TANDING ON THE balcony with his elbows propped on the wall, Mitchell watched the lights of a distant cruise ship gliding slowly northward as he waited for Kate to finish dressing so they could leave for the casino.

After their first bout of lovemaking, they’d gotten up to eat; then they’d gone back to bed, made love again, and fallen into a deep, exhausted slumber. The sun had already set when he woke up with Kate in his arms. He’d felt utterly contented and totally relaxed lying there, and he still felt the same way.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” she said behind him.

Mitchell straightened and turned, his relaxed smile widening into an appreciative grin. Dressed in a short black strapless sheath with a scalloped bodice edged in lace and sassy high-heeled sandals with slender scalloped straps, Kate Donovan was a vision of lush curves, luminous skin, luxuriant hair, and long, long legs. His gaze riveted on her legs again, and Mitchell tipped his head back, grinning at his astonished reaction to what was, very possibly, the most beautiful pair of legs he’d ever seen.

“Are you smiling because I look surprisingly nice, or because there’s something wrong with my dress?” she teased, but she sounded a little anxious.

“I’m smiling because I just realized you have gorgeous legs,” Mitchell replied wryly, “and I never saw them before.”

“I was wearing both of them earlier,” she said flippantly. “In fact, I distinctly remember that they were attached to me when we were in bed.”

“I was too close to get a full-length look when we were in bed.”

She walked up to him and turned her back. “Would you pull my zipper up the last inch?” she asked, lifting her hair out of the way for him. “I can’t reach it.”

Mitchell had performed that same service for other women countless times in the past, but as he looked down at Kate’s exposed nape, there was an intimacy and pleasure associated with the simple act that surprised him. As he located the tab of the zipper and slid it up, she joked with him about his reaction to her legs. “Let me guess,” she said, “you’re a leg man, aren’t you?”

Normally, Mitchell would have answered “yes” without hesitation or thought, but for some obscure reason, the question seemed all wrong, especially coming from her. Curving his hands over her shoulders, he bent his head and kissed her cheek. “Let’s not have that conversation,” he whispered.

Kate turned slowly around and looked at him. He hadn’t answered the question for the same reason she’d instantly regretted asking it—she didn’t want to know what female body parts he was partial to. In fact, right now, she wanted to think he was partial to her as a whole being. “Nice answer,” she said, smiling into his eyes.

“I thought so, too.”

THE CASINO HE took her to was in the Dutch section, and it was a large private club where the members spoke an amazing variety of foreign languages and the table limits were very high. On the way there, Mitchell had described the casino as having a “European flavor,” which Kate now realized translated into an atmosphere that was elegant, sophisticated, and subdued. It was an atmosphere that suited him perfectly, Kate thought. Wearing an impeccably tailored gray suit, dark gray shirt, and pale gray tie, he personified elegant sophistication and calm self-assurance.

The only resemblance between the casinos she’d been to in the States and this one was that gambling was legal in both. In fact, the only times she’d ever seen casinos like this were in movies that were filmed in locales like Monaco.

Trying not to look as if she’d never been inside a place like this, or been around people like this, Kate glanced past baccarat and roulette tables populated by wealthy men with large stacks of chips in front of them and well-kept women with glittering jewels at their wrists and throats.

“Are you looking for something in particular?” Mitchell asked.

“Yes,” Kate replied, flashing him a laughing look, “James Bond.”

“You’ll have to settle for me tonight.”

“I can do that,” she replied unhesitatingly, and he grinned.

“My original question referred to what game you prefer,” Mitchell explained, suppressing the sophomoric impulse to put his arm around her as they walked.

“I prefer whatever game I can win money playing.”

“In that case, we need to leave now,” he joked.

“I’m actually very lucky at cards,” Kate said truthfully. “Slot machines like me, too. And craps tables are often very friendly to me.”

“How is your luck at blackjack?”

“It varies.”

They found two seats together at a blackjack table, and although Kate inwardly shuddered at the $100 minimum, she opened her purse and resolutely withdrew five $100 traveler’s checks before she sat down. “I need to cash these first.”

“I intended to back you or I wouldn’t have brought you here.”

“I can’t gamble with your money. One of the things my father taught me was that a lady always gambles with her own money, or she doesn’t gamble at all.”

“Your father had some very novel notions,” Mitchell replied drily as she turned and walked away, heading toward the cashier’s window nearby. With an unconscious smile, he watched her walk, admiring her natural grace and the way her flame-colored hair changed from waves into thick curls below her shoulders.

“Belle femme,” the man on Mitchell’s right remarked, his gaze also following Kate.

“Yes, she is,” Mitchell replied. He signaled to the dealer and signed the usual table form to draw money against his line of credit. “See that the young lady doesn’t run out of chips when she gets low,” Mitchell instructed the dealer as he began sliding Mitchell’s chips toward him.

“Certainly, Mr. Wyatt.”

An hour later, she was $2,400 ahead, and Mitchell had stopped playing so that he could lean over and watch Kate play her hand. It had been obvious from the first that she knew when to ask for another card, when to stay with the hand she had, and when to double-down. When she followed the usual procedure, she won an inordinate amount of times, but what fascinated him was that, on a whim, she would do the opposite of what she should—and she still won. Unfortunately those intuitive whims of hers made it difficult for the other players to anticipate her actions, and they were screwing up their own hands as a result. He was wondering if she realized that, when she slid her chips toward the dealer and said, “I’d like to cash these in, please”; then she looked at the four men seated at the table with her and said graciously, “I apologize for disrupting your hands. It’s difficult for me to ignore my hunches when I have them.”

The Frenchman who’d spoken to Mitchell earlier grinned broadly at her, lifted her hand, and kissed it in sheer gratitude. “Elle est une trèsbelle femme!” he said to Mitchell. Caught between amusement and shock, Kate gathered up her winnings while the man spoke animatedly in French to Mitchell, who replied to him in the same language.

“What was that all about?” Kate asked as they walked away.

“He noticed that you’re not only very beautiful, but you are also very lucky at blackjack.”

“He said more than that. He asked you a question, too, because you shook your head and answered him in a rather chilly voice.”

Mitchell grinned at her. “Did I sound ‘chilly’? That was rude of me, and I’m rarely rude.”

“What did he ask you?” Kate persevered.

“He asked if I would be willing to let you stand beside his chair so that he would have not only the benefit of your beauty but also, perhaps, your good fortune at cards.”

Kate gave an indelicate snort and shook her head. “He’s an old letch, and that was a total crock.” Mitchell’s shoulders shook with laughter at her phrasing, and he suppressed another sophomoric urge—the urge to snatch her up into his arms and indulge in a public display of affection.

“What did you say to him?”

“It’s difficult to translate it accurately.”

“Give it a try.”

“Loosely translated, I told him that he’s an old letch, and what he said was a total crock.”

Kate laughed, but she wasn’t buying it. “That’s not what you said.”

Mitchell bent his head and whispered against her cheek, “I told him to get his own girl because I wasn’t going to share mine with him”; then he straightened, and continued walking as if having his lips on her cheek had been the farthest thing from his mind.

Kate’s heart did a somersault at hearing Mitchell refer to her as his “girl,” but she knew it was just a figure of speech, and she tried not to think it meant anything else. She had a wonderful time for the rest of the evening, even though she lost half her winnings.

Mitchell gambled with the same effortless competence with which he did everything else, but what particularly fascinated Kate was his reaction to several women who made frank visual overtures to him during the evening: He had no reaction; he simply acted as if the women were invisible. Either he was so accustomed to it that he didn’t notice, or else he didn’t enjoy being looked at like a delicious sexual feast. Kate preferred to think the latter was true.

Shortly after midnight, when they’d finished gambling, they stopped in an intimate little lounge on the first floor of the casino, where a small band was accompanying a male singer. They found an empty table, and while the singer launched into the familiar lyrics of “The Way You Look Tonight,” Kate watched Mitchell sit down, unbutton his jacket, lean back in his chair, and casually stretch his long legs out. That picture of him—relaxed, handsome, and utterly at ease in an exclusive private casino—imprinted itself on Kate’s heart while the words to the song entwined around his image, framing it. Trying to hide her admiring smile, she put her elbows on the table and leaned her chin downward on her folded hands, watching him from beneath her lashes.

A moment later, he evidently felt a waiter should have already arrived, so he lifted his head an inch and glanced to his right with the merest trace of a frown. Two waiters materialized from opposite directions, almost colliding with each other in their haste to answer his summons, and Kate swallowed a laugh. In her father’s restaurant she’d observed all the known signals used by male customers to attract the attention of waiters—from the most boorish signals to the most timid—and she silently gave Mitchell the highest score possible, both for “style employed” and “effectiveness of style.”

“How does cognac sound?” he asked while the waiter stood beside him.

“Fine, thank you,” Kate said, knowing she’d have only a sip. Still amused by her observations, she turned her head, watching the singer, a smile hovering at her lips.

Mitchell ordered their drinks and then mistook the reason for her smile. “Are you especially fond of that song?”

Kate nodded.

“Any particular reason?”

Since she couldn’t explain her current reason, Kate lowered her eyes and gave him a different one that was equally true. “When I was thirteen, Michael Bublé and his grandfather were visiting Chicago and, purely by chance, they had dinner in our restaurant. Michael’s grandfather happened to mention to my father—very proudly—that Michael was about to launch his singing career in Canada, so my father offered to let Michael make his ‘United States debut’ in our bar. Michael was only sixteen at the time, but he was so amazing that my father brought me downstairs from the apartment to listen to him.”

“And?” Mitchell prompted when she looked slightly embarrassed.

“And Michael sang the song we’re listening to now. Actually, he sang it to me.”

“Should I be jealous?”

“Of course,” Kate joked with a winsome smile. “I fell madly in love with him right then and there. The next time I saw him sing,” Kate finished, “he was at Carnegie Hall.”

Feeling a little foolish because she’d told him yet another story about her life when she still knew virtually nothing about his, Kate glanced down at the table and realized Mitchell’s hand was resting beside hers, less than an inch away. The sight of his long fingers lying so close to hers enthralled her. Telling herself that she was being naïve and foolish, she finally pulled her gaze away.

Mitchell’s head was bent, his gaze fixed intently on their hands, just as hers had been. Slowly, he lifted his hand, and then he laid it over hers.

Kate felt a thrill run through her entire body. Swallowing, she watched to see if he had any noticeable reaction at all. He tightened his grip on her hand.