frame an answer, she was going on fiercely.
"Would you sell your honor if the stakes were high
enough? How high is high enough? Or is your integrity too
important to you? Are there prices you aren't willing to pay, no
matter what it costs you? Or do you bet your honesty the way you bet
money?"
"No." He hadn't meant the answer to come so
harshly, and paused a moment before he continued, looking seriously
into her startled eyes. "No, I've never gambled my honor –
integrity, self-respect, whatever you want to call it. That price has
always been too high to pay. Winning was never so important that I
had to bet everything. Losing was never so important that I had to
bet everything." He drew a breath. "But I'm a gambler,
Jenny. And every gambler knows that sooner or later he'll have to pay
– whatever the cost. Even if the price is everything. Even if
he staked his honor."
Jennifer stared at him for a long moment, then turned
jerkily away. She was more shaken than she could remember ever having
been before. Had that been she, that rambling, fierce woman? God,
what she had told him! "I'm sorry," she managed. "I
don't know what's wrong with me."
Dane knew. The storm had passed, leaving her a
shipwrecked survivor of her own tempest, and reaction was setting in.
He straightened away from the car and went to her, but didn't try to
make her face him. Instead, he rested his hands gently on her
shoulders.
"Why should you be sorry?" he asked.
Stiffly, she said, "Look, just forget everything
I've said, all right? I wasn't thinking, and – "
"No, don't do that," he interrupted.
"What?"
"Slip back into your glossy shell." His hands
tightened on her shoulders, but his voice remained light. "I
didn't realize that's what it was, until you cut loose at Kelly."
"I told you I had a temper."
"And I should have believed you. But that calm
surface of yours had me fooled. Is it the Italian blood, do you
think, or was your father's family known for their passions?"
She thought his word choice had been deliberate, and it
made her uneasy. "My mother takes the credit," she
murmured, very conscious of his hands on her. "Or the blame,
depending on your point of view. Umm ... I really should be going."
"Not yet." He turned her to face him, keeping
his hands on her shoulders.
Jennifer felt a sense of panic. "All those things I
said about my mother and – Well, it's just a misunderstanding,
that's all. She's a little volatile, and she just got carried away
with the Idea – the wrong idea – that I was
interested in you."
"Is it a wrong idea?"
"Of course it is! I hardly know you."
"I'm very interested in you," he said, and
then added thoughtfully, "A tame word, that."
Remembering her mother's opinion of the same word,
Jennifer didn't know whether to laugh or swear. "Well, it
doesn't matter," she said with a touch of desperation,
"because I'm not in the market for a fling at the moment."
"Who said anything about a fling?" He was
smiling, violet eyes glowing in that characteristic way, his hands
holding her shoulders firmly. "Do you realize that you haven't
once said my name?"
Jennifer couldn't break the hold of his gaze. She felt
curiously trapped, something alive captured in resin and imprisoned
for eons. As if it were some phenomenon she observed apart from
herself, she was aware of suddenly quickened heartbeats, of a rising
heat that sapped strength, of dizziness. And then her detachment
snapped, a rubber band stretched too tightly, and it was herself she felt reacting this way, like never before. It was her own body
that was unfamiliar.
"How are you doing that?" she managed
to ask, baffled.
"Doing what?" he murmured, the charm of his
eyes still holding her, a lure she couldn't resist.
With an effort that left her even more shaken, Jennifer
yanked her gaze away, staring fixedly at the open collar of his white
shirt. "Never mind. I have to go. Now."
"You sound like a scared little girl, afraid to
stop playing dress-up and try the
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