Page 16 of His Last Gamble

Don’t let him notice that either, she thought frantically. Oh please!

She coughed, managing to dislodge her breath, and plastered a false smile onto her face. ‘So, what do I do?’ she asked brightly. And looked up to find him staring down at her, his eyes dreamily caressing the curve of her breast.

‘Hmm? Oh, with the chips you mean,’ he teased, watching yet again as she blushed in mortification.

Really, he must stop doing this to her. But it was so hard to resist. He did so love the way her icy, sometimes frightening beauty melted so charmingly into consternation.

‘Yes,’ Charmaine gritted. ‘You were going to teach me to play roulette, remember?’

This man was a monster! He knew exactly what a hold he had over women, and used it with all the skill of a surgeon wielding a knife. No wonder poor Lucy had been unable to resist him.

He was like a drug. Even now, as mad as she was with him, as humiliated and flustered, she was aware of the sharp pine tang of his aftershave. The smooth line of his jaw, freshly shaved, and the firm moulded line of his lips. She wanted to kiss him again. To be prepared this time, for the devastation of his mouth on hers — to revel in it, in fact.

Yes, she had no doubt loving this man would be an experience like no other. The surrender of mind and body to another, a giving over of the entire self to bliss.

Ah, but afterwards. When the drug was withdrawn, leaving a soul craving more . . . No, she must never succumb. He had to pay for what he’d done so callously to Lucy, and who knew how many others.

‘The wheel is on the table,’ Payne pointed out dryly, making the woman who’d moved over and several other gamblers sitting around the table laugh softly.

Her face flamed. Damn him! She’d been staring up at him like a moonstruck calf!

She didn’t realise it, but nobody was actually laughing at her. In fact, the men at the table were all looking at her appreciatively, and envying the casino owner his companion, while the woman who’d been usurped at the table sighed enviously. An older woman, dripping in diamonds, looked positively misty-eyed, sensing young love, and perhaps remembering past loves of her own.

But to Charmaine she felt as if she was suddenly the butt of everyone’s joke.

‘What do I do?’ she asked grimly, trying to smile, but wanting only to run and hide.

‘Well, you can bet on either black or red, but it doesn’t pay very well. Or you can bet on a specific number.’

‘Fourteen,’ she said promptly, the date of her birthday in February.

‘You’ve got to part with one of your chips, sweetheart,’ he murmured, raising her clenched fist with one hand and kissing the back of her knuckles. ‘Not even at the Palace do we bet with nothing but thin air.’

Again a ripple of indulgent laughter came from the others and she abruptly opened her palm, allowing him to pick out a single chip. She wanted to curl her fingers back into a fist and . . .

His eyes crinkled at the corners, and she could almost believe he could read her mind.

He reached forward and placed the chip on the fourteen square. The others had already made their bets, and with far less fuss, and the croupier spun the wheel.

All eyes turned to the spinning centrepiece, as if it held the answer to all of life’s mysteries.

All except her own gaze. She knew the odds of the ball falling into her own slot were almost astronomical. Instead she looked up at the man beside her. ‘Do you ever play?’ she asked.

‘Yes, but not here,’ he said softly. ‘There’d be no thrill,’ he explained at her puzzled look. ‘If I lose I haven’t really lost because the money returns to me. And if I win, I haven’t really won, because it’s my own money returning to me. No, when I gamble, I go to Monaco.’

Charmaine smiled dryly. Of course he did. What was she thinking of, even asking him?

‘And what did you win there? A yacht? A beach house?’ A woman?

Payne shrugged, a small secretive smile pulling at his lips.

Yes, it was a woman, she thought. She wouldn’t put it past him. She wouldn’t put anything past him.

A sudden wave of congratulation rent the tense air, and she turned back, confused, towards the table.

‘You win,’ Payne said, and her eyes shot to the small white ball, nestling in the fourteen slot.

‘I won?’ she echoed numbly.

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