Raising the Stakes

“No. Of course not. Keir—Mr. O’Connell was very nice about—”

Hell, Gray thought, and took pity on her. “I’m sure he was,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “I think it’s time we introduced ourselves. I’m Gray Baron. And you are…?”

She looked from his face to his hand. He had to stop himself from actually checking his fingers for spots of soot but, finally, she made the decision.

“Hello.” She put down the papers and clasped his outstretched hand. Her fingers were cool; he thought maybe they even trembled a little…and then, suddenly he was the one who needed a lifeline because now that she didn’t have the papers clasped against her, he saw the name tag pinned to her lapel. It was enameled, he thought crazily, as if that mattered, in blue and gold.

“I’m Dawn,” she said, when he raised shocked eyes to hers. “Dawn Carter.”

* * *

Mary Elizabeth O’Connell watched her son pace from the Carrera marble fireplace to the window of her living room with its view of the city and distant mountains and back again. He’d been pacing ever since he’d entered her penthouse suite a few minutes ago.

“Mother,” he’d said, and kissed her cheek, “I thought I’d drop by to say hello.”

Mary didn’t buy that for a minute. Keir never visited her this early in the day. Her eldest son was a man who enjoyed the stability of routine. He always spent the first hours of the working day strolling through the hotel and the casino, greeting guests and staff and making sure that all was running smoothly. That had been his pattern ever since his father’s death six years ago, when Keir came west to help her with the Desert Song. He’d only varied it when she’d been ill.

He might be thirty-five but she could still read him like he was eleven and crazy to be the next star center on the Chicago Bulls. Keir had something on his mind and she knew it, but asking straight out had gotten her nowhere. Well, she should have figured that. He’d never been one to spill his concerns in anybody’s lap.

“Is there a problem?” she’d said, when she’d opened the door to his familiar knock.

“Must there be a problem for a son to pay his mother a visit?” he’d replied, and flashed a smile.

Mary pursed her lips. For a man who had no problem, her eldest son certainly seemed determined to wear a path through the carpet. He wasn’t talkative, either. Except for saying yes, he’d like some coffee—and she strongly suspected that had been out of politeness, not desire—Keir hadn’t spoken another word.

Time to take some action, she thought, and cleared her throat. “Keir?”

“Hmm?”

“You should have told me you disliked Kelim carpets.”

That stopped him. “What?”

“You’re going to wear a hole in my rug,” she said gently. “Come and sit down.” Mary smiled. “Besides, this excellent pot of coffee is going cold.”

“That excellent pot of coffee which is surely decaffeinated, as your doctor ordered. Right?”

“Right,” Mary said blithely, lying through her teeth. The doctor had ordered her to give up the cream in her coffee. He’d suggested she also give up the coffee but suggestions were only that, nothing more. “Will you have a slice of Jenny’s raisin cake?”

Keir sat down in the blue velvet chair opposite hers and shook his head as he accepted the delicate porcelain cup and saucer she handed him.

“Thank you, but no. Coffee’s all I want.”

Keir took a sip of coffee. One taste, and he flashed her a look through narrowed eyes that said he suspected the brew was the real stuff. She returned his gaze with what she hoped was charming innocence and, after another sip, he sighed and sat back in the chair, all but dwarfing it with his size. Looking at him she wondered, as she so often did, how she and her Ruarch could have produced such a son. Such sons, she thought, correcting herself. They were all so big. Not that her Ruarch hadn’t been big, too, and wonderfully brawny until almost the end, when he’d been so thin that it had broken her heart to see him…

“Mother?”

Lord, she missed him. Six years, and still she reached a hand out to touch him in the night. They’d spent more than forty-three years together, she and Ruarch. You didn’t meet a man when you were barely seventeen, marry him two months later, bear him six children and not feel as if a piece had been carved out of your heart when you lost him…

“Mother?”

Mary blinked away the past and smiled at her son. `Yes, love. Have you decided you’d like some cake after all?”

“Don’t try to divert me. You had that look on your face again.”

“What look?” Mary picked up a knife from the silver serving tray the maid had set on the low table between the two chairs. “Just a little slice, to keep Jenny happy.”

“Not even a crumb. It’s too early in the day.” Keir’s voice took on an edge of command. “None for you, either, Mother. You know what the doctor said.”