His Last Gamble Read online

  ‘Jo-Jo, please,’ he responded, eyeing first the casino owner then his friend, an arch, speculative look creeping across his face.

  ‘Oh, she’s not his,’ Jinx drawled spitefully, not best pleased at being dismissed so quickly.

  Charmaine, having no other choice, reluctantly put her hand in his, but her legs shook as he led her to the dance floor. The neon-blue lighting and lingering smoke from the scented table candles reminded her of the kind of films where Bette Davis planned seduction and murder, and in which men were men, and women knew it! And she had to fight back the absurd desire to laugh. She was utterly out of her depth here. She must have been out of her mind to think she could ever pull this off.

  ‘Relax,’ the deep timbre of his voice, again with that underlying melodic resonance that so thrilled her, whispered across the top of her head, his breath rustling the tendrils of hair on her forehead. He was so close, if he just bent his head a few more millimetres, his lips would be brushing her brow.

  She shuddered as she longed, suddenly and violently, for him to do just that. To trail his lips across her temple, down beside her eye, to move across to kiss the tip of her nose and down to her mouth.

  She firmed her lips against the imagined touch, but they throbbed, as if feeling cheated.

  His arm felt like a band of molten steel around her waist, his fingers, resting on the bare skin of her back, like branding irons. Her thighs, encased in the velvet of her dress, trembled against the length of his own, and she was sure he must feel it.

  Her head swam as she fought to get her breathing under control. She couldn’t faint now. Couldn’t do something so ignominious. And yet, she felt as if she was floating.

  ‘Are the stars out tonight . . . I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright . . .’

  The voice of the torch singer could have been directed only at her. She didn’t know what was happening in the world outside. Here, on the dance floor, there was only the two of them. Payne’s voice, his breath on her hair, his arms around her, the length of her body pressed to his. She was breathing in his scent, her very heartbeat synchronising itself to his.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said softly. ‘But then, you must hear that every day. From lots of men.’

  Charmaine’s eyes snapped open. The spell abruptly broke.

  She wondered, with something approaching hysteria, what he would say if she told him that, no, men in fact never said that to her. She never gave them the chance. On the rare occasions that she had dated, she never followed up on that first meal out, or that first visit to the cinema.

  It was Lucy who was the famous actress. Lucy who could be really beautiful, just because she made people believe that she was so. Lucy who had the charm, the talent, the appeal. It had always been so.

  She just designed dresses.

  For a moment, she felt an intense longing to be back home. Safe in her cottage, with her cat, Wordsworth, and the garden that she loved to fill with all the old-fashioned country garden plants. There all was calm and right with her world. Here, she was lost. Buffeted by sensations and feelings that were alien and strange. And, she was sure, dangerous.

  Unspeakably dangerous.

  ‘Your friend is well named,’ he said, wondering what was making her shake all over again. Surely it wasn’t her temper coming back.

  ‘Who? Jo-Jo?’

  ‘No. Jinx.’

  And suddenly Charmaine was burbling with laughter. He hadn’t fallen for the super-glamorous model after all, then. When she’d seen them dancing, with Jinx’s flame-red hair against his shoulder, they’d looked so right together. But they’d only danced the once, and she’d hoped, oh how she’d hoped, that she hadn’t imagined it when he’d seemed relieved to deposit her back at the bar.

  Now she knew she’d been right.

  ‘Most men fall for Jinx like a ton of bricks,’ she felt obliged to point out.

  ‘And isn’t she just used to it,’ he drawled. ‘No. I’m much more interested in you.’

  Charmaine stumbled against him.

  ‘You are?’ she whispered. Her heart seemed to lift, then plunge, like a bird about to take wing, then realising, just before it was too late, that it couldn’t actually fly.

  ‘Hmm-hmm,’ he confirmed lazily. ‘Just what makes you tick, Charmaine? One moment you’re the hard-bitten woman with her eye on the main chance. The next, you’re all a-tremble.’

  Charmaine pulled her head back to look at him. ‘What do you mean? What main chance?’

  ‘Oh come on,’ Payne said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not sleeping with the boss?’

  Charmaine gasped. She stepped back, her eyes firing up like an acetylene torch. Payne felt a huge surge of desire hit him. Yes. Now. Now she would erupt.

  ‘You certainly live up to your name, don’t you?’ Charmaine hissed. ‘Payne by name, and pain by nature.’

  ‘Whereas you don’t,’ he shot back. ‘You may be Charmaine by name, but charming by nature—I don’t think so.’

  He laughed then winced as she kicked him on the shin.

  His jaw tightened, but his dancing step never faltered. In fact, Charmaine realised, they were still dancing, and had never stopped.

  ‘For your information,’ she hissed, ‘Jo-Jo is gay. He’s been living with his partner, Peter, a top investment banker, for nearly ten years now.’

  Payne smiled. ‘Is that a fact,’ he said gloatingly.

  And Charmaine realised how neatly he’d tricked her into divulging information. Information she could have used to her advantage, if only she’d kept her big mouth shut. She could have used Jo-Jo to make him jealous. Or even, to act as a much-needed shield and buffer.

  Too late now.

  Her eyes narrowed. She drew her foot back in preparation.

  ‘Ah, ah, ah,’ he said warningly, turning sharply, pivoting her around and bending her supple back over against his arm, laughingly neutralising her. ‘No more kicking.’

  Charmaine clung on to his shoulders, despair burning deep inside her again.

  It was all going wrong again!

  First the disastrous start, now this. If she was going to go through with her plan, she had to pull her socks up! How was she ever going to win him over when she kicked his shins like a frustrated schoolgirl?

  But she knew only too well what had come over her. Temper. And fear. For the first time in her sheltered, ordered, calm life, she was out of control.

  And she didn’t like it.

  Didn’t she?

  A small voice whispered like a genie from the depths of a bottle. Wasn’t it heady? Wasn’t it wonderful? To have a man like this one, interested in her? Wasn’t it just blissful? The voice seemed to come at her from all directions at once—her mind, her heart, the place where her dreams lived.

  As he pulled her closer to him, as she felt his hand slip down to rest suggestively against her buttocks, and she felt her insides become fluid with molten heat, she began to wonder.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m in a garden. Or on a crowded avenue . . . You are here, so am I. Maybe millions of people go by . . .’

  Her head rested almost wearily against his shoulder. It was no good fighting it. It felt gloriously right to be here. To be held like this, by this man, dancing as closely in his arms as the laws of physics would allow, giddy with excitement and recklessness.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Payne said softly. And smiled tenderly over her head. What a contradiction she was. She seemed so unsure of herself, and yet she was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  And she was free and unencumbered. And she’d be on the island for the next week or so. Which was the perfect length of time for a blissful, guilt-free affair.

  ‘But they all disappear, from view. And I only have eyes, for you.’

  The song came to a poignant end, and in a daze, Charmaine pulled away.

  Was she mad? This was the man who’d broken her sister’s heart, driving her to a suicide attempt. A man so callous he could, and d
id, regard women as nothing more than disposable items for his pleasure. And she’d nearly fallen into the same trap herself. But she was all right now. She was ready for him. The plan was back on track.

  She looked up into eyes that were now as soft and as grey as a wood pigeon’s wing.

  ‘Dance with me again?’ he said softly, sure of her answer.

  Charmaine smiled coolly. ‘No. I don’t think so,’ she said calmly, turned and walked away from him.

  He watched her in silence for a few seconds, standing utterly still, then forced a wolfish grin to his face, ignoring the tiny kernel of hurt that had for some reason wormed its way to his heart.

  So she wanted to play rough.

  Well, if that’s the way she wanted it, he was always willing to oblige a lady.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The beach was idyllic—a curving crescent moon of white sand, palm trees, an aquamarine, calm Caribbean 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 muttering 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 many photo-shoots before. Oh, she’d been present, in the audience, at nearly all of Jonniee’s fashion shows and launches, but firmly resisting 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 photo-shoots. 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 ebony skin and tight curly hair and bone structure to die for, even seemed to be snoozing, two pieces of cucumber covering her dark, soulful eyes. Jinx, in contrast, was here there and everywhere, fixing her makeup 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. ‘Don’t worry. Rebecca’s on hand so you don’t need to do your own make-up, and Rex, as he never ceases to remind us, once won Hairdresser-of-the-Year, so no worries. You’ll knock us all out.’

  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 up and coming 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’s got it made,’ she heard one of the young men, a beach attendant from a hotel further up the beach, grumble jealously. ‘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 gambler’s license in doubt?’

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

  ‘No, mon, 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 sort of 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 red 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 Bajan 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 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 marry 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 strategically staged piece of driftwood and seaweed. As the orange-haired pixie stood up, Charmaine saw that she’d already changed into one of her designs, a one-piece bathing suit in near-fluorescent oranges, yellows and greens, with a floating see-through beach coat of diaphanous green over it.

  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.

  And she knew, with a sinking feeling deep in the pit of her stomach, that when it came to be her turn, the gathered crowd wouldn’t give her such applause. Already her feet were beginning to feel
like lead, and her limbs as graceless as those of an elephant.

  * * *

  Payne Lacey saw the crowd the moment he stepped onto the beach. He watched, amused, as Jinx, in a navy blue bikini top and wrap around skirt, flirted with the camera. There was a collective gasp as she whipped off the skirt to reveal the briefest of bikini thongs, revealing long, long legs and tanned, rounded buttocks.

  He moved around the edge of the crowd, to where he could see Charmaine watching from the sidelines.

  She looked, he realised, surprised, scared to death. She went even paler as the photographer called her name.

  Charmaine, heart pounding, walked unsteadily to the spot that Phil had indicated. The wind had picked up a little, creating white horses on the sea, and he wanted to incorporate them into the shoot. He’d had enough of panoramas and palms.

  ‘Right, go back a little, so that your feet are in the foam. No, not that far,’ he yelped, as the waves threatened to splash the long, wispy beach robe she had on. In creams and yellows, it would darken and show off every spot of moisture.

  ‘Dippy, don’t you know enough not to get the merchandise wet,’ Jinx drawled from her sprawled position on a deck chair. Fizz, next up, looked across, surprised. Charmaine bit her lip, knowing the other girl had a right to be taken aback at such unprofessional behaviour. Then she jumped as Phil yelled at her again not to ruin her lipstick. He called to Rebecca, who obligingly re-touched it.

  Even from where he stood at the back, Payne could see the painful colour come then go from her face. She stood stiffly awkward, not at all with the loose-limbed grace of the other girls.

  ‘OK, let me get in close . . . yes, that’s it,’ Phil said, much more favourably. A thin, wiry cockney in his forties, he’d seen and done it all. He cared only about getting the perfect shot, which meant cajoling or bullying the best out of the clothes and woman wearing them.

  The sea breeze lifted the long, straight, gossamer strands of her hair in a way that no wind machine could match. That, and the stark blue sky behind her, the playful sea, and the rippling of the cream beach coat against her lithe form, gave him, he knew the perfect shot of the day. Maybe even of the whole shoot.