Raising the Stakes

by Sandra Marton

  “Look!”

  He followed her pointing finger. The place he’d remembered was just ahead, a tin-roofed clutch of falling-down buildings set on a sprawl of gravel. The tires crunched as Gray pulled up to the gas pump and killed the engine.

  “Okay. Now all we have to do is hope they have a gas can somewhere and we’re in business.”

  They did. A kid with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes filled Gray’s car, then filled a dented red gas can.

  “Forty bucks,” the kid said when the tank was full.

  Gray looked at the pump. It said he owed twenty-six dollars.

  The kid grinned. “That’s life, mister.”

  Gray handed him two twenties and was glad Dawn had wandered off in search of what she’d referred to as a rest room. He doubted anybody would want to rest within a mile of this magnificent oasis. He also doubted she’d let him pay for the can and the three gallons of gas it held, and he was right.

  “How much do I owe you?” she said, when she found him behind the wheel.

  “Nothing.”

  “Thank you, but I’d prefer to pay for the gas myself.”

  He shrugged “Okay.”

  “Great. So, how much do—”

  “Dinner.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You owe me that meal we never got to eat.” He made a show of checking his mirror and the road, as if the arrow of blacktop was about to turn into the Indianapolis Speedway.

  “That’s out of the question.”

  “You’re right,” he said, trying to sound every bit as coolly polite as she did. “You don’t owe me dinner. I didn’t mean to make it sound as if you did. What you owe me is the pleasure of your company at dinner.”

  “No!” She swung toward him, her forehead wrinkled in consternation. “Mr. Baron—”

  “Don’t tell me we’re going back to that.”

  “Gray.” She took a deep breath. He was learning things about her. That deep breath meant she was readying a logical, reasonable, perfectly sane explanation for why she wouldn’t have dinner with him. “Look, Gray—”

  “It’s a debt of honor.”

  “I know it is.” She opened her purse, pulled out a wallet. “And if you’ll just tell me how much—”

  “I don’t know how much.” He looked at her, then back at the road. “What’s it cost, do you think, to have your own private Triple A?”

  “Your what?”

  “Your private Automobile Association of America. A hundred bucks a year? A thousand? Take a guess.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Nope,” he said cheerfully, “it isn’t. But you have to admit, there’s something unusual about the same guy rescuing the same damsel in distress three separate times.”

  “Twice,” she said quickly.

  “Thrice,” he said, just as quickly. Did she smile? He thought she might have, but it came and went in a flash.

  “Two times. On Las Vegas Boulevard. And then today.”

  “Right. And now I’m driving all the way back to where your car conked out. What do you figure? Seventy miles, round trip?”

  He could feel her glaring at him. Then she slouched in her seat, looked straight ahead and folded her arms, and he knew he’d won.

  “Home Cooking.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll have dinner with you, and that’s what you’ll get. Home Cooking.”

  It was more than he’d hoped for. Dinner, at her apartment. He told himself it would give him insights into her he’d never get elsewhere, because it couldn’t be the idea of being alone with her that was making his blood sing.

  “Well. That’s very nice of you. I didn’t expect you to go to all that trouble.”

  She turned her head and looked at him, and he knew, as soon as he saw her face, that he hadn’t won at all.

  “It’s no trouble,” Dawn said sweetly. “Home Cooking. That charming little restaurant where we just got that gas.” She gave him a blinding smile. “I just hope neither of us comes down with ptomaine.”

  * * *

  He was, at the very least, a persistent and determined man.

  Dawn pulled onto the highway with Gray’s car right behind her.

  Persistent, determined, better-looking than any man had the right to be—and he was crowding her. Another woman would probably love all the attention. Not her. There was no room in her life for a man, not even for one who would only be in Vegas for a few days.

  She glanced into the mirror again. He was still there, following along at a safe distance and that was probably the only “safe” thing about him. He wanted dinner, but she knew that wouldn’t be all. He’d want more. Expect more. And she had nothing to give. He could be as charming, as handsome as he liked but she wasn’t going to sleep with him, and wasn’t that a hell of a stupid way to describe what happened between a man and a woman in bed?

  She took a breath.

  Okay. Maybe she was jumping ahead. Maybe she was reading things wrong. Maybe he’d be satisfied with dinner, though she doubted it. Still, she’d made a decision four years ago. She wasn’t going to let anybody get close. Well, Cassie, yes, but Cassie was a woman. She had her own secrets and they knew enough not to poke at each other’s pasts the way Gray and his cousins must have poked at that dead snake.

  Dawn smiled.

  She could almost see him as a little kid, dirty-faced, wearing jeans with holes in the knees, screwing up his courage to take a bite out of the snake. Tommy would probably do stuff like that, too, when he was older. When she’d saved enough to buy a little house somewhere, on a patch of land big enough for him to have a dog although she knew what he’d really want was a horse. Gray would know how to ride, coming from Texas the way he did. She could almost see her little boy, up on the back of a pony, Gray on a big horse, riding alongside him…

  A horn bleated behind her. She jumped, glanced in the mirror and saw Gray pointing toward a blur up ahead. There it was. The dilapidated diner, the gas pump, the souvenir stand.

  All she had to do was return the can and keep going. Or hang on to the can, to make it easier. She could hit the pedal and drive on, and what could Gray do about it? Nothing, except finally realize that she wasn’t interested in him or in playing the games men and women played. But she’d agreed this was a debt of honor. Dawn let out a sigh, turned into the gravel lot and parked. He pulled up alongside.

  “You’re sure you want to eat at this place?” Gray asked, as they got out of their cars and walked toward the restaurant.

  “It’s just dinner. Not gourmet…” She stopped and stared at the smudged window of the shack. Big black spots were moving purposefully across the surface. “Ants,” Dawn said. “And they’re inside, not outside.”

  “No extra charge,” he said lightly, and smiled at her.

  She could leave now. She’d done what she’d promised, gone with him, and whose fault was it that they obviously weren’t going to be able to have dinner here? She didn’t owe him anything, not really, and the truth was that she knew he didn’t really think it, either. But… Dawn’s heart edged into her throat. But, she didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to be with him a little while longer. All the things she knew about men, about what they wanted, about what was safe and what was dangerous, weren’t enough to hide the truth clamoring within her, that she’d felt more alive since meeting this man than she had in the last four years.

  “Dawn?”

  Their eyes met. He was giving her the choice, and she took her courage in her hands and made it.

  “There’s a little caf;aae near town… If you like Mexican food.”

  “Hey.” He raised his hands, held them palms out. “I’m from Texas, remember?”

  They both smiled, and then they got back into their cars. He followed her again, just another twenty miles or so. She tried not to think about what she was doing because it was crazy. Crazy, and wrong…except she couldn’t come up with reasons why it was either. She wasn’t compromising Tommy’
s safety. She wasn’t promising a stranger anything more than dinner. How could what she was doing be dangerous?

  She signaled a turn, looked in the mirror and saw him wave his hand. They pulled into the parking lot of a small restaurant that she and Cassie had discovered. It served the best fajitas in Las Vegas.

  The hostess, a small woman with a big smile, led them to the patio. It was dusk, and the tables were lighted with fat candles stuck into a variety of small earthenware bowls; white fairy lights glinted in wooden latticework overhead.

  Dawn hesitated. “Maybe we should eat inside,” she said, and looked up at him.

  He knew what she was thinking, that this was a meal not a date, that they didn’t belong out here in this romantic setting. He decided not to crowd her.

  “Whatever you prefer. I like it here. It’s relaxed and pretty, but if you’d rather go in…”

  “There are no tables available inside, se;atnorita. If you don’t mind waiting ten, perhaps twenty minutes…?”

  The breeze blew a strand of hair into Dawn’s eyes. She shoved it back. The choice wasn’t hers, it was fate’s, she thought, though she’d never believed in fate before.

  “No, it’s foolish to wait. This is fine.”

  Gray pulled out her chair. His hand brushed hers. It was accidental, but nothing could have prepared him for the electric tingle that shot from her fingers to his. She pulled away as if he’d burned her. Was she feeling the same kind of fear as when he kissed her, or was it different this time? He wanted it to be different, more than he could recall having wanted anything in a very long time.

  The realization caught him off balance. He looked at Dawn, saw the same surprise mirrored in her eyes.

  A waitress appeared beside the table and introduced herself with the kind of senseless good cheer that usually made Gray long for the days when nobody gave a damn if you knew what their name was. Now, he embraced the intrusion and when she handed him a wine list, he gave it far more attention that it deserved before asking for a California Chardonnay.

  “Is that okay with you?”

  Dawn said it was. Then she buried her face in the menu. He did, too. Something crazy was happening. He didn’t know this woman. What little he did know was disturbing. What was he doing, sitting across from her, feeling as awkward as a kid on his first date?

  “Well,” he said, and almost winced. He sounded more jovial than the waitress. “Tell me about the weather here. Is it always so hot?”

  Brilliant. Just brilliant. Now they’d talk about the weather, and then maybe the food, and after a while he’d catch her checking her watch and he’d do the same thing, and he’d wonder, later on tonight, why in hell he’d imagined wanting to be with her…

  Except, it didn’t work out that way.

  They began with weather but quickly, easily, moved on to other things. Books. Movies. The impossibility of tourists squeezed into polyester bermudas, Hawaiian shirts, black socks and shoes. Dawn was easy to talk to. She had a nice sense of humor, and, after a while, an easy smile. They talked about the casinos, and gambling, and he felt something inside him soften when she explained, earnestly, how she’d once been a dealer and how she’d never felt comfortable about it because so many people didn’t seem to know when to stop.

  “I’d look at them and I’d think, will you be able to pay the rent next month? And, of course, that really wasn’t my business.”

  “But you felt it should be,” he said, and she smiled as if he were brilliant and said yes, that was it, exactly.

  “I had the same feeling when I dealt at the high stakes tables, and I knew that was silly because only high rollers—heavy gamblers—play there, and they know, going in, that there’s a big risk.” She sighed, scooped some guacamole onto a corn chip and looked at him. “Raising the stakes is always a mistake.”

  “Is it?” Gray said quietly.

  She could feel her skin heating under his steady gaze. She wanted to look away from him but she couldn’t.

  “Dawn,” he said with sudden urgency, “I have to tell you—”

  “Here we are,” the waitress said, and the moment was lost.

  The evening moved on. They drank a little of the wine, ate a little of the chimichangas and fajitas and the hot, spicy sauces and cool salads. A guitarist came to stand beside their table and serenade them with music that was full of “mi corazons” and unabashedly schmaltzy…and, somehow, just right.

  It was late by the time they rose from the table. Without thinking about it, Gray took Dawn’s hand. They strolled out to the parking lot, which was quiet and almost empty, and he knew he didn’t want the evening to be over. Not yet.

  “Will you be okay, driving home alone?”

  She smiled. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  “No. No, really. I drive home a lot later than this, from the hotel.”

  Gray nodded. She didn’t want him going with her. Okay. He wouldn’t push.

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  She hesitated. “Gray. I don’t—”

  He didn’t stop to think. He took her face in his hands, lifted it and brushed his lips lightly over hers. She stiffened and drew back but before he could apologize, she made a little sound, moved closer and pressed her mouth to his in a closemouthed, innocent kiss that left him feeling as if the earth had just swung out from under his feet.

  “Dawn,” he whispered. He clasped her wrists, took a step back because God only knew what might happen if she felt what that sweet kiss had done to him. He wanted to tell her everything, why he’d come here, what Jonas wanted, but he couldn’t. Net yet. She’d only just begun to trust him. If he told her he’d come to Vegas to meet her, that might frighten her off. “It’s late,” he said softly.

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “Meet me for breakfast, at that little coffee place in the hotel?”

  Her lashes swept down and hid her eyes, but he saw her teeth gently sink into her lip in that now-familiar action he felt right down to his toes.

  “I shouldn’t…” She looked up and smiled. “Yes.”

  “Seven o’clock?”

  “Six-thirty. I start work at seven.”

  “Fine.” He smiled, stroked her hair away from her temples. He kissed her again, gently, tilting her chin up with his finger, and almost went to his knees when he felt her mouth move delicately against his. “Dawn. I don’t know your phone number or your address.”

  He did. Both were in Ballard’s report. All he had to do was open the file and look, but he couldn’t let her know that any more than he wanted to open the file Jack had given him and be reminded that he’d lied to her from the minute they met.

  She hesitated. He sensed that she didn’t give that information to many people, and if she gave it now it would mean as much, maybe more, than that she’d kissed him back.

  “Nine sixteen East Orchard Road,” she said softly. “Five five five, one two seven nine.”

  He wanted to kiss her again but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself from wanting to taste more of her. Instead he repeated what she’d told him and turned her gently toward her car.

  He stood watching after her until all he could see of the car was the faint glow of its taillights winking against the darkness. Then he exhaled heavily and looked up at the night sky.

  He’d come to Las Vegas to learn things and he had. He’d learned all he needed tonight.

  He knew that he wanted to make love to Dawn Kitteridge and show her what being in a man’s arms—in his arms—could be like.

  His jaw clenched.

  And he knew that Harman had lied. Whatever had happened on that Arizona mountaintop, Dawn would never have walked away and left her child behind.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GRAY got to the coffee shop at twenty after six. Dawn wasn’t there yet so he fed the machine some coins, bought a cup of coffee and settled in to wait.

  He didn’t mind waiting. It gave him time to think about last night, how
she’d returned that last kiss with an innocence that hinted at the passion locked within her. He could see it in her eyes, in her smile; he felt it whenever he touched her, whenever he caught her glancing at him from under the sweep of her lashes. Behind the fear, beneath the cool exterior, a woman waited to be set free. And he wanted to be the man to do it. His senses were filled with Dawn’s scent, with her taste, with the low, lovely sound of her voice.

  He’d never felt such intense need for a woman as he felt for her.

  Last night, he’d made a couple of phone calls, then tried to sleep. After an hour of tossing and turning, the bed was a tangled mess. He got up, showered, put on jeans and a T-shirt and went down to the casino. He’d wandered around aimlessly, watching the crowd gathered around a roulette table where a middle-aged guy with horn-rimmed glasses was raking in the chips and trembling with excitement. He’d even fed a few bucks into a slot machine that promised a two million dollar payoff and after a few desultory pulls at the handle—not necessary, he knew, but at least it gave him something to do besides stare at the apples and oranges on the screen—the machine had suddenly belted out a series of electronic whoops and trills and regurgitated what looked like a ton of half dollars.

  “You won!” the woman playing the next machine shrieked.

  He had, to the tune of four hundred bucks. And he had to admit, just for a couple of minutes, he’d felt a rush of adrenaline. The lady on the adjacent stool leaned in, all but lay her boobs on his arm and asked him if he’d like to celebrate. Gray took his first real look at her. She was pretty. More than that. She was what any man in his right mind would have called hot, and her smile made it clear she was his for the asking.

  He hadn’t asked. Instead he’d thought about a woman with a hesitant smile and a mouth as soft as silk.

  “Sorry,” he’d said, with what was almost genuine regret. “I appreciate the offer but I’ve had a long day.” Then he’d nodded at the tray that held his winnings. “You celebrate for me,” he’d said, and walked out, headed back to his room and what remained of the night. He’d spent it dreaming about Dawn and how it would be to awaken her to desire.