He was six foot one, maybe two. He wore a black dinner jacket open over a black silk T-shirt and black trousers that emphasized his lean, muscular body. Dark-haired, as Alain had said. The color of midnight was more accurate.
Alain hadn’t mentioned his eyes.
What color were they? Blue, she thought. She was too far away to be sure and, for an instant that passed as swiftly as a heartbeat, she let herself wonder what would happen if she crossed the marble floor, stopped right in front of him, looked into those eyes to see if they were the light blue of a tropical sea or the deeper blue of the mid-Pacific.
Savannah frowned and permitted herself another tiny sip of champagne.
She had a task to accomplish. The color of O’Connell’s eyes didn’t matter. What counted was what she knew of him, and how she would use that knowledge tonight.
He was considered one of the best gamblers in the world. Cool, unemotional, intelligent. He was also a man who couldn’t resist a challenge, whether it was a card game or a beautiful woman.
That was why she was here tonight. Alain had sent her to lure O’Connell into a trap.
She’d never deliberately used her looks to entice a man into wanting to win her more than he wanted to win the game, to so bedazzle him that he’d forget the permutations and combinations, the immutable odds of the hand he held so that he’d lose.
It wasn’t cheating. Not really. It was just a variation of the skill she’d developed back when she’d dealt three-card monte. Keep the sucker so fascinated by your patter and your fast-moving hands that he never noticed you’d palmed the queen and slipped in another king.
Tonight was different.
Tonight, she wanted the mark watching her, not her hands or the cards. If the cards came the right way, she would win. If they didn’t and she had to resort to showing a little more cleavage, so be it.
She’d do what she had to do.
The goal was to win. Win, completely. To defeat Sean O’Connell. Humiliate him with people watching. After she did that, she’d be free.
Free, Savannah thought, and felt her heart lift.
She could do it. She had to do it.
And she wanted to get started. All this waiting and watching was making her edgy. Do something, she thought. Come on, O’Connell. Pick your table and let’s start the dance.
Well, she could always make the first move…No. Bad idea. He had to make it. She had to wait until he was ready.
He was still standing in the entryway. A waiter brought him a drink in a crystal glass. Bourbon, probably. Tennessee whiskey. It was all he drank, when he drank at all. Alain had given her that information, too. Her target was as American as she was, though he looked as if he’d been born into this sophisticated international setting.
He lifted the glass. Sipped at it as she had sipped at the champagne. He looked relaxed. Nerves? No. Not him. He was nerveless, or so they said, but surely his pulse was climbing as he came alive to the sights and sounds around him.
No one approached him. Alain had told her to expect that. They’d give him his space.
“People know not to push him,” Alain had said. “He likes to think of himself as a lone wolf.”
Wrong. O’Connell wasn’t a wolf at all. He was a panther, dark and dangerous. Very dangerous, Savannah thought, and a frisson of excitement skipped through her blood.
She’d never seduced a panther until tonight. Even thinking about all that would entail, the danger of it, gave her a rush. It would be dangerous; even Alain had admitted that.
“But you can do it, chérie,” he’d told her. “Have I ever misled you?”
He hadn’t, not since the day they’d met. Lately, though, his attitude toward her had changed. He looked at her differently, touched her hand differently…
No. She wouldn’t think about that now. She had a task to perform and she’d do it.
She would play poker with Sean O’Connell and make the game a dance of seduction instead of a game of luck, skill and bluff. She’d see to it he lost every dollar he had. That he lost it publicly, so that his humiliation would be complete.
“I want Sean O’Connell to lose as he never imagined,” Alain had said in a whisper that chilled her to the bone. “To lose everything, not just his money but his composure. His pride. His arrogance. You are to leave him with only the clothes on his back.” He’d smiled then, a twist of the mouth that had made her throat constrict. “And I’ll give you a bonus, darling. You can keep whatever you win. Won’t that be nice?”
Yes. Oh, yes, it would, because once she had that money…Once she had it, she’d be free.
Until a little while ago, she hadn’t let herself dwell on that for fear Alain would somehow read her mind. Now, it was all she could think about. She’d let Alain believe she was doing this for him, but she was doing it for herself.
Herself and Missy.
When this night ended, she’d have the money she needed to get away and to take care of her sister. They’d be free of Alain, of what she’d finally realized he was…Of what she feared he might want of her next.
If it took Sean O’Connell’s humiliation, downfall and destruction to accomplish, so be it. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, concern herself about it. Why would she? O’Connell was a stranger.
He was also a thief.
He’d stolen a million dollars from Alain in a nonstop, three-day game of poker on Alain’s yacht in the Mediterranean one year ago. She hadn’t been there—it had been the first of the month and she’d been at the clinic in Geneva, visiting Missy—but Alain had filled her in on the details. How the game had started like any other, how he’d only realized O’Connell had cheated after the yacht docked at Cannes and O’Connell was gone.
Alain had spent an entire year plotting to get even.
The money wasn’t the issue. What was a million dollars when you’d been born to billions? It was the principle of the thing, Alain said.
Savannah understood.
There were only three kinds of gamblers. The smart ones, the stupid ones and the cheats. The smart ones made the game exciting. Winning against someone as skilled as you was a dizzying high. The stupid ones could be fun, at first, but after a while there was no kick in taking their money.
The cheats were different. They were scum who made a mockery of talent. Cheat, get found out, and you got locked out of the casinos. Or got your hands broken, if you’d played with the wrong people.
Nobody called in the law.
Alain wanted to do something different. O’Connell had wounded him, but in a private setting. He would return the favor, but as publicly as possible. He’d finally come up with a scheme though he hadn’t told her anything about his plan or the incident leading up to it until last week, right after she’d visited her sister.
He’d slipped his arm around her shoulders, told her what had happened a year ago and what he wanted her to do. When she’d objected, he’d smiled that smile she’d never really noticed until a few months ago, the one that made her skin prickle.
“How’s Missy?” he’d said softly. “Is she truly happy in that place, chérie? Is she making progress? Perhaps it’s time for me to consider making some changes.”
What had those words meant? Taken at face value they were benign, but something in his tone, his smile, his eyes gave a very different message. Savannah had stared at him, trying to figure out how to respond. After a few seconds, he’d laughed and pressed a kiss to her temple.
“It’ll be fun for you, chérie. The coming-out