The Winning Hand (21 page)

She wasn’t in the market for a bauble, but she rented a car. Buying one was going to wait until she could decide if the sports car or the sedan suited her new and developing lifestyle.

She secretly hoped it would be the sports car.

Armed with maps, she began the task of familiarizing herself with the city, the one beyond the Strip. She cruised downtown, noting the huge building cranes that loomed like giant, hovering birds.
Growth was everywhere, from the spectacular hotel resorts, to the developments that sprawled into the desert.

She parked and walked the malls, the grocery store and drugstores, giving herself a chance to observe the life that pulsed here beyond the casinos.

She saw children playing in yards, houses tucked side by side in neighborhoods. She saw schools and churches, quiet streets and crowded ones. She saw sprawling homes that faced the eerie peace of the desert and the tumble of rocks that made the mountains beyond.

She saw a life she could begin to build.

Circling back, she found a library and went inside to gather more information on the place she would make her home.

It was after seven when she got back to her suite, pleasantly tired and more than eager to put her aching feet up. She was certain she’d walked twenty miles. Though she hadn’t bought a bauble, she had made an appointment to view a property the following day.

She thought she might become a home owner very soon.

“There you are.” Mac stepped up to the elevator the moment the doors opened. “I was getting worried.”

“I’m sorry. I was out exploring.” She tossed her purse aside and started to smile, but her mouth was soon busy against his.

He knew the sense of relief was out of proportion, as was the irritation he’d felt when he hadn’t been able to find her anywhere in the hotel. “You shouldn’t have gone out alone. You don’t know your way around.”

Responsibility, she thought, and wanted to sigh. “I got a map. I thought it was time I saw a little more of the city.”

She started to tell him about the house she planned to see the next day, then held her tongue. The news was hers for now, she thought, just as the call from New York was hers.

“You spent some time in the sun.” He ran a fingertip down her nose and made her wrinkle it.

“I’ll have to remember to get a hat before I turn into one big freckle. The air’s so hot and dry. It must be murder on the skin, but I really love it.”

“It’s easy to get dehydrated.”

“Mmm. You’re right.” She walked over to take a bottle of water from behind the bar. “I saw people with water bottles hooked on their belts. Like hikers or explorers, and so much building going on. Men in hard hats working a hundred, two hundred feet in the air. Slot machines in the grocery store.”

“You went to a grocery store.”

“I wanted to see what it was like,” she said, evading. “All this boom in the downtown area, then suddenly, you’re in a quiet suburban neighborhood, with kids and dogs in the yard, and it all seems so cozily settled.”

“I’d have taken you around if I’d known you wanted to go.”

“I knew you were busy.”

“I’m not busy now. My parents booted me out, with orders to take the night off.”

A smile curved her lips. “I really love your parents.”

“So do I. Come for a drive with me.” He held out a hand. “We’ll find some moonlight.”

In the distance, Vegas shimmered like a mirage. The floor of the desert stretched in every direction, barely marred by the slice of road. Overhead the sky was a clear, dark sea, studded by countless stars and graced by the floating ball of a white moon.

In the distant hills a coyote called, and the plaintive sound carried like a bell on the air that had cooled with moonrise.

He’d put the top down so that she could lay her head back and let starlight shower on her face.
Wind danced lightly across the sand as they sat in silence.

“You forget this exists when you’re in there.” She looked toward the colors and shapes of the city. “The West, wild and dangerous and beautiful.”

“A long way from Kansas.” It was too easy to picture her there, away from the arid wind, the gaudy lights. “Do you miss the green? The fields?”

“No.” She didn’t have to think about it. “There’s something so powerful in the siennas and soft reds, the baked-out greens and browns of this land. But you didn’t grow up here, either.” She turned her head to look at him. “You lived back East, didn’t you?”

“The house is in New Jersey, just outside of Atlantic City. My parents didn’t want to raise a family in hotel rooms over a casino. But we spent plenty of time there. Duncan and I used to hunker down in the security bay over the tables. Before everything was electronic, that’s where they watched the room. My mother would have skinned me if she knew I’d taken him up there.”

“Rightfully so. It must have been dangerous.”

“Part of the appeal, right?” His grin flashed and to her secret joy he began to play absently with her hair. “There’s a story about the night one of the men fell out and landed facedown on a craps table.”

“Ow! Was he hurt? What happened?”

“Rumor persists that some guy bet five dollars on his ass. The game doesn’t stop for much.”

She chuckled and settled her head on his shoulder. “It was exciting for you, being a part of all of that. Why did you choose to work here and not back East?”

“There’s only one Vegas. No point in settling for less than the best.”

Her heart gave a little jerk at the sentiment, spoken with such casual confidence. But she ignored it. “Is the rest of your family involved with the casinos?”

“Duncan’s managing the riverboat. It suits him down to the ground, cruising along the Mississippi and charming the ladies.”

“You’re close?”

“Yeah. We are, all of us. Geography doesn’t change that. Gwen’s a doctor, lives in Boston—as do several assorted cousins. She had a baby a few months ago.”

“Boy or girl?”

“A girl. Anna, after my grandmother. I have two or three hundred pictures,” he added with a smile, “if you’d like to see her.”

“I’d love to. You have another sister, the youngest?”

“Mel. She’s a live wire. The eyes of an angel and the right hook of a middleweight.”

“I imagine she needed both,” Darcy said dryly. “You probably teased her unmercifully.”

“No more than was my right and duty. Besides, I’m the one who taught her how to punch. No girlie little slaps for my baby sister.”

“I bet they’re all beautiful. With heart-stopping faces and killer smiles.” She turned her head, let herself trace his mouth with her fingertip. “And between the looks and the breeding, they’re a confident bunch. The kind who walk into a room, take one slow glance around and know exactly where they stand. I always envied that innate sense of self.”

“I thought the word was
arrogance
.”

“It is, but it’s not always a criticism. Did you argue all the time?”

“As often as humanly possible.”

“No one argued in my house. They reasoned. At least in an argument you have a chance to win.”

“I’ve noticed you hold your own in that area.”

“Beginner’s luck,” she claimed. “Wait until I’m seasoned a bit. I’ll be a terror.” She grinned. “Then I’ll learn how to punch, in case arguing doesn’t work.”

Her lips were still curved when his lowered to them. The easy kiss turned dark quickly, began to heat rapidly around the edges. They both shifted, moving into it, into each other.

Emotion surged through him so powerfully, so violently that fury sprang up to tangle with need. “I shouldn’t want you this much.” He dragged her head back to try to clear his own. But all he could see
were those dark gold eyes, and what was the shadow of himself drowning in them. “It’s too damn much.”

She remembered his words of the night before and gave them back to him. “Take what you need.”

“I’ve been trying to. It doesn’t stop.”

The words sent a wild thrill soaring through her. Recklessly she knelt on the seat beside him, watched his gaze lower and follow the movement of her fingers as she unbuttoned her blouse. “Try again,” she murmured.

He should never have touched her, was all he could think, because now he couldn’t seem to stop. He drove the long, straight road back to Vegas at a fast clip, with Darcy sleeping like a child beside him, her head on his shoulder.

He’d taken her in the front seat of the car like a hormone-rattled teenager. He’d driven himself into her with a blind desperation, as though his life had depended on it.

And Lord help him, he wanted to do it again.

He’d broken all the rules with her. A man who made his living with games knew the rules, and when they could and should be ignored. He’d had no right to ignore them with her.

She’d been innocent and alone, and had trusted him.

He’d let his needs, and hers, step ahead of that. Now he was so tangled up in her, in what he wanted, in what was right, that nothing was clear.

He was going to have to step back. There was no question of it. She needed room, and the chance to test those wings of hers. No one had ever given her that chance, including himself.

He could keep her, he knew it. She thought she loved him, and he could make her go on thinking it. Until eventually, he thought with an inner lurch, that glow of hers began to fade against the neon and
glitter, and that light of fascinated joy dulled in her eyes.

Keeping her would ruin her, change her and eventually break her. That was one gamble he wouldn’t take.

Caring for her left him only one answer. He had to back away and give her a nudge in the opposite direction. In the direction that was right for her.

He should do it quickly for her sake, and yes, for his own.

She was the only woman who’d ever slipped uninvited into his mind at odd hours of the day and night. He wanted to resent it but found that he was already afraid of the time that would come when she would fade into a memory.

And he was already furious thinking of the time when he would become little more than that to her.

She’d think of him now and then, he reflected, when she was tucked into some pretty home in a green-lawned suburbia. Children playing at her feet, a dog sleeping in the yard and a husband who wouldn’t appreciate the magic of her nearly enough on his way home for dinner.

It was exactly where she belonged, exactly where she would go once he worked up the courage to cut the ties that bound her to him. Ties of gratitude, excitement and sex, he thought, and despised himself for wanting to hold her with them.

He’d spoken no less than the truth when he’d told her she didn’t belong in the world he lived in. He believed that absolutely. She would come to the same truth once the gloss had dulled a bit.

Virtue and sin didn’t mate comfortably.

He glanced down as he drove along the Strip and watched the carnival lights from the neon splash over her face. He would have to let her go, he told himself. But not yet.

Not quite yet.

The house grew up out of the sand like a little castle fashioned of soft colors and magic shapes. Darcy’s first sight of it shot an arrow of love and longing into her heart.

It was tucked among palms, and desert plants were scattered near the wide sunny deck. The soft red of the tile roof accented the cool ivory and buffed browns of the exterior. The multilevels gave it a variety of charming rooflines and made her think of artistically placed building blocks.

It had a tower, a canny little spear that had her romantic heart picturing princesses and knights, even while the practical part of her nature snagged it greedily as the perfect writing space.

It was already hers, even before she stepped inside. She barely heard the Realtor’s professional chatter.

Only three years old. Custom-built. The family moved back East. It’s just come on the market. Bound to be a quick mover.

“Hmm.” Darcy responded simply as they started up the brick walkway to the door flanked by glass etched with stars.

Stars had been lucky for her, she thought.

She stepped into the entrance onto the sand-colored tiles, let her gaze travel up to the lofty ceiling. Skylights. Perfect. It was an airy space with walls painted a cool, soft yellow. She would leave them alone, she decided, listening to her heels click on the tile as she wandered.