by Lara Adrian
Everywhere I look I see refined, Old World style and class.
What I haven’t seen so far tonight is the host of this exclusive evening.
I’ve only seen a photo or two of Jared Rush on society websites and gossip pages. Still, I find myself scanning the small group of men, searching for the features I recall with surprising clarity now. Shoulder-length waves of thick, sandy-brown hair. Broad shoulders on a tall, muscular frame. Suntanned skin, sharp brown eyes, and a cocky smirk that always seems a little too amused, a little too insolent, despite his handsome looks.
But he’s not in the room.
I’m not even certain he’s in the building.
I don’t know why I should feel so relieved.
The riffle of shuffling cards draws my attention back to the table as the first new hand is dealt. I settle in and watch the game pick up where it left off during the break. The men who’d been chatting over drinks and small bites a few minutes ago are silent now, faces schooled into unreadable masks as the cards fly and the stacks of chips rise and fall on the table.
Daniel’s lost none of his confidence, but his luck is off to a shaky start.
I wince as he loses a quarter of his holdings in a couple of hands. The next one returns some of his money, but I can tell from the tension in his spine that his cards are not coming the way he would like.
Instead of dialing back on his wagers, he grows bolder. Reckless.
I watch in shock as the game quickly devours all but a couple thousand dollars’ worth of Daniel’s chips.
“Ah, well. Easy come, easy go,” he jokes after the final card is turned.
His quip earns a few chuckles and some shared commiseration from his fellow players. But Daniel’s humor is a front. I know him well enough to understand that.
After downing the shot of bourbon he’s been nursing in the crystal glass in front of him, he glances back at me with an unconvincing wink. Then he signals to the floor manager who introduced himself to us simply as Gibson when we arrived.
“How may I assist, Mr. Hathaway?” the older gentleman asks in a discreet tone.
I hope Daniel’s going to say he’d like to exit the game and take me home before he ends up losing even the last two grand of the twenty-five thousand dollars he put up at the start of the night.
But that’s not what he does.
“Would it be possible to extend my credit a bit tonight?”
The older man inclines his silver head. “I’m sure it won’t be a problem, sir. How much would you require?”
Daniel considers for less than a second. “Fifty.”
Holy shit. It’s all I can do not to gape.
“Of course, sir.” Gibson’s expression doesn’t even flicker in reaction. “I’ll go see to it at once.”
As soon as the man has left us, I pull Daniel away from the table. Panic is drumming inside me, rising into a growing sense of dread. “Let’s go now. Please.”
“Go?” He looks at me as if I’m the crazy one. “Sweetheart, I’m in the middle of a game.”
I shake my head. “You’ve already played. You’ve already lost a lot of money. Now you’re talking about risking even more. Seventy-five thousand dollars, Daniel?”
“I can win it back. I just need the means to try.” Where my hushed voice sounds strangled, his low tones are measured and resolute. He cups my face, drops a reassuring kiss on the tense line of my mouth. “Everything’s under control. Trust me.”
Trust him. He doesn’t know how much he’s asking of me. How hard it is for me to surrender my trust to anyone, particularly a man.
But I do trust Daniel. In three months, he has never given me the slightest reason to doubt him. He’s never let me down, not even once.
Gibson returns with a tray containing five rows of chips. With a nod at Daniel, he sets the additional stacks down on the table for him.
“Come on, now. Give me another kiss for good luck.”
I comply half-heartedly, tilting my face up to meet his lips. “Good luck.”
He resumes his place at the table and the new game begins. I don’t have the stomach to watch anymore. My chest feels as if it’s got a swarm of bees buzzing inside it. My skin feels flushed and tight, crawling with prickles of anxiety.
I have to get out of this room.
What I really want to do is call an Uber and go straight home, but I can’t abandon Daniel. I never would, but especially not when the stakes are suddenly so high.
But if I don’t move my legs and get a little air, I just might pass out.
With the game underway, I approach Gibson where he stands near the bar. “Is there a restroom somewhere I could use?”
“Of course.” He walks me out of the salon and gestures down the hallway. “Third door on the left, miss.”
“Thank you.”
The door is locked when I get there. I decide to wait the several minutes it takes before the ornately carved panel swings open and a pair of model-thin, beautiful women about my age stumble out together. I recognize them from the salon, the much-younger companions of a couple of the middle-aged men playing cards with Daniel.
They giggle as they step past me in their body-hugging sheaths and designer shoes. I don’t miss the dismissive flick of their gazes as they take in my simple black A-line dress and kitten heels. I’d felt pretty when Daniel picked me up for dinner tonight. Now, I may as well be wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“Excuse us,” one of the women says after a moment.
Her friend just giggles, brushing her fingertips under her nose and wiping away the traces of cocaine that dusted her nostrils when they emerged from the bathroom.
I step inside the powder room and lock the door behind me. Even this room is luxurious. Whorled-wood millwork and gleaming brass fixtures. Warm golden light softens the tension I see in my reflection in the large mirror.
I don’t know how long I linger there, letting the cold water run into the marble sink as I stare sightlessly into the glass and wonder what the hell I’m doing.
Not only tonight, but with my life.
I don’t belong here.
Not in this place. Not among any of these people.
And neither does Daniel.
I want to go home. Right now. If he doesn’t want to leave with me, then he’ll have to understand that I’ll be leaving without him.
I head back into the salon and find Daniel speaking privately with Gibson. His face is ashen, his posture hunched . . . defeated.
“Is everything all right?” I ask as I approach, even though it’s clear that nothing is even close to all right.
Beyond Daniel’s slumped shoulders, the poker game continues—minus him and a couple of other players who seem to have left the gathering.
My heart sinks. I don’t have to ask him if he won back the twenty-five thousand. Or the extra fifty he borrowed on credit to keep playing.
“Oh, my God. Daniel.”
He doesn’t look at me. His voice is pitched low, his words rapid, his eyes pleading with Gibson. “One more extension, that’s all I’m asking for. Another twenty, just to give me another shot. Hell, I’ll take ten and not complain.”
His desperation is shocking. Embarrassing. “Daniel, please.”
It’s as if I am invisible to him. That’s how tight a grip his panic has on him. “Come on, Gibson. You gotta help me out here, man.”
The older man’s face is sober, his calm unwavering. But then he releases a slow breath. “I will see what I can do.”
Retrieving his phone from his pocket, Gibson calmly exits the salon.
“Are you insane?” I hiss at Daniel when we’re out of earshot from anyone else in the room. “You can’t possibly be crazy enough to keep borrowing money and gambling it away. What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t have it.” His reply is toneless, wooden. “I can’t pay back seventy-five grand tonight. I need to recoup my losses and then some, or I’m fucked.”
I step back, mutely shaking my
head. “You said you had it under control. You said the money you were getting from the new project was enough to cover the risk.”
“It is. It will be . . . but not until the work is under way. If I can’t make good on what I owe Jared Rush from this game tonight, there might not be a project anymore.”
Oh, God.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I can’t believe this is happening.
Gibson returns, his schooled expression telling us nothing. He puts his phone back into his pocket, then formally extends his arm toward the salon’s exit. “If you would follow me, please, Mr. Hathaway.”
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to accompany them or not. I have no idea where they’re going, but the last thing I want to be is left alone to wait for Daniel in the salon or anywhere else in this strange place.
Besides, I’ve never seen him so unnerved and anxious before.
As upset with him as I am for his stupidity tonight, I’m scared for him, too.
I’m scared for both of us.
I slip my hand in his and walk with him to whatever awaits us at the other end of the long hallway.
4
MELANIE
We are taken to a private elevator, then up to the top floor of the five-story mansion.
Daniel fills the short ascent with nervous chatter about the unlucky cards he was dealt during the last game and second-guesses about how he could have turned the odds in his favor if he’d been able to play a few more rounds.
He doesn’t seem to notice the other man’s silence. He’s still talking as if he’s going to get another chance to sit at the table again and try to recoup his losses with more of Jared Rush’s money.
I have no such delusions.
Gibson leads us out of the lift and down an opulent corridor. This floor seems more personal, more intimate than the one we just left. I might be tempted to gape in awe at the fortune in framed art on the walls and the beautiful museum-quality furnishings everywhere I look, but I can hardly focus on a thing. My heart is pounding. Every fiber in my body is taut with apprehension.
Gibson pauses with us outside a pair of towering, closed double doors at the far end of the hallway and I feel as if we’re being brought to the gallows.
His sober announcement only confirms my dread.
“Mr. Rush thought it would be best to discuss the matter with you in private,” he says to Daniel.
“Oh. I didn’t realize he was here.” Daniel swallows, his palm going a little sweaty against mine.
Gibson inclines his head without comment. “He’s expecting you inside, sir.”
Daniel clears his throat and offers a stiff nod. “Sure. Okay, thanks.”
As Gibson turns the antique brass handles and the doors start to swing inward, Daniel swivels a blanched look over his shoulder at me.
“Maybe you should wait out here, Mel. This business is between Rush and me.”
Honestly, there’s nothing I’d like more than to avoid whatever awaits inside this room. But I’ve never been afraid of confrontation before, and as much as I appreciate Daniel’s attempt to shield me from his problems, that’s not how I’m wired.
If we’re a couple, that means his problems are mine as well.
I shake my head and lace my fingers more solidly through his. “It’s okay. We came here together, so I’m going in with you.”
Gibson remains in the hallway as we enter the room. He closes us inside the masculine study with a soft clack of the latch at our backs. It echoes in my ears like a gunshot.
Facing us is a massive walnut desk that looks like it belongs in an English manor. The piece dominates the dimly lit chamber, but the big chair behind it is empty.
Not that my gaze lingers there for long. Like the rest of my senses, my vision is pulled toward another point in the enormous room.
The place where Jared Rush is seated on an oxblood tufted-leather sofa.
He’s even more arresting than any photo can convey.
Dressed in a dark suit and snowy white dress shirt unfastened below his tan throat, he is leaned back against the glossy leather, one ankle resting on his opposite knee. In his long-fingered grasp a lit cigar smolders, tendrils of fragrant, cedar-and-spice smoke curling up from the glowing tip.
Although he’s staring straight at us, he hardly acknowledges our arrival.
No greeting. No pretense of friendliness.
“Hey, Jared. Thanks for seeing me,” Daniel says a bit too cheerily. He steps farther inside, pulling me along by our clasped hands. “Hell of a game going on down there. It’s damn hard to walk away when there’s a million-plus in chips on the table just waiting to be won.”
His chuckle is met with a prolonged silence.
“I understand you ran into some bad luck tonight.”
The flat statement of fact is voiced in a deep baritone, carrying the smooth traces of a Southern accent. His hair is long, a tawny mane that extends below his broad shoulders, lending a savage edge to the refined cut of his jacket. An end-of-the-evening beard shadows the squared angles of his face and jaw.
In photos there is always an untamed quality about Jared Rush, as if he were a man more suited to rambling mountain ranges and wide-open spaces than to the bristling skyscrapers and concrete jungle of Manhattan.
In person he is the mountain. The power of his presence alone seems to diminish everything else in the room.
Including Daniel, whose entire demeanor seems to deflate by the second. “Unfortunately, my luck did take a bad turn. But I was having a great night at first. Isn’t that right, Mel?”
I jolt at the mention of my name. “Um, yes.”
Until that moment, I think I had myself convinced I was invisible in the room. At least, invisible to Jared Rush.
Now I feel the weight of his stare as if his dark eyes are boring right through me. He appraises me from across the room, his gaze seeming to take an hour as it moves over every inch of me. I feel it like a stroke of a hand, an illicit caress of his eyes that speeds the breath in my lungs and makes me wish I had stayed outside.
Maybe Daniel noticed the shift in the other man’s focus, too. His grasp on my fingers tightens possessively, and he moves his body partially in front of mine.
“Come in and sit,” Rush offers now, less invitation than command. “There’s no reason for you and your pretty date to stand there all night.”
“I’m not Daniel’s date, I’m his girlfriend.”
The words leap off my tongue before I can hold them back.
Why on earth do I feel compelled to clarify anything to him?
Who I am is no business of Jared Rush’s. Neither is my relationship with Daniel. But some instinctual reflex makes me feel it’s important to draw that line, even if I get the sense this man is accustomed to not only blurring established lines but obliterating them.
“This is Melanie Laurent,” Daniel says as we approach the sofa and take our seats on the two chairs opposite it.
Now that we’re directly across from him, Rush seems in no hurry to release me from the grasp of his stare. “Ms. Laurent, a pleasure.”
I only nod, eager for this conversation, and the rest of the night, to be finished.
Daniel clears his throat. “Look, Jared. This is not how I expected things to go. I don’t know if Gibson explained the situation to you, but—”
“He did. I invited you to come to my home tonight and play a private game among my friends. You had some bad hands, you ran through your credit, which was sizable, and now you’ve come to ask me for more. Correct me if I’m missing something.”
Daniel shifts on the chair. “I realize this is a rather awkward situation.”
“Not for me.” Rush’s deep drawl is indifferent, impossible to read. “It’s awkward for you, maybe. Awkward for your girlfriend, I have no doubt.”
“All I’m asking for is a chance to win some of my money back.”
“Using more of my money to do so.”
Rush leans forward to snuff hi
s cigar in the heavy crystal ashtray on the cocktail table in front of him, fragrant smoke curling up from the bowl. A glass of whisky sits next to an opened bottle of expensive Scottish single-malt. He picks up the glass and drains it in one shot.
He has elegant fingers. An artist’s fingers on large, strong hands that look too powerful for wielding paintbrushes. He catches me watching his movements as he sets the glass down and for an unnerving second, our gazes meet and hold.
I glance away first, my face awash in an uncomfortable heat.
“I’m not in the habit of trusting anyone,” he says. “Least of all when it comes to my money. That’s why you won’t ever see me at the table. I enjoy hosting private games—and other diversions—for friends. But we’re not friends, Mr. Hathaway. Until several weeks ago, you were only a name on a business card.”
“We’re colleagues now,” Daniel adds. “I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize our relationship or the project.”
“That’s reassuring. Some men’s honor is worth a lot less than seventy-five thousand dollars.” Rush reaches for the phone lying next to the bottle of Macallan. “I’ll call Gibson in to join us. After you and he authorize a bank transfer for tomorrow morning to cover the current debt, I’ll extend you another twenty-five to get back into the game.”
“Um.” Daniel clears his throat again, and I can practically feel his mounting panic beside me. “A bank transfer’s going to be a bit of a problem.”
“A problem? You either have it or you don’t.”
I brave another look at Rush as his low voice vibrates into my bones. I was wrong to think he didn’t seem at place in the cutthroat environs of Manhattan. Right now, while his handsome face is held with utter calm, there is no mistaking the danger in the man.
“I’ll, ah, I’ll need to rearrange some finances, that’s all,” Daniel hedges. “I can have everything cleared for you in a couple of days.”
“A couple of days.” It’s not a question, and a person would have to be deaf not to hear the threat in that calm reply. “Are you saying you came to play tonight knowing you couldn’t cover your losses?”
“I have some of it now.” Daniel clasps his hands between his spread knees as if in prayer. I hope to hell he’s praying, because I have no idea how he intends to get out of this. “I swear to you, I’m good for it.”
