Kincaid’s Dangerous Game

Chapter 6

It was late by the time they got back to Las Vegas.

They had taken time out for a fast-food hamburger before leaving Reno, which was pretty much Holt’s customary choice of cuisine, anyway. He had noticed Billie barely touched the salad she’d ordered, although she did help herself to a few of his French fries. Then, at the Vegas airstrip Tony couldn’t let them go without getting one of his cameras out of the back of the plane and snapping a bunch of pictures, mostly of Billie.

She had been good-natured about it, probably figuring it was pretty much to be expected, given that Tony was a photographer. Naturally, she didn’t know the real reason he wanted those pictures, which was that Brooke, twin sister to Brenna and the woman Tony Whitehall planned to marry and start having kids with in the very near future, would surely have skinned him alive if he’d come home without them. That was a revelation both Holt and Tony had agreed would be better kept for another time…another place.

Billie hardly spoke a word on the drive back into the city. She hadn’t said much during dinner or the flight from Reno, either, except to answer direct questions, usually accompanied by a distracted smile. And the closer they got to her neighborhood, the less Holt liked the idea of dropping her off at her front door and leaving her alone. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to risk giving her a chance to cut out on him. They’d had a deal and he’d kept his end of the bargain, and now her moment of reckoning was at hand. He had no idea in the world what was going on inside her head right now, but he did know she had a history of running when things got rough.

But he knew in his heart that was only part of it, and that the whole truth was both simpler and more complicated than that. The truth was, he didn’t want to leave her. Period.

He pulled into her driveway and turned off the Mustang’s motor and got out of the car, expecting her to tell him he didn’t need to come in, that she’d be fine, thanks for everything and good night.

She didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything at all, just walked beside him along the avenue of potted plants, up the steps and onto her front porch. Holt kept his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker to keep from touching her, putting his hand on her back…the nape of her neck. He told himself it would only have been a touch meant to give comfort and sympathy. Which was a lie. But even if it had been the truth, he didn’t know that he had the right to offer her anything so personal, or that she wouldn’t misunderstand if he did.

There was, he realized, a lot he didn’t know about Billie Farrell. Or Brenna Fallon, either.

She’d forgotten to leave a porch light on, so there was only the dim glow of the streetlights to see by as she unlocked the front door, pushed it open, then turned to look at him.

“You want some coffee? Or a Coke, or something?” She’d thrust her hands into her jacket pockets, and her shoulders looked hunched and defensive.

“Sure,” Holt said. “Sounds good.”

He followed her into the dark house, across the living room and into the kitchen beyond. There was more light here, shining in from a porch light outside, above the back door. Without turning on the kitchen lights, Billie shrugged out of her jacket and dropped it onto a chair beside the dining table, then went into the kitchen’s work space to make coffee. Holt took off his jacket and draped it on the back of a chair, then went around the table to look out the window into the backyard.

He was about to ask her why there wasn’t any water in her swimming pool-just to make conversation-when something crunched under his feet. He froze-outwardly. Inside, adrenaline was exploding through his veins. He knew what broken glass felt and sounded like when he stepped on it.

“Billie,” he called quietly. But she had the water running and didn’t hear him.

He was beside her in three strides, maybe less. She turned startled eyes to him as she reached to turn off the faucet, and he pressed a finger against her lips before she could utter the exclamation poised there.

“Shh,” he whispered, his lips close to her ear, “I think you’ve had a break-in. Window’s broken. Stay here while I check the house.”

She nodded, eyes wide above his cautioning fingers, and he gave her neck a reassuring squeeze before he left her.

He took his weapon from its holster in the small of his back and began a room-to-room sweep of the house, gratified at how quickly it came back to him from his cop days, long years past. How natural it seemed. He cleared every room, closet and cubbyhole as he’d been trained to do, and when he was satisfied the intruder was no longer in the house, he retraced his steps to the kitchen, where Billie was calmly filling the coffeemaker as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

He switched on the lights, tucked away his weapon and reached for the phone that was sitting on the counter. She looked over at him and said, “What are you doing?”

“Calling nine-one-one.” He paused, phone in hand, to frown at her. “Somebody broke into your house. I’m calling the cops. And before they get here you need to check and see what’s missing.”

She shook her head and went on filling the coffeemaker, silently counting out spoonfuls of coffee. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and her movements were jerky with anger. When she’d finished counting, she set the coffee can down with a clank and snatched the phone out of his hands.

“Come on, Billie, you need to report it.”

She stared down at her hands, gripping the edge of the countertop, the knuckles white knobs against the pale blue tile. She wondered how, just a short time ago, she could have wished to feel something. Now, she felt ready to burst with feelings. Feelings she didn’t know what to do with, or how to even name. She felt angry, but didn’t know who to be angry with. She felt sadness and grief and regret and longing and fear, so much of everything she wanted to find a hole somewhere and crawl into it, cover her eyes and ears and wait for it all to go away. She wished she could cry, at least, but she’d lost that ability a long time ago.

Then there was Holt. This man who’d made such a shambles of her nice, ordered life. This man taking up so much space in her kitchen she felt as if there wasn’t enough air left for her to breathe. She wished he’d never happened, wanted to hate him, wanted to be angry with him, at least. And she was. Oh, she was. And yet, she couldn’t bear to think of him going away now and leaving her alone.

“It was just that stupid Miley,” she said between clenched teeth.

“You don’t know that.”

Having no other place to send it, she threw him a look of bitter fury. “I know, okay? I don’t need the hassle. Let it go.”

He leaned against the counter and folded his arms, and his calm only infuriated her more. “Why are you so sure it’s him?”

She picked up the coffeemaker’s glass carafe and rounded on him, words tumbling from her lips in a rapid mutter. “Because I know him. This is just the kind of thing he’d do. Hang around, wait for me to leave, then just…waltz in. He figures he’ll find what he’s looking for, and if not, well, he thinks he’s going to scare me, at least. I told you-the guy’s a weasel.”

“What’s the story with this guy Miley?” He asked it as he took the carafe from her hands and turned to the sink to fill it with water.

She stared at his shoulder, unable to bring herself to lift her gaze higher. She couldn’t look at his face. Not now. She was too full of feelings already. In silence she watched him pour the water into the coffeemaker, set the carafe in place and switch it on. Then he turned to her, the question he’d asked repeated in his sharp blue eyes and upraised eyebrows. She caught a breath and said, “Do we have to go into this now?”

“Yeah, Billie, I think we do.” He leaned against the counter and folded his arms, and she could see no quarter in his face, or hear any gentleness in his voice. “I heard him threaten you. He scared you enough that you pulled a knife on him. So, yeah. We need to go into it now.”

For a long moment she just looked at him, her heart-shaped face set and angry, and Holt was conscious of a little thrill of combative excitement. But he was more determined than she was, or maybe she was simply beaten down by the emotional bombardment she’d taken today. Anyway, after a moment she closed her eyes, let out a hiss of breath and muttered something under her breath. Something that meant capitulation.

She postponed it as long as she could, though, opening cupboards and banging drawers and taking milk out of the refrigerator in angry silence. With everything assembled, she stood and glared at the gurgling coffeemaker as if doing so could make it finish its job faster and give her a few more moments reprieve while she poured and served. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, she lifted her hands and let them drop, then turned on him.

“I was going to tell you the whole story-the other day, in your hotel room. You’re the one that told me you didn’t want to hear it.”

“Yeah, well…” What could he say? He couldn’t very well tell her what had been in his thoughts that evening…couldn’t tell her how she’d haunted him, and how the pictures she’d painted of her life on the streets still did. “I didn’t know the guy was still around. I thought he was past history.”

“Yeah, well…so did I.” She closed her eyes and he could see her fighting for control. After a moment she hitched in a breath as if girding for a difficult task. Clearly, he thought, this wasn’t a woman accustomed to laying her troubles on someone else.

“Okay.” She exhaled slowly. “He showed up about a week ago-a few days before you did, actually. He said he’d managed to come up with the buy-in for the big no-limit hold ’em tournament that starts in a couple days at the Mirage.”

“I thought he’s been barred from playing,” Holt said, frowning.

“He is. Which is why he wanted me to sign up instead.”

“Ah.”

“I told him no,” Billie said, her voice tight and vehement. “I’m done with that life. Don’t have any desire to get back into it.”

“I take it he didn’t take no for an answer.”

“He did not. Turns out he had a pretty good reason not to.”

The coffeemaker chose that moment to announce the conclusion of its task with a belching, gurgling crescendo, and she turned to pick up the carafe. She poured two cups and handed him one, then set about doctoring her own cup with cream and sugar. She stirred, tasted, then leaned her backside once more against the counter, arms again folded, cup in one hand. She didn’t move to sit down at the table, and neither did he.

Her eyes had a dark glint that wasn’t amusement. “Miley always imagines he’s smarter than everybody else. Or that everybody else is dumber, maybe. Anyway, he’d borrowed money from some pretty scary people to finance some scheme or other, and things evidently didn’t turn out the way he hoped they would, so now he owes these guys some serious money.”

“How serious?”

She drank coffee, frowned as she swallowed. “Seven figures.”

“What? Millions?”

“Well, not millions. Little over a million, actually.”

“Why would he think you could help him with that kind of money?”

Her smile was sardonic. “You don’t follow tournament poker much, do you? A major tournament like the one at the Mirage, the winner will take home way over a million dollars. Even the runners-up get pretty big bucks. You know that tournament I was in, the last one before I quit? That was a fairly small one. I went out in third place, and my share after taxes was over a quarter mil.”

Holt nodded. “I heard him say that. Sounded like he thinks you’ve still got it.” He watched her closely while he sipped his coffee.

Her gaze hardened and slid past him. “Yeah, well, I don’t.”

“Why do you suppose he thinks you do?”

She gave a little huff of laughter and gestured with her cup. “Maybe because of the way I live? Do I look like I just spent a quarter of a million bucks? Even if I paid cash for this house-which I did, by the way-and even considering I already gave him a chunk of the money-”

“Why did you? By the way…”

She drank the last of her coffee and put the cup on the counter. She felt calmer, now, at least. Talking about past history seemed to be helping take her mind off the present. She shrugged. “I guess…I felt like I owed him. It was the first time I’d played without him, and he’d put up part of the buy-in. So, I gave him his share and I figured that was it. We were done.”

“So,” Holt said, “let me get this straight. Your ex-partner gets in trouble with some loan sharks, he’s desperate, he comes to you to ask you to get into a poker tournament in order to win the money to bail him out. You say no dice and he comes back, this time demanding money which he thinks you have stashed away from your last big tournament win. You tell him you don’t have it, he threatens you, you pull a knife, he leaves…is that why you think he’s the one who broke in here today? You think he came back looking for the money?”

She shrugged and held out her hands. “What else?”

He frowned. “Who keeps that kind of money stashed in their house?” She just looked at him. The lightbulb evidently went on, and he sucked in air. “Ah-I get it. You lived on the street…”

“…and, I was used to hiding my stash of whatever I’d managed to acquire. Even after I met Miley, I didn’t have much use for banks. He probably figures I’m still like that.”

“Are you?”

She snorted, making it clear it was all the answer she was going to give him. After a moment he said, “So, it was true, what you told him? You really don’t have the money to give him?”

She straightened with an indignant jerk. “Yes, it’s true. Do you think I’m that heartless? The guy’s a weasel, but he saved my life, probably. Of course, I’d give him the damn money. If I could.”

Holt waited. The silence grew electric, and he knew she wouldn’t tell him unless…

“Okay…sorry,” he said, reaching past her to set his coffee cup in the sink, “but I have to ask. What did you do with it? The money?”

There was another long pause.

“Billie?” he prompted softly. She was so close to him…arms folded on her chest as she gazed intently at the toe of her shoe, scrubbing away at the vinyl tile floor. He couldn’t see her face, just the top of her head, and her hair looked unbelievably soft. He lifted his hand and his fingers hovered…

Then, abruptly, she lifted her chin and shook back her hair and her eyes met his in defiance, as if she were about to confess a major sin. “I put it in a trust.”

“A…trust.” He felt a moment’s confusion, jarred by how near he’d just come to touching her in a way he’d never have been able to explain, at the same time wondering why this was so hard for her to admit. It seemed a reasonable enough thing to do. Responsible, even.

“Yeah,” she shot back curtly, “like, you know, a trust fund?” She looked away, then, and mumbled something he couldn’t hear.

“I beg your pardon?”

Her eyes snapped back to him. “For her-my daughter. For Hannah Grace.”

He didn’t know what to say. Words seemed to pile up on each other in his throat, forming a hard knot. He shook his head, and she stared at him almost accusingly.

“It’s why I asked you to find her, okay? So I could put it in her name. Her real name. It’s for…you know-college and…stuff.”

“Jeez, Billie…” His face felt stiff. He lifted his hand and rubbed it, but it didn’t help much. His arms, his face, his whole body ached with the need to reach for her…hold her…help her.

He didn’t know what to do. Only one other time in his life had he felt so powerless-and that was a time he resented being forced to remember now, if only by way of comparison. How had he gotten himself to this point? When had he become so tangled up in this woman’s life? When had she become so important to him?

It occurred to him then that they’d been standing there looking at each other for quite a long time, in silence. And when Billie spoke, it was a moment before he could be certain he’d understood her.

“Would you mind staying with me tonight?” she said softly.

There was a part of him, then, that wanted to take a page out of her playbook-bolt, get the hell out of there, run for his life. He was not a man equipped to deal with emotional demands. He lacked, or so he had always believed, the ability to give of himself emotionally. The ability, in short, to love. And he’d always considered himself lucky because of it-love, after all, being notorious as the cause of pain, anxiety, insecurity, disappointment and so many other negative emotions he could never hope to name them all. The positive aspects of love, highly touted in song and verse, he’d always considered not worth the cost.

But now, standing here facing this woman, with her golden eyes holding a burden of anguish that seemed too great for any one person to bear, he was coming to the realization that he’d been wrong. Wrong about his own ability to love, anyway. And, at the moment, the hazards and burdens of loving someone still seemed terrifying, and to far outweigh the supposed joys.

What should he do? It was late; he knew he should refuse the offer, make his excuses and go. To leave her now seemed…unthinkable. But to stay with her, wouldn’t that be taking advantage of a vulnerable woman?

Of course she was vulnerable-what other reason could she have for asking him to stay? He doubted she even liked him very much. She’d kissed him once, that’s true. But only, if he remembered correctly, because she’d just gotten one helluva shock.

He’d been strong enough to walk away from what she’d offered him that night, hadn’t he? What had changed? Why did it seem so much harder now?

The answer was obvious: You’ve changed, Holt.

Yes, but she hasn’t. And she’s had more than one shock today.

“If you need me to, sure,” he said calmly, as he tried to pluck words of reason out of the chaos of his thoughts. She’s had a break-in, you idiot. She’s uneasy about staying alone. That’s all it is. “Be glad to. I’ll, uh…just bed down on the couch. If you’ve got a pillow and a blanket…”

She tilted her head and made a derisive sound. “Jeez, Kincaid, what are you, twelve?” Her eyes met his, bright and brave. “I’m not asking you to a damn sleepover. I don’t need you to protect me. I don’t want you to sleep on the couch. Don’t you get it? I want you to stay with me.”

He didn’t say a word, not one word. Just stood there and looked at her, and for once she couldn’t read him at all.

Her first impulse was to hit him-anything to jar that stony expression off his face. Her second was to cover her face, hide her eyes. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how devastating his rejection was.

She felt cold, and any moment now she was going to start to shake.

It took all her courage not to look away and all her strength just to make her facial muscles form a smile. “Well, I sure as hell am not gonna beg,” she said, and pushed past him, wanting only now to get away.

His fingers closed around her upper arm, and her response was automatic. She jerked back against his grip, and for a few seconds there was a kind of silent tug-of-war, her desperation against his greater strength.

Finally, he said in a low growl, “For God’s sake, Billie-” and she gave a sharp little cry as he pulled her into a hard embrace.

It was what she’d wanted, what she’d asked for. She had no idea why she went on fighting him; her reasoning mind had deserted her. She’d managed to get her arms folded up between her chest and his and refused to let herself give in to the temptation his body offered…the warmth, the strength, the comfort she yearned for.

“Don’t do me any favors,” she managed to get out between clenched teeth as she struggled.

Above her head she heard a small gust of a laugh, and when she looked up in fury, his head swooped down with the quickness of a hunting hawk. She had time only for a muffled and wordless protest, and then her mouth was no longer hers to control. He simply took it…claimed it…made it his.

And she had no objection. Her reason had already fled, and the same primitive imperatives that had made her fight him so mindlessly now compelled her to surrender. She felt herself growing weak and soft, and all her muscles becoming pliant. Her head fell back because her neck would no longer support it, but that was all right, because his hand was there to provide a cradle for it instead. Of their own accord her arms abandoned their barricade and crept around him like soldiers quitting the battlefield. And it was then, when her guard had been vanquished and she was left defenseless, that she felt it begin…the insidious invasion of emotions she’d been holding at bay for so long. First the ache…in another moment there would be tears.

I can’t…I can’t.

From somewhere, some reserve she didn’t know she had, she found the will to pull herself back from the edge. Back…from the brink, yes, but not from him. No…because he felt too good, and she needed him too much.

And so, finding her mouth once again hers to control, she now gave it up to him. And remembered as she did how good he’d felt before when she’d kissed him. And wondered why she’d waited so long to kiss him again.

Her senses returned and they brought her pleasure, something she’d almost forgotten these past few days, and was surprised she could still experience. He smelled good…that elusive aftershave she’d noticed before, and the warm, earthy scent that was essentially, unmistakably male. He tasted pleasantly of the coffee they’d both been drinking. Her ears were filled with muted sounds, like the throbbing of distant drums…heartbeats and soft sighs and murmurs, and the shush of skin on skin. But mostly, the sense that dominated, that ruled, that overwhelmed, was feeling.

Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be alive and humming, quivering with eagerness for his touch.

And everywhere he touched her the pleasure was almost too intense to bear. So intense it brought tears to her eyes, and because she could not, would not cry, she laughed instead. A soft little gulp of laughter, caught in the sweet warmth of his mouth.

She felt his lips curve against hers in an answering smile, and she lifted one hand to touch his face. Her fingertips tingled exquisitely from their contact with the roughness of beard and the vibrant warmth of skin beneath, and her smile blossomed against his. She was shaking now, with silent laughter that was her only available release for the emotions that theatened to overwhelm her, and she felt his hand touching her face in much the same way she touched his.

It seemed a long time that they remained like that, lips touching, alternately forming smiles and kisses, fingertips exploring the vibrant, constantly changing landscape of each other’s faces, bodies melding so naturally together she almost didn’t notice the intimate ways they’d begun to shift and cling.

Then he let a breath out, long and slow, and his hand moved to cup her cheek, fingertips combing into her hair as he lifted his head and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She tensed then, waiting for him to release her, wondering how she’d bear it when he did. But instead he whispered words against her sweat-damp skin.

“Does this feel like I’m doing you a favor?”