Chapter 8
Tiffany watched as Theo strolled to the bar, tumbler in hand, and helped himself to the decanter of whiskey that Kelly had left out before she’d knocked off for the night.
She’d already cleared and washed up the used glasses, leaving only the tumblers for Tiffany to take care of before she finished her shift.
‘My hero,’ she murmured, forcing herself to be nonchalant as Theo poured amber fluid into the heavy crystal. The saloon was not a small room but it suddenly felt suffocating – certainly not big enough for the two of them as the sound of liquid splashing into his glass filled the silence.
He chuckled. ‘I think it would be slightly more heroic had I not been bashed with an umbrella by an old lady.’
Tiffany smiled as she picked up the tumblers that were sitting around the edge of the table. ‘But you got her bag back.’
Sure, the story had been amusing but also intriguing in that it had given her further insight into Theo. Maybe it had been reflexes or the foolhardiness of youth, but he’d done something, he’d acted, where a lot of people might not have – without any thought to the consequences.
That wasn’t nothing.
‘True,’ he conceded as he gestured to the decanter, his eyebrows raising in question. ‘You want one?’
Tiffany had learned in her teens if a woman wanted to hold her own with the guys on an outback property, she needed to know how to shoot whisky.
And rum. After a half dozen tinnies. And that had held her in good stead for her partying around Europe stage and for the many, many parties held in crew bars on cruise ships.
It had also helped her forget what was happening at home. But this wasn’t that.
This was just a standard debrief session about how the night had gone. Could they improve on the experience for the guests or change anything up? Did Theo want to try anything different tomorrow night? Etcetera, etcetera.
‘No. Thank you.’
‘It’s okay,’ he murmured, a slight smile playing on that wicked mouth, his blue eyes dancing with humour below the fringe of his black brows. ‘You’re off the clock now.’
Off the clock or not, it was best not to lose any of her inhibitions around this man.
‘Thanks, but no.’ Glasses in hand, she crossed the saloon to the bar, giving Theo a wide berth as she slipped behind and placed her load beside the sink.
Putting in the plug, she flicked on the hot water, excruciatingly conscious of his gaze boring a hole in her back.
Heat flared between her shoulder blades, along the ridges of her hip bones and around the base of her spine, each entry point burning all the way through to her front, licking at her nipples and undulating fiery fingers along muscles fibres that stirred a dull throb between her legs.
Her bowtie cinched a little tighter.
‘You can do that in the morning if you like? You haven’t even had a restroom break since we started and you are off the clock.’
‘It’s fine.’ Tiffany shook her head. ‘I don’t mind.’ It gave her something to think about other than the six feet two inches of pure man mere metres away.
Once the sink was half full, she turned off the tap and dropped the glasses in before heading back to the tables. ‘Was tonight what you hoped?’
She clocked him turning in her peripheral vision, lounging back against the bar, his arms spread wide, his bent elbows resting along the top, the glass dangling from his fingers.
Even in shorts and a T-shirt it was commanding, and she was hyperaware of his attention as he tracked her progress across the room, the air between them sizzling.
‘I think the guys had a blast.’
‘And you?’ she asked, deliberately not looking at him in case he saw something in her gaze she didn’t mean to give away. Like how much she wanted him to have had a blast. This man who wrestled bag snatchers to the ground for little old ladies.
Reaching under the table, she removed the chip containers from the ledge, and started to sort the messy piles into towers according to their monetary value.
‘Are you kidding? I could watch you rob my friends blind every night.’ He chuckled and it was all low and sexy and felt conspiratorial. Intimate.
Like they were sharing a secret.
Tiffany glanced up from her sorting and met his gaze, which lingered on her mouth. ‘You want me to take it a little easier on them?’
Tiffany played the way she would have played had she been on the Hellenic Princess – conceding some hands, getting them comfortable, getting them hooked then reeling them in.
Because the house always won.
But this wasn’t a massive cruise ship with high rollers and even higher stakes. It was a superyacht with five fun, drunk Englishmen.
Pushing off the bar, he ambled towards her and Tiffany’s breath drew shorter with every footfall.
Halting when he reached the opposite side of the table, Theo placed his glass on the table edge.
‘On the contrary,’ he murmured as he raked over a pile of chips.
‘It’s probably the only payback I’m going to get for their endless embellished stories over the next six nights, so go for it. ’
Despite the tension from his proximity tightening every muscle in Tiffany’s body, she laughed. ‘In that case, sir, I will be merciless.’
Tiffany didn’t mean for it to be flirty – not consciously, anyway – but the flicker of blue flame in Theo’s eyes told her it had been. His gaze drifted to the knot of her tie before returning to her eyes. ‘Appreciated,’ he murmured, a sexy tilt to his full mouth.
Swallowing against the slight constriction of the collar, Tiffany lowered her gaze to the table and the job at hand, and for long moments, there was only the quiet click of chips as they stacked and sorted.
Externally anyway. Internally, the throb of her body was a drum beat through her ears as blood washed thick and hot through her system.
‘I can do this,’ she said, dismissing him as her trembling hands accidentally knocked over a tower of chips. ‘You don’t need to help.’ If anything, the man was a walking, talking – or not, as the case might be – hinderance.
‘I know.’
But he didn’t stop. He just kept clicking and stacking, the growing silence shredding Tiffany’s last nerve until finally he cleared his throat and said, ‘I didn’t realise you would be wearing a uniform tonight.’
Her fingers stilled as she glanced his way. ‘Oh, sorry… I just assumed you wanted the whole casino vibe? You’d prefer I didn’t?’
A half laugh rumbled from his lips. ‘It’s just very…’
His eyes lifted, taking a slow inspection of her vest from the straps on her shoulders to the row of buttons ending just under her breasts.
To what felt like each and every pinstripe on her blouse to the knot of her tie.
Goosebumps erupted in its wake, almost as if he’d reached across and trailed his fingers over her skin.
When their eyes met again, he said, ‘Distracting.’
Tiffany swallowed, the hammer of her pulse just above the constriction of her collar pronounced, and she itched to pull the knot loose, undo the button, so she could breathe.
But she didn’t seem to be able to move and she was aware all over again that it was just the two of them in the saloon.
Her brain was sending frantic signals to her mouth to say something, to diffuse the situation, but sadly, she wanted to do other things with her mouth right now.
Her body was back in that hotel room where his eyes had raked over her just as thoroughly as they were now.
Except she’d been naked at the time.
She’d relived that night a thousand times these past five months, and the heated memories of his kiss, of his touch, buzzed through her system now with such visceral intensity they activated all her on switches.
Boss or not, off the clock or not, best friends BIL or not – Tiffany was lit with desire.
Which was not good.
Neither of them were sorting chips any more; they were just staring at each other. Also, not good. Idle hands and all that. What had he been saying again?
Right… the uniform. Distracting. ‘That’s kinda the point,’ she murmured. ‘Of the uniform.’
A slight frown creased his brow momentarily, like he’d also lost track of the conversation before picking up the thread again. He looked her over one more time. ‘Yeah.’
‘Keep the punters at the table with charms and smiles,’ Tiffany reiterated, even though she clearly didn’t need to explain casino psychology to a guy who’d probably signed the purchase orders for this very uniform.
Or was certainly the boss of the person who had, anyway.
‘Yeah,’ he repeated. ‘I think…’
Tiffany waited for him to finish, but Theo just let the sentence trail off. ‘What do you think?’ she pressed, desperate for any conversation to distract her from the staring.
‘Maybe we should rethink the uniform.’
It was Tiffany’s turn to be puzzled. The uniforms clearly did what they were supposed to do – keep gamblers gambling. Including the male croupier uniforms, which were so slim fitting they might as well have had Velcro fasteners on the shirts and trousers.
Changing that seemed like a dumb business move.
‘Why?’
‘We want to attract punters, not make them forget why they’d sat down in the first place. Because trust me.’ His eyes took another quick tour over her blouse, his gaze roaming hot before it returned to her face. ‘You in that uniform? I’m not thinking about gambling at all.’
His gaze locked on hers. ‘What are you thinking about?’
It was out before she could stop it. Stupid.
So stupid. Playing with fire as her libido and the thick pulse between her legs drove her mouth.
She had no business asking him such a loaded question.
She should have ordered him out of the saloon, or taken him up on his offer to clean up in the morning.
They should be anywhere else but here – alone.
‘Trust me,’ he said on a harsh huff of air, his eyes holding her captive. ‘You don’t want to know what I’m thinking.’