“You’re looking uptight, boss,” Craig said, the first words out of his mouth.
“You’d be uptight if you had to deal with that vixen.”
“Yeah?” Craig grinned. “Got you on your toes, huh?”
“She’s got me p.o.’d is what she’s got me. And while I’m on the subject, can you tell me what the hell Buster was doing in the hangar?”
“In here?”
“Yeah. What’s more, he was on the Lear this morning. In fact, he was Hannah’s alarm clock.”
Craig’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not kidding. Big as life, there he was, and what’s more, he was making his mating call.”
Craig’s eyes widened, then he started to laugh. Much as he wanted to stay annoyed, Buck started to laugh, too.
“The gator has the hots for her?” Craig choked out as he laughed. “Nobody’s going to believe this!”
“Well, I saw it.”
Craig chuckled. “Hey, did you hear on the radio? Tom Regan dropped thirteen hundred to Bill Anstin last night.”
“You’re kidding,” Buck said. “Tom’s not great, but he ought to be able to clean Anstin’s clock. What happened?”
“Anstin was feeling cocky after playing here yesterday, so he and Tom Regan were playing five-ten-limit at the casino until the tourists left. Regan challenged Anstin to a heads-up match. Five-ten, no-limit. Thousand dollar buy-in. Regan was down three hundred and decided to rebuy, then two hands later he’s holding King-Queen on a flop of King-King-Nine. He pushes it all in—”
“And the other guy had pocket Nines,” Hannah said.
Buck hadn’t heard her approach, and turned. “What’re you doing here?”
“I heard him come in,” she said, angling her head toward Craig, “and heard the two of you laughing. I thought I’d check and see if y’all have made any progress on my jet.”
“Ah,” Buck said, pointing to the stack of schematics. “Not yet.”
“But I’m right, aren’t I?” she said, turning to Craig.
He nodded. “Yeah, Anstin had nines full.”
Buck couldn’t resist a smile. As much as he hated to see Bill Anstin win, it was even better to hear that Tom Regan’s three kings had cost him a thousand dollars against Anstin’s full house of three nines and two kings. Regan was the island’s mayor, and Anstin owned the casino. The two of them were, in Buck’s view, trying to ruin Treasure Island by turning it into a major tourist resort. And that was what yesterday’s card game had been about.
Just as bad, Regan and Anstin kept hounding Buck to waive the landing fees for the tourist charter planes that Anstin booked. And Buck simply couldn’t afford to do that. It was a long-running bone of contention, and anything that made either of them miserable was just fine with Buck.
“So this was on the radio?” Hannah asked.
“Yeah,” Buck said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Wait,” she said, holding up a hand. “Is that Bill Anstin? The World Series bracelet winner?”
Damn, Buck thought. Beautiful, a pilot, and she knew poker. A trifecta of danger. “Yeah, that’s him. Took his winnings and built the casino here. Lords over it like he’s God’s gift to gambling.”
Hannah laughed. “As if! He’d never have made the final table if he hadn’t rivered that straight flush against Chris Ferguson. Ferguson flopped the nut flush, and Anstin hit runner-runner.”
Buck couldn’t resist a smile. Everyone on the island knew the story of the final table, where Anstin was dealt one monster hand after another, taking down two previous world series winners en route to the championship.
But few people remembered that hand against Ferguson, a hand that Anstin should never have played to begin with, and certainly not the way he had. Holding the Queen of Spades and the Four of Hearts, he pushed in all of his chips, trying to bluff on a flop of Jack-Six-Three, all Hearts. Former World Series winner Chris Ferguson called him holding the Ace and Queen of Hearts, an Ace-high flush. Anstin caught the Deuce of Hearts on the Turn, and the Five of Hearts on the river, giving him a straight flush, Deuce-Three-Four-Five-Six of Hearts.
Anstin’s odds of hitting the cards he needed to win were one-in-five-hundred. It was one of the legendary bad beats in World Series history, but it had happened on an outer table, away from the television cameras, and it was largely forgotten outside of poker circles.
If Hannah Lamont remembered it, she must be a serious player. And since she was also a business owner, she might be good pickings.
“So you like poker?” he asked.
“I’m from Texas,” she replied, as if that said all that needed to be said.
He nodded. “We have a game here, a couple of nights a week. If you’re interested.”
“Buck….” Craig said cautiously, as if sensing what Buck had in mind.
“Just a few friends,” Buck added, ignoring him. “We play three-six, no-limit.”
“Sure,” she said with a casual shrug. “I’ll give it a try. It’s not like I have much else to do.”
“Tomorrow night at seven,” Buck said. “Back of the hangar.”
“I’ll be there.”
As if she could be anywhere else.
CHAPTER FIVE
BUCK COULDN’T help it. As the vixen walked away toward the door, all he could see was the gentle sway of her hips. And of course she couldn’t leave without another word.
All of a sudden, she stopped and turned. “Is there anywhere I can get a shower?”
The idea of her in a shower filled his mind with all sorts of images that belonged in a men’s magazine. For a few seconds his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
“Sure,” said Craig, drawling. He pointed to the emergency gravity shower over in the corner of the hangar, a defense against caustic spills and burns.
Hannah put her hands on those luscious hips. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“You can use mine,” Buck heard himself say, another one of those Delilah-induced moments. It was like being under an evil spell.
“You don’t mind?”
He shook his head. Mind? He’d have to be out of his mind to mind. “Go through the back door of the office. The bathroom is off to the right.”
“Thanks.”
She shifted directions and headed back to her plane, prolonging his agony. When she re-emerged from the Lear, she was carrying a duffel.
“I thought,” she said as she passed him, “that I’d be vacationing in Aruba. I guess it’ll be here instead.”
Vacationing here? Running up the side of the volcano and jumping into the crater was beginning to sound like a pleasant alternative. Certainly a safer one. But then he remembered Edna. Nope. No running up the side of a volcano for him.
Then, thanks to all powers that be, Hannah disappeared through the door. All of a sudden the air lost its thickness and he could breathe again. He ignored the strange look Craig was