Love's Gamble

by Theodora Taylor

Once again feeling flustered by the Benton heir no one was supposed to take seriously, she retreated several steps back, only to run into a wall.

  Max closed in, placing a hand on each side of her head.

  “Let me assure you, Detective Pru,” he said, running his nose along her neck, “whatever you want from Gus, I can give you. Let Wedding Night Pru come out to play and I’ll give her whatever she needs.”

  It was just the tip of his nose touching her now, no other part of his body, but the small action sent a shiver of sexual tension through her entire frame.

  “His wallet,” she somehow managed to rush out. “What I really need is Gus’s wallet, so that I can access his personal information. And his phone, too. So if you really want to give me what I need, help me get them.”

  Max paused and she could see the muscles in his shoulders bunch as if he had to hold himself back from just taking what he wanted. But eventually he pulled away, his face tight with what she could only guess was frustration. Max, she knew, wasn’t a man used to not getting exactly what he wanted, exactly when he wanted it.

  But all of a sudden, he frowned and said, “You got rid of your extensions.”

  Pru looked from side to side, her face scrunching up with confusion over the sudden topic change. Also because she wasn’t used to men directly referencing her weave.

  “Yeah,” she answered carefully. “I got rid of them.”

  A hard look came over his face then. One so harsh, it made her wonder how he’d ever managed to garner a reputation as a happy-go-lucky guy in the first place. “You got rid of them, because you were trying to get rid of her. Trying to make yourself under, so I’d be less attracted to you.”

  Well, she wouldn’t have called it a “makeunder” per se. She loved the way she looked with short hair and thought the tight little pixie fro would really complement her mostly vintage wardrobe. But other than that...yeah, that was exactly why she’d made sure to toss her extensions before coming back to the Sinclair Lodge.

  “I’ve got work to do here, and all that extra hair was getting in the way.”

  This time it was Max who took a step back, the look on his face so lethal, he put her more in mind of a hit man than a brand ambassador for luxurious sports and leisure.

  “One hour,” he said, his voice low.

  “What do you mean ‘one hour’?” Pru asked, once again flummoxed by the sudden change of subject.

  “You want Gus’s wallet and phone. I want an hour with Pru. Not Detective Pru. Wedding Night Pru.”

  Pru shook her head. “Are you saying you want me to get drunk again?”

  “No, I don’t want you to get drunk. I want you to get real.” Max crooked his head to the side. “In my experience, and I have a lot of it, people either become someone totally different when they’re drunk or they show their true colors.”

  “And you think it’s the second one when it comes to me?”

  “Sweetheart...” The hot up-and-down look Max gave her made Pru feel as if she was slowly being stripped bare. “I know it is.”

  Then before she could argue with him any further, he turned and left the room. Leaving Pru to wonder if he’d really get Gus’s wallet and bring it back, or if Max was just toying with her.

  * * *

  Pru was pissing Max off. First of all, hot pants? Seriously? He wouldn’t have minded the modern-day version favored by adult movie stars and strippers alike. He’d seen so many of those throughout the years, they seemed ubiquitous now, and he barely noticed when women wore them anymore.

  But the high-waisted orange ones Pru had chosen to wear today ought to be against the law. The sophisticated cut and the low back hem made them tasteful enough to wear outside a nightclub. Nonetheless, the hem was still high enough to show off her long, shapely legs to perfection. And though they didn’t mold her skin like spandex, they framed her assets enough for any red-blooded man to know there was something juicy underneath. Know and want to take a bite.

  Judging from that kiss they had shared at the bottom of the stairs and the sexual tension that had been thrumming between them when they argued earlier, she wanted to take a bite of him, too. They were two adults. Why not enjoy their time stuck in Utah together?

  Yet she resisted him at every turn. Acted as if he’d made up the fun, passionate woman he’d met on their wedding night. Well, he was done playing that game—at least the one she wanted to play with him. Red-hot fury flowed through him as he pulled out his phone and charged down the steps. He pressed his brother’s name and typed in two words to the text box. Play along.

  A few hours later, Max charged back into the room to find Pru at the desk, reading something on her laptop.

  As he got closer he could see it was an article. One with a picture of a younger Gus standing in a suit with his arm resting against a banister in the familiar pose of a student so overachieving, the school just has to write a feature article about him. It was the kind of article no one would bother to read unless they were digging deep into a person’s life.

  Research and guts. Max thought back to their earlier conversation with Cole, and knew for sure that Pru had just spent the past few hours researching another man the way she’d researched him before tracking him down in New Orleans.

  Jealousy ran through his bloodstream like an unstoppable river. Max felt hot with anger and also like an idiot, because he understood that this was what Cole had basically asked her to do.

  It also didn’t help when Pru not only did not look up from her computer when he came into the room, but also asked, “Hey, did you know your grandfather handpicked Gus out of Cornell’s hotel administration program to start out as a manager at the Benton’s New Orleans location?”

  Max hadn’t known, but he wasn’t surprised. Cole had graduated from the program before moving on to another Ivy League school to get his MBA, and his family had long been charitable supporters of Cornell’s esteemed hotel administration program.

  But Max hadn’t come up here to talk about Gus. “Pru, turn around.”

  Pru’s shoulders stiffened, and she very carefully kept scrolling down the screen. “I need to finish reading this article, and then I have a few more leads I want to investigate—”

  Max reached around her and very deliberately closed the laptop on Gus’s overachieving college face.

  Ignoring Pru’s gasp of indignation, he repeated, “Turn around.”

  She did, probably only because she wanted to give him a piece of her mind. Which made it even more satisfying for Max when she froze in shock, her mouth dropping completely open at the sight of what he was holding in his hands.

  A basket with not just Gus’s wallet and smartphone but also the wallets and smartphones of all twenty-two of the other executives attending the retreat.

  “So,” said Max, not even bothering to keep the note of triumph out of his voice, “when do I get Wedding Night Pru back?”

  Chapter 11

  It took quite a few attempts before Pru was able to form words, much less complete a sentence. “What...how...there’s no way.” She swallowed and finally got out, “How did you do all of this?”

  Max smirked, enjoying her shock immensely. “Let’s just say when it comes to suits, never underestimate the power of a trust exercise. You’ve got these for about thirty-six hours until our breakfast meeting on Wednesday, then I have to give them all back.”

  Pru’s entire face lit up. “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe it. This is exactly what I needed. Thank you so much!” she exclaimed, reaching for the basket.

  Max had to admit it was nice to be on the receiving end of her gratitude as opposed to her complete disdain for once on this trip. But still, end goals were end goals.

  He lifted the basket away before her fingers could make contact with it. “Uh-uh-unh, Prudence. Nothing comes for free betw
een us. You of all people should know that.”

  Pru’s eyes widened. “This is your brother’s case, involving your family’s company,” she reminded him. “You should want to help me solve it.”

  “Yes, I should,” Max agreed with a lazy shrug. “But I’ve always been a selfish bastard, so I’m just going to continue on that route and withhold this basket of juicy intel until I get what I want.”

  Pru’s eyes narrowed now. “You wouldn’t.”

  Max answered with an incredulous look. “I’m paying you to be my wife in order to get my brother to sign off on my trust fund,” he answered. “Not going to lie, Pru, I’m kinda shocked you keep putting stuff past me.”

  He then lifted one of the smartphones out of the basket. “Did you know that shockingly few of the people on our executive committee have passcodes on their phones? They’ve left them wide-open, primed for info gathering.”

  With an irritated sound, Pru made a sudden leap to snatch the basket away from him.

  A leap that Max, who’d played lacrosse from an early age all the way through college, easily sidestepped. He raised the basket above his head with one hand and placed the other against her forehead, admiring the view of the way her chest heaved under her terry-cloth polo as she wildly attempted to get at the basket. Eventually she gave up with an angry squawk of frustration.

  “This isn’t fun and games, Max!” she reminded him, full-on Detective Pru. “This is about the future of your family’s company. And if I only have thirty-six hours with them—”

  “So yeah, it’s probably in your best interest to agree to my terms sooner than later,” Max finished for her.

  He set the basket on a side table and leaned against its edge, putting his entire body between its contents and her.

  Perhaps sensing that he would more than enjoy having to intercept her if she made another attempt to get at the basket, Pru folded her arms and lifted her chin. “Fine. You can have an hour with me in exchange for the basket. But I’m telling you now, I’m not opening my legs for you.”

  Her words made a dark wave of lust pulsate through his body. He was going to enjoy proving her wrong on that count.

  “An hour with Wedding Night Pru,” he coolly reminded her. “And an hour will only get you Gus’s wallet.”

  “But how about the rest of the wallets?”

  “Same deal. An hour for each wallet.”

  This announcement sent Pru into full sputter. “But—but that’s impossible. There has to be at least twenty wallets in there.”

  “Twenty-two if you count Cole’s and mine, which you don’t need. So yes, I guess we can call it twenty, and I can be a generous man when I want to, so I’ll throw in the matching phones, too. Free of charge.”

  From the look on Pru’s face, she didn’t consider his offer as generous as he did. “You want twenty hours with me for the basket, and I only have thirty-six hours to go through them?”

  “Twenty hours with Wedding Night Pru,” he corrected. “And let’s say you give me one hour up front. I could take the rest after the thirty-six hours are up.”

  Pru’s eyes once again narrowed. “First of all, let’s just say there is a Wedding Night Pru. There’s no guarantee you’re going to get what you want from her. And even if you do, what’s to keep me from reneging on my nineteen credit hours after I get what I need from the basket?”

  Max half smiled, almost liking how unwilling she was to go down without a fight. “Nothing,” he answered. “Except the fact that you don’t lie.”

  * * *

  Pru shook her head at Max, not understanding his reasoning at all. She was totally a liar. She’d lied to him from the moment they’d met again in New Orleans, and she was lying to his brother about the real nature of her involvement with him now.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “You see, right around the time we were having that first convo with my brother, it occurred to me that I’ve never actually heard you lie. Even your story about why you were in New Orleans was perfectly crafted to let me assume you were there with a bachelorette party and not specifically for me. I bet you even had a flight out at the time you said you did.”

  Pru’s cheeks warmed. Actually, he was right. Her flight details had been the absolute truth and she’d gone straight to the airport after leaving his hotel room.

  He took her silence as an invitation to keep going. “And with Cole, you were careful never to reference love when it came to me. I also don’t think you were lying to him about what you thought of my plans for the trust money.”

  That was true, too. Pru looked away to hide the fact that he’d totally found her Achilles’ heel.

  “But you know what really let me know you’ve got a thing about not lying?” he asked. “The fact that you’ve never out-and-out denied the existence of Wedding Night Pru. You know she’s in there, and you’re holding her hostage for some reason—maybe for the same reason you don’t lie.”

  Again, that totally exposed feeling came over her. As if Max had stripped her completely bare without one touch of his hands.

  He nodded, as if she’d affirmed with her silence every single thing he’d said. “So yes, Pru, I’ll take that gamble. If you say you’ll let me have twenty hours with the Pru I met on our wedding night, I believe you’ll let me have her.”

  He pushed away from the table and closed the space between them in an instant. “So how about it, sweetheart? Twenty hours with Wedding Night Pru. Are you willing to take that gamble with me?”

  “Twenty hours,” Pru repeated, weighing the words. “But I can’t drink,” she told him. “Not when I’m on a case.”

  “Like I said before, I don’t want you drunk,” he replied. “I want you alert and sober for every single thing I plan to do to you.”

  His words sent a shiver down Pru’s back. “And—and how about if I solve this case? L-like tomorrow? If that happens I should be able to go back to Las Vegas and you can go back to wherever until you have to sign the papers.”

  Max gave her hypothetical a few moments of consideration before shrugging and saying, “Fine, Pru. If you solve the case, any remaining wallet hours will be forgotten.”

  Pru rubbed her suddenly sweaty palms on the front of her hot pants, trying to make a decision she didn’t want to make.

  It was only an hour, she told herself. And the old Pru wasn’t a complete idiot. She partied too much, and made quite a few piss-poor decisions when it came to men. But even on her most outrageous night, it had taken more than an hour to seduce her.

  So if she let the old Pru take over for an hour, that didn’t mean she’d be having sex with Max. Max wasn’t that good. And the old Pru wasn’t that bad...she hoped.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “One hour up front and the rest later.” Hopefully never, she added silently. Then she asked Max, “Do you want the first hour after dinner?”

  It’s business, she told herself. Just a deal you’re making to solve this case, which will lead to other cases and make it so you never have to deal with men like Max Benton ever again.

  “No,” Max answered, his eyes hot on her. “I want my hour now. I want her back now.”

  That was fine. She could give him the old Pru for an hour right now, and maybe he’d even get so frustrated when she turned down his advances that he wouldn’t bother with the other nineteen.

  She told herself this as she went over to the desk, picked up her phone and set a timer for sixty minutes before propping it up sideways against her closed laptop.

  Then she made herself meet Max’s eyes just as the old Pru would have looked any man directly in the eye. Especially one as fine as Max. “Your hour starts now, Max.”

  She issued these bold words and braced herself for another one of his fiery kisses, but it never came.

  Max just stared at her while the clock on her ph
one finished counting down the first full minute. Then he said, “Welcome back, Pru. Let’s celebrate your return with one of my favorite games, Truth or Dare.” He gave her a feral smile and steepled his hands like a villain personified. “I’ll start. Truth or dare, Prudence?”

  Pru wet her lips, more than a little scared now. She’d been playing Truth or Dare since high school, and the old Pru had one hard-and-fast rule for the game. She always chose dare.

  “Dare,” she told Max with a tight chest.

  Max’s vicious smile grew even wider. “I’m guessing your underwear is vintage, too, Prudence. Let’s find out.”

  Pru hesitated, realized the old Pru wouldn’t have and then pulled her terry-cloth polo off quickly to reveal the bandeau rainbow bikini top she was wearing underneath. She’d spent the morning washing clothes, and like many women around the world, had put off the task so long, she’d been forced to wear a bikini as she did so.

  “Hot pants, too,” he said.

  She stepped out of them, thinking the joke was on him as she revealed the bikini’s full-waisted electric-blue bottoms.

  It’s literally a bikini, she reminded herself, and a rather modest one at that. No big deal. Like standing in front of Max in her swimsuit. She couldn’t even tell if he liked what he was seeing, since his gaze remained just as it had before. Completely amused and totally wicked. As if he was having the time of his life laughing silently at her.

  Annoyance rippled through her. “Do I get a turn or is this a one-sided game of Truth or Dare?”

  One black eyebrow lifted and he answered, “Sure, sweetheart. I’ll take truth.”

  “Great, tell me the truth,” she said, her newly bold eyes meeting his. “This is just a game for you, isn’t it? I turned you down, and your ego couldn’t take it, so now the only reason you want to go to bed with me is so you can have me and trash me, just like all the other girls. That’s why they call you the Ruiner, right?”

  His eyes grew a few shades cooler. Then he said, “You’ve got me, Pru. I do want to take you to bed. I want to spend this week figuring out what turns you on and then I want to use what I discover to make you scream and make you come harder than you ever have with any other guy. And then, yes, after I’m done with you, I will walk away.”