Raising the Stakes
“Everything okay?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You sure? My offer still stands. If you need me to talk to your boss—”
“Thanks, but it’ll be fine.”
“Yeah.” He reached for the radio, then changed his mind. He didn’t know why but he had the feeling almost anything, even a wrong choice in music, could spook her. “So, what kind of work do you do? No, don’t tell me, let me guess.” He looked at her. “You repair slot machines.”
“Me? No! I don’t…” She saw his mouth twitching and she laughed. “Try again.”
“First tell me where to go. Left? Right? Straight ahead?” He smiled. “Better still, point me toward some quiet little restaurant where we can have a glass of wine, a long lunch and get to know each other better.”
“Straight ahead,” she said, because it was turning out she didn’t know how to deal with this man’s flirting at all, because she knew she was blushing, because she wondered why she was behaving like such a fool. “Just continue toward the Strip.”
He sighed. “Struck out again.”
“Look. I’m really…” Really what? Not good at this stuff? “I’m really grateful for your help, but—”
“But you have a boyfriend named T
eddy and a boss named Scrooge and you have to get back to your office. I’m right about that, aren’t I? That you work in an office?”
“Yes,” she said.
He smiled. It was a nice smile and he was a nice-looking man with a nice sense of humor. Everything about him was nice. A winner, Cassie would say. Maybe Cassie would like to meet him. She could ask him his name, where he was staying, invite him to meet her at the Song for coffee and arrange for Cassie to be there…
“You’re an accountant.”
“Bad guess.” Dawn laughed. “I need to take off my shoes to balance my checkbook.”
“Yeah, well, so do I. That’s what pocket calculators are for.”
“In that case,” she said, with a little smile, “are you an accountant?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “It’s almost as bad, though. I’m a lawyer.”
“There’s nothing bad about being a lawyer.”
“No?”
“No.”
“That only means you haven’t heard the jokes.”
Dawn turned toward him, as far as the safety belt would permit. “What jokes?”
“Let’s see.” The light ahead turned red. Gray eased the car to a stop. “What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. What?”
“A good start.” Her laughter was so genuine that it made him laugh, too. Don’t stop while you’re ahead, he told himself, and fired off another. “Why do they use lawyers instead of rats in experimental labs?” He gave her just enough time to shake her head. “There are some things you just can’t get a rat to do.” She laughed even harder and he thought how nice it would be to take her to dinner tonight. “You never heard those jokes, huh?”
“They’re terrible,” she said, on a last chuckle. “Are you here on vacation?”
He said he was, that he’d decided he needed a change of scene for a few days. He asked her to recommend some places to see, not because he gave a damn about seeing places but because he liked the softness of her voice. He liked the way she smelled, too. He had the fan turned high and the air had taken on her scent, a delicate mix of flowery perfume and female musk. What would the lady say if she found out that he was sitting here saying all the right things while he inhaled the essence of her, and that doing it was turning him on? Maybe she’d admit that she was interested, too. He’d seen it in her smile, in her sudden awareness of him when he’d leaned over her.
The teddy bear didn’t know it, but it didn’t have a chance.