OLIVER Elliot opened his door at the knock on it and stared. Day-um. The tense British lifeguard-wannabe looked even better in clothes than he did wearing nothing but a towel. And he’d been freaking hawt, rocking terry cloth that clung precariously to his narrow hips. The dude had a serious six-pack going. Body fat: none. High-protein diet: totally. The only word that came to mind to describe the guy: classy.
“That’s why you got hypothermic so fast, you know,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” Collin replied, managing to look both confused and uptight at the same time.
“No body fat.”
“Um. Perhaps a context for your comments would be helpful?”
“I was thinking about how you looked wearing that towel before. You’re ripped, dude. No body fat. That’s why you got cold so fast when you jumped in to save me. Thanks, by the way. Square of you to come in after me like that.”
“Square?”
English sounded pissed off, so Oliver explained. “Yeah. You know. Square. As in cool. It was cool of you to come in after me.”
“Ah. In that case, you’re welcome. And thank you for making sure I got back to shore safely.”
Jeez. The guy sounded like a walking Debrett’s British Etiquette manual. “No prob.”
“And thank you for lending me the clothing.”
English held out a glossy paper gift bag, the kind high-end boutiques used, and Oliver took it, peering inside. His Banzai T-shirt and khaki surfing shorts had never been folded so neatly in their entire lives. “Anytime.”
One corner of—Collin, that was his name—of Collin’s mouth turned up in wry humor. “I sincerely doubt I will be borrowing your clothes again anytime, but thank you for the offer.”
“Too bad.” Oh fuck. The words were out of his mouth before he stopped to consider them. This wasn’t California, where anything went and casual propositions were a way of life.
For just an instant, he thought he saw a spark of heated interest in Collin’s cool gray eyes. Nah. He hadn’t seen that. It was just wishful thinking.
“What do you do to work out, Collin? You obviously don’t surf.”
“I study martial arts. I find that they calm the mind and center my focus.”
“Sweet! Which one?”
“Traditional judo, some tai chi, and a variant of jujitsu taught by the British Special Forces.”
“You’re not a soldier, are you?”
“No. I’m not.”
“Whew. Had me worried there for a minute. I mean, you could definitely pass for a military type.”
“Why do you say that?”
He tilted his head, considering. “Well, there’s the short hair and guy-who-works-out-a-lot thing. But mainly it’s your intense, poker-up-the-ass bearing.”
The guy’s spine stiffened even more, going ramrod straight. Fuck. Oliver had stuck his foot in his mouth again. Most of the surfers he hung out with were too stoned or too brain-fried from being stoned to give a rat’s ass when he said stupid crap that could be interpreted as insults. So touchy, this guy was. Or maybe he had become that big a social klutz when he’d checked out of real life and moved to a shack to surf his days away a few years back.
“Can I buy you a drink or a meal or something to say thank you for trying to save my life?” Oliver asked belatedly. Dropping the invite like that into an awkward silence had probably been colossally bad timing, and he wouldn’t have blamed the guy for saying no. He had a hard-core zig going every time he should be zagging with this man.
“That would be nice.”
Whoa. Wait. What? English had accepted?
“You sure?” he blurted, incredulous.
“Is there some reason for me to be apprehensive or turn down the offer?” Collin asked cautiously.
“Hell no—uh, no. Lemme grab a real shirt. This joint’s restaurant has a dress code and gets picky about it.”
He stripped off his T-shirt and reached into the closet for a polo shirt with an actual collar, which was about as formal as his attire ever got. He’d heard that the El Rocca was old-school European, though, so he’d broken down and invested in a few garments that actually passed as not T-shirts.
A sharp breath sucked in behind him.
His face popped free of the polo shirt’s neck, and he grinned over at Collin. “Like what you see?”
Collin’s facial muscles twitched infinitesimally. Just enough to indicate a frown without actually being one.
“Either you’re straight, and my gaydar has gone completely haywire, or else you’re severely uptight. Which is it?”
“Those are not the only two alternatives to explain a startled reaction to a strange man undressing in front of oneself,” Collin declared a shade defensively.
“Doesn’t it get uncomfortable having that stick up your butt all the time?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No reason to ask for my pardon. I’m pretty hard to offend.” He knew damned well that wasn’t what Collin had meant, but the guy really needed to loosen up. Or more accurately, he had a perverse urge to force the guy to loosen up. Weird. Usually he didn’t get into debauching the closeted and uptight homocurious members of the male population. But damned if this one didn’t make him think all kinds of lecherous, cherry-popping thoughts.
“While you’re changing, you might want to consider a less… well-ventilated… pair of pants. I doubt they’ll let you into the restaurant in those jeans,” Collin said.
“Well-ventilated?” He looked down at the holes in his knees and the worn spot on his thigh, where only the white cotton cross threads remained, and grinned. “I paid good money for these holes. They’re designer fashion, you know.”
“On what planet?” Collin snapped.
Oliver burst out laughing. “It’s called California. It’s in a galaxy far, far away, about a hundred years in the future from your existence.”
“Just change, will you?”
“Me? Change? Never.” Just enough of a pause to let indignation build in those sexy gray eyes, and then Oliver added, “If you mean I should change the pants, sure thing.” Oliver unbuttoned his pants and dropped the offending jeans then and there before reaching into his drawers for another, less worn pair. Too bad he hadn’t gone commando today. It was a blatant come-on, and more hot than he’d expected, to undress in front of Collin Callahan, but the man rubbed him every wrong way with all that stuck-up British manners stuff. It made him want to knock the guy out of his comfort zone. To shock him.
Another sharp inhalation announced that Collin was not unmoved by what he saw. Dude was definitely gay, or at least bi. Question was, did Mr. Fussy-pants know that? Or, more importantly, was he willing to admit to it?
Oliver finished zipping and buttoning his newest and least-ventilated pair of jeans, skipping his usual flip-flops for a more sedate pair of deck shoes.
“Am I acceptable now?” he asked wryly. The last time he’d dressed to please someone else had been when his father insisted he put on a suit and tie for his college entrance interview. He’d been fourteen, frighteningly intelligent, and browbeaten. That kid had been so damned confused—starting to realize he was gay, desperate to get out from under his family’s iron fist, with no idea what to do with his freakishly brilliant mind and looking for someone to love him before he found a compelling reason to kill himself. Sometimes he wondered if he’d changed all that much from that unhappy kid of long ago.
Collin was speaking. “…As for me, your attire was entirely acceptable before. But now the manager may actually let you eat in his establishment.”
He was acceptable, huh? Good to know. Oliver would bet if he got the guy naked in bed, Collin would find him more than merely acceptable. The way he figured it, English would be either a total wild child or massively repressed in bed. But he couldn’t for the life of him decide which. And it was starting to make him a little crazy.
He followed the Brit down the hall to the elevator. He had to admit, Collin’s glutes made those ultraconservative dress pants look sexy as hell. Martial arts, huh? The guy must be good at it to have an ass like that. That stuff made a person flexible too. Opened up some interesting sexual possibilities….
Stop. Collin Callahan was clearly uptight as hell. Oliver had thrown out blatantly obvious love-to-do-you signals at the guy, and he hadn’t even blinked, let alone responded in the affirmative. Too bad. He would’ve enjoyed knocking a little of the starch out of Collin Callahan.
COLLIN led the way into the restaurant, more nervous than he’d been in a long time. Gun was the kind of guy who would let it all hang out in bed, hold nothing back, and enthusiastically embrace being gay, not shy away from it in shame. Unlike his previous lovers, up to and including the most recent fiasco, who’d universally been as furtive and ashamed as he was about being gay.
His family was deeply traditional, which translated to conservative and homophobic. He’d never dared to tell his parents about his proclivity for other boys. Instead he’d gone off to university, explored his preferences in private, and stayed away from his family. He would lay odds that Gun didn’t have a shy bone in his body about being gay. He’d probably exuberantly fucked every like-minded kid he’d come across in school. And under his parents’ noses to boot. Although Gun’s parents had probably embraced the whole idea of having a gay son. No doubt it would have immeasurably increased their liberal credentials in California.
He had no business pondering a dalliance with Gun. None.
As titillating as it was to consider taking Gun up on his flagrant flirtation, he was better off sticking to his own kind—the semicloseted and deeply ashamed. Better the occasional secretive hookup where no one would ever breathe a word of it than a messy, doomed relationship with an uncouth heathen like Gun. Opposites might attract, but that would only last up to the point where they attacked and killed each other. The scandal it would cause if he got caught messing around with Gun on the job made him faintly nauseated to even consider.
He led the way to a small table in an inconspicuous corner of the restaurant.
“Huh. Went for the romantic table in the corner, did you, English? Didn’t see that one coming.”
He started. Oh Lord. Was that what people would think? “We can move to a more conspicuous table. Better lit—”
“Relax already. This is fine. Might as well lurk in the corner and study the competition while we’re at it.”
The very private, very illegal poker tournament he’d been assigned to infiltrate started tomorrow at the exclusive El Rocca Casino in tiny Gibraltar, perched at the junction of the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.
A story was circulating that an Arab prince had rented out the entire resort and casino for a private party with his friends. Who knew? That might actually be the case. What the public didn’t know was that the prince’s “friends” were several hundred of the world’s best poker players, each of whom had paid a million dollars for the privilege of participating in this little gathering.
Except for him, of course. The British government had staked the money, and he wasn’t even close to being a professional poker player. He was, however, a quick study, and the best mental mathematician in the Wild Cards organization. Contrary to its name, the company provided security and discreet problem solutions to high-end clients, not gamblers. But apparently the British government hadn’t known that when they’d come calling with a very off-books request of the firm.
The Home Office needed to get a man inside the tournament and find out what prize the players were playing for. He’d been pulled out of his cubicle and offered this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a real spy. A win-win for everyone. Wild Cards did a favor for the Home Office, maybe got itself some future business from that quarter.
COLLIN glanced at the other patrons and realized with a start that he recognized many of the faces in here from the dossiers the British government had provided to Wild Cards, Inc. of suspected attendees at this illegal gathering. Most of these men and women were professional hustlers. Not the kind who starred in Texas Hold’em tournaments on TV, although a few of those were here too. These were the hard-core gamblers who took casinos and rich amateurs for all they were worth and never looked back. Tough men and women, unashamedly con artists and criminals, who lived down to the traditionally seedy reputation of professional gamblers.
He asked Gun in a low voice, “Do you suppose most of them are here for the tournament?”
“All of us are here for it. The tournament director has rented the whole place for the next two weeks. The only nonplayers here besides the hotel staff are the card dealers, security guards, and professional female entertainers the director brought in.”
So. That part of rumors was true. Good to know. “And who exactly is the director?”
“No idea. I don’t think anyone knows. Only invitation I got to this shindig was an anonymous e-mail.”
“Me too,” Collin lied. “Do you suppose all of these people really had a million dollars to spend on a poker tournament without knowing what they would be playing for?”
Gun leaned back in his seat, away from the intimate conversation. Interesting. Either the surfer didn’t know what the prize was or didn’t want to talk about it. Gun’s cobalt eyes practically glowed in the flickering light of the candle sitting in the middle of the table. Even in this dim light, his eyes were shockingly blue. Collin could gaze into them all night.
A waitress came, and they ordered drinks. Then Gun surprised him by ordering two surf plates. The waitress smiled, obviously flirting with Gun, and retreated.
“What did you just order for us?” Collin asked.
“Surfers work up a big appetite and need to carb and protein load. The local version involves steak and potatoes. You burned a crap-ton of calories staying warm in that cold water, plus swimming around, and you need to recharge.”
The surf plate turned out to be a mountain of mashed potatoes topped by a boneless ribeye steak, rare, topped by three fried eggs, the whole thing drenched in hollandaise sauce.
“There must be two thousand calories on this plate!” Collin exclaimed.
“Oh yeah. Easy.”
He shook his head, pushed aside the eggs and as much of the sauce as he could, and carved neatly into the steak. He polished off the meat and shocked himself by finishing most of the potatoes. And then the eggs. Good call on the huge meal. His body had been craving the energy.
“So. What brings you to the El Rocca?” he asked Gun. “Are you a dealer or a player?”
“Player. You?”
“Same.”
“So I guess we’ll be, like, mortal enemies.”
“Assuming we end up playing at the same table at some point. And odds of that are—”
Gun interrupted, “Approximately fifty to one in the first round, say a diminishing player base of twelve per round, ten or so rounds of play summed—”
Collin interrupted back, “I get the idea.” That flash from Gun of the math genius poker player he would expect at a tournament like this one was more intimidating than he cared to admit. Note to self: don’t underestimate the competition, even if they come off like brain-dead surfer bums.
“Bitchin’ good times.”
And the surfer bum was back.
“You get a load of the monster yacht that pulled into the marina overnight?” Gun asked around a mouthful of eggs, potatoes, and sauce.
“Sorry, no. I was busy watching you nearly get killed and then trying to find your body.”
“It’s a beast. Has to be six hundred feet long.”
“That’s not a yacht. That’s practically a cruise ship.”
“No shit, Sherlock. And nobody seems to own it.”
Collin frowned. “How do you know that?”
Gun shrugged. “While you were cooking in my shower, I did some online research. The Erebus is not registered anywhere I can find. And I’m a great researcher.”
Huh. Collin was a professional intelligence analyst. He would stack his researching skills up against this guy’s anytime. When he got back to his room, he’d have to look up the yacht himself. And if he couldn’t find it, the entire Wild Cards, Inc. staff bloody well could. “Erebus? That’s its name?” Collin responded aloud. “As in the Greek god of darkness?”
“Yuppers.”
Huh. That was certainly a creepy mythological reference to choose for a boat name. “Maybe it’s registered under some other name but displays the name Erebus to protect its owner.”
“Yeah, but who needs that much identity protection? Especially because it’s bad luck to rename a seagoing vessel.”
“Maybe a player in the tournament?” Collin guessed aloud. Privately he hoped it was the director of the tournament making a grand entrance. Maybe his or her arrival would signal the beginning of some answers about who was behind this whole tournament and why it was being run so secretly.
Gun shrugged.
“Have you heard anything about the rules for the tournament?”
Another shrug from Gun. “They don’t really matter, do they? The cards will be dealt, the bets will get made. Shit’ll happen.”
“Are you mainly a Hold’em player?” He’d read that it was a variant of the older poker standard, seven-card stud, but modified to make play faster and betting more interesting.
“I prefer straight poker. Made my living playing seven-card stud until—” Oliver broke off.
Until what? Collin sensed a mystery. “Why the shift to Texas Hold’em?”
“It got popular a few years back, and all the big casinos started running nothing but Hold ’em tournaments. From a bettor’s stand point, the better statistician you are, the more you win. Fewer cards dealt means less luck of the draw in play. So professionals prefer Hold’em to the stud poker games—” He broke off again. “Christ, I’m rambling. Of course you know that.”
Collin circled back to the question that had brought him here. “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about all of the mystery around this tournament?”
Gun’s expression went guarded. Closed. Whoops. He’d pushed too hard. Collin backed off, saying, “I’m just antsy to get going. I don’t like to wait while everyone sits around sizing up the competition.”
“I hear ya, bro. That’s why I swim. I surf when I can. I’m told there are decent waves by Tarifa, but I haven’t had a chance to check them out yet. Surf report yesterday over there was for glass and bad fetch.”
“What, pray tell, are those?”
“Glass as in glassy calm water, and bad fetch means the wind’s blowing onshore. An onshore breeze knocks down the waves and turns them into unsurfable mush.”
“Ah.”
“You’ve never seen Endless Summer, have you?”
“The movie?” Collin frowned.
“Classic surfing flick. Legit stuff. Shows why surfing rocks. You should give it a look.”
He couldn’t tell if Gun meant the movie or surfing, but either way, he’d skip the look.
A group of men came into the bar talking loudly in some Slavic-sounding tongue.
Gun murmured, “The mob contingent.”
“Excuse me?”
“Way I hear it, they’re Albanians. Staked a couple of players to the tournament.”
Collin leaned in close enough to Gun to smell the salt in the guy’s hair and muttered, “There’s such a thing as an Albanian mob?”
“Fucking A. Their players will band together against everyone else. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and all that crap. After the outsiders are taken down, then they’ll turn on each other. They’ll go at it like rabid dogs and tear each other apart in the end.”
“Lovely,” Collin replied.
“Watch out for them. If a couple of them are playing together, they’ll cheat the table.”
“How?” he asked in surprise.
“They’ll signal cards back and forth, and they’ll gang bet against a single player to squeeze him or her dry.”
“Aren’t tournament referees supposed to prohibit that kind of behavior?”
Gun gave him a strange look, like that had been a deeply amateur question to ask. “Of course they’re supposed to. Doesn’t mean the tournament referees always see it or that they choose to take action once they spot it. The house gets the same cut of the pot no matter who it goes to.”
“What’s the house cut in this tournament?” Collin asked.
“One hundred percent, the way I hear it. Rumor is we’re not playing for the stake money.”
“What, then?”
“No clue.”
“Doesn’t that worry you at least a little?”
Gun grinned. “Hey, I just came to play some cards.” But his eyelids flickered a little as he said the words. This surfer dude was hiding something. He knew more about this weird tournament that he wasn’t sharing. Not that Collin had any business casting the first stone over secrecy. He wasn’t about to go around announcing that he was the British government plant at this event.
As he pushed the last of the mashed potatoes around his plate, Collin considered the revelation that there was no monetary prize at the end of this event. Who in their right mind tossed away a million bucks just to play some cards? Gun was surely in it to win, or he wouldn’t be here. Behind that casual façade had to lie an intense but well-concealed competitor. Why else would he be here pitting himself against the most skilled, ruthless card sharks on earth?
“Do you know any of the other players?” Collin asked.
“Some of these pros were around when I used to play.”
“Used to?”
“I’ve been out of circulation for a while. Thought I might stick my toe back in.”
Collin was not a highly effective intelligence analyst for nothing. A person did not stick their toe back in by ponying up a million bucks to play in an illegal cutthroat poker tournament. Gun’s story was not adding up. Collin glanced around the restaurant. Who else’s story here was a lie?
Was anybody here who they appeared to be?