by Kay Hooper
She stared into darkly purple eyes, got lost In them, and made the only denial left to her. "It's just chemistry," she whispered. "I can't feel anything more than that. Not for you!" She wanted to recall the words Immediately, but it was too late.
His face paled, and Dane released her Instantly, drawing away from her both physically and emotionally. He sat gazing through the windshield for a moment, then silently started the car and turned them back toward her house.
"You're a gambler," she said softly, her entire body aching, emotions in turmoil.
"I understand. It's all right. Jenny." His voice was very quiet and steady. "I knew the odds were against me."
Jennifer couldn't take her eyes off his face, some part of her shocked to see that it meant so much to him. And some part of her was bleeding, because she had cut herself with the same knife she had used to cut him. "I can't help it," she said, because she had to say something.
"I know. Neither of us can help being what we are." He smiled faintly, and said with a lightness that didn't hide the hurt beneath it, "I should have become a lawyer."
She was losing something and knew it, and the pain of that loss was worse than anything she'd felt before. But the trauma of her father's gambling had affected her too deeply to be easily set aside, and she knew that too.
After a moment of silence, Dane said, still with deceptive lightness, "I think I knew there was no chance when I saw your sketch of your father. There's a lot of love in the picture. And a great deal of bitterness. Was it a deliberate choice, the cards fanned out on the table in front of him?"
"Yes," she answered softly.
Dane nodded. "I thought so. A possible royal flush, In spades, with one card facedown."
She sat very still, watching him, afraid that If she moved at all, she'd shatter. The tension between them was something stark and alive, contained only by this unnatural, deceptive calm they both wore like shields. It was visible in the whiteness of his hands as they gripped the steering wheel, in her own tightly laced fingers lying so still in her lap. They were both conscious of it, both holding it at bay with quiet words and motionless bodies, as if to release it meant something terrible.
Jennifer felt her whole body resist the volition of her mind, felt her breathing grow more ragged, her heart pound even harder. All her senses cried out to ignore reason and give in to the more simple reality of need and desire. She refused to love him, but she needed him, wanted him, and her body Insisted that was enough for now. She would never have believed that she could want a man with such blind Intensity even while knowing – knowing – that the next step forward might bring only pain.
"Tell me gambling doesn't matter to you," she whispered suddenly, unable to stop the words. "Tell me you can give it up without hesitation."
"I can't." His voice was bleak. "I won't lie to you about that, Jenny. I am what I am."
"And you won't change?"
He hesitated. "It's too late for me to change. I want to promise I'd never hurt you the way your father did, but what's that promise worth when you don't trust me?"
"I want to trust you. But ..."
Dane nodded jerkily, as if his own control was dissolving. "I know. You can't trust me because I'm a gambler, and I can't be anything else."
"It hurt so much, what Dad did to us," she said unsteadily, trying to explain what he already seemed to understand. "My whole life changed. Belle Retour was more than just home, and when he lost it so damned easily and quickly, it seemed as if ... as if nothing could be forever. As if there was no certainty left. One turn of a card, and all my roots were cut away from me." She caught her breath, trying not to cry out with the pain she felt. "I can't risk that happening again. I'd never survive it again!"
Jennifer hadn't realized she felt that way; it was something she had hidden from herself. But he had drawn it out of her, just as he had drawn out so much else. And he was even more pale now, his white face more still, as if every heartfelt word she had thrown at him had been a knife.
"All right," he said softly. "All right. Jenny."
She tried to gain control of herself, to breathe deeply, but she couldn't. She was only vaguely aware that they had reached her house, that he had stopped the car in the driveway. He got out and came around to open her door, and she moved automatically to step out onto the drive.
But when he closed the door and took a step back away from her, her frail control broke, and she couldn't just let him go. Her arms went around his waist and she pressed her face against his chest, holding on to him.
Dane's body was rigid, his heart pounding heavily, but his arms were gentle when they slipped around her.
"Damn you," she whispered raggedly.
He hugged her briefly, an almost convulsive movement of strength and possession, then gently forced her arms away and stepped back from her. His smile was only a ghost of the charming, crooked one he usually wore. "I'll come back when it's all over, and tell you about it," he said in that light voice that wasn't. "When we finally get Kelly."
She nodded, unable to say another word, and turned away from him stiffly, aching. And she didn't look back as she walked to the front door. She opened it and went inside, closing it behind her and leaning back against it. She heard the Ferrari roar away, the first hint of violence from Dane implicit in the uncontrolled sound.
"Jennifer?"
She looked up as Francesca approached her, watched her mother's face go still in a sudden awareness.
"My baby ..."
Jennifer heard a soft laugh escape her throat in a sound that held no humor. "What am I going to do, Mama?" she murmured. "What am I going to do now?"
* * *
It was sheer luck Dane didn't get stopped by the highway patrol on his way back to the hotel. He handled the car with an expert driver's automatic awareness, but made no effort to leash the Ferrari's powerful engine. More than one speed limit sign quivered in the wake of his passing, and more than one other driver felt his own vehicle lean toward the shoulder of the road as if cringing away from the low-slung white fury rocketing by.
Dane slowed the car at last when he reached the hotel. Moments later, he was up in his suite with no memory of having parked the car or walked through the lobby. He paced without thought, and when the phone rang minutes or hours later, he picked it up and answered automatically.
"Hello?"
"Dane, it's Raven." Her innately cheerful voice was brisk. "Have you got anything yet?"
He pondered the question for a moment, until the submerged, professional part of him fought its way to the surface of his numb mind. "Something," he said without inflection, remembering what Skye had found out last night from Brady Seton. "But it may be only half the story. I'd rather not explain until I know for sure. A few days. I think."
There was a pause, and then Raven said, "Are you all right? You sound . . . very tired."
"I'll be all right," he said, and wondered how long it would be before that statement became true. If it ever did. "Kelly's a night owl; he likes to play until dawn."
"If you say so." She didn't really sound convinced. "I wanted to remind you. If you need more money – "
"No. I can't use your money now, Raven. I'll wire it back first thing in the morning."
"What? Dane, this whole thing was my idea, my problem. You can't bet your own money when you're helping me!"
He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It's more than that now. It became personal to me. I have my reasons, and I'll tell you about them later. In the meantime, just accept that I have to beat Garrett Kelly with my own money."
"What if you lose?" she asked soberly.
"I won't. This time, winning's too important."
She was silent for a long moment, then sighed. "I hope you know what you're doing, pal."
"I know. I'll be in touch within a few days, Raven."
"All right. Good luck."
"Thanks."
He cradled the receiver and stood gazing at nothing. He knew w
hat he was doing. He was keeping a promise. No matter what happened or what it cost him, Jennifer would have her Belle Retour back when it was over.
Six
The clock on the mantel ticked steadily on in the quiet of the room. The only light came from a lamp suspended low over a round table near the window. Cigarette and cigar smoke rose upward to disappear Into darkness, each tendril following the eddies and currents always present in even the most still room and caused now by air-conditioning and the breathing of the five men seated in comfortable chairs, cards in their hands or stacked neatly or flung down haphazardly on the green baize of the game table.
For serious gamblers such as these, poker chips remained in a caddy and out of the way: the rule was cash on the table. Stack of bills, arranged according to individual habit, lay before each man, and in the center of the table was a careless heap of money, all hundred-dollar bills.
The current pot was somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty thousand dollars.
Three men had folded, and they sat back, smoking or sipping their drinks, watching silently as the remaining two played the hand out. It was a game of bluff now, and had been for more than an hour, each man steadily raising the stakes in an effort to make the other lose his nerve and fold. Neither of them had requested a new card since it had become a duel. In fact, Dane's cards were stacked facedown near his relaxed hands, and he hadn't so much as looked at them in almost half an hour. Each time Garrett Kelly tossed a stack of bills into the pot, Dane simply matched, then raised the bet.
And it became increasingly difficult for Kelly to duplicate Dane's relaxed, almost indifferent air. He toyed with his cards, putting them down and picking them up a dozen times. He lit cigarette after cigarette. His peculiarly colorless eyes probed sharply across the table as he sought to find a hint of strain in that tranquil, handsome face, some sign of hesitation or uncertainty in the vivid eyes.
He found no crack in Dane's composure, and by this fourth night of playing against him, no man at the table was surprised by it. At least two of the men had gulped silently upon discovering that Dane never raised the bet in increments of less than five hundred dollars, but they were wealthy men and experienced gamblers, and had adjusted. What they continued to find incredible was Dane's utter stillness.
He appeared boneless in his chair, requiring neither cigarette nor drink as a prop, and having no apparent need to change position to ease the strain of sitting for so long. At the beginning of the hand, when there was much more activity around the table, his deep, charming voice had been heard as often as the other men's, but once the play had come down to only two, he had fallen silent. And as Kelly's tension increased, Dane seemed to become even more unruffled. His brilliant eyes appeared as serene as twin violet lakes, his lips remained curved in a crooked half smile; and his graceful hands moved only to flick more money into the pot.
It was just after midnight, and they had been playing since eight.
Kelly, still with a respectable pile of money before him, matched Dane's last bid of four thousand dollars, and was about to raise by another thousand when his opponent's lifted hand stopped him.
"Before you decide to raise," Dane said lazily, "maybe you'd better look at this." With his right hand only, he turned his top card faceup on the table. It was the ace of diamonds. Slowly, he turned the next three cards up. In a neat row before him lay a very possible royal flush in diamonds, ace, king, queen, jack. The fifth card remained facedown, and Dane tapped it lightly with an index finger.
"If this is a ten of diamonds," he said, still lazy, "you can't possibly beat me. There are no wild cards in the game, so you can't have five of a kind. And although it may be remotely possible that you're holding a royal flush yourself, it would be a first for me in twenty years. So you'd better decide if my hole card is a ten of diamonds."
The other three men leaned forward, their eyes moving from Dane's imperturbable face to Kelly's strained one. This, they all felt, was poker at its best, a game of strategy. Was Dane bluffing in a carefully calculated show of confidence, his hole card worthless, or did he Indeed hold a hand Kelly wouldn't be able to beat?
A long moment passed, and then Kelly nodded jerkily at the bid he had already placed into the pot. "Call."
Smiling faintly, Dane tossed another ten thousand into the pot. "Raise," he said.
Kelly hesitated, but then his nerve broke. Swearing, he slapped his cards facedown. "I'm out," he said heavily. Then, as if he couldn't help himself, he said, "Were you bluffing?"
Dane didn't have to answer that, but he quite deliberately flipped over his hole card. It was a three of diamonds.
Kelly closed his eyes briefly, then reached for the hand he'd abandoned and showed it to the others. He had been holding a straight, king high, in hearts and clubs. He would have won if he had called Dane's bluff.
The tension in the room eased, and a murmur of discussion broke out. While Dane was collecting his winnings, as tranquil as he'd been all along, Kelly glanced at his watch and then rose.
"I think we could all use a break, gentlemen. Stretch your legs if you like, while I get some sandwiches for us." A bit stiff from having sat for so long, he walked slowly from the room.
The other men rose as well, stretching and wandering around. Someone turned on a few other lamps, so that the room looked more like a parlor and less like a gambling den. They left cards and money on the table, Just as Dane did when he rose with his usual grace and strolled casually out of the room.
"He's not human," one of the men muttered to another.
Out in the hallway, Dane grimaced faintly as he heard the comment, but didn't pause or turn around. And it wasn't until he reached the portrait gallery that he flexed his shoulders to ease the ache between them. Wandering down the long hallway, he looked absently at the paintings. The only illumination In the corridor came from the portraits' individual lights, which were always on at night. Dane had made it obvious that the paintings fascinated him, to the point that Kelly was no longer surprised to find him wandering along the corridor at odd times staring Intently at the portraits.
The real reason Dane came here was that it was a central location in the house, and a perfect place to make contact with Skye. This was the most dangerous time for them, both inside the house, with Kelly's remaining security man roaming about. Dane wasn't even sure Skye would be here yet. He had planned to use at least the first few hours of the poker games for sleep, while Dane could watch their quarry.
But Dane wasn't surprised to hear his partner's low voice just as he reached the end of the hallway, because Skye required little sleep, especially when they were working.
"Kelly still hasn't replaced Seton; has he mentioned his lost security guard?"
"Interestingly, yes," Dane replied in an identical soft tone that couldn't have been heard from three feet away. "One of the other men commented that there seemed to be one less security man. Kelly said something about it being unwise to hire relatives."
"Relatives? Damn, we missed that."
"Something else. Kelly's openly scornful that his relative flunked out with quote, some federal outfit up north, end quote. So when Seton told you he was carrying a badge during his clumsy feint at Josh Long, he may well have been telling the truth."
After a moment, Skye said, "Hagen."
"That's my bet. We'll find out for sure once we have Kelly wrapped up nicety."
"Let me be the one to tell Raven if that's the case," Skye requested. He sighed. "We should be about ready to wind down on this. You could have taken him with that hand," he said, having obviously been close enough to the parlor earlier to hear what had transpired there. "He would have kept raising."
"Probably," Dane agreed in a murmur, standing where he was and gazing at the portrait hanging before him. Skye was to his left, completely hidden in the darkness of a doorway. "But we haven't found the press yet, and he hasn't passed any phony money. I don't want to panic him with just one hand."
"He has to b
e feeling the strain," Skye observed thoughtfully. "How much have you hit him for so far tonight?"
"Fifty thousand, more or less. He had close to a hundred in his safe the other night. The way it stands since that last hand, he's lost two thirds of what he started out with."
There was a short silence, and then Skye said, "We won't find the press in the house, you know that. I've already checked nearly every room. You're going to have to win all the cash he's got, and force him to lead us to it."
"Yes. I know."
"What's on your mind?" Skye asked perceptively.
After a moment, Dane answered, "Tomorrow night's game – if I manage to win it all tonight. Kelly's sure to want another shot at me."
"So?"
"I did some figuring this afternoon. If our information on Kelly is accurate, his only assets are this plantation and house. The plantation is the biggest in this part of the state, more than three hundred acres, mostly rice and timber. It's in the red at the moment because he's borrowed heavily against it and the income just barely covers the mortgage. Even so, the market value is easily into seven figures, and he could expect to stake close to a million with it discounting the mortgage. The house is crammed with two hundred years of history, most of it valuable, so add another million at the very least."
Quietly, Skye said, "Your promise to Jennifer."
Dane nodded, still gazing at the portrait of a proudly erect Chantry in the uniform of a Confederate soldier. "I can match Kelly's assets unless he goes berserk and prints a few hundred thousand worthless dollars. In that case, I'll have to accept them at face value, and even if I win every dollar on the table tonight, I may not have enough to force him to stake Belle Retour."
Skye sighed. "Then, somehow, we've got to prevent Kelly from printing any more than a hundred grand without alerting him that we're on to him. You're better with machines than I am; when we find the damned thing, you'll have to cripple it – slightly."
"And so carefully that he won't know it was tampered with? Damn. I'd better make some calls tomorrow. I don't suppose you know anyone who knows how to gently disable a counterfeit press?"