“No. Sorry. I didn’t mean…” Keir sank into a chair. “There are things happening, is what I should have said, and though it’s possible they’re meaningless, I don’t want to take any chances.”
“What things?”
“Well, you know we were trying to figure out what Baron wants with Dawn.” Keir glanced at his mother. “It would seem he’s, ah, seeing her.”
“Seeing her?” Dan said.
“Yes. Ah, dating her.”
Mary snorted. “What sort of delicate flower do you think I am? Do you mean he’s sleeping with her?”
For the first time since he’d entered the room, Keir smiled. “Yes.”
“And you know this because…?”
“Cassie told me.”
“Who?”
“Dawn’s friend, Cassie Berk. She’s a cocktail waitress in the casino. She knows Dawn better than anyone, and she said Dawn and Baron are…that they’ve become intimate.”
“That’s not a crime,” Mary said dryly, “certainly not in this town.”
“Well, there’s more.” Keir got to his feet, stuck his hand into his pocket and began to pace. “Seems that Dawn has never been involved with anyone before.”
“You mean, Mr. Baron swept her off her feet?”
“I mean, maybe he set out to sweep her off her feet.” Keir narrowed his eyes. “And maybe it had little to do with his attraction to her.”
Mary frowned. “I don’t follow you, Keir.”
“Cassie says a man’s been asking about Dawn. Seems like quite a coincidence, two guys turning up here within, what, a week, both of them interested in the same woman?”
“Yes,” Mary said softly, “I suppose it does.”
“Cassie says this guy doesn’t belong here.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never seen a human being who didn’t belong in this town, one way or another.”
“I’m not saying it right.” Keir frowned. “She says he looks like…” He thought for a moment. “Well, from her description, he sounds as if he just came down from the hills. Big, rawboned, cammo pants and combat boots, talks like a redneck and he’s got a cold look in his eyes.”
“Harman Kitteridge,” Dan said softly. “Dawn’s husband.”
“Right. It’s a good guess, anyway. Do we have a photo of him?”
Dan unlocked a drawer in his desk, took out Dawn’s file and leafed through it. “No, dammit, we don’t. But I can get one.”
“In the meantime, I’ve told Cassie she’s to call me if she spots him again.”
“I’ll have her take a look at the footage from the security cameras, let her see if she can find him.”
“Good.”
“Keir?” Mary began to rise from her chair. “If you haven’t yet said anything to Dawn, let me do it. You know, woman to woman.”
“There’s nothing to tell her, Ma. If this is a false alarm, we’d just scare her. Worse, once she knew we’d found out about her problems, she might run to protect herself and her son.”
“Yes. Of course.” Mary settled back. “But we can’t simply ignore things.”
“No. We can’t.”
The three of them looked at each other. Then Keir shrugged his shoulders. “The best we can do is what we’ve talked about. Let Cassie ID this man, if she can. Get a photo of Kitteridge. And Dan? Tell your men to keep their eyes open for this guy.”
“Right.”
“And make sure Snyder sticks close to Dawn without letting her know he’s watching her. That’s all we can do just now.”
Mary and Dan nodded.
“We’re agreed, then?”
“Agreed,” Mary Elizabeth and Dan said in one voice.
Keir hoped it would be enough.
* * *
Gray spent the morning doing his best to behave like a tourist. Considering that he’d spent the night with Dawn in his arms, it wasn’t easy. How could a man concentrate on Hoover Dam when his head was filled with a woman?
He strolled through the lobby of the Desert Song, remembering how hard it had been to leave her, as he always did, just before daybreak. That was how she wanted it. She had this thing about keeping their relationship private; it was why he hadn’t stopped to look for her when he entered the hotel. He teased her about it but he had to admit, he kind of liked it. Not the secrecy. Hell, no. He wanted the world to know they were together…but he loved that touch of old-fashioned modesty.
How could he ever have imagined Dawn was a woman without morals? She was probably the most principled person he’d ever met.
He just wished he had half her morality, he thought as he inserted his key card into the door of his suite. If he did, he’d have told her the truth about himself by now, but he was a coward. He kept postponing the moment she’d realize that he’d deceived her, right from the start, especially after all the things she’d said about trusting him.
“Damn,” he said softly, as he tossed his card on the table.
He had to come clean, and soon. He’d hoped to wait until he knew more about her child, where the boy was and how best to assure his safety, but the longer he put it off, the worse the moment of truth would be.
Gray pulled off his T-shirt, took a can of soda from the minibar and headed for the shower.
Plus, he couldn’t stay in Vegas forever and he wasn’t leaving until everything was out in the open. Her secrets as well as his, because that had to happen before he could tell her that he couldn’t imagine being without her, that she was going back to New York with him.
He bowed his head, put his palms against the glass wall of the shower and let the water beat down on his shoulders.
He’d never fallen so hard or fast in his life. Actually it made more sense to say he’d never fallen at all, because what he’d felt that first night they’d spent together hadn’t diminished. If anything, it had grown more powerful.
He was in love.
He’d tried telling himself he wasn’t, that his emotions had been stirred by great sex. Mind-blowing sex. It hadn’t worked. It was love, not sex, and he knew, just knew, Dawn felt the same way. He could see it in her eyes when he took her in his arms, taste it on her mouth when he kissed her, feel it in the way she touched him…and wasn’t that great? He was standing in the shower, turning himself on.
Gray turned the water colder and shivered under its merciless pounding. By the time he stepped onto the bath mat, he’d reached a decision. He hadn’t heard from Ballard yet but what did it matter? It was reality time. Tonight, he’d tell Dawn everything. Why Jonas had sent him in search of her. Why that search had started with Harman, and what Harman had told him about her son. She’d be upset, maybe angry, maybe scared, but he’d take her in his arms, force her to listen to him, keep talking and explaining and telling her that he loved her until she got past everything and admitted she loved him, too, because he knew she did, dammit, he knew she did.
Then she’d tell him where she kept her kid and he’d be able to protect the boy. And then—then, they could move on with the rest of their lives, live in New York or anyplace else she wanted, because among the many things he’d discovered during this amazing week was that he didn’t really like the city. He didn’t like what he did for a living, either. He’d started out with some noble idea about defending the innocent and ensuring justice, and ended up defending anybody who had the big bucks to buy his services.
What would it be like, to be a lawyer in a small town? A place like, say, Brazos Springs? It was a crazy idea, considering that he’d run away from Texas and small towns, but everything was different now. He’d run it past Dawn and make sure she understood that they could live wherever she wanted, in a city or a town or the middle of the desert, just so long as it made her happy.
Gray chuckled. He reached for a clean shirt and a pair of chinos, put them on and looked at himself in the mirror.
“You’re running ahead of yourself, buddy,” he said. “Slow down, tell the lady how you feel before you start putting down roots.”
He would, tonight. And if Ballard didn’t phone by this evening… Why wait for evening? He zipped his fly, slid his feet into a pair of mocs and reached for his cell phone, frowning when he got Jack’s answering machine.
“Jack, it’s Gray. I need that data about Dawn Kitteridge’s kid ASAP. I’m counting on you, man. Get the info to me fast, okay?”
Gray snapped the phone shut. Ten to one, she had the boy living somewhere along that road where he’d chased her and her car ran out of gas. She’d probably been visiting the kid that day. Thomas, his name was. Jack had learned that much. Tommy. Nice name for a boy. He’d be, what, six? Seven? What did kids that age like? Baseball? Football? He’d never thought much about kids one way or another except for his ever-expanding batch of cousins, but he could…
“Whoa.”
He blinked. He was going from being a bachelor to being a husband and father, and he hadn’t even consulted with the lady he wanted to marry. Intended to marry. Gray shook his head as he switched on the light over the bathroom sink.
His friends back east would never believe it. Graham Baron, a study in domesticity. His cousins wouldn’t believe it, either, although they’d all taken turns teasing him, saying that one day he’d fall and when he did, he’d fall hard. Wishful thinking, he’d figured—but they were right. He’d gone down like the proverbial ton of bricks and the craziest thing was, he was happy about it.
Whistling softly, he lathered his face and drew the razor along his jaw. One more hour until he saw Dawn. Until he went for broke and told her everything. What if he said the hell with waiting that hour? If he went straight downstairs, to where she worked, swung her into his arms and kissed her and never mind modesty and propriety or anything else. Would she kiss him back or would she slug him? Knowing Dawn, she might do both. First the kiss, because he wouldn’t let her go until he felt her mouth soften under his and, yes, it would soften. She couldn’t resist his kisses any more than he could resist hers. Then the slap, because no matter how wonderful the kiss, she’d be brimming with indignation. He loved that about her, all that fire and strength—
Gray cocked his head. Was that somebody at the door? He turned off the water, swabbed at his face with a towel, looped it around his neck and went to find out. Maybe it was the guy who restocked the minibar. When he fished out that can of soda, he’d noticed…
It wasn’t the minibar guy or the chambermaid. It was Dawn. He’d thought about her, wanted her…and she was here, yet another small miracle in a week of them. He felt a foolish smile curl over his mouth.
“Sweetheart. Honey, I was just thinking of—”
The words died on his tongue. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Dawn’s eyes were wild; her face was drained of all color. She was trembling. Visibly trembling, and when he reached out to draw her into his arms she jerked away from his hands. A chill lanced through him, drove straight to the marrow of his bones as a dozen explanations ran through his head, every last one of them bearing the name Harman Kitteridge.
“Dawn? Sweetheart, what’s happened?”
She slipped past him, drawing in her breath as if she couldn’t bear the thought of her body brushing his. He caught her by the shoulders. She tried to pull away but he held on tight.
“Talk to me,” he demanded. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Dawn stared at him. She’d come here on impulse. It was either that or go crazy. Lunch with Cassie had triggered it but the truth was that horrible questions and doubts had been tormenting her for days, buzzing around inside her head like tiny insects. She’d done her best to ignore them but, just like a swarm of mosquitoes, they kept coming back no matter how hard she swatted them away.
Who was Graham Baron? A lawyer from New York, he said, but the only thing she really knew was that he was a stranger who had entered her life with the force of a storm coming down from the mountains. Why had he come to Vegas? He said he was on vacation, but he didn’t like gambling any more than she did. And then there was the most important question of all. Why her? In a town filled with beautiful women, why had he chosen her? She never deceived herself about her looks. She was attractive, yes, maybe even pretty, but competition for the showgirls, the models, the would-be actresses who were a dime a dozen in Las Vegas? No way.
Why would a man who was so good-looking, so intelligent, so obviously rich and eligible, pick her?
All those questions, and then her conversation with Cassie. It had left her shaken though she’d tried not to show it. She’d spent the afternoon doing the scut work of the wealthy and important guests who demanded her services, performing her duties by rote while she tried to make sense of things, but how could you make sense of a puzzle when the important pieces were missing?
For four years she’d led a quiet, careful existence. She’d been content with her job, happy with the little home she’d made for herself, and thrilled with the knowledge that her son was safe. She’d lived by a set of self-imposed rules meant to protect her and Tommy—and then, in what she could only think of as one explosive moment of madness, she’d broken them all.
She’d gotten involved with a man. Gotten involved? What a stupid, empty phrase. What she’d done was a thousand times more dangerous.
She’d fallen in love.
She’d been sitting in her office after lunch, talking on the phone with an up-and-coming Hollywood director who was babbling about how he could only drink water bottled in a spring that bubbled up in a particular valley rimmed by a particular set of mountains, and she’d been saying yes, uh-huh, I understand, when all at once she’d thought, Cassie’s right. I’m in love with Gray.
And hot on the heels of that dizzying realization had come another.
A man who sounded as if he might be Harman was hanging around the casino.
How could those two things happen at the same time? Was Cassie right about that, too? Was it coincidence, that Gray had come into her life and now Harman had found her, or was it something else?
“You must understand,” she’d heard the director say, “only that specific water…” and she broke into his stupid little speech and said all right, she’d take care of it. Then she’d dropped the phone and run from her office because if she thought too long about where she was going or what she was about to do, she’d have lost her courage.
Riding the elevator to Gray’s floor, listening to the pounding of her heart, she’d tried to imagine what he’d say when she confronted him. Questioning him could be the most risky thing she’d done since the night she ran away from the mountain.
If Cassie was wrong and there wasn’t a connection between Gray and Harman, she’d have a lot of explaining to do. Once Gray knew everything, how would he look at her? Her past. Her secrets. She’d kept the most important parts of herself hidden from him…and yet, that wasn’t the worst of it.
What if Cassie was right? Could there be some awful link between Gray and Harman?
No, she’d thought as she hurried down the hall, no, there couldn’t be. Just imagining the two men in the same room was impossible.
Gray, she’d say, Gray, I have to ask you something and I know it’s foolish…
And then he opened the door and saw her, and guilt flashed in his eyes like lightning. He’d tried to hide it but she knew what she’d seen, and it terrified her.
“Dawn? Talk to me.”
She took a deep breath. “Gray. I have to ask you something.”
“Anything. You know that, sweetheart. Let me shut the—”
“No!” She shook her head and shifted free of his hands. “No,” she said carefully, “don’t.”
“All right.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you… Have you ever…” Her mouth felt as parched as the desert. Just do it, she told herself, just say the words and get it over with. “It’s about my husband. Do you know him?” She kept talking; she knew she was babbling but she couldn’t seem to stop. “Have you—have you had dealings with him? Gray
? Please. Don’t look at me like that. Tell me. Tell me that you don’t know Harman…”
“Darling,” he said softly, and reached for her.
She slapped at his hands. “You do!” She wanted to scream but she had to hold on, hold on; she needed to know everything. “You know him. And you came to Las Vegas to find me.”
“Dawn. It’s not that simple.”
“Yes. It is. It’s very simple. You and Harman. God, oh God, you know each other!”
“Dammit,” he said, his word rough with anger, “will you listen?”
“I did. Oh, I did. I listened to all your lies, you—you—” She caught her lip between her teeth, bit down until she felt the tang of blood. “Did you come to Vegas looking for me?”
“Jesus, if you’d just—”
“Yes or no?” Her voice rose. “Just yes or no, Gray. You can manage that, can’t you?”
He stabbed his fingers through his hair, paced in a tight circle before facing her again. “Yes. Okay? That’s why I came to Vegas. To find you. And yes, I know Kitteridge, but… Dawn? Dawn!”
He reached for her as she swung away from him and she flailed out with her fists, pummeling him while she sobbed for breath. Gray cursed and caught her wrist. She kicked him in the shins and he grunted with pain but held on.
“Dawn,” he said desperately, “listen to me—”
“I did,” she panted, “I listened and God, I wish, oh I wish…”
She jerked a hand free, reached back and picked up something from the table. Gray saw the blur of her hand and then pain exploded in his temple. She slugged me with the phone, he thought in wonder. Then the room began to spin. His hand fell from hers and he dropped to his knees. Blood dripped to the carpet.
A couple of minutes dragged by before he could get to his feet, walk unsteadily into the bathroom and peer into the mirror. He had a cut over his eye and the odds were good he’d also have an impressive shiner in a couple of hours. The lady swung one hell of a mean telephone.
He winced as he soaked a towel in cold water and pressed it to the wound. Time to go to Plan B—except he didn’t have a Plan B. He’d never imagined Dawn would confront him before he had the chance to—
Raising the Stakes Page 28