Authors: Barbara Freethy
Kayla paused to let her eyes adjust to the lights. The slot machines in front of her were packed with tourists. Her gaze caught on the back of a man, a blond man playing a quarter machine. There was something about his posture.
Was it Evan? The thought raced through her mind.
Had he somehow followed them here?
“What’s wrong?” Nick asked, picking up on her tension.
“That man.” She tipped her head toward the line of machines. “Is it —” She stopped abruptly as the man got up from the machine and she saw his face. He walked right by her, gave her a curious smile as if he wondered why she was staring at him, and then with a cheerful little whistle continued on his way. She let out the breath she’d been holding. “I thought it was Evan for a second.”
“Well, keep your eyes open. Let’s check out the blackjack tables. Maybe we can talk to Lisa now.”
They stopped at the first table and asked the dealer if Lisa Palmer was working. She told them Lisa was on a dinner break and would be back in about an hour. Disappointed that they couldn’t talk to her right away, they decided to check into the hotel and leave their bags upstairs.
Their room was on the ninth floor at the far end of a long hallway. Kayla didn’t bother to unpack. She’d thrown in only a nightgown and a change of clothes. She walked over to the window and glanced out at the view.
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She could see for miles. Reno was basically a brown, dusty desert city surrounded by low, rolling bare hills.
She could see just about all of it from her window. The only highlights were the casinos, providing an adult playground. She glanced away from the window to the king-size bed and imagined just what adult games she and Nick could play later on.
At some point she really needed to think about what the hell was going on with them, but that point wasn’t now.
She glanced across the bed and saw Nick watching her. The tension in the room suddenly went up a notch.
“If we don’t get out of here now, we won’t be leaving for a long while,” he drawled, his gaze taking a leisurely stroll down her body.
“That’s a very confident statement,” she said with a teasing smile. “You really think it would take that long?”
“Want to try me and see?”
“You’re always so quick to rise to a challenge.” She dropped her gaze to his crotch. “In more ways than one.”
“Are you having fun?” he asked with a dry smile. “Enjoying what you do to me?”
“I could be having more fun if you weren’t so far away.”
“I can fix that.”
“But,” she said, putting up a hand, “I am hungry, so maybe we should go downstairs and check out the buffet before we talk to Lisa.”
“Now that you’ve gotten me all revved up, you want me to eat?”
“I think you’ll live,” she said with a laugh. “Just don’t eat any oysters. It might put you over the edge.”
He caught her arm as she walked by him. “You’ve al-226
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ready driven me over the edge, Kayla. You know that, don’t you?”
Suddenly all the lighthearted teasing was gone, replaced by something far more serious, far more dangerous. “Nick . . .” She didn’t even know what she wanted to say. She didn’t know what they were to each other — or what she even wanted them to be to each other. They needed time to figure it out, time they didn’t have.
“Let’s go eat,” Nick said abruptly.
As she followed him out of the room, she had the feeling she’d just blown something important.
An hour later Kayla wasn’t thinking about Nick or Evan. She was thinking about how much she’d eaten.
“I’m stuffed,” she groaned. “These buffets should not be legal. There is way too much tempting food.” She sat back in her chair, rubbing her stomach.
“You should know. I think you tried everything they had,” Nick said.
She was pleased to hear the light note back in his voice. They had enough to deal with without trying to figure out their relationship in the middle of everything else.
“It’s not very gentlemanly to point that out,” she said,
“and you didn’t do so bad yourself.”
He grinned. “At least we got our money’s worth.” He glanced down at his watch. “It’s almost eight. Hopefully Lisa is back on duty.”
“Hopefully,” she echoed. She paused as her gaze came to rest on a man sitting across the room. He was dressed in a sport coat, white shirt, and dark trousers. His hair was black and greasy, and he had a rough, weathered face. His eyes were glazed, as if he were tired, or drunk, or maybe on something. She would have put his appearance down
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to too much gambling, but he was staring at her as if . . . as if he hated her. The realization took a moment to sink in. How could he hate her? He didn’t know her.
When he realized she was staring back at him, he quickly looked away.
“What is it?” Nick asked. “Who is that guy?”
“I don’t know.” She watched as the man threw a few bills on the table, stood up, and left. Something niggled at the back of her brain. “I feel like I’ve seen him before.
He was in the parking lot.” Did that mean anything? So what if he was in the parking lot? But the look he’d given her a few minutes ago had made her feel cold. “He stared at me as if he didn’t like me much.”
“Are you sure he was looking at you?”
Kayla glanced around her. “Who else? There’s no one but you and me in this corner of the restaurant.”
Nick tipped his head toward the casino floor behind them. “Could be anyone back there.”
He was right. She’d probably imagined the whole in-teraction. “I guess I’m a little paranoid.”
“You’re not paranoid. I don’t want to discount any possibility. But I didn’t recognize him at all.”
“And it’s Evan who is following us,” she said.
“We don’t know that for sure. He could be working with someone.”
“True. Well, the man’s gone. So I guess it’s a moot point.”
“For the moment. But tell me if you see him again.”
Nick took out his wallet and put a tip on the table.
Then they walked back to the casino. It didn’t take long to find Lisa Palmer. She was the only woman dealing blackjack.
“Can we speak to you a moment?” Nick asked.
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“If you have something to say while you play, I can listen,” she said smoothly.
They sat down at the table and Nick handed her a fifty-dollar bill. She pushed a stack of chips across the table.
Nick gave half to Kayla.
“I’m not very good at cards,” she murmured.
“Give it a shot.”
Lisa dealt out the cards. Kayla came up with a ten and a four. Fourteen. She didn’t know what to do. It was such a low number. She decided to take another card. It was a nine — twenty-five. She was out. Nick held at twenty.
The dealer drew a seventeen.
“Hey, you won,” Kayla said. “Looks like you’re the lucky one tonight.”
“Let’s hope so.”
The other two men at the table left, leaving Nick and Kayla alone with Lisa. “We spoke to your grandmother earlier,” Nick said as Lisa dealt another hand. “We’re the ones looking for the watch.”
“Oh,” she said in surprise. “I thought you were going to call me later.”
“We decided to stop by. Do you know if you have it?”
“It’s funny you should ask. I called my sister earlier after I spoke to my grandmother, and she said another man had come by looking for it. He said he was an antiques dealer. It was weird.”
Kayla’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you know what he looked like? Was he tall, blond, and good-looking?
“That’s what my sister, Beth, said. Why is everyone so interested in an old watch? Is it valuable? Because we could use some extra cash.”
“It might be worth something,” Nick replied. “Did your sister give him the watch?”
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“No, and you’re going to have to keep playing, or I’ll get in trouble.”
They obediently played out the hand. Nick threw in his cards. Kayla tried hitting again — this time on thirteen.
She got a nine. Twenty-two. The dealer won with eighteen.
“My sister didn’t know where the watch was, thank goodness,” Lisa continued. “Otherwise, she might have given it to him. She doesn’t have a lot of sense. If the watch is worth something, I want to get full price.”
“So you do know where the watch is?” Kayla asked.
“Sure, it’s in my dresser drawer in my bedroom.”
Kayla was relieved to hear it was still tucked away.
“That’s good. The man your sister spoke to is not an antiques dealer; he’s a con artist, and he’d probably steal the watch from you before he’d pay you a dime.”
“It must really be worth something if a con man wants it.” Lisa dealt another hand of cards. They obediently placed their bets and went through the motions of the game.
“What time do you get off?” Kayla asked. “We’re very interested in talking to you some more. You don’t happen to know if there’s an inscription, do you?”
“Yes. It said . . . ‘Until the Day.’ I always wondered what that meant. I get off work at ten. If you meet me by the front desk, we can talk more about it.”
“What about your sister? Maybe we could talk to her right now,” Nick suggested.
“She’s at work. Not that I’d want her going through my drawers anyway.”
“We’ll talk to you at ten then,” Kayla said.
They rose from the table and moved away as three other men sat down to play. “She still has the watch,”
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Kayla said as they walked toward the lobby. “That’s something.”
“I don’t think it’s a good sign that Evan was here before us,” Nick said heavily.
“But it might take him some time to find the watch, if she has it tucked away in a drawer.”
“I don’t know, Kayla. It doesn’t feel right. I wish we didn’t have to wait two hours to talk to her,” he said in frustration. “That will be too long. I’m going to call J.T.
Maybe he can pull some strings, get us an address.”
They paused in the lobby by a lounge area so Nick could make the call. “He’s not answering,” he muttered.
“Yeah, J.T., it’s Nick. Call me back. I think we found the owner of another one of the watches, and Evan was here before us. Her name is Lisa Palmer. She’s a blackjack dealer at the Peppermill Casino in Reno. That’s where we are right now. She thinks the watch is at her house. We’re going to meet her at ten o’clock. Call me back at this number as soon as you get the message.”
“I guess we wait,” Kayla said as he hung up.
Before Nick could reply, her cell phone rang. She was surprised. Hardly anyone ever called her on her cell phone. She opened it, not recognizing the number.
“Hello?”
“Hey, babe, how are you?”
Her jaw dropped at the sound of a very familiar male voice.
“Don’t you know you should never hit on fourteen?”
Evan continued. “That’s a sucker bet. Haven’t you learned anything from me, Kayla?”
Her heart began to race, and sweat broke out across her brow. “How do you know I did?” She looked around
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her, sure Evan couldn’t be far away. At Nick’s quizzical glance, she mouthed,
Evan
.
“I know everything,” Evan replied. “Good lead on the watch, by the way. Who told you — Grandma?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nick and I just decided to take a little trip.”
“The honeymoon you never had, sweetheart?”
Her blood boiled at that comment. “Damn you, Evan.
You’re a pig.”
“That’s not what you said before, when we —”
She cut him off, ending the call with a ruthless snap of her cell phone.
“What did he say?” Nick asked.
“He was horrible,” she replied. “So cruel. I couldn’t talk to him.”
“Kayla, what did he say?” Nick repeated.
“He said we gave him a good lead on the watch. He’s here, Nick. He’s watching us. He knew what cards I played. He’s everywhere. I can’t find him. I can’t get away from him. I can’t stand this. And I can’t do it anymore.” She looked around, feeling a wild desperation to get out of the trap she was in. “I have to take a break.”
“Fine, we’ll take a break.”
“No, by myself. I need some air. I need to be alone.”
She spun on her heel and headed for the first exit.
The door led out of the casino and into the garden and pool area. The night air was refreshing, and it cooled the furious heat running through her body. She walked to the far edge of the pool, where a fountain ran over a beautiful array of rocks. The sound of the waterfall soothed her nerves. She was grateful for the quiet. After the noisy chaos of the casino and Evan’s disturbing phone call, she needed a moment to regroup.
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Maybe Nick could go nonstop without ever taking a breath, but she couldn’t. Too much was happening too fast. She felt like a hamster running around on a wheel in a cage, racing as fast as she could but never getting anywhere. And the walls of the cage just kept closing in on her.
She heard a groan, then a thud, and she whirled around. There were only a few soft lights along the path.
The bushes and trees in the garden were suddenly filled with dark shadows, and she realized how isolated she was.
“Nick,” she called. Had he followed her into the garden but was staying far enough away to give her the space she’d requested? “Nick?”
There was no answer. She started walking back the way she’d come. She kept a wary eye around her as she headed for the door. She was looking up, not down, which was why she almost tripped over Nick’s body. She let out a startled gasp. He was sprawled across the grass, facedown, and unconscious.
“Oh, my God!” she said in horror. Before she could kneel down to check on him, an arm came around her neck, hauling her up against a hard male body. She squirmed, trying to see who had a grip on her, but she couldn’t move. The man was strong. She kicked out her feet behind her, trying to get away, trying to remember everything she’d learned from her self-defense class.
“Where is it?” he growled against her ear. “Where’s the watch?”