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wouldn’t have worked out. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that.”
    “You’re probably right,” he said. Still, he never had been able to shake a vague feeling of guilt. Nor had he ever told anyone about it. He’d never had the urge to, before now. Probably not a wise urge, he thought. He’d been having quite a few unwise urges around Ellen. It was a relief to know that she understood.
    He couldn’t imagine her clinging and dependent. She stood alone. A little too alone to suit him.
    They passed a huge, glittering billboard that advertised the Palace Casino. The shaft of the sign’s arrow bore the legend: 10 miles.
    “Not too much longer till your first assignment, Scotty,” Joe said, glancing over at her.
    “As long as it’s my last,” she replied in the sweetest of voices.
    He studied the slender line of her throat, herfull breasts, and the faint V of her thighs under her skirt. He shifted his gaze back to the road and smiled to himself.
    It wouldn’t be the last time, if he had something to say about it.
    Ellen was staring at his mouth, feeling again the firmness of his lips against hers, their tongues dueling in a kiss of fire.…
    “See him?” Joe asked.
    Startled from her reverie, she dutifully dragged her gaze away from his mouth and shook her head. She edged away from him and looked down into the “pit” from their spot at the lobby railing. “No. Still no sign of your cousin.”
    It was futile, she thought. The casino was enormous, with more twists and dead ends than an eighteenth-century garden maze. People milled about continually as the din of voices, the chink of coins, and the bing of slot machines filled the air. She and Joe had been there for six hours and still hadn’t spotted Mario. The man could have met two hundred people by this time, she figured, and they wouldn’t know it.
    Joe muttered a curse of frustration.
    “Sorry,” he apologized.
    She smiled. “Actually, I was thinking the same thing.” Still, the bustle and excitement here was very different from European casinos, and she privately reveled in it. “It’s ten o’clock, Joe. We’ve wandered around and placed ourselves in strategic locations in order to watch the rooms. But there are mobs of people here tonight, and unfortunatelymy eyes keep wandering to the glitzy chandeliers, gold wallpaper, and floor-length mirrors. This place is more opulent than Versailles. And you and I have lost each other twice so far, so it’s not surprising that we can’t find Mario. Any suggestions?”
    “Other than paging him,” Joe said in disgust, “I’m out of ideas.”
    Ellen looked around the casino again. She wished her commitment to Joe was over. She was finding it all too easy to be around him, and he was much too attractive to suit her. She had decided long ago that if she was ever going to be interested in a man again, he would have to be short and pale. Not tall, not bronzed, and definitely not good-looking. Joe was all three and then some. He could turn her to jelly with the slightest touch. The more she was in his company, the more she was attracted to him. Twice she had been horrified to find herself gazing at his mouth, wondering what it would be like to kiss him again. And she was already telling him things she had never told anybody before. He was dangerous, very dangerous to her barely regained sanity. She didn’t need this now. All she wanted to do was go home. Even a lecture from her grandmother was better than this.
    He leaned forward, his arm brushing hers as he peered at the crowd. Her blood leaped in her veins. She forced herself not to show it and turned her mind back to the problem at hand.
    “I wish we could have looked in the private gambling rooms,” she said, her voice only a littleshaky. “But we can’t without him spotting us instantly.”
    Joe shrugged. “I was just thinking that any of the regular hotel rooms upstairs could be used for private games. We could hardly watch them.”
    Ellen