Sara Craven - The Highest Stakes of All

Marie Claude had shrugged, her eyes cynical. ‘You have a good body. Use it while you are young.’

So Joanna took the dress back to the suite, and hung it in the armoire.

She spent the rest of the afternoon washing her hair and conditioning it until it shone with all the rich depth of a horse chestnut, then gave herself a pedicure, painting her toenails in the clear light red that matched her fingertips.

Lastly, she arranged the cosmetics she planned to use later on the dressing table, together with her precious bottle of Miss Dior, before changing into shorts and a tee shirt, and heading off to Chris and Julie’s bungalow situated on the farthest edge of the hotel gardens.

Its remoteness didn’t bother Joanna, who loved the sense of privacy imparted by the surrounding hedges of flowering shrubs.

‘I expect we’ve been dumped here out of the way,’ Julie had confided. ‘But that’s fine by us. Because if Matt decides to squall we don’t have to worry about disturbing the neighbours.’

It had another advantage, too, thought Joanna. There was no direct sea view, so she was spared the sight of the Persephone together with her owner and any stray members of her crew who might still be hanging around, behaving like God’s gift to women.

The sun was getting lower in the sky, but it was still warm, so she let herself in and took a bottle of chilled Coke from the refrigerator in the tiny kitchen, and the copy of Watership Down which Julie had promised to leave for her ‘together with a box of tissues. It’s all about rabbits'.

‘And I’ll give you Jaws,’ Chris had teased. ‘By way of contrast.’

She settled herself with a sigh into one of the cane chairs on the small verandah, relishing the peace, longing to start her new book, but unable to dismiss from her mind the horrors she knew were awaiting her later that night.

She had watched poker games in the past until her eyes glazed over, as they often did when a game continued through the small hours into dawn. But that was through boredom as much as tiredness. She had tried at first to establish some kind of interest in the game, but she still didn’t follow its intricacies or understand its attraction.

In fact I wouldn’t care, she told herself, if I never saw another pack of cards as long as I live.

But she wasn’t likely to be bored this evening. Far too much depended on it, and the role of mindless dolly-bird would be even more difficult to sustain than usual.

It was a good ten minutes before Chris and Julie arrived with the baby, looking harassed.

‘He’s been really grumpy at supper,’ Julie reported. ‘Started crying and threw his food on the floor. I could feel waves of disapproval reaching me from the nannies all over the room.’

She unstrapped a red-faced Matt from his pushchair and lifted him out, whereupon he began to cry again, a steady, bad-tempered wail.

‘Leave him to me,’ said Joanna, sounding more reassuring than she actually felt. ‘Go and have a smashing meal together, and I’ll bath him and get him settled.’

Julie looked at her with a mixture of doubt and relief. ‘Well, if you’re quite sure …’

Half an hour later, Joanna wasn’t certain of very much at all. Matt was standing up in his cot, roaring with discontent and shaking the bars, only desisting when Joanna picked him up and held him.

‘You haven’t got a temperature,’ she told him. ‘And I don’t think you’ve got a pain anywhere. I suspect, my lad, you’re just having a major strop.’

Any attempt to get him back in the cot, however, met with stern resistance, so in the end Joanna bowed to the inevitable, heated up his milk, and carried him out to the twilit verandah, settling his squirming red-faced person gently but firmly in the crook of her arm.

‘This had better not become a habit,’ she said, dropping a kiss on his silky head.

By the time he’d drunk nearly all the milk his eyelids were drooping, but he was still attempting to cry intermittently as he fought against sleep.

‘Drastic measures called for, I think,’ Joanna whispered to herself, and, cuddling him close, she began to sing, clearly and very sweetly, a song from her own early childhood, ‘"There were ten green bottles, hanging on the wall …"’

As the number of bottles gradually decreased, she allowed her voice to sink lower and lower, until it was barely a murmur, and Matt, thumb in mouth, was finally fast asleep.

Joanna sat for a while, looking down, smiling, at the sleeping baby. A faint breeze had risen, bringing a delicious waft of the garden’s evening scents. And also, she realised, something more alien. A faint but unmistakable aroma of cigar smoke.

But Chris, she thought, puzzled, was a non-smoker. Besides, it would be another half-hour or more before he and Julie returned.

Suddenly nervous, she wanted to call Who’s there? but hesitated for fear of waking Matt. In the next instant she thought she could hear the sound of footsteps quietly receding, yet wasn’t entirely sure.

She got carefully to her feet, listening hard, but there was nothing—only the distant sound of the sea.

I’m imagining things, she thought. Because I’m feeling jumpy about tonight. That’s all it is.

Which was probably why the breeze seemed suddenly colder, too, she thought, shivering as she carried Matt inside and closed the door.

The crochet dress did not improve on acquaintance, Joanna thought, sighing, as she made a last check of her appearance. Worn with knee-length white boots that laced up the front, the outfit presented itself as the kind of sexy tease which needed a certain amount of sophistication to carry off, and she knew she was nowhere near that level.

However, she’d done her best. She’d used the heavier foundation she reserved for these occasions, transforming her face into a blank canvas, then smoothed shimmering silver on to her eyelids, accentuating it with softly smudged black liner, before adding two coats of mascara to her long lashes. The bronze blusher on her cheekbones had a touch of glitter, too, and she had applied a deeper shade of the same colour to her mouth.

Fancy dress and a mask, she told herself, as she applied scent to her pulses, her temples, and the valley between her breasts. Think of it that way.

There was room for very little but the basics in her tiny evening purse, and as she searched in her shoulder bag for the compact of pressed translucent powder she always wore, she found the slip of paper Chris and Julie had given her, with their name, address and telephone number.

It was the nearest to a friendship she’d achieved since leaving Britain, and it was also a possible lifeline, she thought wryly as she tucked it carefully into her wallet.

Denys was pacing the sitting room, and he gave a nod of judicious satisfaction as she emerged from the bedroom.

‘Once dinner is over,’ he told her, ‘someone will come to escort us up to the Gordanis suite.’

‘Very formal.’ Her tone was dry. ‘As are you,’ she added, removing a speck of fluff from the lapel of his dinner jacket. ‘Is the black tie strictly necessary?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a big night. And a very big game. Mr Gordanis can afford to impose his own rules.’

But can you afford to play by them? was the question she did not dare ask as they took the lift down to the dining room.

She ate sparingly at dinner, and drank even less, noting that her father was being equally abstemious. Afterwards they drank coffee on the terrace outside the dining room while the time ticked slowly past, building the tension inside her.

She said, ‘Do you think it’s not going to happen—that we’ve been forgotten?’

‘No.’ Denys shook his head. ‘Apparently, he plays for amusement first with some of his friends. After they leave, the stakes rise and the game becomes serious. We’ll be sent for soon.’

But it was well after midnight when Gaston Levaux appeared unsmilingly beside them. ‘Monsieur Vernon. I am here on behalf of Monsieur Vassos Gordanis who invites you to join him.’ He paused. ‘I should warn you that you will be required to pay one thousand dollars simply to buy into the game.’

Oh, God, Joanna thought, suddenly weak with relief. We haven’t got a thousand cents. I never thought I’d be glad to be broke.

But her father was meeting Monsieur Levaux’s questioning glance with an airy shrug. ‘There’s no problem about that. I was told he played in dollars and I have the money.’

Thanks, no doubt, to Mrs Van Dyne, Joanna whispered under her breath, silently cursing all rich American widows.

‘I must also caution you that Monsieur Gordanis is a formidable opponent. It is not too late for you to make your excuses—or at least those of the mademoiselle,’ he added.

‘You really mustn’t concern yourself.’ There was a note of steel in Denys’s voice. ‘I’m looking forward to the game, and so is Joanna—aren’t you, darling?’

Joanna saw the manager’s mouth tighten. As they walked to the lift, he spoke to her quietly in French. ‘Do you ever suffer from migraine, mademoiselle? If so, I suggest you develop one very quickly.’

If only, thought Joanna, aware that she was being warned and a little startled by it. Knowing, too, that she would probably have to develop a brain tumour in order to deflect Denys from his purpose.

When they reached the top floor, a small group of men were waiting in the corridor, laughing and talking. As Joanna emerged they fell silent, and she saw glances being exchanged, and even heard a murmur of, ‘Oh, là là!’ from one of them.

You take no notice, she reminded herself stonily. You behave as if you were a dummy in a shop window. You don’t see, hear, talk or think. And you just pray that Dad wins—and wins quickly.

The double doors at the end of the corridor swung open as they approached. The room ahead was hazy with tobacco smoke, and the smell of alcohol hung in the air. Half a dozen men were standing around, chatting as they waited for play to recommence, while a waiter in a white jacket was moving among them, refilling glasses and emptying ashtrays.

So many other rooms, she thought. So many other times, yet all the same.

Except, she realised, that tonight there were no other women present. It was then she saw Vassos Gordanis walking towards the door, smiling expansively and talking to a man in a dark blue tuxedo, who also seemed to be leaving.

As he saw Joanna, the smile faded from his pouched face, and she felt herself quail inwardly beneath his hard, opaque gaze.

A sudden hush had fallen on the room as everyone turned to look at her, too, and she knew an overwhelming impulse to turn and run, only Denys’s hand was under her arm, urging her forward.

‘Come along, my sweet,’ he said. ‘Come and meet our host.’

She thought, But we’ve just walked past him. And then the group in front of her fell back, revealing a circular table littered with chips and a scatter of playing cards.

But, more importantly, revealing also the man who was seated facing her across the green baize.

She knew him at once, of course. He was clean-shaven now, and the curling black hair was combed back, but the arrogant lines of his face with its high-bridged nose and strongly marked chin were quite unmistakable, as were the heavy-lidded dark eyes and that hard, frankly sensual mouth that she’d last seen smiling at her from the deck of Persephone.

Only he wasn’t smiling now, and the hooded eyes studied her without any particular expression in their obsidian depths as he lounged back in his chair, his tie hanging loose and his frilled white shirt half-unbuttoned, providing her with an unwilling reminder of the bronze muscularity she’d seen only that morning.