by Jayne Castle
"I'm aware of that. As I said, you'll have the rest in a couple of months."
"The total was due last month," he told her flatly.
"What are you going to do? Send Wolf out to beat her up?" Kendra inquired evenly, her dislike of the situation plain in her voice.
"On the contrary, Miss Loring. There are other ways for a woman to pay her gambling debts. Don't look so shocked. That's exactly the sort of remark you were expecting me to make, wasn't it? I can see your opinion of my .. . er . . . profession quite clearly in those lovely hazel eyes!"
"From what little I know of your line of work, Mr. Garrett," Kendra retorted acidly, "I doubt that you would allow one of your customers to pay off her debts in anything other than cold, hard cash."
"There are exceptions to every rule," he mused, his dark eye glinting with mockery. "Do you gamble, Miss Loring?"
"I have other uses for my money, Mr. Garrett."
"Your own, perhaps, but would you have any serious objections to throwing away a man's money on my tables?"
"This conversation is becoming a bit personal," Kendra said quietly. "May I please have the receipt for that check?"
"You'll have to give me a moment to consider this," he drawled. "The debt is, after all, somewhat overdue, and you have only brought half of the required amount."
"Are you going to refuse Donna's check?" she demanded coolly, wondering at the small shiver of apprehension that had just coursed down the length of her spine. This
was an unforseen contingency. Donna had felt certain there would be no problem. . . .
"No," he said after a second's hesitation. "I shall be willing to accept the partial payment, under certain conditions."
"What conditions?" Kendra asked, meeting his challenging look with determined unconcern. She refused to give way to the irrational impulse to twist her hands together in her lap. Instead she concentrated her inner energy on sitting serenely in the gray chair as if she were content to humor him for the moment.
"You needn't be so wary, Miss Loring," he soothed, a lazy smile revealing the whiteness of shark's teeth. "I'm merely asking you to join me for dinner."
She flinched at the unexpected demand, regrouping her forces at once. "Asking me or telling me you won't accept that check unless I do?" she tossed back bluntly, anger beginning to simmer under the surface of her calm.
"That's putting it a little crudely—"
"A simple yes or no will do," she interrupted icily, telling herself that if she remained resolute enough, there was still a chance she could face him down. He was playing with her. He had every intention of accepting that check; she was certain of it. But what if he did refuse? The last thing Donna needed now was another dangerous male making threats!
"Are you always so straightforward, Miss Loring?" Case inquired interestedly.
"When I'm conducting business, yes."
He winced. "You consider a dinner invitation business?"
"In this instance, it would be more akin to blackmail."
"Another line of work in which you would expect to find me adept?"
"I'd rather not discuss your methods of making a living, Mr. Garrett."
"I can see that," he murmured, sitting forward and twisting a key in the desk drawer.
Kendra watched worriedly as he dropped Donna's check inside but-made no move to write out any sort of receipt.
"Mr. Garrett," she began firmly, fighting for control in her words.
"Call me Case," he admonished, getting easily to his feet. "All my friends do!" He grinned at her, a purely male, purely bantering smile, which dared her to tell him they weren't friends.
"The response to that is obvious," she gritted.
Out of a vague feeling of self-defense, she also rose to her feet, the white mink muff dangling on a silken cord from one wrist. She saw him glance at the refined elegance of gold at her throat and ears, and then his smile broadened knowingly.
"Oh, you'll like being my friend," he told her softly, coming close but not touching her. "I'm very generous to my friends. And you look like a woman who appreciates a man's generosity."
The open insult was almost more than even Kendra's hard-won willpower could tolerate. Red washed up into her cheeks and then receded, leaving her pale in the chandelier's light. She wanted to scream at him that every expensive item of her clothing had been purchased by her, not a man, but instinct warned that he would only take pleasure in having provoked a response.
"The casino restaurant has an excellent chef, Kendra," Case went on urbanely, using her first name quite naturally. "I'm sure you'll enjoy the roast duckling, and the house pate is exceptional."
"Why are you doing this, Mr. Garrett?" Kendra whispered with barely repressed anger.
He took her arm and led her toward the door. "Mostly,
I think, because you so clearly dislike me and my business," he told her with blatant honesty.
Kendra hesitated, thinking of the check in his drawer. She needed that receipt for Donna's peace of mind. For Donna's sake, she could tolerate dinner with this one-eyed shark. Belatedly, she told herself she shouldn't have challenged him so openly.
"You enjoy dining with women who dislike you." She sighed in the tone of one resigning oneself to a particularly unpleasant business chore.
"I enjoy dining with women who interest me," he corrected, opening the door with grave politeness. "And you, Miss Kendra Loring, interest me. Greatly."
"I can only regret that," she told him ruefully.
"I can see that. Perhaps the penalty you're paying for your poor manners will serve to teach you better ones," he noted suavely.
She ignored that. "You'll give me the receipt after dinner?"
"Yes," he agreed pleasantly enough, guiding her down the hall in the opposite direction of the gambling area.
"I have your word on that?" she clarified cautiously.
"You do, although I can't imagine you'd put much faith in it."
Kendra bit her lip, refraining from the sort of sharp response that would only serve to goad him further. She had made a mistake in handling this man, she acknowledged privately. She should have been polite and charming, and she should have smiled. She should have been all those things, yet instead she had been cold, condemning, and, yes, arrogant. Not a good way to conduct business.
She gave a mental, philosophical shrug. Well, she doubted that she was in any real danger with him, and if he were to try something physical, she could deal with it. But somehow Kendra didn't think it would come to that. He was just out to get her back for her haughty manner.
Not an unpredictable reaction if she'd just given the subject some thought earlier.
She would tolerate dinner and chalk up the event to experience. The next time she dealt with a man whose background probably could not bear close scrutiny, she would take care not to insult him too obviously! She took a long breath. Perhaps the meal would pass more serenely if she mended a few fences first.
"Mr. Garrett . . ."
"Call me Case, or I'll insist you stick around for dessert." He smiled deliberately.
"Case," she repeated dutifully, summoning an apologetic curve of her lips that was not repeated in her eyes. "I'm sorry I offended you, but this whole thing has been rather a nuisance for me. I'm doing a favor for Donna, and—"
"I only accept the most sincerely meant apologies," he told her coolly, coming to a halt by an elevator and pressing the button. "So let's skip that line about feeling bad for having offended me. Quite unnecessary anyway. I've endured much worse," he added cryptically.
For some reason the mildness of the statement struck Kendra as so incongruous as to be very funny. A smile sailed into her eyes, and the curve of her mouth took on the spontaneous brilliance that had so overcome Wolf a short time earlier.
"I'll just bet you have." She laughed up at him, imagining the sort of "offenses" a man like this must have been dealt in his life. "Did you punish the offenders by taking them out to dinner? Strange, but I
wouldn't have thought you the 'turn the other cheek' type."
"You don't think having dinner with me will be such a trying penalty?" he murmured, his dark eye drinking in the sight of her smile with a strangely thirsty look that Kendra didn't understand.
"Not if the duckling is as good as you say it is," she
retorted blandly. "Besides, I'm hungry," she added easily, stepping obediently into the opening doors of the wood-paneled elevator. "I was going to have dinner after I finished my business here, anyway." She watched him press the button for the third floor of the building. "Is the restaurant on the top floor?"
"No," he replied, flicking an amused glance at her inquiring expression. "My apartments are."
"Your apartments!" she snapped, the well-marked lines of her brows snapping together in a quelling frown. "You invited me to dinner in the restaurant. . . ."
The elevator was already gliding to a halt, the heavy doors opening to reveal a white-carpeted hallway and a broad, carved oak door directly across from them.
"I invited you to dinner. I don't recall saying we would dine in the restaurant," he said smoothly, guiding her across the hall and inserting a key into the massively ornate brass lock.
He opened the door but made no move to force her inside. Instead he smiled with deliberate, goading mockery as she hesitated on the threshold.
"The deal still stands," he told her easily. "Roast duckling in exchange for Mrs. Radburn's receipt. How good a friend of hers are you, Kendra?"
"Good enough to eat your duckling," she replied crisply, her eyes narrowed in warning. "But not good enough to play the role of dessert. Is that very clear, Case?"
"Very," he admitted dryly. "The invitation was for dinner, not bed."
"As long as that's understood," Kendra began magnanimously and walked into the room. She could take care of herself, but that didn't mean she wanted to find it necessary to do so, she thought grimly.
"Willing to humor me up to a point, hmmm?" he observed, shutting the door and standing with his back to it as he watched her take in the room.
"I suppose so," she acknowledged, and then she stopped short at the sight of the apartment spread out before her. "Good heavens, Case! Since when do professional gamblers create fantasy worlds for themselves?"
"Everyone needs an escape."
"But a South Sea island?" Kendra asked skeptically, eyeing the wooden ceiling fan, the tapa-cloth-covered rattan furniture, the woven grass mat on which she stood, and the bamboo trellis that separated the entrance hall from the sunken living room. Potted palms, a painting of a sailing ship, and some unusual baskets accessorized a room which would have been appropriate for a tropical island.
It was an expensively done fantasy, she acknowledged privately, but a startling contrast to the snows of winter in Lake Tahoe. Somehow, when she pivoted on one heel to face her host, it struck Kendra that Case Garrett looked right at home in his exotic surroundings. He was unique enough to fit the fantasy of the room. A born adventurer.
"Can you think of a better setting in which to warm some answers from a very cool and aloof mystery woman?" He smiled meaningfully.
"I'm not here to give you answers tonight, Case," she said quietly and with absolute confidence. "I'm only here to buy that receipt."
"That would be a shame," he told her, his gaze darkening. "Because you have some answers to questions I didn't even know I wanted to ask until I saw you waiting for me across the casino tonight."
Kendra saw the deliberate challenge in him, and her expressive mouth quirked wryly. It had been two long years since she had last come in contact with a man who viewed women as potential prey.
She wasn't yet certain whether or not Case Garrett represented a genuine threat, but one thing she was sure of: The past two years had not been wasted. Kendra Lor-
ing would never again be forced into the role of unwilling victim by any man. She had learned to take care of herself, and she possessed the inner confidence that that knowledge provided.
No, she felt sublimely assured of her personal safety. Case Garrett wouldn't want a major scene in his own casino, anyway. That wasn't really what bothered her, she realized as she stepped down into the fantasy room.
Her main concern was that she had finally put a name to that strange flash of recognition she had experienced earlier in the casino. The other word for it was "attraction."
CHAPTER TWO
It was as if the illusion of the room somehow reached out to surround her, Kendra decided later. The very incongru-ousness of the decor gave her a curious sense of unreality, as though she had stepped into an isolated moment out of time with a man she would normally have had nothing to do with.
This couldn't be her, she told herself in silent humor, dining in South Seas elegance on roast duckling in orange sauce and drinking fine wine. And this certainly couldn't be her engaging in tantalizing, delicate conversation with a man she should despise.
But here in this tropical setting, which looked out on moonlit snow-covered mountains, darkened forests and lake, nothing was quite as it should be.
But it didn't really matter, Kendra thought deliberately as she swirled the wine in her long-stemmed glass. After all, she would never see this dark, mysterious man again. The whole evening was a bizarre vignette in an otherwise graciously calm, sophisticated life.
Case set his gleaming silver knife and fork correctly on the English china plate, pushed both gently aside, and leaned forward to rest his chin on linked fingers. The black velvet patch lent him an undeniably buccaneerish air, especially in this island scene.
"We're very good at this, aren't we?" he mused, his gaze gleaming with a combination of humor and frustration.
"Very good at what?" Kendra smiled, her glance flickering away for an instant to the new-falling snow outside the window. The soft, wintry sight might as well have been a movie she was viewing for all the reality it had from the perspective of her rattan chair.
"Carrying on a conversation without managing to drop a single, concrete fact about ourselves. I've been plying you with good food and wine for over an hour, and I can still count all the pieces of hard information I've learned about you on the fingers of one hand."
"As you said, it's a mutual talent," she murmured, thinking that every time she had come close to a serious inquiry about his past or his life outside the casino, he had turned the question aside with an enigmatic smile and a light comment. Perhaps he didn't want the potentially grim answers casting a shadow over the fantasy, she thought.
"You're very confident," he continued gently. "Very self-assured. And you're driving me crazy trying to pry information out of you!"
She laughed at that, pleased at his admission of power-lessness. "Why do you need the mundane facts of my life? Are you making a scrapbook?"
"Hardly worth it so far," he retorted dryly. He held up one hand and began enumerating. "At this point I know your name"—he broke off to lift a black brow inquiringly —"assuming, of course, that you gave Wolf the real one. Did you?"
"I don't see that it matters particularly."
He sighed. "So even that fact is in doubt. What else? I know you're on a mission for one of my former patrons. Does Donna still live in Los Angeles, by the way?" he added innocently.
"As far as I know," Kendra said smoothly.
"Can I assume you're also from L.A., then?"
"You can if you like."
His mouth curved wryly as he held up a third finger. "I know you enjoy good food and expensive clothes. ..."
She shrugged. There wasn't much to be said about that. She had demolished her duckling with delicate greed. And the mink and silk spoke for themselves.
"You see?" He groaned. "Very few hard facts."
"I know little more than that about you," she pointed out, lounging back against the tapa-cloth print of the cushions on her chair and smiling at him across the gleaming table. The lovely meal and table setting had emerged miraculously after a short phone call. Once the food had bee
n delivered, no one had returned to intrude. Kendra wondered how frequently Case Garrett entertained in this fashion.
"Tell me what you've learned," he invited with a coolly mocking twist of his mouth.
"Your name, assuming it's the right one, of course," she drawled obediently.
"It's on the casino license. Which is more proof than you've provided me," he told her virtuously.
She inclined her head briefly, acknowledging the point. "I know you're the employer of one Wolfgang Amadeus Higgins. . . . Where did you find him, incidentally?" she asked interestedly.
"Wolf and I go back a long way," Case retorted, telling her nothing at all.
"I know you run one of the most exclusive clubs in Nevada ..."
"A profession of which you obviously do not wholly approve."
"It's your business," she said amicably. "Literally," he agreed.
She glanced at the fingers of her left hand and gave up. "We're about even, I think. Although I suppose I could
add that your taste in interior decor is not quite what I would have expected."
He glanced around the lush room and smiled slowly. "If I tell you why the apartment is decorated this way, will you answer a personal question in return?"
She hesitated, eyeing him with consideration that was spiked with laughter. She really did want to know why he had chosen this particular fantasy. "If the question is not too personal, yes," she said.
He rose, coming around the small table to assist her to her feet, and lead her over to the couch. Gallantly he seated her in one corner and went to a side table of glass and wicker to pour a brandy for each of them. Carrying them back to the couch, he handed her one of the snifters and sat down next to her, not touching.
"I worked in that part of the world once," he began rather cautiously, staring down into the golden brandy as he warmed it with his hands. "I love it."
She waited. "End of explanation?" she finally prompted, watching his hard profile. His blind eye was on the side away from her.
"Sometimes explanations are very simple," he said, sitting back into the depths of the couch in a lazy, graceful sprawl. He turned to look at her. "I'll be satisfied with an equally simple answer from you."