The Winning Hand

  “Yes, of course. It’s just that—”

  “Damn right I do—she does,” he corrected quickly. “Boy’s going to be thirty in another month or so, and is he settling down to make a family? He is not,” Daniel rolled on before Darcy could speak. “And what’s so wrong with giving him a bit of a nudge, I’d like to know, if you suit him?”

  “Do I?” she murmured. “Do I suit him?”

  “I’m saying so, and who’d know better?” He huffed, then his voice shifted, became sly and persuasive. “He’s a good-looking young man, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Strong stock, a good brain. There’s a kind heart in him, too, and a fine sense of responsibility. He’s a steady one, stands for his friends and his family. A woman couldn’t do better than my Robbie.”

  “No, I don’t see how she could.”

  “We’re not talking about she,” Daniel said with some impatience. “We’re talking about you. You’ve got a spark for him now, don’t you, Darcy girl?”

  She thought of the fireworks exploding over the city the night before. Her spark for Mac was every bit as huge and bright and volatile. “Daniel, I’m so desperately in love with him.”

  “Well now.”

  “Please.” She winced at the booming pleasure in his voice. “I’m trusting you with that because I need to tell someone.”

  “Why aren’t you telling him?”

  “Because I don’t want to scare him off.” There, she’d said it, she thought, biting her lip. It was no more than a plot.

  “So … you’re giving him some time to woo you, and come around to thinking it was his idea.”

  Now she winced. “It’s not really that devious. It’s just—”

  “What the devil’s wrong with devious? Devious gets the job done, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose.” Her lips trembled into a smile. How could she help it? “He cares for me, I know he does, but I think part of it comes from that fine sense of responsibility. I’m willing to wait until he doesn’t feel responsible.”

  “Don’t wait too long.”

  “I’m hoping I won’t have to.” She smiled. “I have some ideas.”

  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.

  Chapter 11

  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.

  Another deck stretched along the back, accessed by atrium doors in a quiet blond wood. No dark colors here, she thought. Everything would be light, fresh. Her eyes gleamed with pleasure as she looked beyond the deck to the sparkling waters of the swimming pool.

  She let the Realtor expound on the wonders of the kitchen, the Sub-Zero refrigerator, the custom-made cabinets, the granite counters. And was charmed by the cozy breakfast area tucked into a bay window. That was for family, she thought. For lazy Sunday mornings and rushed school days, for quiet, late nights and cups of tea.

  She would enjoy cooking here, she thought, studying the range, the double ovens, the mirror black cooktop. She’d always been a plain and pedestrian cook, but she thought she would like experimenting with recipes, with herbs, sauces.

  The maid’s room and laundry area off the kitchen were easily as big as her entire apartment in Kansas. Darcy didn’t miss the irony, or the wonder of it.

  She’d put a trestle table in the dining room, she mused. That would suit the tone and go well with the small tiled fireplace for chilly desert nights. Watercolors for the walls, soft bleeding tones.

  She’d learn how to entertain, have intimate, casual dinner parties as well as sparkling, sophisticated ones. Lou
d, bawdy, backyard barbecues. Yes, she thought she could be a good, and what was better, an interesting hostess.

  She toured each of the four bedrooms, checking views, space, approving the builder’s choice of random-width pine for the floors, and the bright jazz of contrast tiles scattered in amusing patterns among the neutral colors of the baths.

  She knew she goggled at the master suite, and didn’t care. The two-level area boasted its own private deck, fireplace, an enormous dressing area with closets large enough to live in and a bath that rivaled the one at The Comanche with a lagoon-sized motorized tub in an unexpected clay color.

  The treated skylight above it cut the glare while offering a dazzling view of desert blue sky.

  Ferns, she imagined, in copper and brass pots; crowded together, all lush and green. She would jumble them on the wide ledge behind the tub and every bath would be like swimming in a secluded oasis.

  The tower was octagon shaped, generous with windows. The walls were cream, the floor tiles the color of stone. Her workstation would go there, she decided, facing the desert. Not a desk, but a long counter, perhaps in a sharp, deep blue for contrast. It would have dozens of drawers and cubbyholes.

  She needed to go shopping for a computer system—a fax, a desktop copier. Reams of papers, she thought with a giddy burst of joy.

  She would put a love seat on the other side of the room and create a small seating area, and she’d want shelves there, floor to ceiling, for books and small treasures.

  She would sit there, writing hour after hour, and know she was a part of everything around her.

  The Realtor had been silent for the past several minutes. She’d been in the game long enough to know when to sell, and when to step back. The potential buyer didn’t have much of a poker face, she mused, already imagining the tidy commission.

  “It’s a lovely property,” the Realtor said now. “A quiet, settled neighborhood, convenient for shopping but tucked just far away enough from the city to offer a sense of solitude.” She offered Darcy a bright smile. “So, what do you think?”

  Darcy pulled herself back and focused on the woman. “I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “It’s Marion. Marion Baines.”

  “Oh, yes, Ms. Baines—”

  “Marion.”

  “Marion. I appreciate you taking the time to show me through.”

  “Happy to do it.” But she felt a little hitch in her stomach, a sign of a sale slipping away. “It might feel a little large for your needs. You did say you were single.”

  “Yes, I’m single.”

  “It might seem a bit overwhelming, but empty houses often do. You’d be amazed how it all comes together when it’s furnished.”

  Darcy had already seen it come together as she could picture it furnished, perfectly, in her mind. “I’ll take it.”

  “Oh.” Marion’s smile faltered, then spread. “Wonderful. I’m so pleased you want to make an offer. If you like we can use the kitchen to fill out the paperwork, and I can present your offer to the sellers this afternoon.”

  “I said I’d take it. I’ll pay the asking price.”

  “You—well.” Something in that fresh face and youthful eyes had her hesitating. Even as she ordered herself to keep her mouth shut and close the deal, she found herself speaking. “Ms. Wallace, Darcy … I’m contracted to represent the sellers, but I realize this is the first time you’ve bought property. I feel obligated to mention that it’s usual to make an offer of …