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“Am I? If we stop taking risks, something in us dies.”
“Risks can kill!”
“I assure you, I don’t have homicide in mind.” Kill, he thought. That’s a strong word.
Her breasts rising and falling with her agitated breathing, Clea said, “Men don’t stick around long enough for women to get to know them.”
“Generalizations are the sign of a lazy mind.”
“The first sign of trouble, you’ll be gone faster than I can say au revoir.”
“You’re being both sexist and cowardly,” he said.
Her chin snapped up. “Who gave you the right to stand in judgment on me?”
“Deny it, then.”
“I’m not a coward!”
Slade said softly, “Prove it to me. More important, prove it to yourself.”
Toying with the olive in her glass, Clea said raggedly, “You’re talking about us getting to know each other. Yet you never let any of your women close enough to hurt you.”
He said grimly, “You may be the exception that proves the rule.”
And how was she supposed to interpret that? “I like my life the way it is,” she said. “Why should I change?”
“If you didn’t want to change, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”
He was wrong. Completely wrong. “Do you do this with every woman you meet?”
“I’ve never had to before.”
“So why are you bothering now?”
“Clea, I don’t want to play the field,” he said forcibly. “Right now it’s you I want. You, exclusively. Because deep down I don’t really believe you are a coward.”
“Just sexist,” she said with a flare of defiance.
“Don’t you get bored playing the field?”
She said nastily, “I’ve not, so far, been bored with you.”
“Then I’ll make another dare—date me until you do get bored.” Slade pushed a piece of paper across the table to her. “My personal assistant’s phone number in New York. His name’s Bill and he always knows where I can be reached.”
She stared down at the paper as if it might rear up and bite her. Her second line of defense, she thought wildly, what had happened to it? Hadn’t Slade jumped in ahead of her, daring her to date him? Worse, to go to bed with him? “I’m not interested in your money,” she blurted, trying to collect her wits. “I have plenty of my own.”
“I never thought you were.”
The Test, she thought. Now’s the time. Do it, Clea. She glanced up, her accent pronounced, as it always was when she was upset. “Very well, Slade…I also can make dares.”
“Go ahead.”
“Meet me in the Genoese Bar in Monte Carlo, three weeks from now. In the evening, anytime after seven-thirty. Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.”
“Name the day,” he said.
“Ah,” she said smoothly, “that’s part of the dare. I’m not telling you which evening. Either I’m worth waiting for, or I’m not—which is it?”
“But you will turn up?”
Her eyes flashed fire. “I give my word.”
“Then I’ll wait for you.”
“It stays open until 2:00 a.m., and the music is deafening,” she said with a malicious smile. “You won’t wait. No man would. Not when the world’s full of beautiful women who are instantly available.”
“You underrate yourself,” he said softly. Reaching over with his finger, he traced the soft curve of her mouth until her lip trembled. “I’ll wait.”
Fear flickered along her nerves. He wouldn’t wait. Not Slade Carruthers, who—she’d swear—had never had to wait for a woman in his life. Tossing her head, she said, “If you’re unfamiliar with Monte Carlo, anyone can direct you to the Genoese—it’s well known.”
“Monte Carlo—where life’s a gamble and the stakes are high.”
“High stakes? For you, maybe—not for me.” Which was another barefaced lie.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t know how to gamble, Clea…tomorrow I’ll give Bill your name. You have only to mention it, and he’ll make sure I get any messages from you.”
She said, so quietly that the drifting jazz melody almost drowned her out, “I must be mad to have suggested a meeting between us. Even one you won’t keep.”
She looked exhausted. Slade drained his whisky. “Finish up,” he said, “and I’ll take you back to the lobby. Then I’ll be on my way—my flight’s early tomorrow.”
Her face unreadable, she said, “So you’re not putting the moves on me tonight?”
His jaw tightened. “I don’t gamble when the deck’s stacked against me—that’s plain stupidity.”
“At any table, you’d make a formidable opponent.”
He pushed back his chair. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Come on, you look wiped.”
“Wiped? I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound flattering.”
He took her hand and brought her to her feet. Standing very close to her, his eyes caressing her features, he said huskily, “It means tired out. In need of a good night’s sleep. When you and I share a bed, sleep won’t be the priority.”
“When we share a bed?” she said, looking full at him. “I’ve never liked being taken for granted.”
His eyes were a compelling midnight-blue, depthless and inscrutable. Charismatic eyes, which pulled her to him as though she had no mind of her own. She felt herself sway toward him, the ache of desire blossoming deep in her belly and making nonsense of all her defenses. Reaching up, she brushed his lips with hers as lightly as the touch of a butterfly’s wing, then just as quickly stepped back.
Her heart was hammering in her breast. So much for keeping him at a distance, she thought, aghast. What was wrong with her?
For once Slade found himself bereft of speech. Going on impulse, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it with lingering pleasure, watching color flare in her cheeks. Then, calling on all his control, he looped one arm lightly around her shoulders and led her back to the lobby. The light from the crystal chandeliers seemed excessively bright. He said, “The Genoese. In three weeks. If you need anything in the meantime, call me.”
“I won’t call you,” Clea said. Turning on her heel, she crossed the vast carpet to the elevators.
Nor did she.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE Genoese Bar on a cool damp evening in November should have been a welcome destination. Slade had walked from his hotel, with its magnificent view of the Port of Monaco and the choppy Mediterranean, past the obsessively groomed gardens of the casino to a curving side street near the water where a discreetly lit sign announced the Genoese. It was exactly seven-thirty.
The bar, he saw with a sinking heart, was underground, down a flight of narrow, winding stairs.
His nightmare, once again.
He was thirty-five years old now. Not eleven. He should be able to walk down a flight of stairs and spend six hours in a windowless room without hyperventilating.
Yeah, right.
Clea, he was almost sure, wouldn’t arrive until Friday. If this was some sort of test, why would she meet him any sooner? Unless she thought he wouldn’t bother turning up until Friday, and in consequence came tonight.
It was useless trying to second-guess her. Taking a deep breath of the salt-laden air, Slade walked slowly down the stairs and pushed open the heavy, black-painted door.
The noise hit him like a blow. Rap, played as loud as the sound equipment could handle it. He’d never been a fan of rap.
He let the door shut behind him, his heart thudding in his chest. The room was vast, tables all around its circumference, a small dance floor in the center under flickering strobes that instantly disoriented him. A big room, he thought crazily. Not cupboard-size, like the one he’d never been able to forget.
Come on, buddy, you can do this.
Leaning against the wall, he let his gaze travel from face to face, wishing with all his heart that Clea’s would be among them. It was a young crowd, in expensive leather and designer jeans, the women’s silky hair gleaming like shampoo ads, the energy level frenetic.
Clea was nowhere to be seen.
Slade claimed an empty table near the door, where he could see anyone who entered or left. Shucking off his trench coat, he sat down and ordered a bottle of Merlot and a dish of nuts. Automatically he located the Exit signs, wishing the ceiling didn’t feel so low, wishing they’d turn off the strobe lights. Wishing that he’d never met Clea Chardin.
His hormones were ruling his life, he thought savagely. How he resented the hold she had on him, with her slender body and exquisite face! But no matter how fiercely he’d fought the strength of that hold, he couldn’t dislodge it. God knows he’d tried hard enough the last three weeks.
She, in all fairness, had no idea how arduous a test she’d devised for him by making him wait in an underground bar.
As the array of bottles at the mirrored bar splintered and flashed in the strobes, dancers writhed to the primitive, undoubtedly hostile music. The little underground room had been quiet. Dead quiet. Frighteningly, maddeningly quiet.
All these years later, Slade still did his best never to think about the kidnapping that had so altered his life. At age eleven, he’d been snatched from the sidewalk near his school, drugged and kept in darkness in a small room below the ground, for a total of fifteen days and fourteen nights.
The kidnappers, he’d learned later, had been demanding ransom. The FBI, working with admirable flair and efficiency, had tracked down the hiding place, taken the kidnappers into custody and rescued him. Apart from the drugs, aimed at keeping him quiet and administered from a syringe by a masked man who never spoke to him, he was unharmed.
He’d never forgotten his mother’s silent tears when she’d been brought face-to-face with him at the police station, or the deeply carved lines in his father’s face.
The lasting aftereffect had been a phobia for dark, underground spaces. Right now, to his mortification, his palms were damp, his throat tight and his heart bouncing around in his chest. Just like when he was eleven.
A woman in a black leather jerkin and miniskirt sidled up to his table. Pouting her red lips, she said over the thud of the bass, “Want to dance?”
So she’d picked him out as an American. “No, thanks,” he said.
She leaned forward, presenting him with an impressive cleavage. “You didn’t come here to be alone.”
“I’m waiting for someone,” he said in a clipped voice. “I’d prefer to do that alone. Sorry.”
Smoothing the leather over her hips, she shrugged. “Change your mind, I’m over by the bar.”
By 2:00 a.m., when the bouncer closed the bar, Slade had been propositioned six times, felt permanently deafened and was heartily tired of Merlot and peanuts. His claustrophobia had not noticeably abated.
He climbed the stairs and emerged onto the sidewalk. Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he strode east along the waterfront, where buildings crowded down the hillside to a pale curve of sand. Useless to think of sleeping until he’d walked off those agonizingly long hours.
He should leave Monaco. Forget this whole ridiculous venture. Was any woman worth two more evenings in the Genoese Bar? After all, what did he really know about Clea? Sure, she’d given her word. But was it worth anything? What if she didn’t show up? What if she’d spent the evening in Milan with one of the many men she’d mentioned, laughing to herself at the thought of Slade sitting in a crowded bar on the Riviera in November?
She was making a fool of him. He hated that as much as he hated being confronted by the demons of his past.
And how could he lust after a woman whose sexual standards, to put it mildly, were by no means exacting? Promiscuous, he thought heavily, and knew it was a word he’d been repressing for the last three weeks.
She looked so angelic, yet she’d slept with men the length and breadth of Europe. The clippings and her own admission proved it.
He should fly back to New York in the morning and forget the redhead with the vivid eyes, dancing intelligence and lax morals. Hadn’t she done her best from the beginning to discourage him? The Genoese Bar was the final touch. After three nights of his life wasted in a futile vigil, he wouldn’t be in any hurry to search her out.
Which meant, of course, that she’d won.
At three-thirty Slade’s head hit the pillow; at five-forty-two he was jerked awake from a nightmare of a syringe impaling him to a dirty mattress; and at eight that evening, he was again descending the stairs of the Genoese Bar. Clea didn’t show up that night, either. Nor had she appeared by one-thirty the following night.
By Friday Slade’s vigil in the bar had become as much a test of his courage and endurance as anything to do with Clea. He was intent on proving to himself that he could stick it out for one more night; that the low ceiling and dark corners weren’t able to drive him up the stairs in defeat.
That night he was drinking Cabernet Sauvignon. He had a headache, he was sleep-deprived, he was in a foul mood. He sure didn’t feel the slightest bit romantic.
At one-forty, Clea walked down the stairs into the bar.
Slade eased well back into the shadows as she stood on the stairs looking around, her red hair in its usual wild swirl. Her jade-green evening suit boasted a silk camisole that clung to her breasts. He fought down a jolt of lust that infuriated him.
Be damned if he was going to fall at her feet in abject gratitude because she’d finally shown up.
From his stance against the wall he watched her search the room from end to end, checking out the men at the bar, the dancers, the seated, noisy crowd. On her face settled a look compounded of satisfaction, as though she’d proved her point, along with a sharp, and very real, regret.
The regret interested him rather more than he cared for.
Clea took the last of the stairs into the bar and wormed her way across the dance floor, her eyes darting this way and that. She couldn’t see Slade anywhere. So he’d failed The Test. Given up. If indeed, he’d ever been here at all.
I’ll wait, he’d said. But he’d lied.
A cold lump had settled in her chest. Hadn’t she believed him when he’d said he’d wait for her? So, once again, her low opinion of the male of the species had been confirmed, rather more painfully than usual. She straightened her shoulders and tried to relax the tension in her jaw; when she reached the bar she ordered a glass of white wine and gave the room one more sweep.
Two men and a woman were edging toward her, old friends from Cannes; she hugged each of them, tossed back her wine and, with a defiant lift of her chin, walked out onto the dance floor with the taller of the two men.
Slade, watching, saw how the man’s arm encompassed her waist, how his fingers were splayed over her hip. His anger rose another notch. Playing the field…her specialty.
