Hooper, Kay - [Hagen 09] (7 page)

Dane smiled slowly. "Isn't that the truth?"

The conversation died away at that point, but when
Garrett Kelly reentered the room five minutes later, he didn't seem
to notice. They had all heard the slam of the front door and a car
roaring away minutes before; he said nothing about that. He was
perceptibly distracted, frowning a bit. But his voice remained
calm and even when he addressed his guests.

"Dinner will be served in an hour, gentlemen.
Please make yourselves at home. I have a few calls to take care of,
and then I'll rejoin you."

There were more polite murmurs, following him back out
the door.

Dane set his untouched drink aside and said, "I
think I'll walk in the garden before dinner." He didn't wait for
anyone to offer to join him, but went out through a set of French
doors leading onto the veranda.

Dane moved lazily until the overgrown garden hid him
completely from anyone in the parlor, then quickened his pace. It was
a simple matter to cut through the garden toward the front of the
house, and he was easily able to keep out of sight in the wilderness
of untended plants and trees while he circled around and headed for
the patch of woods to the left of the lane where Jennifer had agreed
to meet him.

And she was waiting for him, her small car parked just
inside the woods on a rutted track. She wasn't sitting in the car;
she was pacing violently beside it.

Dane approached her just a bit warily, intrigued by the
sheer unexpectedness of her temper. Granted, she had said that her
temper was a force of nature, but her cool blond loveliness and
serene grace had painted a rather different – and deceptive –
picture.

"Are you married?" she inquired fiercely the
instant she caught sight of him.

He blinked, stopping by the car. "No, I'm not."

"My mother wanted me to ask." Jennifer was
still pacing, obviously so angry she was hardly paying attention
to what she was saying. "I'm glad you're not. Mother probably
would have poisoned your wife."

Dane leaned back against her car and folded his arms,
patiently waiting for the storm to subside even while thoroughly
enjoying the spectacle. "Why would she have done that?" he
asked.

"To get her out of the way, of course. She said
divorce would be easier, but I know my mother. Poison in the
tea, or something. The Borgias were Italian, you know."

"Yes, I remember that." Dane was having a
difficult time holding back laughter, but at the same time he was
fascinated by what Jennifer seemed to be telling him.

"Then beware," she said darkly, still pacing.
"As far as I know, Mother isn't related to them, but you just
can't be sure about these things. I can't control her. We'll be lucky
if she hasn't already ordered wedding invitations."

"Whose wedding iIs she planning?" Dane asked.

"Ours," Jennifer snarled. "Damn. And just
because I had to say
something
when I hadn't gotten any work
done. How was I to know she'd go all maternal and
Italian
on
me just because I said I was thinking about a man I'd met? I couldn't
have known she'd do that, could I?"

"Definitely not," Dane said solemnly.

"She doesn't even
know
you, and she's
probably thinking up names for babies. I've never heard such –
Desperation, she said. Passion. Real men, she said, and
essences." Jennifer stopped pacing suddenly, an expression
of uncertainty passing over her face. "Essences?" she
repeated, as if the word sounded odd.

"Sounds fine to me," he offered helpfully.

Jennifer stared at him for a moment, and the doubt
vanished to be replaced by a return of her glare. "What price
honor?" she demanded intensely.

That one appeared to come straight out of left field,
and Dane coped with it in some bewilderment. "Hypothetically?"

"No, not hypothetically! You. Your honor. How can I
trust you if I don't know that?"

It was, Dane realized, a serious question despite the
apparent mental contortions that had brought her to it. Before he
could frame an answer, she was going on fiercely.

"Would you sell your honor if the stakes were high
enough? How high is high enough? Or is your integrity too
important to you? Are there prices you aren't willing to pay, no
matter what it costs you? Or do you bet your honesty the way you bet
money?"

"No." He hadn't meant the answer to come so
harshly, and paused a moment before he continued, looking seriously
into her startled eyes. "No, I've never gambled my honor –
integrity, self-respect, whatever you want to call it. That price has
always been too high to pay. Winning was never so important that I
had to bet everything. Losing was never so important that I had to
bet everything." He drew a breath. "But I'm a gambler,
Jenny. And every gambler knows that sooner or later he'll have to pay
– whatever the cost. Even if the price is everything. Even if
he staked his honor."

Jennifer stared at him for a long moment, then turned
jerkily away. She was more shaken than she could remember ever having
been before. Had that been she, that rambling, fierce woman? God,
what she had told him! "I'm sorry," she managed. "I
don't know what's wrong with me."

Dane knew. The storm had passed, leaving her a
shipwrecked survivor of her own tempest, and reaction was setting in.
He straightened away from the car and went to her, but didn't try to
make her face him. Instead, he rested his hands gently on her
shoulders.

"Why should you be sorry?" he asked.

Stiffly, she said, "Look, just forget everything
I've said, all right? I wasn't thinking, and – "

"No, don't do that," he interrupted.

"What?"

"Slip back into your glossy shell." His hands
tightened on her shoulders, but his voice remained light. "I
didn't realize that's what it was, until you cut loose at Kelly."

"I told you I had a temper."

"And I should have believed you. But that calm
surface of yours had me fooled. Is it the Italian blood, do you
think, or was your father's family known for their passions?"

She thought his word choice had been deliberate, and it
made her uneasy. "My mother takes the credit," she
murmured, very conscious of his hands on her. "Or the blame,
depending on your point of view. Umm ... I really should be going."

"Not yet." He turned her to face him, keeping
his hands on her shoulders.

Jennifer felt a sense of panic. "All those things I
said about my mother and – Well, it's just a misunderstanding,
that's all. She's a little volatile, and she just got carried away
with the Idea – the
wrong
idea – that I was
interested in you."

"Is it a wrong idea?"

"Of course it is! I hardly know you."

"I'm very interested in you," he said, and
then added thoughtfully, "A tame word, that."

Remembering her mother's opinion of the same word,
Jennifer didn't know whether to laugh or swear. "Well, it
doesn't matter," she said with a touch of desperation,
"because I'm not in the market for a fling at the moment."

"Who said anything about a fling?" He was
smiling, violet eyes glowing in that characteristic way, his hands
holding her shoulders firmly. "Do you realize that you haven't
once said my name?"

Jennifer couldn't break the hold of his gaze. She felt
curiously trapped, something alive captured in resin and imprisoned
for eons. As if it were some phenomenon she observed apart from
herself, she was aware of suddenly quickened heartbeats, of a rising
heat that sapped strength, of dizziness. And then her detachment
snapped, a rubber band stretched too tightly, and it was
herself
she felt reacting this way, like never before. It was her own body
that was unfamiliar.

"How are you
doing
that?" she managed
to ask, baffled.

"Doing what?" he murmured, the charm of his
eyes still holding her, a lure she couldn't resist.

With an effort that left her even more shaken, Jennifer
yanked her gaze away, staring fixedly at the open collar of his white
shirt. "Never mind. I have to go. Now."

"You sound like a scared little girl, afraid to
stop playing dress-up and try the real thing."

Her chin came up in instinctive anger – and her
eyes were caught again by his. As unwillingly fascinated as a rabbit
watching a circling hawk, she stared into changeable eyes, purple,
blue, dark, light, compelling. "Stop that," she said.

"Say my name."

In some part of her mind, Jennifer recognized that his
was a conscious ability, and one he was completely aware of. He used
it the way another man might use any particular talent, always aware
of using it.
Like flipping a switch. A
siren's voice trapped
in violet, a visual sorcery. And her instinct was to fight that, to
fight him, as if he threatened to take something from her she was
unwilling to give. If the lure of his eyes had offered only
seduction, she could have fought him; she was both too intelligent
and too independent to mindlessly give in to a purely physical
demand.

But it was more than that. It was a seduction of the
mind as well as the senses, a vivid invitation to fly high and laugh
joyously, to
live
on some Incredible level she had never even
imagined. And it was irresistible.

"Try it," he urged, and he didn't explain if
he meant she should stop playing dress-up and sample the real thing,
or if the invitation was that other, silent one. Or if both were the
same, one appeal to her mind and the other to her heart.

She heard her own voice respond, and it was not a
submission but rather understanding and acceptance. "Dane."

"The stakes are high," he warned her softly.

"I know." Arid she did. A gambler of
integrity, Dane would stake some vital part of himself – but so
would she. And in the end, he could win it all.

"Maybe even . . . everything."

Jennifer took a deep breath, a swimmer instinctively
treading water to save herself from that third and final plunge in
uncertain waters. "I know."

His jaw tightened suddenly as a muscle flexed. "Be
sure, Jenny. Be very sure. Once the cards are dealt the game starts."

"Is it a game? Only that?" She was dimly aware
that her hands had lifted to rest on his chest.

"Everything's a game, up to a point." He drew
her a step closer, his arms slipping around her. "Then it
becomes real. The game can't hurt you, Jenny. But the reality can."

Jennifer had never in her life been tempted to stray
from the safe and predictable path: school, work, the undemanding
social structure of occasional dates meaning little. But Dane's
eyes promised so much more. Passion, danger, laughter, pain. The
possibilities seemed endless. And the tempestuous nature she had so
successfully controlled all these years wanted those
possibilities with a wild yearning she had never been conscious
of before.

"What happens if I win the game?" she asked
finally.

"That depends on what you bet."

"And on what you bet?" When he nodded slowly,
she probed, "What are you betting, Dane?"

For a moment, it seemed he wouldn't answer. His face was
still, the changeable eyes something else now, something with
stronger hints of danger, of a kind of wildness. "Too much,"
he said in a roughened tone. "Too damned much this time."

When his mouth captured hers, Jennifer again felt that
instant response, the uncurling heat inside her. She felt the
hardness of his body against her, the unexpected strength of his arms
around her. There was nothing lazy about him now, nothing polished or
suave or humorous; it was as if another layer of himself had
been abandoned. He was rougher, more direct, his growing desire
unhidden.

Hers wasn't the only true self hidden inside a "glossy
shell," it seemed.

And she could no more resist that than she had been able
to stand against the promises in his remarkable eyes. For the first
time, she understood her mother's reference to "essences"
and how a man could fill a woman's senses with that inner part of
himself. Dane was doing that, infusing her somehow with the
flickering wildness she had seen in him, igniting her own
desires so that they burned brightly.

Her arms slipped up around his neck, fingers tangling
in his silky black hair, and she felt his hands slide down over her
back, holding her more tightly against him. The stark caress of his
tongue half satisfied a terrible craving inside her, just as the
feeling of his hard body pressed to her yielding one partially sated
the same hunger. But it wasn't enough.

She didn't care that they stood Just inside the woods a
hundred yards from the childhood home she wanted desperately to be
hers again, didn't care that Dane had to go back there, that he would
be missed soon. She was no longer questioning trust, or honor, or
Dane's enigmatic reasons for being here.

She was luxuriating in sensations. Somehow, perhaps
because he was a gambler and a charming, grace-ful man on the
surface, she had expected less physical strength in him despite his
size, less power. But beneath the fine cloth of his curiously
formal clothing, she could feel the solid muscles of an extremely
strong and active man. His grace had become a feline thing, the fluid
suppleness of a body under unthinking control. His hands, big
and long-fingered, moved over her body with an almost delicate
mastery, as if he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she
belonged to him.

And Jennifer knew it too. Not as a conscious decision,
for consciously she would always rebel at the thought of herself as a
possession. It was something else, something deeper and more
absolute, an acknowledgment that went beyond thought or reason.
She was his, no matter what, his by some primitive reckoning they
both understood instinctively.