Calling His Bluff (7 page)

“Right,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Sorry about that. Didn’t notice
at the time. Won’t happen again.”

“You’re damn right about that.” She turned to her brother. “And you! Is it too much
to ask for a little sympathy around here? I’ve had an
awful
day.” She waved Tyler off before he could even open his mouth. “My car was hit by
someone last night who didn’t leave a note, surprise, surprise. Today, two hookers
told me that I should try to get a little color in my face if I want a man, and Officer
Buttinski wrote me three, count ’em, three tickets because he’s got the heart of the
Grinch at the
start
of the movie. And you—” a hand flung out like the finger of death in J.D.’s direction
“—you ask for my help and then kiss me? And you can’t even call to say thanks or explain
the damn kiss? So I come here for a little comfort, a little empathy, and what’s the
first thing I hear when I walk in the door? ‘I felt sorry for poor, moony Sarah!’”

* * *

She stood in the middle of a silent room.

Even Daniel was staring at her, jaw dropped, head braced back and a little to the
side, as if braced for the next bombshell to explode. She did a mental review of her
outburst and grimaced.

“Sorry ‘bout the language, kiddo,” she whispered at him. He grinned.

The answer to her challenge, when it came, was completely unexpected.

J.D. rose off his bar stool, tugged on his stub of a ponytail for a second, and then
held his hand out to her in a gesture that Sarah’s boiling-over brain was having a
hard time understanding.

“Sounds to me like you need to get out of town for a bit. If I say thank-you and promise
to explain the next time I kiss you, do you wanna go to Vegas tonight?”

Well, that cleared things up. Not.

“Buster, you aren’t even one of my main problems.” Sarah waved her hand languidly
in the air. She wondered if she’d see sparkles trailing from her fingertips if she
drank a third glass of champagne before the plane landed. Maybe it took something
quite a bit stronger than champagne for that to happen? What did it matter? Life with
the rich and famous was good.

Besides, she’d decided even before getting on the private plane that she didn’t want
any explanations from J.D. Not now, not ever. No kissing, no explanations. That was
why she kept on cutting him off whenever he tried to mention their kiss. She didn’t
care to hear, in greater detail than before, about how sorry he was for her or how
he’d meant to call her if only he hadn’t been busy with his
wife.
She’d use J.D. for this free ride out to Vegas, her favorite place to escape, for
the weekend and then forget about him the minute they got back to Chicago. She’d already
laid down her ground rules for this junket.

Vegas had a dramatically negative impact on her good judgment. The tattoo she’d gotten
on one of her trips there was a rather tame example of the impulsive decisions she
made there. Rules were necessary.

“You know, flying on a private jet really
is
a lot nicer than coach,” she announced. J.D.’s friend had loaned them the plane for
the quick hop, and Sarah had already purchased her one-way ticket for the return flight.
J.D. could glower all he wanted, she was not going to get dragged into a conversation
about the kiss. “How much does it cost to charter one of these babies, anyway?”

“I don’t know, twenty grand?”

She frowned and took another sip of champagne. Swished it around in her mouth some.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s twenty-thousand-bucks nicer. This ain’t Dom we’re being
served.”

“Actually, it is. Sarah—”

“
New York Times
or
People?
” She pulled copies of both out of her med bag, which sat at her feet. After the one
time she’d been caught off guard in an emergency, trying without an intubation kit
to get alcohol into the stomach of a pup that had swallowed antifreeze before it killed
him, she’d made a new rule: never leave home without the bag. Thank god this wasn’t
a commercial flight where they wouldn’t have let her bring liquids in a carry on.
She’d have to check it on the way home, but it was worth the hassle. “I stocked up
on both at the terminal bookstore. You never know when the movie might turn out to
be a snoozer.”

“I’m sure there’s a whole library of films, Sarah. But I think we should talk—”

“Really? Do you think they have anything with a good car chase?” Sheesh. Ignoring
him was like trying to shake a terrier. She kept on kicking and kicking him away,
but he kept coming back for more, nipping at her ankles every time she took her eyes
off him for a moment. They were somewhere over the Rockies, she thought. She’d been
warned that there might be some turbulence over the mountains. If she didn’t find
a way to shut him up, she was going to have to spend the rest of the flight chattering
like an idiot to keep him from getting a word in edgewise.

When slipping on her headphones and pretending to listen to music didn’t deter him,
she resigned herself to soaring the rest of the way to Las Vegas with her eyes closed.
She swigged the last of her champagne with a grand flourish and then waited a couple
of minutes before yawning and wondering out loud why two glasses had made her so sleepy.
Giving a big stretch and one last yawn for verisimilitude, she reclined her seat until
it wouldn’t go back any farther and closed her eyes. She would console herself with
fantasies of meeting U2 and convincing one of those lovely Irish gents to fall madly
in love with her. Bono was married, she thought, but surely one of the other band
members had to be single. The Edge or Adam Clayton or, or…darn it, she could never
remember the fourth guy’s name.

She heard J.D.’s seat creak as he leaned back next to her. Too bad they were barely
speaking to each other, much less romantically involved. It was probably fun as hell
to make out on a private plane.

Larry Mullen! That was the fourth guy’s name! Was
he
married?

The rustling noises of J.D. settling himself more comfortably in the seat next to
her finally eased into relative silence. Bored with her fantasies already, she dared
to crack an eye open and sneak a glance at him. She caught him rubbing the heel of
his palm against his thigh. Leg cramps again, she’d bet.

It was a shame really, about the wife. He was just so lovely to look at. All thickly
muscled limbs and darkly forged features. Funny. Because she could look at Spencer,
her sister Addy’s husband, and see dispassionately what a good-looking man he was.
Tall and long and lean, throwing off an aura of whiplike strength and intensity. He
was attractive, definitely. But when she turned her thoughts to J.D… J.D. with the
bunching weightlifter muscles, J.D. with the wicked cheekbones and half-hidden grin
and speculative glint in his eye that
didn’t
say, “I wonder what it would be like to know that woman on an intellectual level,”
J.D. with the pirate’s long hair and the poet’s mouth, J.D. just, hmm…

Yum.

And, purr.

A giggle slipped out and she shut her eyes in a panic. When she thought the coast
was clear, she peeked again. Safe. He was still napping.

If only his good looks weren’t matched by an equally fine ability to make her feel
like an awkward teenager all over again. It had been bad enough to feel like an alien
species the first time around, waiting for her boobs to grow in and the braces to
finish straightening her teeth, all the while watching the older and oh-so-handsome
Joey Damico charm and disarm older girls who
needed
the bras they wore and were past the terrible pimples of adolescence. No doubt nothing
much had changed for him—women, she was sure, still fell at his feet with swooning
regularity. But things
had
changed for her. She was a grown woman, sure of herself and fully aware that she
was at least cute, with a possible upgrade to foxy if she put the time in on her hair
and makeup. Of course, his wife had been asked to pose for
Playboy.

Nothing like a nude pictorial to make a girl feel intimidated. Classier, yes, but
intimidated nonetheless.

She closed her eyes. Better to remove temptation from sight. She was doing just fine
so far in her unspoken vow to stop thinking of J.D. as a potential…well, anything,
and return to treating him like the old childhood chum he was.

Return to.

Who was she fooling? At no point in her life had she thought of J.D. with anything
other than lust in her heart. Even if at first she’d only been lusting for a chance
to hold his hand. She huffed out a breath and shook her head.

Foolishness.

It had been made clear to her long ago that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,
but Sarah Tyler would never be the kind of woman who could hold the attention of a
man like J.D.

* * *

“So I’m not your main problem? What is?”

Sarah answered without thinking, which made this the first time he’d managed to get
an uncalculated answer out of her in the past two hours. He spread his legs and settled
a little deeper into his seat, trying to get comfortable on the plane.

“Convincing my brother that I’m not gonna sleep with you in Vegas.”

Sarah had always been easy to catch off guard as a kid. It had taken two glasses of
champagne to achieve the same feat now that she was an adult.

Not that he’d had any luck whatsoever in getting her to listen to his attempt to explain
the kiss. He’d meant to tell her that there’d just been something in that moment,
leftover heat from the fire maybe, a certain look in her eyes.
Something
that had made it impossible for him to let her walk away.

Now, he couldn’t imagine what had possessed him. Maybe too many painkillers?

“You’re not going to sleep with me? Then why the hell did I invite you?”

Her eyes flew open.

It sure was fun to tease her, though.

“Ha ha ha. Very funny,” she said and threw herself back into her own seat. “You remember
the ground rules.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And they are?”

“Really?”

Silence.

He ticked the rules off on his fingers, one by one. “No kissing.” The glance he shot
her was pure sin wrapped in a red velvet ribbon. “I didn’t actually agree to follow
any of these rules, you know.” She raised an eyebrow, and he scowled back. “I didn’t
know what I was agreeing to when I said we’d do whatever you wanted. Yeah, yeah, rule
number two: no salsa. That was confusing. At first, I thought you had something against
Mexican food, and I was going to scrap this whole trip. A woman who doesn’t dig jalapeños
isn’t worth knowing—”

“Let’s focus here, shall we?” She broke in. Clearly, it was important to keep the
rules at the forefront. “The waltz and the cha-cha—”

“Are allowed, I get it. But no salsa.”

“I have issues with salsa. It’s safer to avoid it completely.”

He pictured Sarah stomping on his foot and flushing with embarrassment and was almost
tempted to make one of the dance clubs on the Strip their first stop. Of course, given
the continued weakness of his leg, it was more likely that he’d be watching from the
sidelines, nursing a drink. Which might be the safer way to go, actually.

“Noted. And finally, under no circumstances, no matter how much you beg—which is difficult
to imagine, mind you, since I can hardly picture you even saying
please
at the moment—am I to let you within twenty yards of a high-stakes poker game.”

J.D. looked at Sarah. Her long, sleek dark hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail.
She was wearing cream khakis, a white turtleneck and a tailored black velvet jacket
that seemed to have invisible little hooks up the front, since he couldn’t see buttons
or a zipper. Black lace-up flats. A little lip gloss, maybe. She looked very nice,
clean and conservatively stylish.

Not exactly like a woman who had issues with salsa dancing and high-stakes poker.
He couldn’t imagine that he’d have a hard time following her rules. Maybe bringing
her with him was enough of an apology. He could drop her off by the pool and go find
that up-and-coming actress from the last film he’d documented. The one who kept asking
him to show her his darkroom as if digital had never happened, what was her name…something
Italian, Donatella…

Beatrice, which she pronounced in the Italian way, Bay-ah-tree-chay. Despite knowing
no more Italian than
ciao.
Beatrice from Boise, with a body that was putting some L.A. plastic surgeon’s kid
through college. Her number was still in his cell phone, he’d bet. Although he’d need
to make sure to “forget” his camera, if he wanted to avoid being asked to shoot porn
photos.

A
harrumph
broke into his fantasy of stripping
Signorina
Beatrice out of her Juicy Couture faster than she could say, “I really admire your
art.” Sarah was glaring at him with a look that would have done his battleship of
a third-grade teacher proud. What the hell were they talking about?

Right, poker.

“Don’t worry, slick. No tournament poker action for you.” Maybe he rolled his eyes
just a little.

“I’m serious, Damico.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve been to Vegas before.
You don’t know what I’m like.”

He mirrored her gesture, kicking his feet up on the low table in front of them. “Tell
me this, Ms. Tyler. What kind of stakes did you bring with you?”

“For the weekend?”

“Yeah.”

She grimaced and looked pained. “Three hundred.”

“Dollars?”

“No, pesos. Of course dollars.”

“What are you gonna do? Play the quarter slots all weekend?” He meant to be insulting.
Only a fool thought three hundred bucks would last for three days of gambling in Sin
City.

She shrugged him off and turned back to her magazine. He might have heard her mutter
under her breath, “I’m going to try, anyway.”