Brenda Jackson - Ian's Ultimate Gamble

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To Gerald Jackson, Sr., my husband and hero.

To all my readers who love the Westmorelands.

To my Heavenly Father who gave me

the gift to write.

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom,

and the man that getteth understanding.

—Proverbs 3:13

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

“I won’t do it, Malcolm!” Brooke Chamberlain said sharply as she absently pushed a dark-brown dread that had fallen in her face back behind her ear. If she’d had any kind of warning of the reason she’d been summoned to her boss’s office, she would have found an excuse not to come.

As far as she was concerned what he was asking her to do was totally unacceptable. First, she had just come off one assignment, where a successful vineyard had been caught producing more than vintage wine, and second, he wanted her to go back out west and literally spy on the one man who hated her guts—Ian Westmoreland.

Malcolm Price rubbed a frustrated hand down his face before saying, “Sit down, Brooke, and let me explain why I decided to give the assignment to you.”

Brooke gave an unladylike snort. As far as she was concerned there was nothing he could explain. Malcolm was more than just her boss. He was a good friend and had been since their early days with the Bureau when he’d been a fellow agent. Because they had been good friends, he was one of the few people who knew of her past relationship with Ian as well as the reason they had parted ways.

“How can you of all people ask me to do that to Ian, Malcolm?” she said, pacing the room as she spoke, refusing to do as he’d asked and sit down.

“Because if you don’t, Walter Thurgood will be assigned to do it.”

She stopped moving. “Thurgood?”

“Yes, and once he is, it will be out of my hands.”

Brooke sat down in the chair Malcolm had offered her earlier. Walter Thurgood, a hotshot upstart, had been with the Bureau for a couple of years. The man had big goals, and one was to be the top man at the FBI. After several assignments he’d earned the reputation of being one of those agents who got the job done, although there were times when how he’d gone about it had been questionable.

“And even if Ian Westmoreland is clean, by the time Thurgood finishes with him, he’ll make him seem like the dirtiest man on this planet if it makes Thurgood look good,” Malcolm said with disgust in his voice.

Brooke knew Malcolm was right. And she also knew what Malcolm wasn’t saying—that when you were the son of someone already at the top, the people around you were less likely to spank your hand when you behaved improperly.

“But if you think Ian is running a clean operation and you don’t suspect him of anything, why the investigation?” she asked.

“Only because the prior owner of the casino, Bruce Aiken, was found guilty of running an illegal betting operation there, and we don’t want any of his old friends to come out from whatever rock they hid under during Aiken’s trial and start things up again without Westmorland’s knowledge. So in a way you’ll be doing him a big favor.”

Brooke’s gaze dropped from Malcolm’s to study her hands, clenched in her lap. Ian would not see things that way, and both of them knew it. It would only widen the gap of mistrust between them. But still, she knew there was no way she could allow Thurgood to go in and handle things. It would be downright disastrous for Ian.

She lifted her head and met Malcolm’s gaze once again. “And this is not an official investigation?”

“No. You’ll be there for a much-needed vacation, while keeping your eyes and ears open.”

She leaned forward as anger flared in her eyes. “Ian is one of the most honest men I know.”

“In that case you don’t have anything to worry about.”

She stared at Malcolm thoughtfully for a moment and then said. “Okay.”

Malcolm lifted a dark brow. “That means you’re going to do it?”

She narrowed her eyes. She was caught between a rock and a hard place and they both knew it. “You knew I would.”

He nodded and she saw another certainty in the depths of his dark blue eyes. The knowledge that four years after their breakup she was still in love with Ian Westmoreland.

Ian Westmoreland sat at his desk, knee-deep in paperwork, when for no apparent reason he felt a quick tightening in his gut. He was a man who by thirty-three had learned to trust his intuition as well as his deductive reasoning. He lifted his head to glance at the wood-paneled wall in front of him.

He reached out, pressed a button and watched as the paneling slid back to reveal a huge glass wall. The people on the other side who were busy wandering through the casino, taking their chances at the slot machines, gambling tables and arcades, had no idea they were being watched. In certain areas of the casino they were being listened to, as well. More than once the security monitors had picked up conversations best left unheard. But when you operated a casino as large as the Rolling Cascade, the monitors and one-sided mirror were in place for security reasons. Not everyone who came to a casino was there to play. There were those who came to prey on the weaknesses of others, and those were the ones his casino could do without. His huge surveillance room on the third floor, manned by top-notch security experts viewing over a hundred monitors twenty-four hours a day, made sure of it.

Since the grand opening, a lot of people had made reservations merely to check out the newly remodeled casino and resort and to verify the rumors that what had once been a dying casino had been brought back to life in unprecedented style. People Magazine had announced in a special edition that the Rolling Cascade had brought an ambience of Las Vegas to Lake Tahoe and had done it with class, integrity and decorum.

Ian stood and moved around to sit on the corner of his desk, his eyes sharp and assessing as he scanned the crowd. There had to have been a reason he was feeling uptight. The grand opening had been a success and he was glad he’d made the move from riverboat captain to casino owner with ease.

A few minutes later he was about to give up, consider his intuition as having an off day and get back to work, when he saw her.

Brooke Chamberlain.

He stood as his entire body got tense. What the hell was she doing here? Deciding he wasn’t going to waste time trying to figure that out, he reached back to the phone on his desk. His call was quickly answered by the casino’s security manager.

“Yes, Ian?”

“There’s a woman standing at the east-west blackjack table wearing a powder-blue pantsuit. Please escort her to my office immediately.”

There was a pause when his security manager asked a question. And in a tight voice Ian responded, “Yes, I know her name. It’s Brooke Chamberlain.”