Page 9 of His Last Gamble

CHAPTER THREE

The beach was idyllic — a curving crescent moon of white sand, palm trees, a calm aquamarine sea, and glorious, glorious sunlight.

As she nervously approached the Jonniee crew, set up midway on the beach, Charmaine could see that the junior photographer was already murmuring ecstatic comments about the quality of light as he gazed into his light meter. Phil, the senior photographer, was already set up, surrounded by the paraphernalia of his profession. As the ‘silent’ partner, Charmaine had never really watched photoshoots before. Oh, she’d been present in the audience at nearly all ofJonniee’s fashion shows and launches, though she had firmly resisted all of Jo-Jo’s attempts to get her up on the stage afterwards to acknowledge the plaudits of the critics and buyers alike. But she’d never before seen the nuts-and-bolts business of photoshoots. Only the glossy perfection of their results in magazines and on public billboards.

Now, she watched the other four models surreptitiously. All seemed perfectly at ease in robes, lounging on deck chairs, waiting for the call to action. Fizz, a tall, stunning woman with dark skin and bone structure to die for, even seemed to be snoozing, two pieces of cucumber covering her soulful eyes. Jinx, in contrast, was here there and everywhere, fixing her make-up in the mirrors, rooting through the outfits, generally buttering up Phil. Dee-Dee, a brunette with hair even longer than Charmaine’s, was reading a book. She thought she’d heard her say on the plane over that she was studying archaeology at college. The final girl, with a pixie face and a bell-bob of orange-coloured hair stared, bored, into the sea. Coral, she thought her name was.

‘Relax, you’ll be fine,’ Jo-Jo said, coming up alongside her and making her jump. ‘We already know from the try-outs we did back in London that the camera loves you.’

It was one thing to be beautiful, Jo-Jo knew, another thing altogether to be photogenic. But the freelancer he’d hired had assured him that Charmaine had the ‘it’ factor to be a model, if only she’d lose the bashfulness. Which was, Jo-Jo had assured him with a wink, just what he was trying to get her to do!

But now she looked as tense as a violin string. She was watching one of the gophers set up poles in the sand, tying gaily striped bed sheets along them to make a private changing enclosure for the girls, and looking as if she wished herself a thousand miles away.

‘Just remember what you’ve learned, and you’ll be fine,’ he said brightly.

Tacked onto a lamp post, near the road edge of the beach, Charmaine’s nervous eye caught the word ‘Palace’, and curious, moved a step or two closer, then grimaced as she read it.

The sign was advertising the upcoming Weekend Extravaganza celebration of Payne Lacey’s decade of ownership. Already several people were reading it, discussing the promise of a truly luxurious, no-holds-barred evening of the finest wines, gourmet titbits, celebrities and of course, gambling opportunities.

‘That guy sure has got it made,’ she heard one of the young men sigh wistfully, a beach attendant from a hotel further up the strip. ‘All the island papers are running a spread about it. As if the place doesn’t rake in dollars like there’s no tomorrow anyway. And to think, the guy got the place for nothing.’

Jo-Jo rose one laconic eyebrow. ‘Oh, not for nothing, surely,’ he protested. ‘You mean it was going cheap at the time. Property prices in a rut, or was the gambling licence in doubt?’

The beach attendant, a native Bahamian, chuckled, delighted to have come across someone who didn’t know the island’s worst kept secret.

‘No, I mean it literally. Didn’t you know? Mr Lacey won the place. In a game of poker.’

Charmaine gasped.‘He what?’

‘True, I swear.’ He held up a hand. ‘Yves St Germaine, the owner at the time, wanted to get his hands on a small hotel Mr Lacey owned in the States. It wasn’t that he wanted the hotel, you see, but because he was part of a big conglomerate that had been buying up real estate on that bit of coast in order to construct a marina.’

Charmaine smiled dryly. No doubt Payne had got wind of what was going on and bought the hotel, just so that he could force up the price when he turned out to be the only one not selling.

‘Go on,’ Jo-Jo said, fascinated.

‘Well, the poker game got out of hand. There was some a Middle-Eastern billionaire sitting in who kept raising the stakes, and there was far too much booze flowing, or so they say. Anyway, Mr St Germaine got reckless and bet his casino against Mr Lacey’s hotel, plus every cent Mr Lacey owned.’

Charmaine paled. ‘And he took the bet?’ she whispered, appalled. How could a man do such a thing? To bet a hotel against a property that had much more value, that was one thing. But to bet every penny?

The Bahamian grinned, no doubt with pride and respect for a man with so much courage.

‘He sure did. And won too. Mr St Germaine was sick as a dog over it later, when he sobered up, and threatened to take the issue to court, but of course he didn’t. There were too many high-flying witnesses for him to back out. He never did get the hotel Stateside, either. Mr Lacey held onto it to muscle his own way in onto the board of the conglomerate building the marina. They say that he made his second fortune with that.’

Charmaine had heard enough.

What kind of man did such outrageous things? What if he’d lost? What if he’d walked away from the game with only the clothes on his back?

He’d have clawed back another fortune, of course,a little voice said reprovingly in the back of her mind. What else would a man like that do?

Ruthlessly, she shrugged the thought away. A woman would never be able to trust a man like that. Never know, from one moment to the next, what insanity he might conceive of next. It would be no good giving your heart to such a man, let alone marrying him.

Charmaine brought herself up short. Marry him? Now what had made her think of that. There was no question of giving her heart to Payne Lacey. Only in making him think she had done, and then wresting his own heart back in return. Then she could take the utmost pleasure in breaking it in half and handing it back to him. On a silver platter worthy of the owner of the Palace, naturally.

‘Looks as if Phil’s ready to go,’ Jo-Jo said, shaking her out of her reverie, and sinking her, once again, into a blue funk of nerves.

Phil called Coral up first, getting her to pose with a piece of driftwood strategically draped with seaweed. As the orange-haired pixie stood up, Charmaine saw that she’d already changed into one of her designs, a bathing suit in near-fluorescent oranges, yellows and greens, with a diaphanous beach robe.

She watched, getting more and more nervous as Coral cavorted and smiled, pouted, threw back her head, did a little jig, and generally looked the essence of flirtatious, vibrant young womanhood.

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