The Player's Club: Lincoln Read Online Free PDF Page A

than to entertain fantasies that she’d fail. Somehow, he got the feeling that what that woman decided to tackle, she did with a single-mindedness that probably matched his own. It made him wonder, for just a second, what she’d be like if that single-mindedness was directed to a more sensual purpose.
    He clenched his jaw. Big mistake. The image of her, now nude and in his bed, dominated his thoughts for a second, almost bringing him to his knees.
    “I’ll make sure that she doesn’t do anything too crazy,” Finn said, and Lincoln let out a bitter laugh.
    “Saying that you’re going to keep her from doing something reckless is like making Keith Richards a high-school-prom chaperone.” Lincoln shook his head. “No. I’ll go along with her becoming a pledge, but I want to be her mentor on this one.”
    “You?” Finn frowned. “You kind of hate her. How is that going to be helpful?
    “Maybe I just don’t know her well enough,” Lincoln said, feeling a little calmer. A little more in control. If he could just get a sense of what she was up to, he could prove what was happening. He’d make Finn see what his gut was already telling him: that she might be sexy as hell, but she was also dangerous and up to no good.
    Finn’s eyes narrowed. “If you don’t trust me, Lincoln,” he said, in a low voice, “then I don’t know how much longer I’m going to want to be a player.”
    Lincoln felt a moment of pain. “I do trust you, man.” And he did. He’d trust Finn with his life, with his fortune. The only thing he hadn’t trusted him with so far was his secret, but he’d spent a lifetime nurturing his parents’ lies. Finn was the best friend he’d ever had, but old habits died hard.
    Bottom line: he didn’t trust Juliana Mayfield. And he was going to protect his best friend and his family—The Player’s Club. Whether they wanted that protection or not.

3
    THE LIGHTS FROM THE Bay Bridge twinkled in the sky. Juliana contemplated them through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the 37th floor of her luxury condominium, then turned back to her laptop. It was one o’clock in the morning.
    She sighed, taking a sip of the lovely red wine in her Steuben glass. It was one of her better vintages: she probably shouldn’t have opened it, but she’d really wanted a glass of wine after today’s shenanigans.
    “Lincoln Stone, Lincoln Stone,” she muttered, tapping quickly on the keyboard. “Who the hell are you, Lincoln Stone?”
    She’d been trying to find out the answer to that question since she’d gotten dressed and left Agent Provocateur without buying so much as a bra. She’d been on the phone all afternoon, asking everybody in her contact list if they knew of him. So far, nothing: he either didn’t ring any bells, or they couldn’t quite place how they knew him. She couldn’t afford a private investigator, so she’d done the next best thing: fired up her computer and started to search on Google.
    After several hours, she’d managed a big, fat zero. Unless he was also secretly an immigration lawyer in L.A., an actor in New York or a big hunk of rock with Abraham Lincoln’s picture on it, the Lincoln Stone she was interested in had no Google tracks.
    It was frustrating. She wasn’t giving up, she thought, but she was getting some more wine.
    She figured he was rich, at least. His clothes looked expensive, if understated—the navy dress shirt was expensive linen, and the slacks were tailored. Even his shoes looked like Italian leather. Finn might’ve dressed like a college kid, but he was rolling in money. Was this a case of opposites attracting…or maybe something more sinister? Was Lincoln some kind of mooch or something, bleeding money from his richer friend?
    As quickly as she thought of it, she rejected the idea. She conjured up a mental picture of Lincoln, rolling through their encounter at Agent Provocateur in her mind as if it had been a movie. Like his surname, he seemed as cold, hard and