Love's Gamble

by Theodora Taylor

Hmm. Maybe. But Coleridge I and Coleridge III had a lot in common when it came to trust. Neither of them did so easily, and it didn’t sound like his grandfather to handpick anyone without having him thoroughly vetted first.

  “Even stranger than that,” Pru continued on, “Cornell was the only program he applied to. He wrote a pretty terrific essay, but still it’s a little hard to believe that he only applied to one Ivy League school or that he got in with his grades and his suspension record. If he hadn’t been a foster kid, I’d think...”

  She trailed off.

  “Think what?” he asked.

  “Well, the only other person I’ve seen with grades and a high school record like that was...well, you.”

  Max flinched a little. But he didn’t deny it. “Yeah, I got into a few fights during boarding school, a few suspensions, too.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. But you’re wealthy, so of course you got to go wherever you wanted. Guys like Gus, though—they usually don’t bounce back like that. And the two arrests with just a warning...it’s almost as if he had a very powerful friend on his side. Someone like your granddad.”

  Max’s eyebrows lifted. “You didn’t know my granddad. But he wasn’t the type to go out of his way for some kid with anger issues he barely even knew.”

  “That’s what I figured, too.” He could sense her frustration, even in the dark. “Seriously, I don’t know whether to give Gus mad respect for overcoming what he did or some serious sketch points. He’s definitely a mystery.”

  That he was, Max thought, deciding then and there that even if Gus turned out to be clean, he was going to do some more digging into the new Benton vice president himself after all was said and done.

  “So how did things go on your first camping trip?” Pru asked. Apparently she was done talking with him about Gus, and he was all for changing the subject.

  “Fine,” he answered. “Turns out I’m kind of good at being rugged. Fly-fished. Cooked some. Had some good ideas about the hotel, too, thanks to Cole.”

  This was kind of nice, he thought. Talking with her about his day.

  He could feel her smiling against his left arm, which she was using as a pillow. “You and Cole seem to really be getting along better these days.”

  Max shrugged. “We’re never going to be you and Jake. But we’ve been doing this for a few days and no punches were exchanged, so that’s a new record.”

  He expected her to laugh, but instead she grew quiet before asking, “Have you two always been like this? This antagonistic?”

  He let a few seconds tick by, then he said, “Short answer, no. We both had messed-up parents. Our dad was never around. His mom offed herself when he was a kid, and mine...”

  He tried to think of a way to describe how Terese Mera had been. A wildly beautiful woman with raven hair, she, like her older sister, had been raised in upstate California by trust-fund hippies of Spanish descent. But unlike her older sister, who’d married a supposedly good man from a good family, she hadn’t rejected her parents’ bohemian ways. In fact, she’d taken it even further, becoming a painter and traveling all over the world, living life without a permanent address. It should have just been a funny story when she ran into her brother-in-law at a ski chalet in the French Alps. Back then, his father had still been trying to fit into the mold of a Benton heir, and had come to France to hobnob with big rollers, who might later choose the Benton when they came to Las Vegas. But it hadn’t turned into a funny story, just a sordid one. What was supposed to be a two-week vacation turned into six. By the time Max’s father got back on a plane to Vegas to inform his family he no longer wished to play the part he’d been assigned since birth, Terese was already pregnant.

  One look, his mother had told him once. One look was all it took for Cole II to decide that he didn’t want to walk in his father’s footsteps and that he no longer wished to be married to her sister.

  For the first few years of his life, Terese and his father had flitted around the world with him and a couple of nannies in tow. But as it went with all of Terese’s lovers, the relationship had eventually imploded and they’d gone their separate ways. Despite having a son now, Terese had continued on with her carefree gypsy lifestyle. But she’d increasingly started to leave Max places. With friends in Barcelona while she went off with a new lover. With the family of an ex-boyfriend in Rio while she spent the summer in Saint Tropez. Eventually Nora had told her that if she was going to keep on abandoning her child, to leave him in Las Vegas, with his grandparents, who could at least watch over him properly until he was old enough for boarding school.

  He’d moved in with his grandparents when he was five. But in many ways the stability of his grandparents’ home came way too late. By that time he’d already grown the chip he’d carried around on his shoulder to this day. And he’d already learned the hard truth about women. Either you left them or they left you.

  His father had left Terese and she had left Max. For as long as Max could remember, his number-one rule had been “leave before you get left.”

  Which was why he had no business snuggling with Pru or admitting he’d missed her while they’d been apart.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him in the suddenly silent dark. “You’ve gone quiet. And tense.”

  “My mom wasn’t like your mom,” he answered, his voice tight. “She was messed up.”

  The silence that greeted his announcement let him know that this was another one of those things that Pru already knew about him. “I imagine that must have been hard, growing up.”

  “It was fine,” he answered quickly. “I’m fine.”

  “But you and your brother used to get along and now you don’t,” Pru pointed out, her voice soft.

  Max shook his head. “It’s stupid. But I wasn’t the only one getting in fights in boarding school. If you’d looked into Cole the way you’d looked into me, you would have found out he had the exact same record. Better grades but the same record as me. Back when we were younger and attending boarding school out east together, we were actually best friends. But then I guess Granddad finally accepted that our dad wasn’t ever going to step back up to the plate. He pulled Cole out of boarding school and started grooming him to take over the Benton Group.”

  “And how about you?” Pru asked.

  He shrugged his one free shoulder. “I stayed behind, kept on being Max, and Cole basically became a replica of my grandfather. He got even worse after Granddad died, trying to bring me to heel, telling me what to do. Basically sucking the fun out of everything.”

  “And now you’re planning to start your own hotel,” Pru observed. “Is that some kind of revenge scheme?”

  “No...yes. I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t like thinking about the stuff I do too hard. I just do it. ’Cause I’m Max.”

  Pru grew quiet again, as if processing what he’d just told her. Then she asked, “So how did you go from partying like a rock star to pretending to settle down with me so that you could start your own hotel?”

  Max thought for a moment. “I spent most of my childhood in hotels and other people’s homes. As soon as I graduated from college, I went right back to that lifestyle. For a long time I thought I was destined to live life like my mom did. But a few years ago, these thoughts kept coming to me. Ideas for the kind of hotels I liked but on a smaller scale, so that nonwealthy people could enjoy them. I tried to ignore those thoughts, but eventually...”

  “...you had to follow through,” Pru finished for him. “That’s kind of how it went with me becoming a private investigator. The other girls in the Revue would ask me to help with these tiny mysteries of theirs. You know, like is my boyfriend cheating, I can’t find my family heirloom, I think I got taken advantage of in this deal—stuff like that. And I’d become totally obsessed with solving their cases. Like I couldn’t stop until I solved them. And that�
��s what gave me the idea of becoming a private investigator after I hit the Benton Girl cutoff age.”

  “That’s not an official cutoff age,” Max reminded her. “You could have kept dancing if you wanted to.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she answered. “But I didn’t want to. I loved being a showgirl at first, but then...”

  She trailed off. But Max had read the report on her, and now he could finish her sentence the way she’d finished his. “Your parents died in a car accident and you had to take care of your brother. That’s pretty hard when you’re doing two shows a night.”

  She averted her eyes. “Not really. At least I had my days free to take care of Jakey. And since you have to slather on the makeup for performances, I never had to worry about the dark circles under my eyes.”

  “As the son of a woman who had all the free time in the world and couldn’t handle raising me, I’m going to disagree.”

  “No, really. It hasn’t been a hardship at all. Jakey’s a great kid.”

  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Deflect any compliment I try to give you about raising your brother. Why don’t you think you deserve any credit for that?”

  She shifted. “Because trust me, I don’t deserve any extra credit for raising Jakey.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “So it went well with Cole today. Have you given any thought to telling him about your plans to build a hotel in New Orleans?”

  He saw exactly what she was doing, the way she’d deflected his attempts to get to know her better with an invasive personal question of her own. “Okay, if you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to,” he said.

  And because he, too, was sick of talking about his messed-up family situation, he said, “You know, I’ve never done it in a tent. You?”

  “Sure, lots of times. That’s one of the behaviors they expect from chaperones when they’re escorting a bunch of kids with raging hormones on camping trips.”

  Max grinned. “So, no.”

  “No,” she answered. He could practically hear her rolling her eyes in the dark.

  They both went quiet.

  “Pru,” he said, “why are you here?”

  “I told you...”

  “Why are you really here?”

  “Like I said, this is a good way to make sure—”

  “Pru, don’t lie to me. Don’t use selling our cover story as an excuse. Not tonight. I need to hear it. I need to know you missed me, too.”

  Pru shifted again. “I’m here, in your sleeping bag,” she answered, her voice small. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Pru scared him. The truth was Max had never been this terrified of a woman in his life. But he told her how he felt. “No. It’s not enough. And by the way, I should have told you this on Monday. I like your new haircut. It’s cute. It brings out your face, makes you look even prettier.”

  She froze, as if his words were a slap across the pretty face he’d just complimented.

  “What exactly is this about, Max?” she demanded. “Cashing in wallets isn’t enough? You want me to humiliate myself first, because that’s your thing, right? Making women think they have a chance with you. Complimenting them. Giving them the best sex of their lives, then you dump them? That’s your MO. That’s how you ruin them for other men, right?”

  She’d pretty much nailed his tactic on the head. Blow a woman’s mind, leave her wanting more.

  Pru must have sensed the truth in his nonanswer, because she let out a weary sigh. “Max, it’s been a long day, and you’re right. I could have stayed behind in the room, but I didn’t. I’m here with you, in this sleeping bag. And yes, it was hard to be in the hotel room without you, and no, I couldn’t sleep, okay?”

  “Why?” he asked. Needing to know, but hating how much he wanted the answer.

  “Because I missed you.” She didn’t sound happy about this little truth. “It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid...”

  “You missed me,” Max repeated, unable to keep a silly grin off his face.

  Unable to stop himself from kissing her, or rejoicing when she stiffened only a little before kissing him back.

  But then just as the kiss was about to take on more heat, she broke it off, her voice desperate and ragged as she said, “Can we not do the thing with the wallets? Can we just pretend that we’re not both messed-up people with messed-up pasts? Can we just be normal tonight?”

  He stroked a hand over her short hair, which he hadn’t lied about liking. And for the first time since he’d started treating women like playthings, he wished that he was a normal guy, capable of conducting a normal relationship. For the first time, he actually wished he was more like Cole.

  He leaned forward and kissed her again. Not as a tactic or a punishment, but because he wanted to. Because she was a very pretty girl. Because he liked her, and because he wanted to feel her lips on his.

  * * *

  Asking Max to cut out his lothario act was a mistake. A huge one. Pru realized this just a few seconds after his lips met hers again. This time when his mouth moved over hers, it was with tenderness as opposed to his usual brutal force.

  Being kissed by Max like this turned her mind into a total doily, with thoughts of first kisses and soft music. Max’s kiss felt the way she used to wish boys would kiss her, back when she was a cheerleader and dating a football player.

  The football player had never seemed to know what to do with his huge hands. Kissing him had felt like kissing a can of beer. Like a chore that came along with being a cheerleader.

  But kissing Max was unlike anything she’d ever known.

  Tonight he smelled of the outdoors and a cooking fire. He tasted like the hot chocolate she’d made for him. And the more he kissed her, the more she wanted him. She couldn’t get enough of him, and soon she was panting against his lips, pressing her body into his.

  “Max...” she whispered.

  She didn’t have to say anything more. He moved away from her, and cool air hit her as he climbed out of their makeshift bed. She could hear the sound of his new backpack being unzipped, then some rustling. He then got back under the covers with her. Naked now, with a condom in his left hand.

  But instead of putting it on quickly, and taking her roughly as was his wont, he took her hand and pressed it against his chest.

  “Touch me,” he said, his voice low.

  It wasn’t a request, but it also wasn’t hard for her to comply. She found she wanted to touch him, too. She brought both of her hands to his chest, mesmerized by the feel of his hard body in the dark as he she ran them over his chest and down his rippled abs. She stopped when she hit the top of his shaft, which was at full mast, already straining hard against the back of her hand.

  The quick intake of breath he took when her hand grazed his sex emboldened her. Made her linger there, stroking her hand up and down his long length.

  As her ministrations went on, Max’s breath become choppy, coming out in short bursts, as if it was becoming harder for him to hold on. Which only made her want to please him more.

  She slipped down underneath the sleeping bag’s top hemline, and soon she had him in her mouth. This time it was Max whose hips bucked underneath her oral ministrations, his hand finding its way to the back of her neck. “Pru...” he called after a few minutes. “You’re killing me...”

  It must have been true, because a few seconds later, he sat up and pulled out of her mouth. Pru sat up, too, and watched him put on a condom, desire hooding her eyes.

  She didn’t get to enjoy the sight for long. Soon after, Max reached over so that he could slowly strip her naked. His undressing was an exquisite torture, his hands grazing but never lingering too long on her now highly sensitized skin. But the torture didn’t last too long either.
She soon found herself on her back, biting her lip as Max pushed into her.

  After he was all the way in, he paused, one hand finding the side of her face in the dark. “So beautiful,” he murmured gruffly, even though he couldn’t possibly see her.

  He leaned forward and kissed her soul deep, and only then did he start moving inside her. With strokes so deep and thorough that the top of his shaft kissed her throbbing button every time he thrust into her.

  The way he took her this time didn’t feel like taking. It felt like something else. As if he was making love to her. Not punishing her, or conquering her, but loving her body with every stroke of his.

  Tears pooled in Pru’s eyes. She’d never been made love to like this.

  The orgasm came on without warning. Arching her back as it crested over her in a wave so powerful it choked her, stealing every single ounce of air out of her lungs.

  Max came soon after. His entire body thrashing once, before he pressed his forehead hard into hers, as if bracing himself against the same wave that had rolled over her.

  Only then did Pru realize what a mistake she’d made by asking Max to play it straight tonight.

  Maybe if he’d continued using sex as a weapon to manipulate her, she would have been all right. But this...this had been too much for her. And when Max rolled away from her, only to come back with his discarded T-shirt, which he used to dry her eyes, she understood what he’d done to her.

  By playing the part of a loving man, Max had ruined her. Ruined her for any other man for what she suspected would be a very long time.

  She wept then, shaking with knowledge.

  “Shh...” Max’s voice was in her ear now, his arms coming back around her as he pulled her close. “It’s okay,” he said, as if reading her mind. “It’s okay. We’re okay. Let’s just sleep. We’ll figure this out tomorrow. It’s okay.”

  It wasn’t okay. He had no idea. It definitely wasn’t okay.

  But eventually her trembling stopped, and she went to sleep anyway. After all, a fantasy made was a fantasy kept. Until you opened your eyes.