spice and earthy man rose between them and when he didn’t immediately release the jacket she glanced up. His face was closer than she expected, his blue eyes deep pools of lethal sensuality. The heating pad that had attached itself to her face increased a few more degrees until her cheeks stung with it.
‘Oh, and, Miss Chatsfield?’
She blinked, unable to do anything but stare. ‘If you wouldn’t mind getting the phone number of the local police for me. I have an incident to report and I didn’t have time to do it before.’
Oh, God. This was it. She would once again be confirmed as the airheaded younger sister of the Chatsfield family. The naughty girl. The one who shouldn’t have even been there.
And she had no one else to blame but herself.
‘Incident?’ she said weakly, wondering if she threw herself at him and begged for mercy if he would listen. Then she remembered his icy disdain and arrogance at the airport.
‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ he said, finally letting go of the jacket to take his seat.
CHAPTER THREE
AIDAN LEANED BACK in the velvet-lined chair at the main gaming table and hooked his arm over the back.
The suspense must be killing her, he thought, shocked to find that he was enjoying himself. He’d almost whistled a merry tune when she’d nearly fainted dead away in front of him after he’d mentioned the police.
He had no intention of calling them, of course, but feeling her worried eyes on him all evening would be punishment enough.
Or would have been if those tingling little glances didn’t have the unexpected result of making him totally aware of her, as well.
It was unconscionable, really, to have his attention so divided when he needed to focus the most.
But okay, so far, the game was going according to plan. Ellery was anxious enough to make some rash plays, but not enough to make him quit. Aidan knew the old bastard loved nothing more than to look good in front of his compatriots and would want to finish the game on a high.
Aidan’s clear-e
yed gaze fell on him now, the older man’s attention once again firmly wedged somewhere in the vicinity of Cara Chatsfield’s cleavage.
He told himself he was glad Ellery had been as distracted by her as many of the other men at the table because it made his job that much easier.
Still, he felt his jaw knot as he watched her smile and work the table, her long-limbed sensuality and graceful movements promising hours of untold delights.
She was very practiced for one so young. And very comfortable having older men paw her. Or was she? Now and then Aidan was sure he’d caught a hint of uncertainty in her expression. A hint that she wasn’t enjoying herself half as much as she pretended.
Yeah, he mocked himself, she’s a real woman of substance.
She played them. Some knew it and played along, hoping to get her into the sack anyway, but some didn’t and they were all but salivating. Aidan wondered if she was just biding her time. Waiting to see which one of them ended up on top before making her move. It would match his experience of women.
So why then, he asked himself not for the first time, did he find her so damned attractive?
An oil-rich sheikh broke into his unwanted musings by calling a time-out to use the bathroom. The croupier gave them fifteen minutes and all the men got up to stretch. Aidan didn’t. He could sit here all night if it meant destroying Martin Ellery. And he was more than halfway there.
His prowess, he knew, had surprised Ellery because Aidan wasn’t by nature a gambler. He’d always been too conservative. Like his father. But he knew poker was Ellery’s weakness and so Aidan had painstakingly learned the game. Learned to be good at it. His natural tendency to hide his emotions helped. Another trait he shared with his father.
His now-dead father, thanks to Martin Ellery’s criminal machinations fourteen years ago that had broken his father’s spirit. And now Aidan would break his. He would snap it in half. He would systematically destroy his pride, his reputation, his confidence … Hell, he wanted Ellery to lose his very reason for living. No man deserved it more.
And Ellery knew he was on the ropes; his dwindling stack of chips signified his run of rash calls and bad bluffs was coming to an end. A smarter man would have got up and walked away by now. Ellery’s ego would keep him at the table. Aidan knew it and he counted on it.
Stretching his legs out in front of him he signalled for another glass of iced tea. He hated the stuff, but to the other players it looked like whisky and it put them at ease. Made him look like a serious player.
Absently he noticed that Ellery had crossed the room and was holding Cara Chatsfield’s arm and once again, his gut tightened. The man had been pawing her all night and by the sound of Cara’s husky laugh she didn’t mind.
So hell, why should he?
It wasn’t like she was some naive little nobody. This was a woman who would go to the opening of an envelope. And for sure he had been wrong about the hint of vulnerability he’d noticed earlier. Maybe he’d been seeing something he wanted to see in her.
And why, he asked himself, would he want this woman to be anything other than what she was?
A vacuous bimbo. He let his eyes wander up her creamy throat to her full mouth and slanted emerald-green eyes ringed with black kohl. They had to be as fake as her hair. Though as to the latter he would admit that the pink gamin hairdo made her look like an erotic pixie. A very tall erotic pixie.
Just then she leaned closer to Ellery to hear whatever dribble was coming out of the swine’s mouth and he hated the dazzling smile on her face as she led him from the room. It was open and engaging and transformed her from beautiful to the kind of woman men went to war over.
And where the hell were they going now? Ellery’s suite? The break was only fifteen minutes. Surely Ellery would want to savour her if he got that chance.
Annoyed with the direction of his thoughts, Aidan settled more deeply into his chair and absently watched the glittering crowd. There were only two ways to make it into this room. Money or promise. The men usually had the former, the women the latter. It was the lay of the land. But not usually his land. Aidan usually worked, worked out and slept. In that order. Occasionally he dated and even more occasionally he joined members of his executive team for a drink. But since the death of his father last year, he’d been driven by a deep, yearning restlessness. A restlessness that he would finally put to bed after he crushed Martin Ellery and took everything that he held dear—his company and his self-worth.
Frowning as his gaze lingered on the private doorway Ellery and Cara had disappeared through, he tried to tell himself that the Chatsfield socialite was not his problem. That it was not his job to protect her if she was too stupid to see the man for what he was.
Aidan had made it a point years ago never to become emotionally involved in any issue, and really, Cara Chatsfield did not seem like the kind of woman who needed protecting from anyone but herself.
So did he care about whether or not the old man had his hands inside her dress? If he had his mouth on hers? If he was kissing his way down her creamy throat—
Hell.
‘Where does that door lead?’ he snarled.
The startled waitress he’d just accosted stared up at him. ‘The High Stakes bar and balcony that overlooks the Strip. But both are closed tonight, sir.’
Aidan grunted and set off. If anyone was going to touch that creamy throat it would be him and it wouldn’t be with his damned mouth.
Cara dodged Martin Ellery’s wandering hands yet again and sighed. She’d believed him when he’d said he wanted to see the spectacular view from the highly exclusive, but private, Chatsfield bar—the High Stakes—but even she wasn’t usually so gullible. Tonight the bar was closed as all eyes were supposed to be on the casino tables. The quietness of the dark-shadowed open-air bar was somehow more deafening than inside the casino.
Earlier she had felt sorry for Ellery when he’d told her how his first wife had lost their baby in a late miscarriage and how that girl would now be about Cara’s age. She wasn’t sure of the truth of his story anymore, but it didn’t matter because it was clear that all those light touches to her arm and the back of her hand had not had a fatherly intention behind them at all. Somehow, if she hadn’t been so worried about Aidan Kelly, she might have picked that up earlier and not found herself alone with him as she was now.
The volcano at the Mirage erupted behind her to the muted oohs and ahhs of the tourists far below, and Cara thought she might erupt, too, if this night didn’t end soon.
‘I hope you like the view and will come back another time to enjoy the bar when it is open,’ she demurred politely, straightening away from the edge of the balcony. ‘But now I really have to return to my duties.’
Before the fake smile on her lips had dimmed Ellery grabbed her forearm. ‘You know I didn’t come out here to look at the view, Cara.’ He stepped closer to her and somehow seemed bigger than before. ‘Come to my room later on. I know you want to.’
He knew she wanted to?
Cara hoped her disgusted outrage wasn’t blaringly obvious as she stared in stupefied silence at him. He might still be considered an attractive man to some women but what on earth had she done to give him the impression that he was attractive to her and, more importantly, how was she going to extricate herself from this situation without upsetting him so much he caused a scene that would get back to Christos?
Feeling as if her mind was a filing cabinet she was riffling through for just the right way to put him off she nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt his fleshy fingers dig into her hipbones, his body trapping hers against the cold metal railing.
‘Mr Ellery!’ She put her hands up between them. ‘I’m seeing someone.’
His eyes narrowed but he didn’t move back. ‘Who?’
Who? Who? God, did the man not know how to say die?
She glanced desperately towards the main casino doors, hoping like hell someone would come through them and rescue her when he cursed violen
tly, the glow of the fake volcano’s erupting flames throwing horrible reddish streaks across his overly tanned features.
‘Don’t tell me it’s Kelly.’
It took Cara a moment to realise he wasn’t referring to another woman but Aidan Kelly. She paused, her mind spinning. It was clear by the men’s interaction—or lack of—at the table that they didn’t like each other. At times she’d been sure she’d noticed flashes of almost fear cross Martin Ellery’s face when Aidan had won another round. Would it hurt to let him think that she was secretly dating Aidan Kelly? It might mean that he left her alone for the rest of the night. ‘A lady never tells,’ she murmured, knowing that he would take that as confirmation of his assumption.
‘Kelly’s a woman hater. Mark my words. He’ll break your tender heart, darlin’, and bury it along with every other woman’s in Australia.’
Considering she had no intention of giving Aidan Kelly the time of day after this horrible evening was over she wasn’t at all concerned about her heart—tender or otherwise.
Unbidden, a picture of Aidan Kelly’s handsome face came into her mind. When she’d first locked eyes with him at the airport she’d felt as if her heart had stopped beating. As if the ground had moved beneath her feet. Which of course it had because her shoe had been broken, but to her tragically romantic way of thinking he had looked like Prince Charming himself.
He wasn’t. She’d known that as soon as he’d growled at her, but it hadn’t stopped her from wanting to go out with him. To do more than that, she reluctantly admitted. She had looked at him with the same stars in her eyes that the stewardess had but he had only thought the worst of her and had ignored her ever since. Well, not exactly ignored her. She’d caught him watching her from time to time during the game and it had made her immediately aware of her body in a way that was uncomfortably hot.
And speaking of uncomfortable it was time to stop Martin Ellery’s fingers from digging into her waist as if he had a right to have them there. Pressing down on his arms she forced her lips into a smile. ‘Look, Mr Ellery—’
Socialite's Gamble Page 3
