Her Dark Half

by Paige Tyler

  Lana set down her glass, then looked longingly at her empty plate. She should have ordered three slices instead of two. She was still hungry. Max must have seen the way she was gazing unhappily at her plate, because he laughed and asked if she wanted dessert.

  “I smelled some killer cheesecake when we walked in.”

  She laughed, marveling at him and his super-sniffer as she considered dessert. “I probably shouldn’t.”

  He regarded her thoughtfully. “I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but you don’t strike me as someone who’s prone to putting on weight.”

  Lana opened her mouth to tell him that was only because she worked out so much, but then decided simply to be honest. “I’m not. In fact, I weigh the same thing I did in high school, and I hardly ever work out. It drives Denise crazy. I can eat anything I want and never gain a pound. She stands too close to a bowl of ice cream and has to go straight to the gym.”

  Max smiled. “It’s probably in your DNA. Fast metabolism, you know?”

  She pushed back her plate and rested her forearms on the table, returning his smile. “Any chance that you have a fast metabolism like that, too?”

  He nodded, his grin broadening. “As a matter of fact, I do. So, how about that cheesecake?”

  “Definitely,” she said with a laugh as he caught their server’s eye.

  After the cheesecake showed up, Lana decided they’d done enough talking about her. It was time to find out a little about this amazing guy across the table from her.

  “Now that you know everything there is to know about me,” she said, licking cheesecake off her fork with a little show of tongue simply because she liked Max watching her do it, “let’s talk about you.”

  His smile wilted a little, much to her disappointment. “My life isn’t nearly as interesting as yours. Definitely nothing worth talking about.”

  “That’s silly,” she scolded. “I bet you have a lot of fascinating stuff to talk about. I mean, for starters, did you grow up in a cop family here in Dallas?”

  Max didn’t say anything, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure he’d heard her. Instead, he focused on his slice of cheesecake, like he was more interested in that than her. Finally, he looked up and gave another smile—only this time, it lacked humor.

  “No, I didn’t grow up in Texas. I was born in Las Vegas and lived there until I was eighteen,” he said quietly. “My family was…well, let’s just say it was about as far as you can get from a cop family. To put things in proper perspective, if one or two events in my life had gone slightly different, you’d be sitting at the table with a guy who works at a Gas-and-Go.”

  With his looks, confidence, and knee-weakening charm, Lana had a hard time believing Max could ever be anything but amazing. “But growing up in Vegas must have been cool, with all the lights and excitement?”

  Max shook his head, though, turning his attention back to his cheesecake, taking a small bite. “I didn’t grow up on that side of Vegas.” He lifted his head to look at her again. “I lived in what you might call the projects—the low-rent housing section of North Vegas.”

  “Rough neighborhood?” she prompted, trying to imagine Max in a place like that. The image just wouldn’t stick. He looked like he could take care of himself in a fight, but the idea of him dealing with that kind of life as a kid bothered her.

  “Sometimes it could be,” he admitted. “A lot of my friends ended up in jail or dead. I always considered myself lucky to have gotten out.”

  “What about the rest of your family?” she asked, curious despite herself. “Did they get out, too?”

  “Not so much,” he murmured.

  Lana saw the flash of pain that crossed his face, no matter how hard he tried to hide it, and was immediately sorry she’d asked the question. She waited, expecting Max to say more. When he didn’t, she was smart enough to know it was time to back off that particular subject. There was something bad lurking in his past, something he didn’t want to talk about.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching across the table to rest her hand on his heavily muscled forearm. “I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories.”

  He looked at her, a slow smile spreading across his face. Setting down his fork, he placed his hand on top of hers. “You don’t have to be sorry. I had a tough life growing up, and I did a few stupid things. But while the events in my past will always be with me, they don’t necessarily define me. In a lot of ways, while some of it really sucked, that life also made me stronger.”

  Lana gazed at him, lost for a moment in those vivid-blue eyes, wondering if maybe the past Max was referring to was the reason her father seemed so resistant to the idea of her hanging out with him. She tried to imagine what he could have done but stopped herself. If Max had done something that terrible, he would never have been allowed to become a cop, especially one on the SWAT team. She was aware enough of her dad’s job to know that SWAT only took in the very best.

  They sat there quietly for a while, eating cheesecake and enjoying each other’s company. Just another indication there was something special going on between them. In her experience, dead air in the middle of a first date was a sure a sign she wasn’t compatible with a guy. But with Max, she felt completely comfortable with it.

  When her dessert plate was clean—short of licking it, of course—she found herself curious about one thing and hoped it was something Max wouldn’t mind talking about.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get from that bad place in North Vegas, with the tough life you had and the stupid things you did, and into the Dallas PD SWAT Team? That’s got to be a complicated story.”

  His mouth quirked mischievously. “Yeah, complicated would be a good word for it. I’m just not sure I should tell you about it.”

  “Why not?” she asked, surprised.

  “Because, like I said, I did some stupid stuff. Stuff I’m not so proud of. I don’t mind telling you, but I’d hate to give you a bad opinion of me.”

  “Is my opinion of you that important already?” she asked coyly.

  He smiled again. “Actually, it is. As crazy as that may be.”

  She didn’t think it was crazy at all. Probably because the connection between them was growing stronger by the second. She couldn’t imagine anything he told her that would affect what they had.

  “I hereby solemnly promise not to judge,” she said. “Lay it on me.”

  He laughed and reached into the pocket of his jeans. A moment later, he came out with a poker chip and set it down on the table between them. She picked it up to read the logo. It was a fancy ten-dollar chip from a casino in Reno that she’d never heard of. Then again, she didn’t know much about casinos in general, much less those in Reno. She flipped it over, expecting to see something on the backside that would help her understand what she was looking at, but there was nothing special there, either.

  “What’s this?” she asked, bouncing the chip in her hand and feeling the weight of it before handing it back to him. “Did you win it while you were in Reno?”

  He took the chip back and gazed at it, a slight smile curving the corners of his lips. “No, I didn’t win it. I paid for it out of my own pocket. I keep it as a reminder of the day my entire life changed.”

  Lana waited, knowing more was coming.

  “It was a Friday.” Max rubbed his thumb back and forth across the front of the chip as he spoke. “It was four in the morning, and I was sitting at a blackjack table with a stack of chips just like this one in front of me. I was too young to be in there, but I was tall enough and big enough, so no one questioned me.”

  She shook her head, having a hard time imagining staying up that late for any reason that didn’t involve studying for an exam—or getting naked with a hot guy. “Four a.m? Were you there on a gambling binge or something?”

  He looked up and smiled. “Actually, I was there
to rob the place.”

  Max said the words so casually that, at first, they went right over her head. Then, when she realized what he’d just said, she was sure he was kidding.

  But he wasn’t laughing.

  “Seriously?” she asked, then lowered her voice, terrified someone nearby would hear, even though there weren’t many people in the place at the moment. “You were going to rob a casino?”

  He chuckled. “I did say I grew up on the wrong side of town and that I did some stupid stuff, remember? I’ll be the first to admit that when I left home at eighteen, I was pretty screwed up. I got involved with a group of idiots who’d been doing small-time burglary jobs all across the Southwest—pawnshops, electronics warehouses, mom-and-pop jewelry stores. I was stupid as hell to get mixed up with them, but back then, being with them looked about as good as it was going to get.”

  “Did you ever hurt anyone?” Lana asked, afraid to ask but needing to know. “Or carry a gun?”

  Max shook his head, looking down at the chip in his hand again. “I carried a gun, but I never had a need to use it. We hit small places that had no security guards, usually late at night. If a situation had ever occurred where I had to pull that gun, I’m not sure what the hell I would have done. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

  “So what happened?” she asked hesitantly, fervently wanting to believe this story had a happy ending.

  “The guys running our little crew got greedy and set their sights on a much bigger payoff. One of them had a cousin who worked in a casino in Reno, and they got it in their heads that we could pull off a smash-and-grab job there early in the morning, just as the security company that serviced the place was taking the evening’s winnings to the bank. They figured we could get away with two hundred thousand, easy.”

  Max stopped talking, flipping the poker chip over and around his fingers so fast Lana could hardly follow it. She tried to be patient, but it was all she could do to not lean over and smack the chip out of his hand. She needed him to hurry up and tell her what happened.

  “I was the biggest guy in the crew, so it was my job to follow the four-person security team through the casino and take out the two in the back as they were pushing the money cart out the rear exit. Then the other members of the crew would sweep in, deal with the two guards up front, and grab the cart full of cash. It was a horrible plan, but in theory, no one was supposed to get hurt.”

  “But?” she prompted, her stomach tightening.

  “But as I was sitting there at the blackjack table, this big guy sat down beside me. He looked me straight in the eyes as the security guards started to move and casually told me that if I got out of my chair, he was going to put me in jail for the rest of my life.”

  O-kay. Lana wasn’t sure what she thought had been coming next, but it hadn’t been that. “He was a cop? They knew you were there to rob the place?”

  “He wasn’t just any cop.” Max’s mouth edged up. “He was Gage Dixon, the commander of the Dallas SWAT team you met at headquarters tonight. And yeah, he knew I was there to rob the place.”

  Lana only had a vague recollection of the men with Max at the awards ceremony because she’d been so focused on him. Her mind spun as she imagined the scene he’d described at the casino.

  “How the heck did he know you were about to rob the place? Why was he even in Reno?” She waved her hand. “No, wait. Skip all that for now. Tell me the important part first—what the heck did you do?”

  Max chuckled. “Well, I wish I could say I did something brilliant and daring, but in reality, I freaked out. The casino guards were already moving past me, and I knew that if I didn’t do something quick, the whole plan would implode. So I did the only thing I could think to do—I tried to punch him.”

  Lana stared, her jaw dropping.

  “Remember that part where I said I’d done some stupid stuff?” Max said. “Well, me—at nineteen years old—trying to take a swing at a fully trained SWAT officer is definitely in that category.”

  “It didn’t work?”

  He shook his head with another laugh. “Understatement there. I won’t bore you with the details, mostly because it’s so damn embarrassing to have to remember them. Suffice to say, Gage had no problem keeping me in that chair.”

  “Did the rest of your crew get arrested?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah, there were a dozen cops waiting for the job to go down. The moment it did, they swarmed in and grabbed everyone. It was over in seconds.”

  “You were arrested?” she asked, but then realized that couldn’t be right. If he’d been arrested for attempted robbery, how the heck could he be in SWAT right now?

  “No, I wasn’t arrested,” Max said. “While everyone else was paying attention to all the excitement on the far side of the casino, Gage yanked me to my feet and we walked right out the front door. We got in his rental car and drove straight for the California state line. Then he pulled over and told me I could get out if I wanted to.”

  This story was becoming stranger by the second, and if it wasn’t for the deadly serious expression on Max’s face, Lana would have thought he was making the whole thing up.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “Your future commander went all the way from Dallas to stop you from robbing a casino, then let you go?”

  “Not quite.” Max’s mouth quirked again. “He was ready to let me walk, but first he wanted to talk to me. I had nowhere better to go, so I listened. We ended up sitting there in his car talking until the sun came up. For reasons that are too complicated to get into, Gage had tracked me to Reno and figured out what I was doing. He got some of his friends from the local PD involved, and in exchange for the tip on the casino robbery, they agreed to look the other way while he got me out of the state.”

  Lana frowned. “Why would he go all the way to Reno to do something like that? Is he family?”

  Max thought about that a moment, then smiled. “Yeah, I guess that in some ways, he is family. He knew what I was going through and went out of his way to find me. He helped me understand a lot of the things that were going on in my life at that time. He got me straightened out and kept me from totally destroying my life.”

  “And he got you into SWAT?”

  Max chuckled. “It wasn’t quite that easy. He brought me back to Dallas and got me a place to stay, then helped me get into a community college to get enough schooling to meet the minimum DPD requirements. After that, I had to get through thirty-five weeks of training at the police academy, then another twenty-four weeks of field training. Only after all that was he able to get me on the team, and even that was tough. The department wasn’t thrilled at the idea of putting a rookie on the SWAT team. He had to really work to make it happen.”

  Lana traced her fingers up and down his forearm. “He must have seen something very special in you to go through all that effort.”

  Max shrugged. “I guess. Sometimes I have to admit I don’t know what he saw in me back in the beginning. I was a soup sandwich.”

  She laughed. She’d never heard that expression before, but she liked it. “Oh, I don’t know. I think I can see some of the special qualities he might have seen.”

  Max raised a brow. “I’m pretty sure the two of you see completely different things when you look at me.”

  “I guess that’s possible,” she agreed.

  As she continued to run her fingers along his arm, the light caught Max’s eyes again, making them glimmer. Lana was about to remark on it when their server suddenly appeared at their table.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” the woman said softly as she put the folio with the bill on the table between them. “But we’re going to be closing soon. Is there anything else I can get for you before you leave?”

  Lana glanced at her watch, blinking in surprise when she saw it was almost one o’clock in the morning. She looked around and realized they were the on
ly ones still in the place. Piggie Pies was supposed to close at midnight. No wonder the server was itching to push them out the door. The poor woman was ready to go home.

  “No, we’re good,” Max said, slipping a few twenties into the folio. “Thanks for everything.”

  The woman gave them a smile and told them to have a good night.

  Max looked at Lana, his eyes still full of heat. “So, where to?”

  * * *

  Lana caught Max giving her a look a curious look as they slowly walked hand in hand up to the front door of her parents’ two-story house. She would have asked him what was so interesting, but the truth was, she was enjoying herself too much to bother.

  It had been difficult to head home after leaving the restaurant. When Max had asked where they should go next, her first thought had been his place. But she’d controlled her urges. Max had to work tomorrow and she definitely didn’t want him being tired the next day, not with the kind of job he had.

  “I’m glad we had a chance to go out,” Max said when they reached the porch. “I had an amazing night, and I’m not just talking about the pizza, though that was pretty outstanding, too.”

  Lana turned to face him, moving a little closer for warmth against the chilly November air. Not that she was cold. In fact, she rarely ever got cold. But she didn’t mind sharing some of his body heat since he seemed to have so much of it. The cold didn’t seem to both him, either. He had his jacket hanging open.

  “I had a good time, too.” She smiled up at him. “Maybe we can do it again sometime?”

  Lana tried her best to not appear too overeager. She didn’t want Max to think she was desperate. While she was eager to see him again, she couldn’t let him know that. A woman had to play it cool.