Katie Rose (51 page)

“He?” Her alleged date was Cat, and Katie was pretty sure that if Cat could have planned the evening, she’d have gladly written this little episode right into the script. Cat thought it was time Katie discarded her books, her calculator, and her pained expression. A man like Montana would be just what a financial director and accountant like Kate needed.

“Your late date.”

The wind blowing across the waves turned cool and damp. “It looks like I’ll be the one doing the standing up.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shivered.

Montana slid his arms out of his jacket and draped it around Katie’s bare shoulders, using the collar he pulled up around her neck to turn her toward him.

She tried unsuccessfully to twist away. “No, you don’t have to do this. I’ll be fine.”

“You wouldn’t want to cool off your streak of luck, would you?”

Cool off was exactly what she needed to do. How could she have miscalculated so badly? She’d been so intent on getting on board and attracting Montana’s attention that she never considered she might need to leave quickly. Her plan to win big and disappear into the night was not to be. A few hours of bravado was about all she could handle. Now she was trapped by the very man she wanted to leave intrigued while she got ready for her next attack.

“Guess you’ll be my guest for a while longer, whether you want to be or not. If you’ve had enough blackjack, we could share a late supper.”

“No, I’m not hungry. I mean I told you … I came here to gamble.”

“That’s right, you said you wanted to win a lot of money. Maybe you’d like to change the game to one with higher stakes. What about a few private hands of poker?”

That was exactly what she’d had in mind. But now Katie didn’t like the look in Montana’s eyes. She’d seen it before. The last time she’d been invited to play poker, she’d been fifteen and her opponent had been a sixteen-year-old with more polish than a queen’s silver. If it hadn’t been for her younger brother, Carson, she might have lost more than her clothes. When Carson discovered them in the gazebo by the river, he’d defended his sister’s honor with his fists. Carson lost the fight and Katie lost her poker-playing admirer.

That had been Katie’s first, but it hadn’t been her last high-stakes game. Back then, she’d learned not to let herself be lulled into agreement by pretty words and a challenge, and later, when she’d learned she had an uncanny ability to count the cards, she’d taught Carson to play poker and had beaten him routinely.

Tonight had been meant as a trial run, a warm-up for the big event. But it looked as if fate had taken a hand. She couldn’t leave the boat, and Montana was inviting her to up the stakes. So her timetable had changed. She’d move to the next stage of her assault, make her strike tonight … and disappear.

She had no choice. Fate had dealt the cards.

Her answer had to be, “Yes.”

The Mississippi River gambler neither nodded nor smiled. Instead he used a more disarming means of sealing their agreement.

He kissed her.