‘Too dressy?’ she asked Adam, after taking quite some time because even dressing, especially in something like this, seemed to have acquired a sensuous pleasure of its own these days.
‘No. And we can always hock the bracelet if we lose,’ he said with a grin. ‘Don’t stray far away from me tonight will you, Roz?’
‘No. Why not?’
‘Someone might be tempted to kidnap you.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Because of the bracelet?’
‘Because you look so desirable.’
‘Oh,’ .she relaxed. ‘l doubt it. It could be the other way round,’ she added with a glint of laughter in her blue eyes.
‘And what,’ he strolled over to her and put a finger on the point of her chin, ‘do you mean by that, my little witch?’
Roz pretended to consider and put up a hand to stroke his immaculate burgundy linen open-necked shirt. ‘Some,’ she paused, ‘exotic lady might be tempted to lure you away.’
‘Oh,’ he said softly, ‘she’d have to be very exotic to compete with you, Roz.’
Roz blushed, knowing exactly what he was referring to, and laughed. ‘You must think—one day I’ll explain that to you. Can we go? I’m dying to win a fortune!’
She turned away to pick up her purse, and that .was one of the occasions when she turned back, to find him watching her intently. But she pretended not to notice.
‘Adam! I don’t believe it,’ she exclaimed later, counting a pile of chips. I’m exactly back to where I started!’
They were having a drink and a midnight snack in the Garden Restaurant, and she was flushed and excited.
‘That’s a very creditable performance,’ he drawled. ‘I wish I could say the same.’
‘You haven’t lost much, though.’
‘No,’ he agreed ‘l must be too cautious by nature.’
‘You must be,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I mean, you never lose your head at the races, or your shirt.’ She grimaced.
‘I learnt that lesson a long time ago, Roz. And I don’t see racing as a gambling medium so much as a …as an industry which I happens to enjoy being involved in. As for this,’ he lifted a hand expressively, ‘it’s fun once in a while, but deadly if you imagine you can beat the house in the long term.’
Roz pushed her plate away and wiped her lips. ‘I didn’t think l would enjoy it so much,’ she confessed. ‘Perhaps l did inherit some of my grandfather’s failings, after all.’
‘To enjoy yourself for an evening is no crime, Roz. In fact I was going to suggest one more fling before we go. What’s it to be‘? Two-up‘? Roulette?’
‘Blackjack,’ she said positively. ‘I told you I was a pontoon player from way back, didn’t I?’
Roz was amazed to discover that although it was a week night and after midnight, there still seemed to be as many people as ever around the tables and the two-up ring with its plush, salmon pink carpet, the centre of a lively crowd drawn by a run of ‘heads’.
But Adam found her a seat at a Blackjack table, the girl croupier smiled at her and dealt her in, and for some minutes she became absorbed in the game. Then she looked around for Adam, to see he was not far away, in deep conversation with an elderly man she, didn’t recognise. But all evening people had stopped to talk to them, many she hadn’t known. Adam lifted a hand as he caught her gaze and she turned back to the table with a smile.
Then she became aware of the woman sitting at the other end of the table. She must have slipped into an empty seat while Roz had had her head turned away, and if Roz had been asked to describe the exotic lady she had mentioned earlier to Adam, it crossed her mind that this gorgeous creature would fit the bill perfectly.
She looked to be in her early thirties, tall with long golden-blonde hair and green-flecked eyes, and she was wearing. a low cut, green silk dress held up over a magnificent bosom by narrow shoulder straps. And as she scratched their table for another card an enormous square cut emerald ring surrounded by diamonds caught the light.
But the card she got gave her more than twenty-one, and she turned with a wry little smile to a man standing behind her and he fondly slipped a hundred-dollar, bill into her hand which she handed to the croupier to be changed into chips.
That was when she looked idly across at Roz, her lovely hazel eyes widened and her gaze lifted, and Roz felt Adam’s hand on her shoulder.
But. when Roz twisted to smile up at him, he wasn’t looking down at her but across the table, with his mouth hardening. Roz felt her own eyes widen as she turned back, because it was the woman in green he was staring at she realised, but it was more, it was as if there was an electrically charged current flowing across the green baize tabletop between them which seemed to touch everyone around them, even the croupier, who turned her head from one to the other and blinked a couple of times before she returned to cutting a pack of cards.