Scout's Honor (3 page)

She lightly touched St. John’s arm, obliging
him to lean his dark head down to her level. “Number ten,” she
murmured, her eyes never leaving the lean masculine face with the
crooked grin.

St. John glanced to the left of the caller
and leveled a glacial stare at the younger man. “If he wins enough
I’ll give him the name of my tailor. That tuxedo is either rented
or borrowed. I hope he’s already bought his ticket home.” He
dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head and strode away.

Anna harbored the same hopes as St. John,
but wished he hadn’t voiced his appraisal so callously. Though
Mitch Summers might be out of his league, she didn’t want to be the
one to put him in his place, wherever that might be.

The suit didn’t fit. It was too full through
the shoulders and a shade worn on the lapels. She was surprised she
hadn’t noticed before. But then, except for tonight she hadn’t been
close enough to notice, and earlier this evening all she’d really
seen were the soft eyes that were still holding her own across the
table.

Mitch lifted his hand in a short wave, and
for the first time Anna noticed the sultry blonde hanging on his
arm. He turned his attention and his smile toward the well-endowed
beauty, and Anna noted with distaste that there could be no doubt
as to what was holding up her dress. And the woman was hanging all
over Mitch like a cat who had found the cream.

You’d better enjoy it while he’s still got
it, honey, Anna thought, because he isn’t going to last long in
this game. She wasn’t quite able to convince herself that it was
his money the woman was interested in getting. If the movement of
her hands was any indication, the blonde had something a lot more
physical in mind.

Anna tried to distract herself by placing
her bet and sizing up the other players, but her glance kept
straying to Mitch Summers. Fortunately, the banker’s hand lost, and
she was able to concentrate on the deal as the shoe was passed to
her until it lost again. She kept her bets below the maximum, yet
made them larger than what had been placed before. She wanted to
bring the game along naturally and take her time picking out the
high rollers. Mitch Summers obviously wasn’t one of them, but that
didn’t seem to dissuade the blonde.

And surprisingly enough that seemed to be
exactly what Mitch was trying to do. More than once Anna saw him
disentangle the woman’s hands from his shoulders and other places.
For a man with enough savvy to follow a woman halfway around the
world he was naïvely inept at releasing himself from a pair of
feline clutches. At one point Anna actually opened her mouth to say
something to the woman, but caught herself just in time. If Mitch
Summers was dumb enough to get taken for a ride by every blond
siren who came along, that was his problem. All Anna needed to know
was why he had been following her, and with a name and a
description St. John would have the information she needed at
midnight.

If there was one thing Anna had learned in
life it was not to believe what people told you about themselves,
especially in casinos. It was always to your advantage to
investigate an adversary from a distance and then, armed with
private knowledge, meet him head on. She would confront Mitch
Summers at a time and place of her choosing.

A flash of irritation at her ridiculous
twinge of protective instincts toward him made her reckless with
her next bet. She pushed the house limit with two thousand on the
player. A murmur of excitement ran through the crowd as the cards
were dealt and the caller passed the hand to her. Anna turned over
the first card, a deuce of diamonds, and the second, a seven of
spades. A natural nine—unbeatable.

The dealer paid her winnings, and she
started to smile triumphantly at Mitch Summers, but the number-ten
seat was empty, and the blonde was nowhere in sight. She barely had
time to register the strange feeling tightening her chest before a
deep masculine voice drawled in her ear, “I did some checking with
our buddy Larry and he’s assured me he can get us a table for
dinner all the way till dawn. But if you’re tied up until then,
I’ll settle for breakfast.”

Anna’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes
slanted up to meet his, and suddenly the tightness dissipated into
an uncalled-for smile. “You’re terribly persistent, Mr. Summers,
but I never breakfast with strange men.”

“Trust me, I’m not at all strange.”

She shot him a skeptical glance.

“Different, maybe,” he conceded with another
of those crooked grins, “but not strange.”

Anna had her doubts on that score, and she
knew they all showed on her face. Even if, by some outside chance,
he wasn’t strange, the effect he had on her was strange enough to
make up for it. Maybe she’d been alone too long, she thought. The
first good-looking man who walked up to her without avarice written
all over his face and she was fascinated. But he did want
something, or he wouldn’t have followed her from San Francisco. She
shook her head and placed her next bet, five hundred on the
banker.

“Mind if I watch?” he asked. “I haven’t
really figured the angle on this game yet.” He casually draped his
arm across the back of her chair, moving the extra step necessary
to bring his body close to hers.

She ignored the brush of his jacket against
her back—almost—and the fraction of an inch separating his slacks
from her upper arm—almost. “There are no angles in baccarat.” The
word flowed off her tongue, dropping the
t
, rolling the
r
.

“See? I’ve already learned something. I’ve
been calling it
back-a-rat
, and that’s about how all my
hands went.”

A quirky grin teased her mouth at his
unpretentious summing up of his skills. The smile was completely
out of character, and the man two chairs over immediately changed
his bet to the banker. Anna barely subdued a chuckle and glanced up
at Mitch.

“You certainly add a new dimension to the
game, Mr. Summers.”

“In most games, Ms. Lange.” His thumb
brushed across her shoulder blade, leaving a trail of warmth, and
his eyes darkened. “I like to play by my own rules.”

She caught the hint of challenge in his
touch and his words, and her smile softened. “And if there are no
rules?”

“Then I make them up as I go. It keeps
things interesting.”

“Yes . . .” The word came out a little too
breathless for Anna’s taste, but his thumb was making another
circle on her skin and there seemed no armor against his touch. “It
certainly does.”

Their eyes met, clear gray and rich brown,
taking full measure of each other.

“Mitch,” A deep-throated whine broke the
moment. “I’m hungry.”

Mitch and Anna both looked at the blonde
sidling up to him. Then Mitch’s eyes came back to Anna and both his
brows lifted in question. With an almost imperceptible shake of her
head she answered him.

He looked at the pile of money being pushed
in her direction by the dealer. “You’re good,” he said, more to
himself than to her, as if he were confirming her prowess rather
than admiring it.

His tone caught her off guard, but only an
instant passed before she replied, “I know.” As he walked away with
the blonde she added with a heavy sigh, “Too good for my own
sake.”

Anna lost the next three hands as the
excitement drained out of her. It was eleven-thirty, and she had
half an hour before St. John would return, but the game had gone
flat.

At midnight, after a series of major losses
and minor wins, she cashed out, and rose from the table just as St.
John appeared at her side. His glance took in the amount of money
she put in her purse, but he didn’t say anything until they were
back in the office and returning her stake to the safe.

“Bad night?” he asked, twirling the lock and
throwing a puzzled look over his shoulder.

“Let’s not talk about it.” She checked her
face in the rococo mirror behind the bar, fluffing the spiky shag
of bangs that framed her wide-set eyes and high cheekbones. A fresh
spray of Magie Noire misted her collarbone as she caught St. John’s
eyes in the mirror and held his gaze.

“What did you find out about Mitch Summers?”
she asked. Her voice held a strain of impatience that she wished
weren’t there.

St. John took his time answering, and the
longer he waited the more she knew she wouldn’t like his answer.
And she didn’t.

“Nothing,” he said. He pulled a gold case
out of his jacket pocket and lit a hand-rolled cigarillo. “Well,
almost nothing, unless he lied to you about his name. Let’s go to
dinner and I’ll tell you what I found out about a man named Stephen
Summers.”

Anna and St. John climbed a private
staircase to the second-floor dining room, where the maitre d’
ushered them to a table on the balcony, overlooking a moon-washed
ocean. White linen, sterling silver, and cut glass adorned the
tabletop, but Anna barely noticed. Her mind was too busy racing
around the fact that the man with the soft brown eyes and crooked
grin had lied to her. Back to rule number one: Don’t believe
anything anyone tells you about himself, even if he looks as
guileless as a boy scout.

It was ridiculous to feel betrayed by his
lie and alternative choice of a companion, but she did. More by her
own instincts than by the man. She’d felt he was different from the
men she generally met. Certainly he lacked the usual
pretentiousness, the guarded look in the eyes, the practiced
facade.

The wine steward poured their wine, and St.
John lifted his glass in salute. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he
said with a wry smile.

She clicked her glass on the edge of his,
then settled back into the upholstered luxury of her chair. “Well,
what did you find out about Stephen Summers?” The name felt awkward
on her lips. He’d told her Mitch and she had believed him.

St. John swirled the Chardonnay in the
long-stemmed glass, then took a small sip. He closed his eyes in
concentration to taste the wine before answering her. “He’s a lousy
gambler—”

“I already knew that.”

“—and a poor loser.”

Now, that bit of information took her by
surprise. The man she’d met didn’t seem to take gambling very
seriously, and she’d been at the same table with him twice. “Go
on,” she said.

“He’s a lawyer in San Francisco, married,
three children.”

And he cheats on his wife, she thought with
weary resignation, ignoring the pang of regret that came with St.
John’s words.

St. John continued. “He showed up in Monte
Carlo a few months ago and lost a lot of cash and a substantial
amount of property. The game was poker, the stakes were high, and
the host was Jacques Dumonde.”

Anna gasped, and almost choked on her wine
as she leaned forward in her chair, a tumble of silky black hair
falling over her bare shoulder. “What in the world was a San
Francisco lawyer doing in a game with Dumonde?”

“Losing his shirt, by all accounts,” St.
John answered, shrugging.

Jacques Dumonde was a persona non grata at
Runner’s Cay and any other casino that wanted to make a profit. The
man was a well-known card mechanic who had turned to fleecing
tourists because his face had become too familiar in the clubs.
Anna had played against him once in Paris, and although she
couldn’t prove it, she knew he’d been second dealing. He was
subtle, very quick with his hands, and he had cleaned her out.

“Why do you think Summers is following me?”
she asked as the waiter appeared with the first course, smoked
salmon with capers and dill sauce.

St. John’s gaze wandered over the other
diners on the balcony as he took a deep breath and expelled it in a
long sigh. “Did you cover all your bases in San Francisco?”

“Of course I did,” she snapped, not
bothering to hide her irritation. She knew what he was insinuating.
Chinatown games weren’t legal, but she wasn’t a novice. “Anyway,
you said he was a lawyer, not a federal agent, and we’re in
Nassau.”

“I know, sweetheart. It was a long shot, but
if it’s not a legal problem, then that just leaves the dress. Maybe
he’s making a play for you. Salmon?” He held out a portion of the
delicacy on his fork.

She took the mouthful but shook her head at
another bite. “He could have made a play for me in San Francisco
and saved himself a plane ticket,” she said, dismissing his opinion
despite Mr. Summers’s obvious attraction to her.

“Then your guess is as good as mine. I’d ask
him the next time I saw him, if I were you.”

She had already decided to approach Mr.
Summers and get to the bottom of his charade.

“There’s always the possibility he isn’t
following you,” St. John continued. “Could be he’s out for a little
old-fashioned revenge. Jacques Dumonde is in Nassau.”

If that was the case Anna didn’t want
anything to do with Mr. Summers. Being between Jacques Dumonde and
a poor loser was the wrong place to be under any circumstances.

During dinner their conversation turned to
St. John’s first love, Runner’s Cay, and the inherent problems of
employing a hundred people and trying to make your dream their
guiding light while taking care they didn’t steal you blind in the
process.

Partway through dessert, the waiter
approached the table, standing to one side until he caught St.
John’s eye. “Excuse me, Mr. Lange. Mr. Walters requests your
presence on the floor.”

St. John was obviously annoyed, but rose
from the table. He couldn’t afford to ignore his pit boss. If Larry
Walters had called, it must be important. Otherwise he wouldn’t
have dared to interrupt St. John’s dinner.

“Do you have your key to the house?” St.
John asked Anna.

She nodded, and swallowed a bite before she
added, “I’m going to call it a night when I’m finished with
dessert. Thanks for dinner and the information.”