Raw Heat

by Cherrie Lynn

  She’d never seen so much turmoil in his dark eyes. This, she thought, is why he doesn’t gamble with women he was involved with. They could see through him. All the subtleties she might have missed in his expression a month ago, she was beginning to be able to read. Emma drew a deep breath, afraid she was about to lose him. “Come on, Damien. I never thought you’d be one to walk away from a challenge.”

  “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

  “Something I never thought I’d do. I’m challenging a world-champion poker player. And I’m about to get my ass kicked. This should be easy for you. Do you have anything to use for chips?”

  “I have some chips,” he said with a wave of his hand, but she didn’t understand his agitation.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “This isn’t like you.”

  “No, this is like you. I think it’s the only way I can get you to abide by my wishes if I should pull off a miracle.”

  “You’ll need one,” he said darkly, and she couldn’t help but laugh. She must be losing her mind. “I want to up the stakes. Another month if I win.”

  Her mouth fell open. “No!”

  “In Europe. The Maldives. Wherever you want to go. Everywhere you want to go.”

  “This isn’t how I want to live my life, one month at a time with you, always in a state of limbo, wondering what happens afterward. I can’t do it again. It can’t even be an option.” The very idea reached into that place she was trying to hold separate from him, bringing her tears to the surface. He watched the first one quiver on the threshold and then slip down her cheek. “You’re cruel to even suggest that. My life isn’t a game.”

  “You’re the one making it a game right now. I don’t want to do this.”

  “If you don’t do this, I’ll be gone tomorrow anyway.”

  “Fine,” he ground out, walking over to the couch and sitting. He picked up the cards, shuffling them gracefully. “No chips necessary,” he said, his voice clipped and angry. “No betting. High hand wins. That’s it. I’m not going to sit here with you all night, Emma; we’ll let fate decide.”

  “The extra month is off, though, right?”

  “Fuck no, it isn’t. The extra month is on. You want to do this, we’re doing it right.”

  Her heart fell to her feet and shattered. “Then I want to up my stakes, too. I walk away and you never speak to me again. I’m gone. If you can do this to me, then you don’t give a fuck about me. I want a clean break. I don’t want to work for you; I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  “And how many times have I heard that? Sit down,” he said, pointing to the other side of the table. “We’ll decide it once and for all.”

  Mouth dry, Emma took her place across from him, feeling her imminent doom all around. He had the luck of the devil. This one hand would probably get him a fucking royal flush or something.

  “Do you want to deal, or do you want me to? Or we can draw for it.”

  “You can deal,” she said softly. She did trust him that much. But his movements were so swift and skillful as he flicked cards at her, she could barely see what he was doing. One for her, one for him, one for her, one for him. That was it. Then, quick as lightning, he put one card aside facedown—the burn card, she remembered—and dealt three more in a stack. These he flipped over and spread out with the efficiency of a Vegas dealer. There was no sense in looking at what she had, she supposed.

  “You sure you want to do this?” he asked, staring her in the eyes, giving her an out.

  No, she wasn’t. “Deal the rest,” she said softly.

  Turn. River. On the table was five cards: the aces of clubs and hearts. The three of clubs. The four of diamonds, the seven of spades.

  Emma licked her lips and stared down at her two cards, still facedown, her fate. Tears pricked her eyes again.

  “I’ll still let you fold. I think we both got carried away.” He smirked. “This is why I don’t play with women I’m sleeping with.”

  Staring right at him, she took both her cards and turned them faceup. His smirk falling, he did the same.

  Her heart couldn’t take any more blows tonight. In her hand was the four of clubs and the four of hearts. With the aces and the four already on the table, she had a full house.

  Damien exploded up onto his feet before she even realized she’d won, his practiced eye picking out her victory over his two pairs of aces and sevens faster than she could blink. Aghast, she watched as he paced a furious circle and then stalked into the bedroom.

  He’d won her, and just like that, he’d lost her.

  As silently as she could, Emma walked in the bedroom to find him braced against the wall of windows, staring out at the twinkling Vegas lights, deep breathing, his shoulders shuddering with every exhale. What was he so upset about? He didn’t give a shit about her. She walked into their shared bathroom and began methodically packing her things. Makeup, brushes, toothpaste, hair products . . . her hands were shaking. She hadn’t even realized tears were leaking down her cheeks until she glanced at herself in the mirror. Two bright spots of color burned on each cheek, matching her hair. Her eyes looked haunted. It would be a long time before they looked any other way, she thought. In so brief a time, he had slid inside her and curled around her heart like a serpent. It would take a lifetime of steady beats to shake him off.

  His voice sounded suddenly from the bedroom, and she paused only to realize he was on the phone arranging her flight. Holding up his end. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, but there was no stopping the flood of tears now. Might as well let him see them; he owned them all.

  “I’ll get a taxi outside,” she informed him as she exited the bathroom. He sat on the bed now, elbows on his knees, seeming to have gotten a grip on his emotions. “Please don’t ride with me.”

  He didn’t look up at her. “I wasn’t going to.”

  “Well. Just in case.” Taking her luggage from the closet, she began putting away the few clothes she’d worn and folding the things she’d hung up. Things he’d bought for her. Things she could never look at again. At least the rest of it all was at his house; she didn’t have to worry about getting rid of it.

  “You’re on the six-thirty A.M.,” he said. “The last flights go out in forty-five minutes and you would never make it. Why don’t you get some sleep and—”

  “It’s fine. I’m going now.” If he tried to talk her out of it there was no way she’d be able to go through with leaving him. “Did you send me the itinerary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jesus, they sounded like they were at work. She hated this. She had to get out of here before she completely lost it in front of him. Dumping the rest of her things in without bothering to fold them, she zipped up the suitcase and tried not to give release to the sobs building in her throat.

  But he was watching her now, and he saw the struggle. “Emma.”

  Just that one word, and the dam burst. She had to sit lest her knees give out, hiccupping with the racking release of everything that had been building inside of her for the past several weeks. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” she demanded when he reached over to touch her, and he promptly drew back. “It hurts when you leave things in the hands of fate and it bends you over and fucks you in the ass, right? And you feel powerless, and there’s not one fucking thing you can do about it because, like a dumbass, you let it happen.”

  He went down on his knees in front of her. “That was never how I meant for you to feel,” he said, grabbing her hands and hanging on hard. She wanted to pull away, but couldn’t make herself. “I thought it would . . . I thought we’d have a good time.”

  “Gee, thanks for the swell time, Damien, I had a blast,” she said, nearly choking on the words. “Doesn’t it look like I did?”

  “Emma, I’m sorry. Jesus Christ, I’m so fucking sorry.” He dropped his forehead to her knees. “If I could make it up to you, I would.”

  “Make it up to me? You tried
to fucking do it again. No. No, no, no.” Without regard to him being in front of her, she jumped up, forcing him back, and stepped around him. “No. I’m going. I’m going now. Don’t follow me.”

  She didn’t know if he did or not. The last she saw of him, he was knelt on the floor, staring down at the carpet in front of him.

  Emma grabbed her bags and walked out.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  After the bright lights of Las Vegas, Houston was grim and dreary. A slow patter of rain fell, snarling traffic in the city. Emma’s first stop was to pick up Bentley from Liz, and it seemed to take hours to get there. She didn’t feel like talking and left her best friend staring after her worriedly as she scurried away with her precious little dog hugged to her chest.

  Her next stop was her bed, where she slept for fourteen hours straight. Only then did she feel somewhat human again, capable of making adult decisions. And even though it was the last place on earth she wanted to go, she drove to Players, where she had a lot of cleaning up to do before Damien got back at the end of his tournament. She wanted there to be no traces of her left anywhere in the building, nothing that might tempt him to try to get in contact with her even though he knew her phone number and address. Hell, maybe she should change both of them. Move out of the city or something. If he was determined, there would be no stopping him. Then again, he might have no inclination of ever seeing her again.

  Her little office. Emma flipped on her desk lamp, fighting tears again as she looked around. She’d been so happy there. It had been a good job, where she could lock herself away with nothing but her numbers, or walk out and shoot the breeze with the bartenders or waitresses when she needed a break. Lots of laughs and good memories. The first thing she did was sit down and type up a resignation letter addressed to Damien, the text blurring on the screen as she typed. Short, sparse, to the point.

  I hereby tender my resignation effective immediately. Thank you. Emma Haskell.

  After printing it out, she crept up the stairs to the second floor, finding Stacia at her desk looking rather haggard. When she glanced up, her eyes got huge. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I got back this morning,” she said, knowing the other girl could see her shadowed, red-rimmed eyes. She held out her letter. “Can you put this on his desk, please?”

  Stacia, of course, glanced at its contents when she took it. Emma had known she would. “Jesus Christ! What happened?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Somebody better fucking do some talking. All fucking night clearing everything out for both of y’all to say ‘Oh, nothing’ when I ask for some kind of fucking explanation. Answer the fucking phone to hear him say that fucking word and I was like, ‘O-M-F-G, Damien, you are SHITTING ME’—Do you even know how much work that took, Emma? Does he? We all want bonuses. Lots and lots of bonuses.”

  “Stacia, what in the hell are you talking about?”

  “He shut the whole shit down! What do you think I’m talking about?”

  Ozymandias, she remembered, and something about the word rang a bell this time. College. English lit. It hadn’t made much sense when he’d said it into the phone, but it must have some deeper meaning for him. While she stood trying to puzzle it out, Stacia got up and came around her desk. “Come here. Look at this.”

  Emma followed, her heart thudding dully. Behind the window where Stacia always sat to hand out chips, there was nothing but empty shelves. She unlocked the door to the huge room, ushering Emma inside—it was vast and empty and echoing. All the tables were gone. Alcohol behind the bar . . . gone. There were even a few pieces of furniture with old dust cloths thrown over them shoved in some of the shadowy corners, as if they’d been sitting there for years.

  Damien’s empire, gone. Emma lifted a hand to her mouth, her eye drawn to the place where the three of them, she and Damien and Benjamin, had stood when he’d first made his offer. All that, and she had nothing to show for any of it, except for a broken heart.

  “Will he . . . bring it back?”

  Stacia shrugged. She wore a black sleeveless T-shirt and ripped jeans, her hair styled haphazardly through a white bandanna. She indeed looked as if she’d worked all through the night. “That was something I hoped you would answer. I don’t know. I kind of doubt it. The cops showed up here this morning, but they didn’t say much, just wanted to look around. We’d worked all night and barely gotten it all out in time. Did some weaselly little piece of shit squeal?”

  My weaselly little piece-of-shit brother. You didn’t waste any time, Ben, you jackass.

  “I think that’s what happened,” she said glumly. “Anyway, could you get that letter to him? Whenever he gets back. I would appreciate it.”

  “I’ll put it on his desk, but I wish you’d reconsider. Is there anything I can do, Emma? Don’t ask me to help you pack up, though. Jake and all the security guys and I, we’ve had our fucking fill of moving.”

  “I wasn’t going to. Thanks for everything, Stacia.” She leaned forward and gave the other girl a hug. For someone she hadn’t liked very much in the beginning, Stacia was a good person to have on her side. Damien had been right about her. “I’ll stick around a few days and get everything in order for the next person.”

  “We’ll probably give it to the temp, if she wants it,” Stacia said, closing the door on the poker-less poker room and locking up. “She’s a pretty good fit.”

  As long as Damien didn’t offer to buy her for a month, she would probably be all right.

  That was all Emma could take for the day. Leaving Stacia, she headed back down to her office, but before she shut down her computer, she ran a Google search on Ozymandias . . . and everything became clear.

  I met a traveler from an antique land

  Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

  Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown

  And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things

  The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed

  And on the pedestal these words appear:

  “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  Nothing beside remains: round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  “He isn’t bringing it back,” she muttered to herself, switching off the computer and sitting back in her chair. The poem spoke of a once-great empire in ruins. Nothing would rebuild that statue made of stone, or put that face with its expression of cold command back on its broad shoulders. It was all in the dust now, wrecked, gone.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The screaming crowd, blaring music, and glaring lights gave him a pounding headache, and if he’d known he wouldn’t catch hell from Mike and Zane, Damien would have begged off from showing up at the August on Fire concert. It had been all he could do to focus on his play for the past two days. All his instincts were wrong, but somehow he’d managed to hang in.

  “Where’s Emma?” Rowan had asked as soon as he’d walked into Zane’s dressing room at the arena, and he’d had to tell them the truth. He feared it was all over his face.

  “She went home.”

  Mike and Zane had immediately zeroed in on him like two bloodhounds picking up a scent. Even Savannah had grown quiet, looking to her fiancé for his reaction.

  “Why?” Mike asked. His face still carried a cut and a bruise from his fight the other night.

  Damien felt like his fucking skin was on inside out as they stared at him. He waved a hand, striving for nonchalance. “Family emergency.”

  “I hope everything is okay,” Savannah said tentatively. “Tell her we’re thinking about her.”

  If she has her way, I’ll never speak t
o her again. The very idea was unimaginable; it made him want to jump on a plane right now, fly home, and fucking make her understand. But he couldn’t do that. He didn’t even know what it was she needed to understand. He only knew he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking sometimes. Even a couple of his poker buddies had noticed and asked him if he was all right.

  He wasn’t. He wasn’t fucking all right. It was not a thing he liked admitting.

  Now he was standing at the side of the stage next to Mike, watching Zane do his thing in front of more than ten thousand people. He’d always been such a natural onstage. Mike was a natural in the cage. Damien . . . he’d been a natural in the shadows, except for once a year when he came out here to destroy dreams. If he wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t even make the final table this year.

  Only three songs into the set, Mike caught his eye and jerked his head toward the backstage area, and Damien knew what was coming. With an inward groan, he followed his big brother back to the dressing room again.

  “Zane’s going to have our asses for not watching every second,” he commented as Mike shut the door, hoping to get this over with as soon as possible. Sleep had been hard coming since Emma had left. It was probably too much to hope that he could catch up tonight, but he wanted to get started on that. The sooner the better.

  “You’re not fooling anybody,” Mike said, turning to stare him down with crossed arms and eyes like shiny daggers. They could always pierce any shields Damien tried to throw up against them. “So tell me what’s going on.”

  “I shut my room down.”

  He watched his brother’s face undergo a dramatic transformation, from worry to surprise to absolute and utter relief. “I’m glad to hear that. I really am.”

  “Are you? I thought you liked coming by there.”

  “I liked seeing you. And you were always there. But it scared the shit out of me for you to be over something like that, I won’t lie.” Mike reached forward and clapped him on the shoulder. “It’ll be all right. I know you’ll miss it, but you’ve still got the club. Let that be enough.”