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She knew. Shelby always knew why people acted the way they did. She made it her business to pay attention to those details. “Just guess.”
“Because I’m driven to make my company a success. I made too many mistakes when I was young.”
“Like you’re old now?” he asked.
“You know what I mean. Sometimes I’m amazed at how immature I was when we were together.”
He leaned back, resting his arm on the seat behind her. He wanted to pull her closer to him, to cradle her against his body and protect her. But Shelby didn’t need him to do that. He imagined that was what she’d been talking about. That men realized that Shelby was an independent woman who made her own way. It was a bit intimidating.
“You’ve done really well. I read an article about your company in Entrepreneur. The reporter said you were one of the savviest business minds he’d ever encountered.”
She shrugged the comment aside. “I think he was just being nice.”
“Reporters are never nice. He respected what you’d done.” Hayden realized he did, too. She’d taken the hand that life had dealt her and rolled with it.
“Well…” She shrugged. It was clear to him that Shelby wasn’t there yet. She didn’t really respect herself. Had he played any part in that?
“Let’s get back to us. I think your dad paid me off so—”
“No, Shelby. I paid that money to you.” He hadn’t meant to say it but it was best she knew the facts. He wasn’t playing around this game—the stakes were high and he wanted to be damn sure Shelby realized it.
“What?”
“Old Alan wanted to make sure I never forgot the lesson he was teaching. He gave you the money, then made me pay him back every cent.” His father had always been real fond of that kind of demonstration—one where the lesson was reinforced by humiliation. It didn’t help that Hayden had played on his father’s biggest weakness: a woman with big soul-filled eyes and an empty bank account.
“Hayden…I had no idea. I’m so sorry. I took the money…well, I didn’t mind taking it from your dad because I knew it was how he kept score.”
He said nothing. She’d pegged his father easily. It was how Alan kept score and he’d paid off three wives of his own, so Shelby knew that it didn’t bother him. Hayden didn’t say anything else but he knew that he’d paid for Shelby with more than just money. He’d paid for her with his soul and now he wanted hers.
Shelby couldn’t have been more shocked. She’d never imagined that Hayden had ultimately paid for her giving up their relationship. But then she’d allowed Alan to push a wedge between them. Let him threaten her with revealing the secret she’d kept from Hayden. The one she still didn’t really want him to know. She wished there were some way to escape the intimacy that he’d created around them. She didn’t want to be sitting so close to him while hashing out the past.
In her mind it was easy to pretend that she was noble and wanted to pay him back—whatever the cost—so that he could find some peace from the past. But the reality was, it hurt. She didn’t want to flirt with the only man with whom she’d ever really been honest emotionally.
She didn’t want to open up herself and him to the kind of hurt that would undoubtedly come. Because she knew that she wasn’t going to be able to just give him a week of sex and then watch him walk away.
Hayden put his arm around her and pulled her against his side. She closed her eyes and pretended that this was something else. Something that she’d done without for a long time. Comfort was easy to take from Hayden. He had big shoulders and a solid chest, and he was more than capable of carrying any burdens.
But that didn’t mean that eventually the burdens wouldn’t be too heavy for him. She turned in his embrace, put her arms around his waist and rested her head over his heart. His hands moved up and down her back, before settling on her hips, holding her close.
His breathing changed, grew heavier. She felt his body changing under hers as well. There was no getting around the fact that sexually they were like kindling and flame. But was that the kind of fire that could be tamed or would it once again consume them?
He brought one hand up under her chin, tipping her head back. “What are you thinking?”
She struggled against telling him the truth. He already saw more of her than anyone else except Paige. Most people she met were content to see only the surface of who she was—a driven, competent businesswoman. But Hayden…he’d known the vulnerable woman underneath. The one who still wasn’t sure of her place in the world.
“I’m thinking this is a mess that I made and it’s past time I cleaned it up.”
“I think we can both carry the blame,” he said, stroking her cheek with a gentleness that made her heart beat a little faster.
“Do you ever feel like life is really a great tragedy? Like the ones in operas?”
He didn’t say anything, only continued stroking her back. Shelby wondered if she’d said too much. Her life had never been ideal, but comparing it to a tragedy…She wasn’t some scared little miss. She needed to stop acting like one.
“I think that in some ways much of our lives is like opera, how operas show the intense emotions that sometimes influence our decisions. Why?”
This was the man who’d convinced her to take a chance and marry him. This soft poet’s soul that she’d scarcely glimpsed since her return to Vegas.
“I thought maybe we were caught at the end of the second act. You know, where all seems doomed.”
“And that maybe it was time to move on to the third act?”
She couldn’t answer. In one of her favorite operas, Tristan und Isolde, the third act had them both dying. But for a love that was so true and right that it captured both of their souls, uniting them even in death. Maybe that was the trailer-park girl deep inside her, but she wanted a man to love her that much.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
That was the million-dollar question. Alan wanted his son happy and expected her to fix whatever she’d broken when she left. Hayden wanted closure and revenge. But what did she want? Shelby had never really figured that out and it was time to. “I guess a chance to make this real.”
Hayden could tempt her into believing that if she showed him her soul he’d reward her with his heart. But she suspected if she did that, he’d take the revenge he so richly deserved. She felt the Sword of Damocles hanging over her. Knew that at any minute the hair might snap.
“How could it not be?” he asked in that deep voice of his.
He was right. There was nothing subtle about the man holding her and nothing tentative in him. He was going to pursue her for his own reasons and she had to decide what she was going to do. She knew with bone-deep certainty that she wasn’t going to resist him. He was her secret longing and she’d never forgotten him. So now she had to decide. Was she really going to meekly let him take charge of this? Or was she going to meet him on a level playing field?
“I want you, too, Hayden. And I have an offer for you.”
“I’m listening.” He traced the line of her spine up her back. His finger circled her neck and toyed with the strap of her camisole.
“Let’s make this real. Let’s say what this really is. I want a chance to get to know each other the way we never did before.”
He pulled the strap of her camisole toward her shoulder and then lowered his head, blowing on the exposed skin. As shivers moved down her arm and back, she undulated in his arms, holding more tightly to his waist.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
She couldn’t think when he was this close to her. When he surrounded her with his heat, his touch and his scent. She just wanted to close her eyes and pretend that they didn’t have the past between them. Close her eyes and imagine that Hayden MacKenzie really could want Shelby Paxton just for who she was.
“I’ll let you try to make me fall in love with you. But honestly, Shelby, I don’t have a heart.”
“Yes, you do. And I’m just the woman to find it.” She promised herself she would. There was no problem she couldn’t solve once she put her mind to it. She’d figure Hayden out—find out what made him tick—and slowly work her way into his heart, because she knew from hearing him speak of her betrayed that he still had one.
“You might be right. After all, you were the last one to see it.”
She shivered and this time it wasn’t from his touch. It was from the coolness beneath his words. She realized this time she may have risked more than she’d anticipated.
“Double or nothing,” she murmured, realizing that was exactly the bet she’d made. Both of their hearts united and at peace or once again broken.
“That’s the kind of gamble I make every day in business, but this…”
“I’m in if you are, Hayden,” she said, unable to keep the challenge from her voice.
“Oh, I’m in.”
Three
“The only way to do this is to live together,” Hayden said while they were eating dessert.
Shelby choked on a bite of her tiramisu. “What?”
He patted her back and handed her a glass of water. He liked the thought of it now. Her living in his home. Shelby there when he woke up and there when he went to sleep. She said she wanted a chance to know him, to seduce him this time. Living together made the most sense.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. No. I can’t think this late at night. I’ve had too much rich food.”
He smiled at the way she said it, but he knew the truth. She wasn’t ready to make a decision. Once she saw his home, though, she’d capitulate.
“Come up to my place and just see it.”
She shook her head.
He frowned. In the past, Shelby had never denied him anything. But of course, this wasn’t the past. And she was a different woman.
“Why not?”
“Because unlike you I need more than four hours of sleep every night. I need a solid eight and I’m tired.”
She had a point. His cell had been vibrating with new messages and he saw Raul, his general manager, hanging around the hostess stand waiting for him. Hayden’s reality involved work for almost a solid eighteen hours a day. But that didn’t mean he was letting this go. “Are you free for breakfast?”
“Just coffee. It takes a lot of work to open a store in three weeks, plus I have a conference call with Paige and the developers for our D.C. project at 9:00 a.m.”
He pulled his BlackBerry phone/PDA from his pocket and checked his calendar for tomorrow. He had an 8:00 a.m. meeting with the gaming commission. Followed by a meeting with his roulette-table staff. And he needed to talk to his head of security about the man who’d been sitting in the front row at each of Roxy’s performances for the last three weeks.
“What time?” he asked. He’d move some stuff around if he had to. But his schedule was already tight. Why was he doing this? He didn’t question his motives, only knew that if Shelby was willing to work toward something solid, hell, he was, too. It felt right, having her here with him.
She shook her head, her thick hair slipping over her shoulder and down her chest to curl over her breast. “I don’t know…seven?”
He remembered how her neck tasted, how soft her skin had felt under his touch, and everything in him went on alert. He wanted this woman. Wanted her naked in his bed. He could see her against his gray sheets. A splash of color in his black-and-white bedroom.
She stared at him.
“What is it? Seven isn’t good for coffee?”
He shook himself, but he couldn’t push away the image of her lying on his bed with a couple of pillows shoved under her hips. Those lush long legs open, inviting.
“No, that’s perfect. I’ll have a key card sent to your room. Just come up when you’re ready.” He was ready now. He didn’t know if he could wait. If he could let her set the pace for this reunion of theirs. He wanted to take the lead. Get her into bed and push away the past in the most elemental way. To reassert his dominance over her by making her his.
“Hayden…”
“Yes?” he said. He signed the check and slid out of the booth.
“I’m supposed to be seducing you,” she said, joining him.
“Do you think Tristan really waited for Isolde?” he asked, reminding her of the opera she loved, the one that he’d let her talk endlessly about when they’d dated long ago.
She smiled. It was all that was sexy and sweet. Much like the woman herself. “I’m sure he didn’t, but he was a warrior.”
“Maybe I am, too,” he said, putting his arm around her and leading her out of the restaurant. He’d learned some hard lessons when she’d left him. He’d become a different man because of her. He had realized he was no longer the golden boy who had everything handed to him. Instead, he knew, in his heart, he was a man who’d fight for what he wanted.
“I thought you were a gambler,” she said.
“Can’t a man be both?” he asked, leading her to the bank of elevators. He didn’t really want to dwell on his own shortcomings.
“You tell me,” she said.
“I already did.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m escorting you back to your room.”
“That’s so sweet,” she said.
He bit the inside of his mouth to keep from smiling. “I’m a sweet guy.”
“Ha. Don’t think you can put the moves on me and I’ll invite you in.”
“Put the moves on you? Give me a break. I’m a little more suave than that.”
They got in the elevator car. There was another couple already in there who got off on the thirtieth floor. Shelby’s suite was on the thirty-fifth. She pulled her key card from her purse when the elevator stopped on her floor.
“Good night,” she said, stepping out.
He followed her into the hall. “Yes, it has been.”
“Don’t, Hayden. This isn’t easy for me.”
“I’m not pushing, baby. I’m just seeing you home. Something we never did before.”
She flushed a little bit. He wondered at the secrets she hid. Her background wasn’t like his, and he hadn’t pushed her to talk about it. Maybe that had been part of the problem. He’d easily accepted the personal boundaries she’d set because they’d allowed him to make her into what he wanted her to be.
“About that…”
“Don’t say anything more. This is double or nothing. The stakes are high, and as you said, you need some sleep. We’ll start again in the morning.”
He took her key card from her hand and unlocked her door for her, pushing it open. She paused in the entryway, the glow from a lamp backlighting her.
She looked ethereal, with her thick wavy hair falling around her shoulders. Her skin was soft and pink, and that little white top skimmed her curves.
