Risk & Reward (4 page)

He allowed her to fix it, but didn’t so much as turn his face to look at her. She placed her hands back into her lap.

Nightmare.

A dangerous emotion rose inside of her, almost as fierce as her guilt, and she throttled it back.
He’s entitled,
her conscience murmured.
You have to take it.

She wasn’t good at taking it. Silence had its moments, but at times like this, it made her want to climb the walls and scream like a banshee.

Fuck it. This was going to be a really long night if she had to play at this timid shit. “I said I was sorry.”

Brooding silence.

Her belly tightened, and she breathed in deeply. Calm. She turned to face his stony profile, not caring that the move creased her pressed dress. “Can we put this in perspective? It’s not like I asked you to have dinner with your mortal enemy. Or worse, one of those magicians that are crawling all over this city.”

Her joke fell flat. “No. Just your parents.”

“Right. Just my parents. If this is about whatever antagonism you guys had in the past, remember that we’re adults now. I’m not some sixteen-year-old bringing a boy home for Mommy and Daddy’s approval.” She dared to put her hand on his flexed arm. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but they’ve met other guys I’ve dated, and they’ve learned to be at peace with whoever I choose. And I choose you.”

Was that a subtle softening in his jawline? “It was a shitty thing you did, not telling me.”

True. It had been a shitty thing to do, to not give him advance warning, but things had been going so well.

Because you haven’t had to deal with any problems yet.
And though she might have hoped otherwise, between her father’s sneers and her brother’s embezzling, her family had always been a problem for them.

It was a problem that wasn’t going anywhere. And she couldn’t stand the thought of delaying the confrontation anymore. “Would it have changed anything? Beyond giving you time to put product in your hair?”

His nostrils flared. “I do not put product in my hair.”

“Figuratively speaking, that is.” She rubbed his arm. “You wouldn’t have come, Wyatt. And I…I wanted you to.”

“You said you would make excuses for me, that I didn’t have to come.”

Logic. Wyatt had it in spades. “I would have been pissed if you’d taken me up on that offer.”

His chest moved in an involuntary silent laugh, and she smiled in return. His hand came to rest over hers. Tentatively, not with his usual confidence, but it was a voluntary move, a crack in his otherwise icy composure. “Women. Say one thing, mean another.”

“Nah. I’m special. Woman. Singular.” She turned her hand so she was palm to palm with him. “They’re my parents. I love them very much. And you’re…also important to me.”

His gaze seemed to search hers. “Am I?”

“You know you are.”

His shoulders relaxed, the tension easing out of him. He squeezed her hand. “Yes. You’re right. I suppose I’d have to see them again eventually. Better to rip this Band-Aid off now.”

Her heart seized. There it was again.
A nightmare. A Band-Aid.

You’ve won. Let it go.

But this was her
family
. A family she didn’t see eye to eye on in every subject, but who the hell did? She loved them, and they loved her, and she knew they hadn’t made it easy for the guy when they were young, but she was sick unto death of the way Wyatt utterly…dreaded them.

Once upon a time, she would have snapped back at him for his poor choice of words. But the car was slowing, and that meant they were probably close to Eduardo’s. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

He nodded once, and she knew he had accepted her apology. The lines of strain were still around his mouth, but his fingers brushed against hers, and the chill in his eyes had receded.

He had calmed down. She’d been forgiven for her admittedly shitty avoidance technique, which was pretty awesome seeing as how she could barely verbalize why it was so important for him to come tonight.

So she would keep her cool. Even though a fresh wave of annoyance ripped through her when he cupped her elbow after they disembarked and said, “Let’s get this over with.”

They walked into the restaurant, and Tatiana stood on her tiptoes. Wyatt, so much taller than her, had no such problems. “I see your mother.” He nodded in the direction of the bar.

She glanced that way. The crowd parted enough for her to spy the tall, lean black woman standing at the bar, dressed in a blue linen cocktail dress that managed to be both elegant and practical, a sharp contrast to Tatiana’s own frothy crimson silk dress.

Something within Tatiana eased at the sight of her mother, though she was well past the age where she expected the other woman to be able to fix everything with a wave of her hands. She started her way, startled when Wyatt’s hand slipped from her arm. She glanced at him.

“Go on. I’ll make sure our table is ready.”

Tatiana forced a smile and continued on to her mother, feeling the lack of his presence at her side sharply. Her mom spotted her as she approached, a bright smile spreading across her still-unlined face. Within a second, she was enfolded in her strong arms and inhaling a familiar baby-powder scent.

“Hey, Mom,” she said, her voice muffled from where her face was smooshed against her mother’s boobs. When she was young, before she’d fully understood what adoption entailed, she’d hoped she’d grow up to look like her mother. Being a small blonde moppet had its perks, but her mother had been and remained all strength and power.

“My baby.”

She gave her mom a final hug and disengaged herself. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s been too long since Christmas. Could Wyatt not make it tonight?”

“No, he’s here, checking on our table.”

“It’s a lovely restaurant. I’m glad you picked it.” Her mom looked over Tatiana’s shoulder, her warm smile dimming, her face rearranging itself into the polite mask she wore when greeting acquaintances. “Wyatt Caine. My goodness. You haven’t aged a bit.”

Wyatt accepted the hand she held out and shook it formally. “Neither have you, Dr. Belikov.”

“Please. I thought it was silly for you to persist in calling me that once you were done with high school. We’re definitely all adults now. Call me Janet.”

“Janet.”

“I feel like I’ve gone back in time, seeing you two together again.”

Tatiana looked up at Wyatt. “Sometimes it feels like that to us, too.”

Wyatt’s hand brushed the small of her back. “Though we are, as you said, adults now. Some things are different.”

Tatiana clung to that, the words that never failed to make her feel better when she secretly wondered if they could resurrect a relationship that had failed once already. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who consoled herself with them.

“We missed you at the holidays, Wyatt. We were quite looking forward to seeing you, but of course we understood about your work.”

Wyatt didn’t respond to her mother for a second. Had he forgotten? She’d told him that her parents had invited him for Christmas. He had declined.
After he finished laughing.

She bit the inside of her cheek. She’d let that slight go by then, and she would now, too.
Not important. Not worth fighting over.

“Yes.” Wyatt finally said. “The holidays are a busy time for us.”

“I’m sure they are.”

“Where’s Daddy?” Tatiana asked.

“Right here, my pumpkin,” came a voice from behind her. Despite decades in the States and a fully American wife and daughter, her father clung to his thick Russian accent.

With a smile, she turned and embraced her father. “Daddy. I thought maybe the speaking engagement tired you out and you were resting.”

Large in height, width and spirit, her father puffed out his chest. “I am not so old a little talking exhausts me.” He kept one arm around her and brought her to rest at his side. Shrewd blue eyes, cold as ice chips, surveyed the man she’d brought with her. “Wyatt Caine.” Tatiana half-expected him to add something like
so we meet again
, but her dad stopped there.

Wyatt nodded, as watchful as a gunslinger sizing up his enemy. “Sir.”

“So you and my daughter, you are together again.”

“That’s right, Dr. Beli—Nikolai.”

Her father cocked his head. The overhead light made his bald scalp gleam. “You may call me Dr. Belikov.”

“Nikolai!” her mom snapped.

“Daddy.”

A thin smile crossed his lips. “Kidding.”

Chapter Four

Wyatt assumed there were more awkward things than a dinner with two people who had once heartily disapproved of you dating their only daughter. He just didn’t know what they were.

They had foregone appetizers, for which he was grateful. Maybe that would cut down on the amount of time they needed to be here.

“Wyatt.” Janet smiled at him after they placed their orders. She was a beautiful woman, as tall and statuesque as her husband. Tatiana looked like a fairy dining amongst a table of giants. “We were so pleased to hear you and Tatiana were seeing each other again, weren’t we, Nikolai?”

Nikolai made a noise that could have signaled anything from happiness to disgust.

Wyatt gave a tight smile and took a sip of his wine. Wished it was hard liquor.
Make an effort.
“I’m sure it came as a surprise. It did to both of us.”

“Not really. The only surprise was that you managed to run into one another after so many years. What a small world it is.”

Tatiana leaned toward him. “It was fate.”

Her father’s snort was loud enough to be audible.

Wyatt set his teeth. Despite Tatiana’s words in the car, he couldn’t help but feel like he was eighteen again, being judged and found wanting. In an effort to dispel the emotion, and out of politeness, he spoke. “I didn’t realize you were going to be in town this week, or I would have told you sooner, but you’re both welcome to come stay at Quest. I’ll arrange a suite for you, with a great view.”

“How kind of you. Nikolai, wouldn’t that be—”

“The Wynn is nice.”

Wyatt’s arrogance wouldn’t let that lie. “I assure you. My place is nicer.”

“Nikolai’s conference is at the Wynn. It would probably be more trouble than it’s worth to travel back and forth for it.”

The two hotels were within walking distance, and if it really was necessary, Wyatt could arrange for a car and driver, but he didn’t feel obliged to insist. “Of course.” He didn’t look at Tatiana, but he hoped she was sticking this under his “he tried” column.

Janet bit her lip. “But thank you so much, Wyatt. We’ve heard amazing things about your place and would still love to see it. I was so excited when Tatiana told us you’d become a casino owner, of all things.”

Because you always thought I’d amount to nothing.

No, that wasn’t entirely fair. Of the pair, Nikolai had been the overtly hostile parent. Still, Wyatt had never missed the worried glances Janet had tossed his way when she thought he wasn’t looking.
What will you do to my baby?
they’d seemed to say.
How will you drag her down?

Well, he hadn’t dragged her down. He’d left before he could. “Yes. It’s different.”

Nikolai grunted. “Didn’t know you were taking business classes in college.”

“I was. My degree is in business. I have an MBA as well.” Not from any well-known school, and he frankly hadn’t cared enough to put his diplomas on his wall, but he had them.

The older man sipped his wine. “Gambling seems an odd choice. Janet, was it Howard who became addicted? Told his family he was having an affair to hide his trips to a casino. They lost everything. He ran off, left his wife alone with two young children and a giant mountain of debt.”

Wyatt opened his mouth. Shut it again. Was he supposed to say something in response to that?

Janet set her glass down precisely on the table. “Howard was a miserable toad of a man, and he wasn’t lying about the affair. The gambling was possibly the least of his flaws.”

“Gambling.” Morose, Nikolai shook his head. “No one can ever win. Terrible pastime.”

“I’m sure Wyatt hardly sits around playing slots all day.”

His past was no secret. “No. But I played poker on the professional circuit.”

Nikolai squinted. “Professional.”

“Yes.” He’d lived and breathed the cards for a few years, eager to make a name for himself. He hadn’t wanted to stay in that world long-term. Poker had better odds than some games, but at the end of the day, the player was basically working on generating income for the house.

That was why he’d always intended to be the house. Playing had given him the capital and connections he’d needed to move up in the world.

Nikolai drummed his fingers on the table. “I see.”

“To go from playing poker to owning your own place is quite amazing. It must have been a great deal of hard work,” Janet interjected.

“The casino was already here, yes?” Tatiana’s father eyed him as if he’d snuck in and stolen the keys from the previous owners.

“The structure was there,” Tatiana jumped in, and he wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or pleased that she recognized her precious daddy’s third degree for what it was. “Wyatt and his investors took the Quest and turned it into something magnificent.”

“Hurrumph.” The older man scowled at him. “I Googled you. You are not as well known as the other places.”

“I attract a certain clientele.” Curious tourists didn’t have the kind of dough necessary to play at his tables or purchase his staff’s discretion over other sinful vices.

“The deviant sort.”

Goddamn it. He was too old to be made to feel like a pervert by a woman’s father. “Sometimes.”

The awkward silence lasted a solid minute before Tatiana cleared her throat. “Daddy, what are you speaking about at the conference?”

For the first time that evening, the older man perked up. “It is on a new flywheel capable of kinetic energy storage…”

Wyatt was grateful for the distraction, since it took the man’s attention off him. Janet looked on fondly, occasionally interrupting her husband to correct or argue with his speech. But then, she was a physicist as well, as renowned as her husband. Though Tatiana hadn’t gone to school for this stuff, she’d grown up with two brilliant minds, and she knew the language. She listened intently, frowning, asking an intelligent question here and there.