Hooper, Kay - [Hagen 09] (10 page)

He was silent for a few moments, then swore under his
breath and turned the car off the main road near a park, finally
stopping It and turning the engine off. In the distance, they could
see the Calcasieu River.

Dane half turned toward her. "Jenny, I want you to
understand something. I'm a gambler. By nature, by inclination, and
by profession. I've won and lost more than one fortune. This week I
could stake two houses, a condo, and a yacht – in a week, I may
well be the next best thing to broke. That's a
fact,
and
nothing else can change it. Believe that. It's the truth."

"But there's more," she said, powerfully
feeling the truth of her words.

He sighed roughly. "There's always more. Over the
years, I've made a number of friends in the intelligence community.
It's not so surprising; I'm often in a position to know things,
to be aware of – well, movements and such. So I became an
information broker. You might say it's a fringe benefit of being a
world-class poker player. And sometimes, when an agent asks me to
cultivate a certain person, to try to get a particular piece of
information, I do."

"This friend of yours, she's an agent?"

"She was. Retired now, and happily married. Her
husband is a very powerful man, and someone's trying to get at him.
The trail led to Kelly."

Jennifer drew a deep breath. "And your partner?
He's an agent, isn't he?"

"Yes. And my best friend." Dane smiled a bit
crookedly. "I haven't explained this much to anyone in ten
years. I can't prove any of it, Jenny."

She nodded slowly. "I know. But I believe you."

"Why?" he asked curiously. "It all sounds
so unlikely. Intelligence agents, counterfeit operations, powerful
men with secret enemies – and me, a gambler, the pivot."

"Maybe that's why I believe it." She smiled
faintly. "Because it sounds so unlikely. It's too elaborate to
be a lie. Too involved."

"Does that mean you trust me now?"

"I trust what you're doing. It makes sense; It
explains why you're here."

"But you still don't trust me."

Jennifer hesitated, still refusing to believe what her
instincts and intuition insisted she believe: that she could trust
him with every part of herself, even her heart. It was absurd.
Irrational, just the residue of powerful emotions freed by her own
lack of control. "I don't know," she heard herself say
finally. "You've told me
what
you are, but not
who
you are. I still don't have that answer."

"Not one of the simple answers, I guess." He
turned his gaze toward the windshield, frowning again. "You
always think you know who you are. Until someone asks. Then all you
can answer with are a few concrete facts. Want to hear those?"

"Yes." She was watching his profile, listening
to his deep, beautiful voice.

"All right. I'm thirty-five, born in Chicago and
raised there. My parents still live there. I have a sister and
brother, both younger. And I worked my way through college by waiting
tables and playing poker."

"Do you have a degree?" she asked curiously.

He looked at her with a sudden smile. "Yes. Law."
His voice was dry, fully appreciative of the irony.

Jennifer had to smile. "You were never tempted to
practice?".

"Not really. There are already too many lawyers in
the world."

"And a welcome dearth of gamblers?"

"Skilled
gamblers, yes."

"So you just became one?"

Dane was silent for a moment, then said slowly, "I
won a fortune. I'd been trying to decide if I wanted to practice law.
What I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Then I got involved in
a high-stakes game. A friend with a lot more money than I had staked
me. He said he'd put up the money, and I'd keep half the winnings if
there were any. He believed I could win, and I did, Half the winnings
turned out to be a fortune. I never looked back."

She gazed at him, conscious of some emotion she couldn't
quite put her finger on. What was it? The feeling that there was more
to this, that Dane was holding back some vital bit of Information. It
was something elusive, and she couldn't grasp it. "No
roots?" she asked.

"I carry my roots around with me." He smiled
faintly. "No regrets. Jenny."

"Have you ever lost everything?"

"Everything I bet, yes. Everything I had, no.
That's the professional part of me. If I lost everything, I'd have
nothing to rebuild with."

"That's the way you think of it? Rebuilding?"

"Sure."

They were silent for a while, Jennifer gazing out
through the windshield and Dane watching her. Then, quietly, he
asked, "Are we going to talk about us now?"

She refused to look at him. Her surface control was
fragile at best, and she was afraid of what lay underneath it.
There was too much that was instinctive and wild. And not real. Her
feelings couldn't be real. Wary of where they might take her, she
didn't trust the feelings. She'd make a fool of herself again.
Imagining –

"Jenny?"

"Why me?" she asked, still not looking at him.
"It was very sudden. Or do you have a girl along with a poker
game in every city?"

Dane looked at her face, lovely and serious, then at the
slender hands laced tightly together in her lap. The glossy shell of
calm she wore was just that, he knew. What he didn't know was how she
really felt about him. Mistrustful, certainly. He could make her want
him, but he was too experienced not to know that desire could exist
without deeper feelings. He thought she was cautious now, still
surprised and unsettled by her emotional storm of yesterday, and had
probably begun doubting her own feelings, her response to him.

And he was a gambler, everything she most mistrusted.

He waited until she looked at him, then said, "I
didn't plan on you. I shouldn't even be with you. Jenny. But I
couldn't stay away." He hesitated, then added harshly, "I
know I'm the last man in the world you want to get Involved with. I
guess you didn't plan on me either."

"No, I didn't." Caught again by his eyes, she
couldn't look away. "I don't know what you want from me."

Dane reached out slowly and smoothed a strand of pale
gold away from her cheek. She wore her hair loosely today, falling
over her shoulders like silk, and his hand slid around to the soft
nape of her neck, under the warm weight of it. He could feel her
tremble, and his own body tensed in an instant response.

"What can I say to that?" he murmured.

"The truth." Her voice was husky, almost a
plea.

Dane hesitated, but he didn't dare tell her how he felt.
Not yet – if he ever could. It might turn out to be something
she would never want to hear from him. "I want a chance. That's
all. Jenny. We both know there's something between us. All I want is
a chance to find out what it Is."

It wasn't
real.
Jennifer thought wildly, feeling
herself drawn slowly toward him. Those feelings of yesterday . . .
But they were rising Inside her again, with nothing but him to
trigger them, no previous outburst to blast her control into
splinters.

When his lips touched hers she wanted to hold herself
stiffly, but it was impossible. The console separated them below
the waist, and Dane made no effort to pull her upper body against
his. His right hand remained curled around her neck, and his left
hand rested gently over both hers. He kissed her without force, a
slow, gradually deepening seduction.

Jennifer couldn't fight the sensations – or him.
And she couldn't deny, this time, that he ignited the feelings
inside her.

The slow probing of his tongue, a secret caress, filled
her senses with building heat, and she was swaying toward him without
thought. She wanted him, as quickly as that, as certain as she had
been before. She •wanted him, and didn't care where they were or
what tomorrow would bring.

A rough sound escaped Dane when his lips left hers, and
both his hands cupped her face warmly. "You see?" he
murmured huskily. "Neither of us can ignore this, Jenny."

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 ..."