Her High Stakes Playboy

Kristin Hardy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book would not have been possible without

the generous help of Tyra Bell-Bloom of the

Venetian Resort, David Brandon of Brandon

Galleries, Gini Horn of the American Philatelic

Society, Chris Johns of the Las Vegas Police

Department, Bill Welch, retired editor

of the American Philatelist magazine, and, of course, Stephen, the Hardy part of Kristin Hardy. All errors are mine.

Dear Reader,

I’m a firm believer that you’ve got to try new things in order to stay fresh, both as a person and (for me) as a writer. Gwen’s book marks my first dip into romantic mystery/suspense. I’ve watched other people do it for a long time and was itching to try my hand at the genre. I’m an avid mystery reader, so building a suspenseful story of my own was a fun challenge – layering in the mystery and suspense while keeping the focus on the emotional development and the trademark Blaze® heat took some doing, but in the end I think it worked.

I hope you’ll write to me at Kristin@ kristinhardy.com and tell me how I did, and whether you’d like to see more books of this type from me in future. Sign up for my newsletter at www.kristinhardy.com for contests, recipes and updates on my recent and upcoming releases.

Have fun,

Kristin Hardy

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Copyright

Prologue

GWEN CHASTAIN CHEWED HER LIP and studied her cards. “D’you have any jacks?” she asked, one leg curled up under her on the kitchen chair.

The man across the table from her scratched at his salt-and-pepper hair and frowned. “Well, now, I can’t say for sure, here. Is that the one wearing a crown?”

“No, the one wearing a crown is a king.”

“Ah.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Is it the lady?”

She giggled and swung her free foot back and forth at the knee. “You know a jack’s not a lady, Grampa. No fair trying to fool me.”

“Well, then, I’d better just say go fish.”

Gwen reached for the cards just as the kitchen door opened and her mother swept in wearing a swirl of bright color, her hair covered with a red-and-orange patterned turban. “Gwennie, why aren’t you ready? We have to leave for the library now.”

Gwen swung her foot harder. “Can I stay here with Grampa instead?” She didn’t want to go stand in front of a room full of kids and tell what it was like to live in Africa. She knew she ought to feel lucky to be able to do it, her mother told her all the time. She didn’t feel lucky, though. She just felt weird. They always looked at her like a zoo exhibit.

Her big sister Joss bounded into the room. Joss was nine, a whole year older than Gwen, and never felt weird about anything. Joss loved being the center of attention. She could make even Gwen think living in Africa was a cool thing. But then Gwen would remember that Africa was more than zebras and elephants.

Africa was heat and flies. Africa was longing for the cool blue San Francisco Bay that glittered now outside the window. Africa was driving into a dusty village with her physician parents to be surrounded and stared at, unfamiliar hands plucking at her sun-bleached hair, touching her white skin.

Africa was always being different.

“Let the girl stay with me, Glynnis,” her grandfather said. “You’re going back too soon as it is. We’ll play cards until Mark gets home and then we’ll all come meet you at the library.”

“Well…”

Gwen knew she ought to change and go with her mother and Joss, but she didn’t want to. Sometimes when she and Grampa were alone they’d play poker and drink cola from frosty mugs and he’d let her win all his pocket change. She crossed her fingers.

“Come on, Mom,” Joss said, bouncing impatiently.

“All right, she can stay.” Glynnis ran a fond hand over Gwen’s hair and Gwen felt a surge of warmth swamped by guilt. Then she turned to give her mother a kiss and wished, as she always did, that she could put the bad feelings away. She knew what her parents did in Africa was important. She just wished, oh, she wished as the door closed behind Joss and her mother, that it could be someone else’s parents doing it.

The tablecloth was a cheerful blue patterned in dancing teapots. Gwen rubbed one of the spouts. In Mozambique they didn’t have kitchen chairs, just stools, and the oiled wood of their low, round table was only covered with a brightly dyed tablecloth on special occasions. Some of the Physicians Without Frontiers workers lived in a special compound, but Gwen’s parents liked living out among the people they were there to help. It was a priceless education that they were getting, her mother insisted. It would make them like nobody else.

But Gwen didn’t want to be like nobody else. All Gwen had ever wanted was to be ordinary.

1

“YOU HAD SEX WHERE?” GWEN CHASTAIN stared at her sister, Joss, who leaned nonchalantly against the counter of the stamp shop’s kitchenette.

Joss adjusted the strap of her splashy red sundress. It was too provocative for the business of selling rarities, but Gwen knew better than to tell her. “In the elevator of the Hyatt Regency. Loosen up a little bit, Gwen, it’s not like we got caught.”

“Normal people don’t have sex in glass elevators.”

Joss rolled her eyes. “If you’d ever stop dating boring men, maybe you’d find out. You need to date a guy who’s not afraid to mess you up a little. You need to have sex on elevators, let your hair down a little while you’re still able. You act like you’re sixty already.”

“And you act like you’re sixteen. It’s a good thing Mom and Dad are in Africa,” Gwen muttered, pouring herself a mug of coffee, careful not to splash any on her tidy taupe suit. A faint hint of makeup accentuated her blue eyes, framed by stylishly discreet glasses that made her look older than her twenty-four years.

Joss snorted. “Are you kidding? Honey bunch, your mother’s done wilder things than that.”

“Way more information than I needed to know,” Gwen told her, doctoring her coffee with soy milk.

“Haven’t you ever talked with her about when she was young?”

Gwen gave her a queasy look. “This is not a conversation I want to have. I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“Shoot, when Mom and Dad were dating, they—”

Gwen stuck her fingers in her ears. “La-la-la, I can’t hear you,” she sang out.

“Oh, c’mon, you can’t say you’ve never been curious.”

“Not about the sleeping together parts, no. I suppose you asked her all about them.”

“Of course.” Joss grinned at her and turned to open the little refrigerator. “So how can we be sisters when you get so freaked out about everything that Mom and I do?” she asked as she fished out a can of Coke.

“Are you kidding? Sometimes I wonder if I’m even from the same family.” How else could a person who prized normalcy as much as Gwen explain her free-spirit mother happily taking her doctor husband, her young daughters and her six years of medical training into a life in the African bush? Gwen looked at Joss, vivid and curvy, her dark hair tumbling down her back in a gypsy mane, so unlike Gwen’s quiet not-quite-brown, not-quite-blond French twist. Joss had turned positively wild after Gwen had moved back to the States at fourteen. Joss had stayed in Africa while Gwen had settled into her grandparents’ San Francisco home and a college prep course with a sigh of relief.

And wished her mother’s wild streak good riddance. Gwen was all about discreet, down to her understated loveliness that was only apparent to those who looked. Her straight nose tipped just a bit at the end. Her chin was just strong enough to hint at a stubborn streak. Only her mouth spoiled the picture, a little too generous, a little too promising. Dusky pink lipstick accented it only faintly. Anything more, she knew, would only attract attention. It was hardly what she wanted during work hours.

“You just got the Chastain conservative gene,” Joss said, cracking open her Coke. “It skips a generation. God knows Daddy didn’t get it.”

“And you have no idea how that pains Grampa.” Gwen turned to leave the kitchen, passing through the door to the main showroom.

“Not nearly as much as it pains him that Daddy married a woman who was raised in a commune.” Joss grinned, trailing after her.

“I’m serious, Joss,” Gwen protested.

“I know, I know, he wants to leave him the stamp empire.” She snorted. “Giving up sunrise on the veld for little squares of colored paper.”

“Some of those squares of colored paper are worth half that veld.” Gwen punched in the multipart code that deactivated the sophisticated alarm system on the front door; as always, she left the back door armed unless they were using it.

“Okay, so Grampa plays in the big leagues. Dad would still be miserable doing it. Grampa should leave it to you. He’s practically handed it over to you already as it is.”

“He’s not leaving it to anyone.” Gwen set her coffee on the top of a crimson-lined display case containing stamp tongs and mounts. “He’ll take it apart as soon as he and Grandma get back from their trip. It just takes time.” She pulled out her keys and walked to the front door, stooping to undo the floor lock. “He’s had some of these clients for decades. You don’t break that up overnight.” Opening the door, she stepped outside to unlock the sliding steel gates that protected the little storefront. Beyond her, traffic whizzed back and forth on Clement Street in San Francisco’s Richmond district.

“Sure you do.” Joss took one side of the gates, pushing it back to the wall. “Tell ’em you’re going out of business and to find a new advisor. I’m sure Grampa could recommend a bunch of people.”

“That’s not the point. Some of these guys might just want to get out of investment stamps period if Grampa’s retiring. They trust him. He’s got a couple of accounts he’s liquidating already.” Gwen finished tucking her side of the gate back into its hidey-hole and turned to the shop door. Glancing at her slim gold watch, she frowned. “I see Jerry’s late again. Nice that he’s dependable.”

“Oh, lay off Jerry. He’s okay,” Joss countered, following her back inside.

“Jerry’s hot for you. Of course you think he’s okay.”

Joss rolled her eyes. “Please. Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

“Of Jerry? Hardly.” The truth was, Jerry gave Gwen a faint case of the creeps for no good reason she could name. On the surface he seemed fine, and if he was maybe a little too slick, a little too accommodating, that was her own problem. His references had checked out over the phone. Coins, granted, not stamps, but at least he had experience with fine collectibles. She had a few too many degrees of separation from the dealer in Reno to get a personal verification, but there had been nothing to confirm the small stirring of uneasiness she felt about Jerry. And the truth was, if he hadn’t been on board and trained, Gwen couldn’t have gone to the estate sale in Chicago two days earlier.

She didn’t know where the restlessness had come from. Maybe from watching her grandparents leave for a three-month tour of the South Pacific. Maybe it was just the time of year. She’d had an undeniable urge to get out, stretch her wings. Vying with some of the top dealers in the world to come away with best properties did nicely. “Jerry’s just not my type.”

“Well, you don’t have to love everyone who works for you,” Joss threw back.

The original plan had been for Gwen to hire someone to help run the store during her grandparents’ long-planned trip. Then Joss had shown up broke and in need of a job. Gwen ought to have been impressed that it had taken almost two weeks before Joss was so bored she’d suggested hiring another clerk. Too bad Gwen had let herself be talked into Jerry.

“I’ve got no reason to think Jerry isn’t fine. I’m just a little uncomfortable around him,” she said irritably, punching her code into the cash register to start it booting.

“He’s noticed. I think it hurts his feelings the way you hang out in the back room and never talk with him.”

“You talk with him just fine. That was the deal, remember? You work the store, I work the investment accounts.” And avoid Jerry.

“The front of the store’s important, too,” Joss reminded her. “We made some money while you were gone. Jerry’s good at selling.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Gwen picked up her coffee mug. “Call me if you get a sudden run and need help. I’ve got to log in the new acquisitions and get them into the safe.”

GWEN STUDIED THE TEAL-BLUE stamp through the magnifying glass. Across it a stylized steam train chugged—left to right instead of the right to left as it was supposed to. She checked the perforations and used tongs to turn the stamp so she could study the back. Inspect, confirm, log. This was the part of an acquisition she relished—poking through to get a firsthand look at all the new treasures, finding the hidden surprises.

And in this collection there had been more than a few.

She rolled her shoulders to loosen the muscles, then adjusted the headset she wore to keep her hands free during phone calls. For a minute she allowed herself to just sit in the blessed quiet of the back office. She’d always loved the store, from the time she’d begun helping out her grandfather at fourteen. After college it just hadn’t seemed right to move on—working the business had engaged her mind fully, and her econ and accounting degrees had made her more valuable to her grandfather than ever.

The place didn’t feel the same without him, even though he was only on an extended vacation. “Practice retirement,” Hugh Chastain had laughingly labeled his wife’s cherished four-month trip to New Zealand, Australia and Polynesia. So what if the process of shutting down the business hadn’t proceeded on schedule? There would be time to close things down properly when they returned.

Gwen tried not to mourn it.

Even though she had a nagging sense that she ought to be out fighting her way up the corporate ladder, she didn’t regret a minute of the three years she’d spent since graduation learning the investment ropes, polishing her expertise. Stamps fascinated her—the colors, the sometimes crude art, the shocking jumps in value of some of the rarities. The clients who chose investment philately over, or in addition to, the more traditional stock market were driven by a certain streak of romanticism, she suspected. There was no beauty or history to an online stock account. You couldn’t pick up a mutual fund with tongs.

Not that they kept any of the investment accounts in the store, of course. A safe-deposit box was the place for holdings whose values could reach into the hundreds of thousands or even millions.

Or it ought to be, she thought, glancing at the wall safe with her usual twinge of discomfort.

She put her grandfather’s stubbornness out of her mind and resumed the process of inspecting and logging the new collection. The auction catalog had focused on the plums, the Columbian Exposition issues and the 1915 Pan Pacifics. She’d never expected to find a mint block of four early Cayman Islands stamps, and the profit from their sale would more than pay for the trip. She already had plans for the Argentinian and Brazilian issues.

Thoughtfully she set down her stamp tongs and reached for the Scott catalog just as the phone rang. She punched a button and a man’s voice greeted her.

“Gwen, how’ve you been? It’s Ray Halliday.”

“Hi, Ray.” It was amazing how quickly word got around about who was and wasn’t at an auction, she reflected. Suddenly people you hardly knew became your best friend.

“Did you go to the Cavanaugh sale?”

He knew the answer to that already or he wouldn’t be on the phone to her. “It seemed worth the trip.”

“How’d you make out?”

He undoubtedly knew the answer to that, too. “I’m looking it over right now.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Maybe.” She turned back a page or two and lifted a quartet of stamps from their mount to inspect them. “Don’t you have a client who specializes in Caribbean issues?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’ve got a nice little block of four early Cayman Islands. Very fine, by the looks of it.”

“I didn’t see that listed in the catalog.”

Gwen grinned. “Pays to actually get out and do some legwork, Ray.”

“I suppose this is going to cost me,” he grumbled.

“I’ve got to get something for my time and travel,” she said reasonably. “The question is, what’s it worth to you?”

The dickering over price didn’t take as long as she’d expected. After eleven years in the business, they’d finally realized she was no pushover. Her grandfather had taught her well.

“Anything else I might care about?”

“Just some South American issues that already have a home.”

“Stewart Oakes, no doubt,” he said sourly.

“Now, Ray, what kind of businesswoman would I be if I told you all my secrets?”

“A wealthier one. I’ll pay you more than he will.”

“If I need the money, you’ll be the first to know.”

She was still chuckling as she depressed the button on the phone. Might as well call Stewart while she was thinking of it. She hit a speed-dial number.

“Stewart Oakes.”

“You missed out at the Cavanaugh sale.”

“Gwennie.” The pleasure was warm in his voice. Only her family were allowed to call her by that nickname—her family and the man who’d helped her understand life in the U.S. back in the early days when she’d first arrived from Africa. Stewart Oakes had been her grandfather’s employee and protégé, but at thirty-five, he’d also been young enough and hip enough to introduce a shy fourteen-year-old to grunge music, Thai food and a culture she’d been separated from since she’d been a toddler.

“Got some goodies for you, Stewie.”

“Always nice to know you’re thinking of me.”

“Well, you’re going to love these.”

“I bet.”

“Careful, now, I thought you were giving that up.”

“Hey, I moved to L. A. and left behind my home poker game, didn’t I?”

“And we miss you every week.”

“Nice to know I’m appreciated.”

“And we miss the money we used to win from you.”

“Cheap shot, Chastain.”

She laughed and reached for another catalog even as the intercom buzzed. “Hold on a second, Stewart.” She pushed the button for the intercom. “What do you need, Joss?”

“I’ve got too many people out here. Can you come out?”

“Where’s Jerry?”

“He still hasn’t shown up.”

Gwen gave herself a moment to steam. “Okay, I’ll be right out.” She took Oakes off hold. “Stewart? I’ve got to run help Joss at the front of the store. Can I call you back?”

“I’ll be here.”

Gwen gathered the stamp albums together and slipped them into one of her desk drawers, locking it carefully. Even so, it nagged at her a bit that some one hundred thousand dollars in stamps was protected only by a desk lock that any self-respecting toddler could pick. A hundred grand of the most liquid, easily portable wealth known.

In countries with unstable stock markets—or none at all—stamps provided a relatively safe investment. Gold coins were heavy, they took up space. Mounted properly, a stamp worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars could be slipped into a square of cardboard, tucked into a wallet or the inside pocket of a suit, walked over international borders and converted into cold, hard cash in virtually any major city in the world.

SHE WAS BACK IN HER OFFICE when four o’clock hit. A muted “hallelujah” from the front, followed by the rattle of the steel security gates, told her that Joss was closing up. It had been a good day, all in all, Gwen thought in satisfaction as she stacked up the stamp albums. She’d logged three quarters of the collection, had set aside the cream for important clients and found stamp dealers only too happy to take on the rest. They’d make money out of the deal. It was a small triumph for her.

Joss stuck her head into the room. “The front is all locked up, nice and tight.”

Gwen swung back the white board that concealed the wall safe. She inserted her key and spun the dial of the combination lock. “First thing tomorrow I’m firing Jerry,” she told Joss. “Then I’m going to put an ad in the help-wanted section.” The dial moved smoothly under her fingers.

“You can’t just fire someone out of the blue, can you?” Joss asked. As the day had gone on, her defense of Jerry had ebbed. “Can’t he take it to the employment board? What if something came up?”

“And what, he couldn’t even call? Joss, he’s been late to one degree or another for seventeen of the twenty days he’s worked for us.”

Joss raised her eyebrows. “You kept track?”

“Of course I kept track. I’m an employer, that’s what you have to do. If he wants to protest, I can show cause.” Gwen spun the dial to its final position and opened the door.

And stared in alarm.

2

“DID YOU OPEN THE SAFE WHILE I was gone?” Gwen’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in her ears.

“No.” Joss crowded up behind her to look at the stack of stamp albums in the safe. “What are you talking about?”

“The books have been moved. I always put them in the same way every time. Joss, you swear you haven’t touched anything?”

“Cross my heart.”

Stay calm, Gwen ordered herself. Maybe she’d been careless the last time she’d unlocked the safe door. Maybe she hadn’t put things back the usual way. In her gut, though, she knew.

Someone had been in the safe.

She spilled the albums onto the desk, opened them with shaking fingers. There was no point in bothering with the blue books that held the store inventory or the green book that held some of her own acquisitions. They didn’t matter. Not now. She focused solely on the burgundy albums that held her grandfather’s collection—the books that held his treasures, his pride and joy, bits of his childhood.

The books that held his retirement.

Holding her breath, she opened one and flipped through to the back, made herself look.

And her mouth went dry as dust. “They’re gone.”

“What’s gone?”

Gwen battled the wave of nausea that threatened to swamp her. “Grampa’s best stamps. The Blue Mauritius. The one-penny Mauritius. The British Guiana one-cent. And maybe more.” Definitely more, the voice of certainty whispered to her. She’d seen at least two other blank spots as she’d flipped through.

Gwen squeezed her eyes tight shut and then opened them to stare at the empty squares. Why had her grandfather insisted on keeping his collection close at hand instead of safely in a bank vault? She knew his reasons, knew the joy he got from regularly looking at his holdings, but they didn’t outweigh the risk.

And now her worst fears had come to pass.

Joss stared at her. “Those were his big stamps, right? My god, what are we talking about—forty, fifty thousand?”

“Not even close.” Gwen’s lips felt stiff and cold. “The last Blue Mauritius auctioned went for nearly a million dollars.”

HALF AN HOUR LATER, GWEN stretched to ease the iron pincers of tension. She’d gone through every one of the books meticulously, recording what was missing.

It was worse than she’d imagined.

The four most important issues of her grandfather’s collection were gone: four nearly unique single stamps and one block of twenty, in aggregate worth some four and a half million dollars. The inventory books were missing another thirty to forty thousand dollars in more common, lower-value issues.

“Grampa has other investments, right? This is just a part of what he’s got.” Joss didn’t ask but stated it a little desperately, as though saying it would make it so.

Gwen shook her head. “He says he trusts his judgment when it comes to stamps, that he doesn’t know anything else as well.”

“This is it? This is all he has for retirement?”

“Had,” Gwen said aridly. “There’s maybe a million left at this point.”

Joss spun and reached for the phone. “I’m calling the cops.”

“No!” Gwen’s tone of command was so absolute, it stopped her dead. “That’s the one thing we absolutely can’t do right now.”

“What are you talking about? There’s millions of dollars in property missing. We’ve got to do something.”

“But not that,” Gwen emphasized.

“Why not?” Joss glared at her, inches away.

“All an investment dealer like Grampa has is his reputation. He’s still got about twenty-five live accounts right now waiting to be closed out, some of them with millions in holdings. And every one of them has a clause in their contract that if he sells their stamps below current catalog price, he’ll have to make up the difference.”

“So?”

“So, if they hear about the theft and decide they don’t trust him anymore, they may want out immediately. If he has to sell in a rush instead of at the right time, and if buyers know he’s hurting, he’ll definitely have to sell below catalog.” Gwen swallowed. “And there goes the other million.”

Gone. All gone. It made her shiver. They were his pride and joy, part of what made the philately business vibrant to him. The loss was unimaginable.

She leafed through one of the store inventory albums, staring at the empty squares. A fifteen-cent stamp showing Columbus’s landing, worth maybe three thousand dollars. An 1847 Benjamin Franklin stamp worth six. Why bother, she wondered suddenly. The store inventory stamps were chump change compared to the major issues. Gwen chewed on the inside of her lip. Then again, the important stamps would be difficult to unload immediately; there would be questions. The inventory stamps would provide a thief with money in the meantime.

A thief who knew how the world of fine collectibles worked.

“Jerry,” Gwen said aloud.

“Jerry?”

“It couldn’t have been anybody else. The alarms weren’t tampered with, the security company doesn’t have any record of the slightest glitch. It had to be him.” Gwen rose to inspect the safe. “Nobody appears to have messed with this, but then I doubt he was an expert safecracker. Somehow I see Jerry as taking an easier route.” She turned to lean against the bookshelf full of reference catalogs. “Tell me he didn’t cook up some reason to get you to give him the key and combination.”

Joss’s eyes flashed. “Give me a break. I left them right here, safe and sound.”

“Here?” She resisted the urge to rant at Joss’s carelessness. “I told you to keep them safe. Where did you put them?”

“In the desk drawer.” Joss raised her chin. “I locked it.”

A lock any self-respecting toddler could break.

“I didn’t want to lose them. I figured this would be the only place I’d need them so I might as well leave them close by.” She stared at Gwen. “You don’t know it was Jerry.”

It wasn’t Jerry Joss was defending, Gwen knew. Joss didn’t want to think it was Jerry because she didn’t want to think she was at fault for the theft. But she wasn’t at fault. Gwen, in the final analysis, had made the decision to hire him. Gwen had been the one in such a hurry to get out of town that she’d left Joss in charge of the store and the safe.

If anyone was at fault, it was she.

The key and combination lay in the paper-clip compartment of the drawer, Gwen saw, but it didn’t mean a thing if Jerry were as quick as she thought. “Was he ever alone in the shop?”

“Of course not,” Joss snapped. “I was here to open every morning and here to close down and set the alarm at night. Things were always locked up. I checked.”

“Was he ever alone here at all?”

“Never.” Joss paused, then stiffened slightly. “Except…”

“Except when?”

Joss closed her eyes briefly. “Yesterday. Lunch. He offered to buy, but the deli was shorthanded and not delivering. He said he’d pay if I went to get them.” She hesitated. “I was broke.”

“How long were you gone?” It wouldn’t have taken much time, Gwen thought, not if he’d been prepared.

Not if he’d known what he was looking for.

“Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty,” Joss told her. “There was a line and they’d missed our order.”

“Convenient.”

“How was I supposed to know?” Joss flared. “We’d hired him. I thought that meant we were supposed to trust him. There’s an explanation,” she muttered, grabbing the phone and punching in a number. She waited and an odd look came over her face.

“What?” Gwen asked.

“Jerry’s cell phone. It’s shut off.” She set down the receiver.

Gwen swallowed. “Why change the number on a cell phone unless you don’t want to be found.” On impulse she turned to her keyboard. It took only a minute to send a quick e-mail out to a stamp dealers’ loop she belonged to, asking if they’d recently acquired the five-cent Ben Franklin or the Columbian landing stamp. If they popped up somewhere, it might give her an indication of where Jerry was fencing them. It might give her a place to start from.

Mostly it was a way to keep busy. Activity kept her from screaming. She had to get them back, pure and simple.

“That son of a bitch,” Joss muttered suddenly. Taking two steps to a cabinet on the wall, she yanked out her purse. “Give me your car keys.”

“Where are you going?” Gwen demanded, rising.

“To find Jerry.”

“I DON’T THINK THIS IS A GOOD idea.”

“It’s your chance to live on the edge,” Joss snapped, driving so quickly that Gwen’s silver Camry bottomed out at the base of the hill.

Gwen winced. “So how do you know where he lives?”

“We went out to see a band while you were gone. He invited me back for a drink.”

Gwen looked at her in horror. “You didn’t…”

“Of course not,” Joss told her impatiently, following the streets into the Mission district. “I saw his building and thought I could probably live without seeing the inside.”

Gwen nodded. “I thought you were sure he didn’t do it. So why are you flying off the handle?”

“I want to find out.” Joss scanned the street for an opening and started to whip into a space to park.

“Why don’t you get out and let me do it?” Gwen couldn’t bear Joss’s Braille-style approach to parallel parking. Still, even with her experience, it took several tries to get the car in place. “Okay, it’s probably smart to see if he’s around,” she said aloud as she got out of the car. “If there’s a reasonable explanation, maybe we’ll find it out and then we’ll know to look somewhere else.” Where else, she had no idea, but she knew in her gut that it came down to tracking the stamps stolen from the store inventory.

They stood on cracked sidewalk looking up at a sagging Victorian that had seen better days. “He might have been a snappy dresser, but he sure lived in a pit,” Gwen commented, studying the peeling gray paint on the shingled building.

“Now you know why I decided not to go in.”

It was a residence hotel, the kind of place that catered to the transient trade. Gwen’s stomach began to gnaw on itself. She’d never bothered to check to see how long he’d been living at the address he’d given. Then again, at a place like this, twenty dollars to the front desk clerk would pretty much get the person to say whatever he wanted.

And, with luck, twenty dollars would get them into his room.

It took forty. “Why do you want him?” An unsmiling dark-eyed woman, her hair skinned back from her face, stared at them from behind the desk.

“He’s got something of ours,” Gwen told her.

“Yeah, well, he’s got something of ours, too,” the woman said sourly. “He skipped on the rent.” She studied the folded twenties Gwen had slipped her and the line between her brows lessened. Abruptly she jerked a thumb at the hall. “I’m cleaning out his room right now. Wait for me at the top of the stairs.”

The dim stairwell held the musty smell of a building that had seen too many anonymous people pass through. The paper on the walls might have been flocked forty or fifty years before. Now it was dingy and scarred. At the end of the hall a parallelogram of light from an open door slanted across a cleaning cart sitting on the bare pine floorboards.

Gwen glanced at Joss. Footsteps sounded on the stairs behind them. “Over here,” the woman said briskly, walking past them toward the open door.

It was less grim than the hallway only because of the weak late-afternoon sunlight that streamed in through the single window onto the dirty beige carpet. What little of it that wasn’t covered by the bed and bureau and uncomfortable-looking chair that constituted the main furnishings, anyway.

“I ask him for his rent and he says tomorrow.” The woman stood nearby. “Always ‘tomorrow’ with him.”

Empty drawers gaped open in the scarred bureau. No clothes hung on the open steel rack in the corner that served as a closet. Gwen drifted to the window. She itched to pull out the drawers, look underneath them and on the ends for hidden envelopes, to check under the mattress, but she didn’t think the forty dollars would get her that far. Instead she poked her head into the tiny bathroom.

“You have a lot of business?” Joss asked, squinting into the cloudy square of mirror fastened to the wall.

The woman shrugged. “Hey, I’m just the desk clerk. Trust me, if I owned this dump, it would look a lot nicer.”

“No idea where he went?” Gwen asked, walking over to stare out the window across to the neighboring building.

“Nope. We don’t exactly get a lot of forwarding addresses around here.” The woman dragged a vacuum cleaner in from the cleaning cart.

“Mind if I look in this?” Gwen asked, gesturing at the trash can.

“As long as you’ve had your shots.” She jerked her head toward it. “A real pig, this guy. Nothing in the trash can if it could go on the floor.”

Gwen poked gingerly through the refuse. Cigarette cartons, an empty toothbrush wrapper, a screwed-up McDonald’s bag that still held the scent of stale grease. Then her eyes widened. In the bottom of the bin were scraps of cardboard, the thin type that came on the back of a pad of paper.

The type that could be used to make a stiff pocket for a stamp.

She pulled some out of the waste bin, staring at Joss. In her eyes Gwen saw knowledge and acceptance.

And a bright flare of anger.

The woman picked up the bin. “Okay, you guys had your chance to look around. I got to get back to work.”

Gwen nodded slowly. “So do we,” she said and turned toward the door. Her foot scuffed against something. An open matchbook. Clement Street Liquors, it said—the business next door to the stamp shop. She leaned down to pick it up.

And glimpsed writing on the inside. Excitement pumped through her. Maybe it was nothing but maybe, just maybe…

“What’s that?” the woman asked.

“Matches.” Gwen held them up. “I could use some. All right with you?”

“Sure, whatever.”

“Thanks for letting us look around,” Gwen told her, already walking out. She didn’t say a word to Joss about it until they were outside, waited in fact until they were in the car. Hope formed a lump in her throat.

“Jerry buys his cigarettes at Clement Street Liquors,” Joss told her.

“Bought. Jerry’s long gone.”

“The question is where?”

Gwen opened up the matchbook and showed Joss the writing. “Maybe Rennie will know.” It was just a name and a phone number, but maybe it would lead them to a guy who’d know where to find Jerry. She dialed the number on her cell phone, her heart thudding.

“Thank you for calling the Versailles Resort and Casino, can I help you?”

Gwen blinked. “I’m looking for a guest named Rennie,” she said and spelled it out.

“Last name?”

Gwen hesitated. “I’m not sure. Try it as the last name.”

Keys clicked in the background. “We have no guest under that name.”

“Can you search under first names?”

The operator’s voice turned cool. “No, ma’am.”

“Okay, thank you.” Disappointment spread through Gwen, thick and heavy, as she hung up.

Joss looked at her questioningly.

“A hotel. They don’t have him listed.”

“So much for our lead. What do we do now?”

Gwen started the car. “We go home and call Stewart.”

“YOU’RE MISSING WHAT?”

Saying the words aloud made them more real. “The Blue Mauritius. The red-orange one-penny Mauritius. More.” Her stomach muscles clenched.

“Does Hugh know?”

“Not yet. They’re on their trip for another twelve weeks. I don’t know what to do, Stewart.” The words spilled out, and for the first time since she’d opened the safe, tears threatened. “He could wind up losing everything, everything, and it’s all my fault.” It was a relief to let the panic out. Stewart would know what to do. Stewart would help her.

If anyone could.

“It’s okay, Gwennie. It’s going to be okay,” he soothed. “Hugh has them insured, so even if we can’t get them back, he’ll get replacement value.”

“But he doesn’t,” she blurted.

“What?” His cool disappeared.

“The premiums went too high. He let the insurance lapse last year except the basic policy on the store. He put all the money into the business.” And his granddaughters were the weak link.

Stewart cursed pungently. “Dammit, what was he thinking? Why the hell didn’t he have them in a safe-deposit box?”

“You worked with him for ten years, Stewart. You know how stubborn he is.”

“That’s no excuse for not having them protected, though. That was the first thing he taught me—protect the clients’ holdings and protect your own.”

“It wasn’t just financial with him. He was a collector at heart.”

Stewart let out a sigh. “I know. Come on, it’s still going to be okay. We’re talking about world-famous issues. They’re not going to be easy to unload, especially if your thief is someone who doesn’t know the stamp world.”

“Oh, I have a good idea who the thief is,” she said grimly. “We hired on a new clerk, Jerry Messner, about a month ago. As near as I can tell, he’s bolted.”

“Coincidence?”

Gwen laughed without humor. “He had motive, he had opportunity. Security wasn’t compromised from the outside. You tell me.”

“You called the police?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Keep it that way for now. The last thing you need on this is publicity.”

Gwen nodded. “That was my thinking. I’m hoping we can get them back before we have to tell anyone.”

“Any ideas?”

“Maybe. The prize issues aren’t the only stamps missing. There’s another twenty or thirty thousand in value gone from the store inventory. Common issues he can unload pretty easily, get himself some money to tide him over.”

“Well, isn’t he a greedy little bastard,” Stewart said, an edge of helpless anger in his voice.

“I put out a few feelers on the loop, asking if there’s any action out there with the low-cost issues. I’m keeping quiet on the high-value ones for now.”

“Smart thinking.”

“If it is, it’s the first smart thing I’ve done since Grampa left.”

He sighed. “Don’t beat yourself up, Gwen. There’s no point. The thing to focus on is getting them back. I’ll tell you what, e-mail me a list of everything that’s gone. I’ll make a couple of quiet phone calls to a few people I trust, just to see if they’ve heard any word of some of the issues coming on the market.”

“As soon as we hang up,” she promised, reaching over to switch on her computer. “And Stewart?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. I feel a lot better knowing we’ve got some help.”

“It’s going to be okay, Gwen. Trust me on this.”

And for a moment, as Gwen hung up the phone, she felt as if it actually would be.

Joss stared at her as Gwen logged on to the Internet. “So, what did he say?”

“He’s going to ask around, see if anything’s surfacing.” Gwen sent Stewart the file she and Joss had compiled earlier.

“Is he going to tell people why he’s asking?”

“Stewart understands the situation. He’ll keep the theft quiet.”

Joss rose to pace around the office. “You know, I’m surprised. I would have picked you for the first one to run to the cops.”

“Normally I would have been,” Gwen told her, clicking on her e-mail in-box. “These are different circumstances.” She scanned the contents of the messages that popped up in her preview pane. “I just don’t want to blow—” The thought evaporated from her brain as she stared at the words on-screen.

Joss crowded up behind her. “Did you get something?”

It took her a couple of tries to speak. “It’s a dealer. He just bought a Ben Franklin, same perf, very good condition. It sounds like one of ours.”

“Well, call him.”

“I am.” Gwen scrolled down, searching for the contact signature at the bottom of the e-mail. And then suddenly she was yanking open the desk drawer and pulling out her purse.

“What? Where is he?”

“Las Vegas.” The blood roared in Gwen’s ears as she pulled out the matchbook and compared it to the numbers on-screen. “It’s the same area code as where Rennie is.”

Joss’s gaze took on a particular stillness. “Call it,” she ordered, her voice barely audible.

Hands shaking, Gwen dialed the number and listened to the tones of a phone ringing hundreds of miles away.

“Versailles Resort and Casino,” an operator answered crisply.

Gwen resisted the urge to cross her fingers. It couldn’t just be coincidence the stamp had surfaced there, it couldn’t. “Jerry Messner, please.” She crossed her fingers. All she needed was a chance.

There was a clicking noise in the background. “How was that spelled, please?”

Gwen told her.

The keys clicked some more. “One moment, I’ll connect you.”

And the line began to ring. Gwen banged down the handset hastily and stared at Joss. “He’s there.”

3

LIGHT, COLOR, NOISE. SLOT machines chattered and jingled in the background as Gwen walked through the extravagance that was the Versailles Resort and Casino.

“You want to tell me what I’m doing here again?” she asked Joss over her cell phone as she walked across the plush carpet patterned with mauve, teal and golden medallions. Ornate marble pillars soared to the ceiling overhead, where enormous crystal chandeliers glittered. Waitresses dressed in low-cut bodices and not much else hustled by carrying drinks trays. The casino had the sense of opulence, a decadent playground for the wealthy, though it was open to all comers.

Under the luxury, though, was the reality of gambling. The air freshener pumped into the cavernous main room of the casino didn’t quite dispel the lingering staleness of cigarette smoke. The faces of the gamblers held a fixed intensity as they hoped for the big score. Or hoped just to break even. She couldn’t have found anyplace more unlike herself if she’d tried.

Then again, she couldn’t have looked more unlike herself if she’d tried.

“You know why you’re there,” Joss said. “You’ve got to find Jerry.”

A balding man in his thirties glanced up from his computer poker machine as Gwen walked by. “Hey, baby,” he said, toasting her with a plastic glass that held one of the free drinks handed out by casino waitresses. After a lifetime of wanting to be unremarkable, Gwen had gone the other way completely. Exit Gwen and enter Nina, the bombshell.

“I look like a tart,” she hissed, tugging at her tight, low slung jeans and her scrap of a red top.

“You don’t look like a tart. You just look like a woman who’s not afraid to flaunt what she’s got.”

“Yeah, well, the flaunting part’s working.” A bellhop walking by tripped over his own feet and stumbled up with a grin. “Joss, this is not my style. This should be your job.”

“It had to be you,” Joss told her. “Jerry knows me too well. He’d recognize me in a second.”

“Like he’s not going to recognize me?”

“All Jerry’s going to register is blond, tight and built. I doubt he’s going to think much beyond his gonads. Anyway, you were always in the back room. He hardly saw you. And no way would he expect you to look like this. You’re different head to toe.”

“Tell me about it,” Gwen muttered, resisting the urge to pull up her neckline. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you took my regular clothes out of my suitcase.”

“I didn’t want you to be tempted to backslide,” Joss said smoothly. “You’ve got to be Nina through and through.”

Joss had effected quite a transformation, Gwen thought, catching sight of herself in one of the enormous gold-framed mirrors that hung on the wall. Gwen—tidy, understated Gwen—was gone. In her place was Nina, whose Wonderbra-induced cleavage alone was likely to distract Jerry from recognizing the person underneath. How Joss had managed to get her into a good salon without notice, Gwen had no idea, but her brownish hair was a thing of the past. Now it had the same streaky, sun-bleached blond look it had had in Africa, only better. The makeup artist had made her eyes more vivid, her smile more bright, somehow without making her look as if she’d troweled on the makeup. She was undercover and, she had to grudgingly admit, she looked good.

Just not like herself. Still, the sooner she got the job done, the sooner she could turn back into Gwen. “All right, well, I’m in the casino, so it’s time to get to work,” she said briskly.

“What’s the plan?”

“Haven’t a clue. Wander around and get the lay of the land. Watch for our friend. I’ll figure something out and call you tomorrow.”

“Have fun,” Joss said a little enviously. “Put a five spot on red for me. I’ve always liked red.”

“Right.”

Gwen switched off the phone and tucked it into her pocket. She was here. She was incognito. Now she just had to find Jerry, cozy up to him, figure out where the stamps were and spirit them away from him, all without being recognized.

Piece of cake.

Gwen drifted steadily through the ranks of slot machines and computer poker games, scanning the players. No Jerry in sight, but then he didn’t strike her as the type for a sucker’s game. He’d want cards, where he could influence the outcome.

She resisted the urge to yawn. Between the shopping, the styling, the packing and the flight to Vegas, it was nearly eleven—about the time she usually clocked out for the night. Since it was a weeknight, the ranks of the players had thinned out some. Maybe Jerry had gone to bed, too.

Yeah, right. She snorted at herself as she passed the croupiers at the craps tables. Jerry was more likely to stay up all night, sure in the knowledge he was going to hit it big, throwing away her grandfather’s money all the while.

As she crossed the broad carpeted avenue that separated the slots floor from the green tables of the real games, the suffocating crowd and noise lessened, replaced by a steadily rising sense of purpose. The people playing at these tables still relied on chance, but they knew their games, and the knowledge gave them a sense of confidence.

Gwen ambled casually down the aisles between tables, as though she couldn’t quite decide where to stop. No point in telegraphing to everyone that she was on the hunt. A tall, ebony-skinned dealer smiled at her. “Baccarat, lovely lady?”

Gwen shook her head, a faint flush tinting her cheekbones.

A burst of giggles rose from the blackjack tables behind her. “Oh, come on, Rennie, you know you’re a winner,” said a woman’s voice.

Gwen whipped her head around to see two female dealers laughing with the player sitting at their table. A single male player.

Rennie.

What were the chances that two guys named Rennie would be at the same hotel as Jerry? Coincidence? Maybe, but Gwen didn’t much like coincidence. She was a bigger fan of probabilities. Odds were that Rennie might very well know Jerry, and if he did, he could just lead her to him. And that was enough to make him her new best friend, she decided as the dealer going off shift walked away.

Gwen sat down next to Rennie and slid some twenties across to the dealer.

“Change a hundred,” announced the current dealer, an ample redhead with laugh lines liberally marking her middle-aged face. She slid a stack of chips across the table and used the paddle to push Gwen’s money into the bill slot.

Gwen studied Rennie out of the corner of her eye. His brown hair was a bit long on top, disordered, she imagined, by a long night at the tables. Even as she watched him, he ran a hand through it again, pushing it out of his eyes. He didn’t hunch tensely like the gamblers she’d seen at other tables or sprawl with exaggerated confidence. He just sat loose and relaxed, a glass of what looked like whiskey at his elbow, next to the stacks of chips that attested to a combination of luck and skill. He wore jeans and a pine-green shirt patterned in faded burgundy and gold. Clearly he’d chosen more for comfort than style.

Then he turned toward her, and she understood why the dealers had been giggling with him.

He looked as though his habitual expression was one of wry amusement. A startling green, his eyes held a glint of devilry that invited her to join in. His sideburns were just a bit long, making him look a bit like some nineteenth-century rake. A day’s worth of beard darkened his jaw.

And his mouth…

Adrenaline skittered through her veins.

“Welcome to the fun house,” he said.

The dealer shuffled the decks and refilled the shoe.

Flirt, Gwen thought feverishly. Keep him talking. Nina wouldn’t be struck dumb by his looks. Nina would be enjoying herself. “You looked like you could use a little company.”

“What I could use is luck. Did you bring any with you?” He looked her over.

Gwen glanced at his stacks of chips. “You don’t look like you’re having any problems with Lady Luck to me.” Lady Luck probably fell for that killer grin just like every other woman he met. She couldn’t be thinking about that now, though. She had to strike up a relationship with Rennie—and fast. If she let him walk away, she gave up her link to Jerry.

“Can I get you something to drink?” A waitress stood at Gwen’s elbow, tray in hand.

What to choose, Gwen wondered. She’d prefer white wine, but that didn’t really fit with her profile. A martini, maybe? Or… “A cosmopolitan, please.” At the expectant look of the dealer, Gwen pushed out two five-dollar chips. Her natural leaning was to bet a dollar at a time. Nina, though, wouldn’t do anything by halves. Nina would take chances.

With brisk efficiency the dealer laid the cards out. Gwen worked to concentrate. It wouldn’t do her any good to have found Rennie if she wound up broke and leaving the table in fifteen minutes. And she wasn’t about to put up another hundred. She’d already dipped into her savings account to finance the trip; she was going to make it last.

Her hand held an ace and a two, for a soft thirteen. The dealer had a seven showing and Rennie had a four. He took a sip of his whiskey and tapped his cards to indicate a hit. Gwen couldn’t tell if the three he got satisfied him or not, but he didn’t bust. He took a sip of whiskey and glanced over at her with interest. “Waitin’ on you, darlin’.”

Gwen tapped her cards, embarrassed to have been caught watching him. The seven she drew made her forget all about it, though. The dealer drew a nine and flipped over her hole card to show eighteen. Gwen’s surge of triumph was probably completely out of proportion to the fifteen dollars she’d won, but it was a good way to start.

Rennie turned over his cards to show a four and a nine and gave her that devilish smile again. This time it sent a pulse of adrenaline through her system that had nothing to do with nerves. “Looks like you brought me that luck.”

“Maybe I’ll stick around,” she said carelessly, picking up the chips the dealer slid her way.

“Maybe you should.” He had a way of looking at her as though she were the only thing in his field of view that interested him, as though the game were irrelevant now that she’d arrived.

Her cosmopolitan appeared at her elbow.

He raised an eyebrow. “Girlie drinks?”

“A woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do.”

“And I’m sure you do it well.” He lifted his whiskey and touched it to her glass.

Cool and sweet, the drink slid down her throat easily.

The dealer coughed. “Bets, please.”

Gwen studied her bet circle. Aggressive but not foolish. She slid six five-dollar chips into the circle.

Rennie gave her that look again, the one that said he knew exactly what she was thinking and it amused him. “Living large?”

“Feeling lucky.”

And her feeling was borne out when the dealer busted, leaving them both ahead.

“So, you out here for business or pleasure?” she asked casually.

“Business, but no reason it has to be all work. How about you?”

“Pleasure. I was supposed to meet a friend named Jerry, but he had to bail.” This, of course, was his lead-in to talk about his own friend named Jerry, but he didn’t bite.

Instead he just raised an eyebrow and pushed out a couple of chips. “A friend friend or just a friend?”

Gwen flushed. “Just a buddy.”

“His loss is my gain.” Rennie shifted in the chair. He had broad shoulders on what looked like a rangy build. That was all right—she liked leanly built men. He gave her a slow smile that had her stomach turning cartwheels.

Gwen blinked. Wait a minute. Back up. This was not part of the program. It was one thing to flirt and convince him she was interested. It was another thing to do it so well she convinced herself. He was the enemy. She needed to remember that. Get close, sure, but keep her distance.

The dealer flipped them a new hand with quick, economical motions. Gwen checked her hole card and tapped for another. Rennie did, too, but he took it too far and busted.

“Bummer,” Gwen said, stacking her chips.

“I thought I had enough breathing room.”

“You know what Penn and Teller say—Las Vegas is powered by the Hoover Dam and bad mathematics.”

He studied her and took a swallow of whiskey. “That’s a pretty cynical opinion for a player.”

“I look at it as a challenge.” She tipped her glass to take a drink and found to her surprise that it was nearly empty.

“And you like challenges?”

“I think they make life a little more interesting.”

“You don’t look much like the type who likes to be bored.” He pushed a short stack of chips into his betting circle.

“How about you?”

He gave her that smile again and her pulse bumped a bit. “I’m all for excitement.” He considered. “Then again, there’s something to be said for just hanging.”

Gwen checked her cards. “Just you and your buddies. You know, whoever you’re here with?”

“Not necessarily,” he answered, tapping the table for another hit. “My buddies can fend for themselves.”

“Are they around?”

He gave her an amused look as she moved to hold. “You seem awfully interested in my friends. A guy could take it kind of personally.”

“I don’t think you should do that,” she said quickly, pleased to see she’d won another round. “I was just curious.”

“I’m much more interesting than my friends.”

The look he gave her this time sent a shiver right down to her toes. The cocktail waitress set another cosmopolitan by her elbow, and Gwen fell on it as though it were salvation.

CHIPS SAT STACKED IN COLORED towers in front of her. She had no idea what the hour was—in a Vegas casino there were no clocks, no windows. High noon looked like midnight when you were at the tables. Time was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was the flip of the cards, the spin of the wheel, the roll of the dice.

She felt no fatigue—far from it. She was wired, playing on house money. Her luck had been solid so far, but it was beginning to flag. Gwen drew a queen to a hand that was already twelve and busted.

Rennie looked at her. “We got a bad trend going here,” he observed, gesturing at his own busted hand. “I’m thinking it’s time to knock off while I’m ahead.” He pushed his chips to the dealer, asking for a consolidation.

Panic seized Gwen. He couldn’t leave—how would she find him again? She knew almost nothing about him, aside from the fact that he had a sexy smile and a weakness for banter.

And maybe a weakness for her.

Nina, of course, wouldn’t be shy about putting her looks to work for her. No way would she just let the guy walk away. If Nina were trying to follow the trail of millions of dollars, she’d do whatever was necessary to persuade him to stick around. Gwen sent him a look from under her lashes as she collected her consolidated chips from the dealer. “So, how about a drink?”

4

WAS IT HER IMAGINATION OR was there more devilry in his smile? “Sure.” He slid his handful of hundred-dollar chips into the pocket of his jeans.

Cosmopolitans, Gwen discovered as she rose from the table, had more of a kick than white wine. Her heel caught in the carpet as she slid off the stool.

“Whoa.” Rennie caught her as she stumbled. “Here, why don’t you grab my arm?”

“That’s very gallant of you.” His bicep was a solid swell under her fingers. The contact shivered through her. He wasn’t built lightly at all, she realized as he tucked her hand against his body. The guy had some very real muscle. Her imagination instantly conjured up images of washboard abs and cannonball shoulders.

“Just call me Sir Galahad,” he said. “So, where do you want to go?”

“Let’s find a nightcap.”

“You sure? We’ve been drinking for the last two hours. Have you had dinner?”

Gwen thought back but couldn’t remember. “Something on the plane, maybe.” He was an inch or two taller than she was, even in her spike heels, she realized. There was something alarmingly cozy about him standing there holding her hand against him protectively.

He looked down at her a moment and considered. “How about if we go to the Reef Bar. Maybe we can get some food there. Trust me, you’ll be happier tomorrow.”

The bar was dark and yet lit with an aqua luminescence from the aquarium that took up one wall. Tropical fish made bright flashes of color amid rocks and waving green fronds. Music played in the background, but there was no crowd and no dance floor.

Quiet and dark was perfect for her purposes, Gwen thought as they took seats off in a corner. Or maybe not. The tabletop was about the size of a dinner plate, she realized. By the time she’d scooted onto her high stool, she found herself much, much closer to him than she’d anticipated. Close enough to find herself staring at that enticing mouth. Close enough to find herself noticing the way the aqua light reflected off his cheekbones. He really was gorgeous, she realized, not to mention sexy as hell.

Okay, reality check. Getting distracted was not good. She was here only to try to track down Jerry. Recreation with Rennie—one of the bad guys—was out of the question.

On the other hand, she’d do what was necessary to accomplish her purpose.

A waitress appeared, dressed in the bikini top and sarong uniform of the bar. “What’ll it be, folks?”

Rennie studied the drinks card that sat on the table. “An Anchor Steam for me,” he said. “And an order of potato skins.”

“Sorry, guys, kitchen’s closed. If you want food, you’ll have to go to the coffee shop.”

“Let’s stick here,” Gwen said quickly. No way did she want to go to a bright and noisy coffee shop. Anyway, Nina would probably sniff at coffee. She’d want a real drink. “How about a Courvoisier?” She wasn’t exactly sure what Courvoisier tasted like, but she liked the idea of swirling a brandy glass.

His eyes were very dark in the dim light as he studied her. “My name is Del, by the way.”

Gwen leaned closer to him. “What?”

“My name. It’s not Galahad, it’s Del.”

“Del?” All the fun evaporated in an instant. She stared at him. “Wait a minute. You’re joking, right? I thought your name was Rennie.”

He shook his head. “’Fraid not.”

Disaster, Gwen thought. It was a disaster. This was supposed to be Rennie, her conduit, the one who was going to lead her to Jerry. If he wasn’t, then she was back to square one, no better off than she’d been when she’d walked into the casino. Worse, because Rennie had been around there somewhere. Now where was she? No lead, no closer to finding the stamps. Instead she was stuck here with him while the true Rennie was still out in the casino somewhere. She struggled to master her disappointment.

And ignore the small, sneaky sense of relief that lurked underneath.

“So, where’d you get the idea I was—who was it—Ronnie?”

“Rennie. That’s what the dealer called you.”

He looked at her, mystified.

“Before I sat down,” Gwen clarified. “I thought the dealer said something like ‘You always win, Rennie.’”

She watched the answer dawn. “Ah. She was joking around with the other dealer.”

“Which other dealer?”

“The one who left when you came up.”

“Was that her name?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It sounded like a nickname.”

“What did she look like?” Gwen asked sharply, thinking back. But she’d fastened so quickly and completely on him that everyone else was a cipher. She cursed under her breath. “I can’t picture her at all.”

“Does it matter?”

He was looking at her attentively—way too attentively. Relax, she told herself. “No, it’s no big deal. I was just surprised.” So how willing would the staffers be to help her find Rennie? And would she be back on shift the next evening? Maybe a quick conversation with the other dealer would help. Then again, Gwen didn’t want to make Rennie suspicious.

“Boy, you’ve got some serious wheels turning in that head of yours,” Del commented. “Not that it’s not an entirely gorgeous head, but if I were Rennie, I’d be a little scared.”

He’d leaned back to watch her, the frank curiosity on his face more than a little alarming. She needed to defray that, pronto. Flirt, Nina, flirt.

Gwen traced a pattern on the tabletop with one fingertip and sent him a look of promise. “Who cares about Rennie or whoever? You’re here and I’m here, that’s all that matters.”

The amusement was back in his smile as he leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table, putting him disconcertingly near. “I suppose. You’re holding out on me, though,” he added conversationally.

Alarm surged through her. “What—what do you mean?”

A beat went by. “Your name. You know mine, I don’t know yours.”

“Oh.” She almost sighed with relief. “Nina.”

“Nice name. So what brings you to Vegas, Nina?”

“A couple days off. I wanted to get out of town.”

He watched her for a moment, his mouth curving in a way that suggested he could see more than she wanted. “Searching for people named Rennie?”

Gwen flushed. “No. I just wanted a break.”

“From what?”

“Oh, life.” That much was true. She thought of the restlessness that had plagued her of late. “You know, you get tired of being stuck at home.”

“Where’s home?”

“San Francisco.”

Genuine pleasure slid over his features. “No kidding? That’s my stomping grounds.”

“Really? Small world. What are you here for?”

“I’m doing a series on poker. I’m a sportswriter for the Globe.”

“You’re a journalist?” Gwen asked faintly. That was all she needed—a curious reporter around.

Again he gave her that look. “I don’t think I’d dignify it with that word necessarily. Let’s just say I can bang out twenty column inches on the Giants versus the Dodgers by deadline.”

“You don’t sound thrilled with it.” The waitress set their drinks down in front of them.

Del shrugged. “It’s a living. What about you?”

Gwen swirled her brandy glass to buy time. Lying wasn’t in her nature. Then again, the last thing she wanted to do was give any personal details to a reporter, especially to a reporter who was entirely too interested in her earlier gaffes already. Even if he was a sportswriter. “I’m an accountant,” she told him. It wasn’t really a lie. She did the books at Chastain Philatelic Investments. She just did a whole lot more.

“Seriously?” He grinned, sending a little flutter through her midsection. He was so close, she realized suddenly. Close enough to whisper. Close enough to kiss.

Gwen blinked. “Yes, seriously. Why, what did you think I did?”

“I don’t know. But I could have guessed a couple dozen possible occupations for you and none of them would have included accounting.”

She could just imagine. “So, what occupations were in your couple dozen?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said offhandedly, “neurosurgeon, astrophysicist, president of the World Bank…”

“You know, if you’d have said lingerie model, I’d have had to belt you.” She reached out a hand to mime slapping him. He caught it in his and held it to his face.

Heat bloomed through her. Sensation piled on sensation, the rough stubble of his day’s growth of beard, the strength of his fingers on hers, the slight calluses on his palm.

It lasted only a second or two and drove every thought out of her head except the desire for more.

Del released her hand, changing his hold to bring her fingers to his lips. Warm and soft enough to make her melt. “Whatever you do, I’m sure you’re very, very good,” he murmured.

Eyes wide, Gwen sat stock-still, forcing herself to breathe. “I…excuse me for a minute,” she managed to say and stood up on knees that trembled only a little.

DEL SAT WATCHING HER WALK away and waiting for the drumming in his head to stop. He hadn’t been able to resist the impulse to touch her. The sudden urge to have her had surprised him, though. He considered himself a civilized man, but there was nothing civilized about this overwhelming need to drive himself into her deep and hard.

Colorful fish circled lazily in the aquarium beyond. He’d sat down at the blackjack table for a change of pace, to kill a couple of hours, not to hook up with a woman. Then Nina had sat down, fragrant, silky and looking hot enough to melt wax.

It wasn’t completely outside his experience to have a woman hit on him, but it certainly wasn’t his normal style to bite. He’d learned from personal experience—in his relationships and in his professional life—that the easy pickings were generally not the way to satisfaction, they were just…easy.

There was something about her, though, more than the looks. The combination of the promise in that wide mouth and the sharp intelligence in those eyes had captured his attention utterly. But something else was going on, something more than blackjack, more than sexual jousting. What about the consternation over his name? And why had she pumped him so hard about his friends?

And how was it that he didn’t really give a damn about any of it, so long as he could have her?

He watched her cross the room toward him again, in her low-cut jeans and skimpy, fire-engine-red T-shirt. The confidence was back in her swagger, in the toss of her head. For a moment earlier she’d seemed like a high school girl, completely undone by his move. It seemed incongruous for a woman who looked the way Nina did, a woman who’d probably been romanced every way possible.

“Welcome back,” he said as she sat.

“Thanks. I’m happy to be here.”

He grinned and raised his beer. “Well, here’s to being here.” Her eyes watched him over the rim of her glass, the deep aqua of the Caribbean. Her scent drifted across to him, something that whispered of dark nights and forbidden passion. “So, how’d you get so good at blackjack?” he asked.

“My grandfather’s got a weekly game. Blackjack, poker, whatever. I usually sit in with them.”

“Win much?”

She shrugged. “I walk away with my share of pots.”

“That’s because you’ve got a genetic advantage.” He propped his chin in his hand. “They probably can’t concentrate a lick with someone who looks like you at the table, and on top of that you’re smart.”

He couldn’t be sure in the dim bar, but he’d swear she flushed. “I’ve known most of them since I was about ten. I’m sure they can ignore it.”

“You underestimate yourself. I don’t think any man who sees you can ignore it.”

She gave him a smoky look and propped her arms on the table herself. “Really?”

“Really.”

“And would that include you?”

He felt the stirring in his belly. “What do you think?”

HIS MOUTH. SHE COULDN’T STOP staring at his mouth. She couldn’t stop wondering how he tasted. The table had shrunk, or maybe she’d inadvertently moved her stool closer to him when she’d returned, because when he reached out to tangle his fingers in hers, it was only a small movement.

This time there was no shock, just the hot and sexy snap of connection. All the way to the bathroom and back—merely an excuse to get away and think for a minute—she’d thought about what it might be like with him. It wasn’t the sort of thing Gwen would do, but she wasn’t Gwen, was she? She was Nina. Nina wouldn’t just sit and wonder what it would be like to kiss this man. She wouldn’t wait for him to make the move. Nina would satisfy herself. Nina would just do it.

His eyes seemed darker, deeper as she leaned closer. She flicked a glance at his mouth and her tongue darted out to lick her own lips. She wanted this, she thought, tipping her head slightly. For tonight Jerry and the stamps could take a backseat. For tonight she just wanted.

And then their mouths came together and she didn’t have to want anymore.

Her fingers were still curled in his but she didn’t feel it. All her awareness was concentrated in the feel of his mouth on hers. He didn’t just kiss, he savored, feasting on her as though she were some rare delicacy. A shift, a nip, a quick slick of tongue. There was a sumptuousness in the slide of lip against lip, temptation in the taste. Her system began to buzz.

When his hand slid to cup her neck and pull her closer, Gwen went willingly. When his mouth opened against hers, she made a little sound of pleasure in her throat. It didn’t matter that she hardly knew him, that he was just a pair of teasing eyes and a devilish smile. Something about him tempted her to take a risk. Something about him sent desire surging through her with an intensity she couldn’t recall feeling before.

In the casino a cacophony indicated that someone had won a big jackpot, but neither of them even registered the noise. All that mattered was this moment, this place, this feeling.

If he’d felt the need to take before, now Del fought the urge to plunder. Up close, her scent wove around his senses, making him imagine her naked, hot and urgent against him. Her mouth was warm and alive. She tasted of Courvoisier and arousal, he thought hazily. Driven by the slide of her tongue over his, the nip of her teeth, he only wanted more.

And so he took the kiss deeper.

The teasing swirl of her tongue around his had desire coiling in his belly. She might have been an enigma, but her trembling response didn’t lie. Throughout the night she’d been an odd mix of uncertainty and confidence. There was nothing tentative here now, though, only a heated certainty that sent urgency thudding through his system.

Finally Del broke away. He sat for a moment, waiting for his system to level. It was going to take a while, he realized. “You pack quite a punch,” he told her.

“So do you.” It took her two tries to get the words out. Gwen stared back at him, breathing hard. She wanted, oh, she wanted. If he could take her this far with just a kiss, how much more was waiting for her? Her lips still felt as though they were vibrating, she realized. And she wanted more. She leaned toward him again, but he stopped her.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” he said, staring at her. “Someplace less…public.”

She nodded, not in answer to the words he’d said but to the question in his eyes. “I think you’re right.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Gwen leaned forward to press a kiss on him. “Oh, yeah,” she breathed. Del tossed a twenty on the table and rose, catching her hand.

And a bubble of exhilaration began to swell in her chest.

It wasn’t her usual style. Gwen dated clean-cut, serious men who took her to a few weeks of movies, concerts and dinners before they segued into decorous sex. That part usually lasted until she was bored mindless with them. She certainly didn’t pick up the kind of men who hung out in casinos. She definitely didn’t kiss them in bars the first night she’d met them, even if they did have perfectly delicious mouths.

And she absolutely didn’t wind up in bed with them.

Maybe it was being in Vegas, maybe it was the cosmopolitans, but suddenly it didn’t matter. Suddenly what she wanted was this moment with this man. She could go back to being careful and deliberate Gwen tomorrow.

Nina was taking over.

5

THE ELEVATOR WAS A BLUR, THE walk down the hall a desperate trek broken up by pauses to just stand fused together, desperate to get their hands on one another. Finally they stood at a door, Del fumbling for his passkey.

Gwen had never known anything like this before. Certainly sex had involved some excitement, but all to a manageable level. Getting swept up in passion was what Joss did, not Gwen. Gwen kept things tidy and controlled.

But now she was Nina, and Nina wanted no truck with tidy and controlled. Nina wanted hot. Nina wanted the rough feel of a man’s hands, the pumping urgency of his body.

Nina wanted it all.

Gwen leaned against him, up on tiptoe. “I want you naked,” she whispered over his shoulder. “Now.”

And the door latch clicked open.

Inside the room Del groped for a light switch, and a recessed light in the entryway came on. It was as though Gwen had a fever in her blood. She was hot, light-headed with wanting. Del turned to her and she flowed into his arms.

She’d never been kissed like this. She’d never had a hot mouth and a pair of hands fling her into arousal so quickly. As he pressed her against the wall and took the kiss deeper, she could taste a faint hint of the bourbon he’d been drinking. The stroke of tongue against tongue sent desire arrowing through her. He was hard, she could feel it, and she shivered a little with anticipation as she shifted her hips in response.

He groaned. With an exultant laugh Gwen broke the kiss and let herself nuzzle his throat, the skin taut under her lips. She could feel his hard-muscled body under the shirt and made a noise of impatience.

“More,” she breathed. “I want more.” Her mouth still on his, she stepped back enough to push his shirt away from his shoulders, and he shrugged it off.

And she caught a breath of delight. His was a body made for movement, the arms hard and sculpted, the belly corrugated with muscle. She traced her fingers down over the ripples of his abs. When he sucked in a breath, she dipped lower to trace over the swell of his hard-on under his jeans.

She wanted the feel of his skin against hers. Gwen reached for the hem of her own top, but Del caught at her hands. “Oh, no, that’s for me to do,” he murmured. He slipped his hands around her waist, sliding over the bare skin and up under the stretchy crop top she wore. His fingers trailed up her back, and the immediacy of the contact made her shiver, and shiver again when he slid them around to the front to fill his hands with the curves of her breasts. The fabric diminished the sensation, and she strained against him with a noise of frustration. She wanted his touch on her naked breasts. Instead he slid his hands up her sides and along her arms, until the rolled-up shirt was just a memory tossed across the room.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Del said hoarsely as he stepped back and just looked at her in her sheer black bra. She flushed and glanced down, pulling her arms in toward her in what seemed like a reflex action. Catching her wrists, he pulled them gently aside. “Let me look at you. You’re such a turn-on.”

She was delicious, all soft and curvy. He wanted more, though. One minute she was all confidence, the next minute self-conscious. There was something about the way she met his eyes, suddenly hesitant. He wanted it gone. He wanted her wet and abandoned, twisting against him. He wanted to hear her cry out. He wanted to taste her. Reaching down, he unzipped her jeans. “These come off. Now.”

Slipping the denim down, he savored the feel of her silky skin against his palms, then pressed her back onto the ridiculously high sleigh bed that mirrored the decadence of the rest of the hotel. One at a time he pulled off her spike-heeled shoes. Her jeans followed and he tossed them aside.

She sat up. “I want to…”

“No.” He pressed her down. “Let me.” He started at her instep, kissing the tender skin, then tracing the inside of her calves with his tongue. Working his way up her thighs, he pleased himself by teasing her, licking close to the silky lace at the vee between her legs, going just under the edge before moving away. Because he had plans and he was nothing if not a patient man.

Rising, he stripped off his own jeans and leaned over the bed. Her breathing became more ragged and she shuddered a little as he moved up over her flat belly, along the sides of her waist. With a snap he unfastened the front clasp of her bra and peeled back the cups.

Dry-mouthed with anticipation, Gwen stared up at him. The touch, when it came, wasn’t the cupping of a hand or the brush of fingers but the stroke of a tongue, wet and warm against her. She licked her lips and waited for more. When he bent to her breasts again, he took his time, until the suction and rub of his tongue over her swollen nipples started an answering resonance down where she was wet and fevered.

Tension tightened her and she twined her fingers in his hair, drawing him up to her so that she could press a hard, openmouthed kiss on him. She curved her arms around him, mad for him to lie alongside her, but he kept away. “Later,” he promised and moved back down her body.

This time he focused on her breasts, kneading them, rolling the nipples with light pressure as he kissed his way down her body. The brush of the hair on his forearms against her body made her shudder, the warmth of his lips made her toss and turn. When she felt him slip off her lacy underwear, she slid her fingers into his hair. “Oh, god,” she breathed.

The mattress gave just a bit as he settled himself between her legs. She felt the brush of his hair against her inner thigh, felt the warmth of his breath. Every atom of her being was tensed in anticipation. Her hips moved just a bit, involuntarily. He gave a chuckle deep in his throat and settled himself between her legs. “Not until you’re begging.”

Lightly, maddeningly lightly, his tongue brushed the lips that enfolded her clitoris. When he separated them, she gave a hum of satisfaction and expectation, but he ignored the hard bud where she ached to be touched. Instead he licked at her folds, dipped inside her, touched her everywhere but the point that would give her release.

She clawed at his shoulders, pulled him toward her. “Please,” she managed. “Oh, please.”

And then his mouth was on her, sending her gasping and flinging her head back into the pillow. Hard and relentless, he drove her, tongue tracing maddening patterns that sent her flailing upward toward some crest, some climax, some pinnacle of ultimate release.

Yet just as she was trembling at the edge, he backed off again, leaving her achingly unfulfilled while he teased her with other touches, his hands on her breasts, his mouth against her thigh. She dragged at him, hands on his head as she urged him to take her over.

And he did, his mouth driving her up, sending her gasping, hips jolting against him, seeking that final touch. But just when he had her shuddering, crying out mindlessly, just when she could feel the climax looming, he moved away.

“Don’t stop,” she cried raggedly, the pressure of the unrealized orgasm pounding through her.

“I’m not. I’m just changing gears.” Breathing hard, Del slid off to stand beside the high bed. She felt a little thrill as he pulled her to the edge, stepping close enough to stretch her legs up the length of his torso, her ankles hooked over his shoulders. Stiff and hard, his cock jerked just a little with arousal as he sheathed it. Then he took the head of it and slid it into the slick cleft between her legs, running it up and down a few times, each brush of the smooth skin against her engorged clitoris making her gasp.

“Oh, like that,” she rasped, but he shook his head.

“I think you’re resourceful enough to do it for yourself,” he murmured and in that instant pumped his hips to slide into her up to the root.

Thick, hard, solid, it dragged a cry from her. Moving against him, she savored every bit of friction as his cock slid in and out, in and out. She trembled on the edge of orgasm.

But she didn’t quite go over. It was taunting to feel so much, to have his hands sliding up and down her legs and still have her desire remain unslaked.

She had to do something or she’d go mad. She needed hands on her breasts, needed something to ease the throb. One hand crept closer to the vee between her legs. When her finger slid into the warm wetness, when she felt the slide of it over the hard knob of her clitoris, she gasped.

“Oh, yeah, touch yourself,” Del said softly, and Gwen swore he got harder. “Show me what you like.” He caught her ankles and moved them apart a little, watching her avidly, watching himself move in and out of her.

Any vestige of self-consciousness was gone. Gwen circled her finger over her clit, each touch tightening the tension that strung her taut, each touch in time with the hard, swift strokes of his cock. She was almost delirious with the sensation that battered her from all directions. Close to the edge, she was so close she didn’t think but raised her free hand to her breast, brushing the tender skin, squeezing the nipple.

“Oh, man,” Del cried out raggedly, even as the bolt of sensation flung her over the edge to orgasm. It was hard, jolting, tearing staccato cries from her as the pleasure battered her over and over again. And even as she was still shuddering with pleasure, he groaned and spilled himself.

SOFTNESS. WARMTH. DEL REDMOND woke to find his face pressed against a fragrant spill of hair, his arms full of silky, curvy woman. It wasn’t an experience he’d had very much of since his divorce two years before. Or very much the year or so before his divorce, come to think of it. He liked it, the way Nina fit in his arms, spooned against him. He liked it a lot.

As to the night before, well, it had been mind-blowing, pure and simple. The way she’d touched him, the way she’d moved, had brought him astonishing release. The two of them might not know each other from Adam outside of bed, but in it they were incredibly compatible.

Of course, he was in Vegas to work, not to have a fling with a woman. Then again, so long as he got the job done, who was to care? And this wasn’t just any woman. This was a woman who attracted him, who aroused him.

Who intrigued him.

A low whine had him glancing at the nightstand to see his muted cell phone flashing. Recognizing the number, he gave a quiet curse and slipped his arm out from under Nina. She rolled over with a sleepy murmur, dragging the covers with her.

Del rose and headed to the bathroom. “Redmond here,” he said, closing the door and sitting down on the edge of the tub.

“It’s ten-thirty in the morning. Where’s your copy, Redmond?”

“Morning, Perry, how are you?” Del could picture Ed Perry, the Globe’s comfortably paunchy sports editor, his balding head counterbalanced by a neat Vandyke.

“How am I? Not nearly as good as you, I’m sure. So where’s my column on the poker life, champ? What are you doing—drinking, chasing after women?”

Del glanced uneasily at the door. “I wrote a story yesterday. I’ll get it filed this morning.”

“You know, I send you to Vegas, plum assignment. This is not what I expect in thanks.”

“Hey, this was your bright idea, not mine.” Walking to the counter, Del pulled his electric shaver out of his leather toilet kit.

“Who was the one bitching about another year covering the All-Star game?”

“Me,” Del admitted.

“Is that a razor I hear? Are you shaving?” Perry demanded. “You really have spent the day in bed.”

“You’re the one who’s always telling me to multitask,” Del reminded him. “I’m not a gambler, Perry. The last time I was in Vegas was when I played here in college.”

“Not a gambler, huh?” the editor grunted. “So how was it again you fleeced me for forty bucks in last week’s poker game?”

Del moved the razor in circles over one cheek, then the other. “Look, a friendly poker game with the guys to drink beer and shoot the shit is one thing. Out here you’re talking hard core. These people are up all night. Everything I own reeks of cigarette smoke.” He ran the razor along his jaw.

“Switch that thing the hell off, will you? It’s buzzing in my ear like a mosquito.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

“Me? What about you? Anyway, you were getting stale. I figured something different would shake you up.”

Del snorted. “Hardly. You just wanted to distract me from the newsroom job.”

“Newsroom job?” Perry repeated innocently.

“Don’t give me that. You know I want to apply for that opening in the metro section.”

Perry sighed. “Del, you’ve got a good gig here in sports. Why do you want to gum up the works going after an entry-level reporter’s job?”

“You just don’t want to have to break in a new writer.”

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