Affair of Honor (6 page)

“Do you know how to play any of the card games?” Ryder asked, glancing down at her animated expression with a warm, amused look in his eyes.

“No, I’ll watch you for a while. I think the slot machines are going to be more my speed.”

“Stand close behind me and we’ll see just how much good luck you’re capable of bringing me tonight,” he drawled, taking a place at one of the green baize-topped tables. The young and attractive woman dealing the cards turned a very brilliant smile on her latest customer.

“I think the croupier is trying to make a pass at you,” Brenna warned Ryder in a dramatically low tone.

“Nonsense.” Ryder grinned cheerfully. “She’s paid to smile like that at everyone. Now keep very quiet while we’re playing and put your hand on my shoulder so I’ll know you’re there.”

“You think the hand on the shoulder is necessary?”

“It’s how the luck gets channeled from you to me,” he explained.

“Oh.”

And then it was too late to say anything else. The attractive croupier began to deal the cards and Ryder gave the game his full attention. Brenna dutifully kept her crimson nails resting lightly on the pale blue-gray jacket shoulder and watched in fascination. Ryder played with the professionalism with which he did everything else, she thought fleetingly. Fully alert but serenely in control of himself and, apparently, of his luck. He was winning.

“There you go,” he concluded, pocketing his chips at last and turning away from the table. “What did I tell you? Tonight is my lucky night. Come on, lady, let’s go find another game to play.”

At the wheel of fortune Brenna took a chance herself, putting an entire dollar onto the number she had chosen. When it came back doubled, she lifted happy, glowing eyes to Ryder, who was standing close, his arm around her waist.

“This could be an easier way to make a living than teaching philosophy,” she announced.

He laughed. “Is teaching philosophy so hard?”

That question brought back unwelcome reminders of the real world waiting for her at the start of the fall semester. “It isn’t the teaching that’s so bad, it’s…never mind. I want to try the slots!”

He made no attempt to force her back into the unpleasant path the conversation was taking, guiding her instead to the nearest of a bank of quarter slots. There she began to plunk in quarters with an enthusiasm that would have astounded her at another time.

“Somehow it doesn’t seem like real money here,” she explained apologetically as the machine politely gobbled up quarter after quarter. The apology in her voice was due to the fact that it was Ryder who had financed her go at the slots.

“Go on trying,” he instructed, unperturbed. “I keep telling you we can’t lose tonight.”

With the next quarter he was proved correct. Instead of swallowing it and waiting implacably for the next feeding, the machine began to tinkle with the delightful sound of cascading quarters.

“Ryder, look! We’re rich!”

“I’ll get a cup to put the loot in,” he said, grinning.

Brenna stood trying to estimate her winnings as he disappeared momentarily and then returned with a cardboard cup. Laughing with delight, Brenna scooped the coins into it.

“We’ll never be able to carry all this!”

“All we have to do is get it as far as the cashier’s stand. They’ll turn it into nice lightweight bills,” he told her.

“The casino management will probably ask us politely to leave if we keep this up.” Brenna chuckled as they moved off down the aisle of slot machines.

“A couple of hundred bucks isn’t going to break them. Still, maybe we should take a little time out.”

“I thought you were supposed to stick with a hot streak once you had one going,” she protested.

“Oh, I intend to pursue the hot streak. On the dance floor.”

Brenna thought about that as he guided her toward the lounge that overlooked the gambling floor. A sophisticated trio was playing while more of the scantily clad waitresses moved back and forth among the intimate cocktail tables. She thought about it carefully, trying to analyze the situation. For the first time that evening she asked herself silently what she might be getting into, but when Ryder took her in his arms, the questions faded back beyond the edges of the pleasant dream world she was inhabiting this evening.

He wrapped her close, the possessiveness she had sensed in him all evening seeming to escalate by several quantum leaps. His hand moved down her back to the base of her spine, pressing her audaciously into his warmth. Ryder’s breath moved a tiny, loose tendril of hair as he inhaled the scent of her. Without protest, Brenna settled her head on his strong shoulder.

“Enjoying yourself this evening, lady?” he growled very softly.

“Yes,” she admitted unhesitatingly. “Very much. And you?”

“I thought things were going to be a bit rough for a while but now everything seems to be going smoothly, doesn’t it? Yes, I’m enjoying myself. I’m enjoying
you
. I think I mentioned once before that I like the feel of you under my hands.”

An unexpected tremor went through her as he suited action to words and moved his fingers compellingly along her spine. Brenna found herself drinking in the feel of his hard body, the totally male fragrance of his skin, and the indefinable, incredibly complex combination of factors that were attracting her senses. It was a magic night, made even more so because she didn’t believe in magic. With a sense of curiosity and desire she moved her nails lightly at the back of his neck, twisting her fingers delicately in the tawny depths of his hair.

His reaction was immediate and electric. His hold on her tightened and his deep voice became very soft indeed. The whisper of silk on a knife blade, Brenna thought, intrigued. What was it about Ryder’s voice that she should remember?

“Dangerous,” she suddenly said dreamily, her eyes closing.

“What’s dangerous?”

“You are when your voice gets very gentle and soft.” She smiled without lifting her lashes.

“I’m not the one who’s dangerous tonight,” he whispered, finding the curve of her ear with the tip of his tongue in a quick, sensuous tasting action. “You’re the one who represents a real threat.”

“Hah!” She snuggled closer, moving her fingers on the back of his neck this time just inside the line of his collar. “I am a prudent, circumspect, well-behaved faculty member of a very respected college.”

“Who goes around climbing through the bedroom windows of unsuspecting males and seducing them on the dance floor,” Ryder concluded for her throatily.

“I am not,” Brenna stated categorically, “seducing you!”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

Brenna opened her eyes and found him watching her face with an intensity that stirred her senses. “Do you feel seduced?” she asked interestedly.

“I feel as though I were being swept out into the middle of Lake Tahoe. It’s very deep out in the middle of the lake, lady. A man could be dragged under and never find his way back to the surface,” Ryder murmured, his voice vibrating with the purr of a lion.

“I have the feeling you’re a very strong swimmer.”

“The danger is that I might not want to swim away in time.”

“Is this some sort of cryptic warning?” Brenna dared.

“Perhaps.”

“A cryptic warning,” she repeated wisely. “Then I shall have to be very careful, won’t I?”

His shoulder lifted easily in a movement that suggested the matter was out of his hands. “Perhaps. Then again, if it’s all a twist of fate, nothing you do will have much effect.”

“You forget that I don’t believe in fate.”

“In which case you’re stuck having to take full responsibility for your own actions, aren’t you?” he taunted huskily, inclining his head to drop the smallest of suggestive little kisses on the curve of her throat.

“I,” she announced bravely, aware of a pleasant warmth creeping through her veins, “am a great believer in personal responsibility.”

“So am I,” he returned. “Because even when fate and luck are involved, there are always choices to be made. The choice tonight will be yours, lady. Think twice before you select the riskier option, because I will hold you to it.”

“Another cryptic warning?” she teased.

“I suppose,” he sighed and pulled her closer.

They danced several more numbers and Brenna found herself surrendering to the natural grace of his body. She had the feeling that she wasn’t nearly as coordinated, even though no one had ever thought her ungraceful. But he made it easy to slide into the pattern of his rhythm, and once into it, she didn’t want to back out.

“It’s nearly two,” Ryder said at last as they walked off the floor and back to their small table.

“Really?” Brenna stifled a delicate little yawn. “Time for me to be crawling through somebody’s window, hmmm?”

“Not unless it’s mine. Are you ready to go home?”

“Yes.” She took another look at the still-lively casino gambling floor. “Don’t these places ever close?”

“No. Come, lady. Let’s go home to bed.”

She looked up at that as he got to his feet beside her, searching his voice and expression for innuendos and double meanings. But Ryder merely smiled back, taking her arm and leading her through the casino and out into the parking lot.

Safely inside the cockpit of the red Ferrari, Brenna leaned her head back against the leather seat and watched the passing scenery of night-darkened pines and lake with a pleasant, floating feeling. Ryder didn’t speak as he drove, but she was aware of a sense of closeness that didn’t seem to need words. A man apart. Different, complex, intriguing. But there was a vulnerability in him, she thought fleetingly. A vulnerability he tried to mask with self-confidence and self-reliance. She had seen it briefly this evening after the truth about his past had emerged.

“Did you want me to know, Ryder?” she whispered suddenly.

“Know what?”

“About the way you used to make your living.”

He hesitated. “I’m not sure. I told myself it would be better if you didn’t find out, but then I found myself taking you to meet the Gardners. A part of me must have guessed the truth would come out there. I guess I must have wanted it out in the open before things went very far between us.”

“A question of honor?” she chided gently.

“In a way,” he replied evenly.

“Admirable.” She nodded, smiling. “But you needn’t have worried.”

“Because you’re not going to hold it against me?” He slid her an enigmatic glance.

“No, because things aren’t going to go so far between us that it will matter,” she retorted lightly, knowing that her response was a kind of challenge.

But it was a challenge he evidently didn’t intend to pick up. Ryder said nothing, concentrating on his driving.

He still said nothing as he parked the Ferrari and walked her to her front porch. Then he turned to her and spoke with gentle urgency.

“Invite me in, lady. For a nightcap.”

She met his eyes, aware of her own quickening pulse and the sensuous silver of his gaze. “I…I don’t have any brandy.”

“Tea will be fine.”

For a moment the force of his will seemed to collide with the wavering shield of her ambivalence. It was a contest in which ambivalence stood little or no chance. Fingers trembling ever so slightly with an excitement and a fear she didn’t want to name, Brenna handed him her key.

Without a word he inserted it in the lock and pushed open the door.

“I’ll build a fire,” he said as he closed the door with a decisiveness that made the creeping warmth in Brenna’s veins flare a little hotter. She watched him move across the room with that easy, catlike stride and then she turned and went toward the kitchen.

A few minutes later she stood staring unseeingly at the teakettle, waiting for the water to boil and listening to the sounds of Ryder constructing the fire. What was she doing? Did she even want to think about it?

An air of inevitability settled on her. It was something that seemed to have been enveloping her for most of the evening but that she had deliberately avoided facing. It was easier to take each event as it occurred even though common sense saw the ultimate conclusion to the pattern that was forming. Brenna poured the tea water over the leaves in the ceramic pot and prepared a tray with cups and saucers.

She found Ryder sprawled on the sofa, staring into the fire as she emerged from the kitchen with her tray. He looked up as she came forward, silvery eyes roving over her with a muted hunger that couldn’t quite be hidden. It was a hunger that found an answering response deep in Brenna, and the cups rattled a little as she set down the tray on the round wicker table.

“To a night of decadent pleasure,” she toasted with a determined lightness as she poured the tea and handed him his cup.

“Philosophy professors don’t usually spend their summer evenings cavorting in gambling dens with writers of sleazy men’s fiction?” Ryder queried dryly as he took the cup.

“I don’t. Not usually,” she stated calmly, lashes dropping as she sipped the soothing brew.

“Come now, surely there have been philosophers who have argued in favor of what is commonly referred to as the good life?” Ryder seemed willing to follow her mood. That surprised Brenna a little. But it fit in with the conflicting signals she had received before from him. She could be absolutely certain one moment that he wanted her and in the next he made it clear that she could set the pace and determine the direction. She didn’t quite understand.

“Oh, there have been several who advocated a life of pleasure, but I’m afraid they had the pleasures of intellectual discovery in mind, not the more worldly ones,” she lectured flippantly. “Even poor, maligned Epicurus was much more concerned with the pleasure of the pursuit of knowledge than the pleasures of the body. His opponents were the ones who made the word ‘epicurean’ a byword for a luxurious lifestyle. Epicurus and his circle of followers were really quite restrained. Even so, I suppose he was a little radical compared to some of the others who advocated a very stoic existence,” she finished speculatively, glancing into the fire.

“Nevertheless,” Ryder persisted softly, “there are philosophical theories that could be used to justify either life in the fast lane or a more cerebral existence?”