The glass of Scotch warmed in Gideon’s fingers. In a few minutes he would try another blackjack table, but it was hard to work up any genuine enthusiasm for the idea. Vegas no longer functioned in its assigned role. It no longer provided the shot of adrenaline or the short, temporary fix he got from winning. What really bothered Gideon was that he didn’t even seem to care when he lost. He felt no pang of regret. There was only a deep desire to settle the future with Hannah.
He had come to Vegas for a few days because he couldn’t stand the waiting. Hoping that the glitter and the fake excitement would take his mind off Hannah, Gideon had quietly slipped out of Tucson. But he might as well go back. Vegas wasn’t going to work.
“Lucky as usual, Cage?”
Somehow the voice at his elbow didn’t surprise him. Gideon didn’t move. He kept his eyes on a man in lizard skin boots and a white Stetson who was playing blackjack. “Ballantine, don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around?”
Hugh Ballantine sat down, putting himself between Gideon and the view of the man in the lizard skin boots. “No. Not at the moment.” He sipped the martini he had brought over to the table. The vivid blue eyes were shadowed and watchful. “I phoned your office and your secretary said you were out of town. I asked her if you were in the Caribbean or Seattle. She said neither.”
“So you knew exactly where to look.” Gideon gave up trying to watch the blackjack player and resigned himself to looking at Ballantine. “Why?”
Hugh shrugged. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“Why?” Gideon asked again, wondering at his own patience.
“She believes you.”
“Who? My secretary? Of course she believes me. She’s paid to believe me.”
Ballantine shook his head. “Hannah. Hannah believes you.”
Gideon felt his insides tighten. “About what?”
“About the past.”
“Why are you here, Ballantine?”
“I think I started believing your version of what happened after I realized that, even though she had a lot of reasons to hate your guts, Hannah believed you.”
“Don’t do me any favors. I don’t give a damn whether you believe me or not. If you’ve come all this way just to tell me that, you’ve wasted your time. In the end it just doesn’t make any difference.”
“I know. Nothing makes much difference to you, does it?”
Gideon didn’t bother to answer. He took a swallow of his drink instead.
Ballantine leaned forward suddenly. “Tell me about him.”
“About who? Your father?”
“Yes, damn it.”
“He was your father, not mine. You must have known him better than I did.”
“That’s not true, Cage and you know it. I wasn’t his real son. You were. I knew that from the time I was in high school. Why the hell do you think I avoided anything that was even remotely connected with the business world for so long? I couldn’t compete against you.”
Gideon eyed him. “I don’t recall you even trying.”
Ballantine smiled slightly. “There was no point. You were older, stronger, tougher, shrewder. You were everything Cyrus Ballantine wanted in his son.”
“He had a strange way of demonstrating his paternal affection.”
Ballantine looked at him. “That’s why I couldn’t believe your version of what happened nine years ago. I couldn’t believe Dad would do that to you.”
“And you still don’t.”
“Hannah does.”
“She’s only got my word for it.”
“That seems to be enough,” Ballantine said.
“Are you trying to tell me Hannah’s feelings on the subject are enough for you?”
“Let’s just say she’s put doubts in my mind.”
Gideon paused and then said calmly, “I can remove those doubts by telling you that Hannah has been wrong about me on other occasions. There’s no reason to trust her instincts this time.”
“Tell me about him, Cage.”
Gideon sighed. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Everything. He was foreign to me. A stranger. I wanted to know him but he was always busy. Always gone. Always working on something important. And then there you were to help him with the busy, important things that kept him gone so much of the time. I just want to know something about him.”
“You set out to avenge a man you never knew?”
Ballantine’s mouth curved wryly. “He was my father.”
“You want to know the truth? You’re more of a man than he ever was. Cyrus Ballantine would never have changed the whole direction of his life to avenge a man he never knew. He wouldn’t have bothered to do it for someone he knew well. Your father was brilliant, manipulative, and entirely self-centered. He’d have laughed himself sick if he had known that the two of us would go to war because of him. Cyrus fought his own battles but not those of other people. He did, however, have an odd sense of humor. It would have amused him to know that neither of us has been able to get him out of our lives. He’d have liked the idea that he was still manipulating us in some way.”
“You hate him, don’t you?”
Gideon thought about it. “No. Not any more.”
“When did you stop?”
“I don’t know. A long time ago. When did you stop hating him?”
Hugh looked down at his drink. “I didn’t know I hated him until I transferred all the hate to you. Hannah told me I blamed you for killing him because I didn’t want to find any weakness in Cyrus. I didn’t want to admit that he could be destroyed physically and emotionally just because he’d been destroyed financially.”
“Hannah has a lot to answer for,” Gideon mused. “She’s got a bad habit of handing out advice even when no one asks for it.”
“She’s got a talent for it. She sees things in people.”
Gideon sighed. “I know.”
“She could do a lot with that kind of ability,” Ballantine said quietly. “She could use it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She could be dangerous,” Ballantine said simply. “She’s honest and up front about handing out the advice but it wouldn’t be hard for her to be less direct. Add a dose of Machiavelli to Hannah Jessett and you’d have a very dangerous combination. She’s the kind of woman who could manipulate others fairly easily in subtle ways. It’s a useful skill.”
It was Gideon’s turn to smile wryly. “I know. But I don’t think she’s ever realized it. Maybe she wouldn’t care if she did. She’s more interested in being dangerous in other ways. She’s got a ghost of her own to exorcise.”
“A ghost like Cyrus?”
“In a way.”
Ballantine was silent for a while. Gideon decided that it felt odd sitting there across from the man who had sworn to ruin him. But maybe no odder than whatever Ballantine was feeling.
“I wanted to be you,” Ballantine said finally. “I guess I wanted to be the man who was even smarter and tougher than my father.”
Gideon took a deep breath. “Change your mind?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I told Hannah that when I looked at you, I saw myself looking back. The man I was nine years ago. You can be whoever you want to be, Hugh, but if you want some free advice, I’d suggest being yourself. Your father and I aren’t particularly good role models. Just ask Hannah.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.”
Gideon put down his glass. “No, you won’t. That was just a figure of speech. You won’t go near Hannah looking for advice or anything else. She’s already given you as much as you’re going to get. You can have Surbrook, Ballantine. God knows you’re going to pay enough for it. And you can have as many of my clients as you can steal. But you can’t have Hannah.”
Ballantine cocked a brow. “You think you can have her?”
“When I really want something, I usually get it.”
“And you really want Hannah,” Ballantine said calmly
.
“Yes.”
“How are you going to get her, Cage? You can’t buy a woman like Hannah. I know. I tried. Do you have any idea how much I offered?”
“I saw the letter.”
“So how are you going to get her?”
“That’s not your problem.”
“No, but I’m curious.” Ballantine regarded him with deep interest. “The only way you’ll get her is if she comes to you. Think she’ll do that, Cage?”
Gideon’s fingers tightened around the glass. “I’ve told you, it’s not your problem, Ballantine.”
Hugh got to his feet, a tinge of humor in his blue eyes. “Just trying to take a few lessons from a master. A wise man never passes up the opportunity to learn. Know what I think?”
“No, and I don’t particularly care.”
“I think you haven’t got the vaguest idea of how to go about getting Hannah. You’re just praying she’ll decide she wants you. Because if she decides differently, you’re not going to be able to do a damn thing about it.”
Gideon smiled but there was no trace of amusement in the expression. “Don’t go near her, Ballantine.”
Hugh considered the advice. “Hannah told me that if I wasn’t very, very careful I might grow up to be just like you. It was a sobering thought.” He turned and walked away.
Gideon watched him go. Then he finished his drink and headed back to the card tables. He needed something to loosen the savage tightness that gripped him and it was clear the Scotch wasn’t going to do the trick. He would try the cards again.
Time passed in Vegas the way it always did, in perpetual night. Two evenings after the encounter with Ballantine, Gideon decided that there wasn’t much point remaining for another cycle of eating, gambling, swimming, and sleeping. He was bored, restless, and tense. As a means of taking his mind off Hannah, Vegas wasn’t working. He sat at a blackjack table with a drink beside him and tried to find some measure of interest in the ace and jack he had just been dealt.
“Feeling lucky?”
Gideon closed his eyes as the clear, quiet, slightly amused voice flowed over him. Then slowly he turned to look at Hannah. She was standing to his right, slightly behind him. The chandeliers created a soft nimbus around the riot of tawny brown curls. She was wearing a safari dress in olive green silk that was trimmed with gold buttons on the epaulets, pockets and cuffs. She was leaning a little on her cane, smiling at him, and she looked wonderful. He saw the anticipation in her eyes and allowed himself to hope that at last everything was going to be all right.
Without a word Gideon folded his cards and left the table. He took the three steps it required to bring him to Hannah and then he just stood there looking down at her.
“I thought you’d never get here.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms. “My God, lady, I’ve been waiting forever.”
He kissed her then, a quick, hard, kiss full of desperation and relief and hope. Hannah responded and then Gideon knew for certain that it really was going to be all right.
THE ROUND BED sat on a red-velvet platform in the center of the suite. It was wonderfully, outrageously tacky, just like the rest of the hotel room. The canopy overhead was mirrored, and when Hannah looked up she could see herself and Gideon reflected in garish decadence. The red-velvet spread was pushed to the foot of the bed and the gold sheets were in chaos. Gideon was lying on his stomach, half asleep, his leg and arm making Hannah a prisoner. She wasn’t struggling very hard to free herself, although she was far from sleepy. She lay quietly on her back, her arms behind her head, and smiled up at the scene in the mirror.
“You make me nervous when you smile like that.” Gideon didn’t open his eyes.
“How did you know I was smiling?”
“I can feel it.”
“Oh.”
“What are you thinking about?” Gideon lifted his lashes slightly, the gold flecks in his eyes glittering as he watched her.
“Nothing that should make you nervous.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He raised himself up on one elbow. “Tell me what you’re thinking about?”
“Revelation Island.”
He groaned. “At a time like this?”
Hannah’s smile deepened. “The great part is that I can think about it at a time like this. It wasn’t so long ago, Gideon, when I was convinced I couldn’t. That’s why I went back to Santa Inez. I thought I would have to choose.”
“Between me and Revelation Island?”
“In a way. I was sure that choosing to write my book would change everything, and it will, but not the way I thought it would. I know now that I can control my future.”
“Nord and the book kept getting in my way,” Gideon muttered. “Every time I tried to find a path to you I found them blocking it. I was afraid I was going to lose you to them.”
“You almost did.” She turned on her side to look at him.
Gideon frowned. “I just realized you’re not wearing the necklace.”
“No. I threw it away.”
He looked shocked. “But you said it was important to you.”
“It was. But it isn’t any longer. It’s a long story, Gideon. Sure you want to hear it right now?”
“Yes. But I think I already know part of it.”
“What part?” Hannah studied his face.
“That necklace scared the hell out of me. I came to think of it as somehow associated with the changes you were going through. I could feel you slipping past me just as I was finally figuring out what I wanted. I was trying to find a way of getting to you but you were busy striking out in a whole different direction. I was terrified it was going to be a direction that didn’t include me.”
“It wouldn’t have included you or anyone else,” Hannah said. “Just as the direction you’ve been going in for the past nine years hasn’t allowed room for anyone. I was going to be as strong as you and my aunt and Vicky. I was going to be very powerful and very free. It was heady stuff, Gideon. It was as if I’d gone to visit the same sorceress the three of you had visited and she’d made me the same offer. I could have the power and success I needed to prove to myself that I was as strong as Aunt Elizabeth had been or as Vicky Armitage was. I could fulfill the promise I had shown in college. All I had to give up in exchange was any real involvement with other people and other things. All I had to do was focus completely on what I wanted, and it would be mine.”
Gideon’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. “It’s a lousy bargain, Hannah. I know. The price is very high.”
“It has its compensations. My aunt was happy with her choice.”
“You’ll never known for certain. You said yourself you didn’t know her that well. No one did.”
Hannah’s mouth curved. “That’s the paradox, isn’t it? You can’t know well someone who has chosen that kind of path in life. I guess we can’t argue the matter. Neither of us can prove anything one way or the other. But I think, on the whole, she was satisfied with her choice.”
“I wasn’t satisfied with my choice,” he pointed out roughly. “I told myself I was, but you knew the minute you met me that I was lying through my teeth.”
“You probably weren’t satisfied because you didn’t willingly choose your route to isolation and power. It was more or less forced on you. You were a successful man nine years ago, a reasonably ambitious man who had the skill and the talent to take most of what he needed and wanted in life. But you hadn’t closed off the rest of the world. You had that father-son relationship with Ballantine, for one thing. It was important to you. You also had your interest in map collecting. You got married. Then Ballantine betrayed you and all at once you only wanted one thing. Your focus became very narrow, very fierce. You wanted revenge, and to get that you had to have more than your natural share of power. That’s when you made your bargain with the sorceress.”
“There is no sorceress, Hannah. There are only choices. We all have to make them. That’s what you were doing down on Santa Inez, was
n’t it? Making a choice between me and…and something else that could have been yours. Something that would have made you into a woman like your aunt. If you had chosen that other path you would have left me behind and never looked back. That’s why I’ve been going out of my head here in Vegas. I knew there wasn’t going to be much I could do to keep you from becoming an Amazon. And I also knew that Amazons don’t need men like me.”
“Just as you haven’t really needed any one woman for the past few years,” Hannah said with a touch of wistfulness. “There’s something to be said for not needing anyone else, for being entirely self sufficient. The sky’s the limit, then. There’s a certain kind of freedom in that, Gideon.”
“There’s a certain kind of hell in that.”
“Do you think you’ve really changed?” she asked.
“You’re the one with the good people instincts. You tell me.” He leaned over to kiss her lightly, his mouth warm and lingering. But his eyes didn’t lose their intensity.
“Sometimes it’s hard to be sure about someone when you’re too close. It’s tough to be objective,” Hannah whispered. “From the beginning I could see a part of you very clearly. But there were other sides of you that were always hidden.”
“Maybe that’s because I didn’t understand them myself. Or because I learned to hide them a long time ago.”
“Maybe. The point is, I couldn’t be sure what the hidden part of you really meant. I didn’t know how strong it was or even what influence it would have over you. When we first went to Santa Inez together I thought you might be capable of changing.”
“So you decided to take the risk of allowing me to become your lover. Then you got scared, didn’t you?”
“I was not frightened,” she said indignantly. “I merely came to the conclusion that I’d been deluding myself. You were never going to soften and as long as I was around you, I would be playing the unrewarding game of hitting my head against a stone wall. Besides, at that point I’d gotten into my aunt’s journals and I’d found the necklace. I was beginning to see that there were other possibilities in life.”