Raising the Stakes

She could almost see him as a little kid, dirty-faced, wearing jeans with holes in the knees, screwing up his courage to take a bite out of the snake. Tommy would probably do stuff like that, too, when he was older. When she’d saved enough to buy a little house somewhere, on a patch of land big enough for him to have a dog although she knew what he’d really want was a horse. Gray would know how to ride, coming from Texas the way he did. She could almost see her little boy, up on the back of a pony, Gray on a big horse, riding alongside him…

A horn bleated behind her. She jumped, glanced in the mirror and saw Gray pointing toward a blur up ahead. There it was. The dilapidated diner, the gas pump, the souvenir stand.

All she had to do was return the can and keep going. Or hang on to the can, to make it easier. She could hit the pedal and drive on, and what could Gray do about it? Nothing, except finally realize that she wasn’t interested in him or in playing the games men and women played. But she’d agreed this was a debt of honor. Dawn let out a sigh, turned into the gravel lot and parked. He pulled up alongside.

“You’re sure you want to eat at this place?” Gray asked, as they got out of their cars and walked toward the restaurant.

“It’s just dinner. Not gourmet…” She stopped and stared at the smudged window of the shack. Big black spots were moving purposefully across the surface. “Ants,” Dawn said. “And they’re inside, not outside.”

“No extra charge,” he said lightly, and smiled at her.

She could leave now. She’d done what she’d promised, gone with him, and whose fault was it that they obviously weren’t going to be able to have dinner here? She didn’t owe him anything, not really, and the truth was that she knew he didn’t really think it, either. But… Dawn’s heart edged into her throat. But, she didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to be with him a little while longer. All the things she knew about men, about what they wanted, about what was safe and what was dangerous, weren’t enough to hide the truth clamoring within her, that she’d felt more alive since meeting this man than she had in the last four years.

“Dawn?”

Their eyes met. He was giving her the choice, and she took her courage in her hands and made it.

“There’s a little caf;aae near town… If you like Mexican food.”

“Hey.” He raised his hands, held them palms out. “I’m from Texas, remember?”

They both smiled, and then they got back into their cars. He followed her again, just another twenty miles or so. She tried not to think about what she was doing because it was crazy. Crazy, and wrong…except she couldn’t come up with reasons why it was either. She wasn’t compromising Tommy’

s safety. She wasn’t promising a stranger anything more than dinner. How could what she was doing be dangerous?

She signaled a turn, looked in the mirror and saw him wave his hand. They pulled into the parking lot of a small restaurant that she and Cassie had discovered. It served the best fajitas in Las Vegas.

The hostess, a small woman with a big smile, led them to the patio. It was dusk, and the tables were lighted with fat candles stuck into a variety of small earthenware bowls; white fairy lights glinted in wooden latticework overhead.

Dawn hesitated. “Maybe we should eat inside,” she said, and looked up at him.

He knew what she was thinking, that this was a meal not a date, that they didn’t belong out here in this romantic setting. He decided not to crowd her.

“Whatever you prefer. I like it here. It’s relaxed and pretty, but if you’d rather go in…”

“There are no tables available inside, se;atnorita. If you don’t mind waiting ten, perhaps twenty minutes…?”

The breeze blew a strand of hair into Dawn’s eyes. She shoved it back. The choice wasn’t hers, it was fate’s, she thought, though she’d never believed in fate before.

“No, it’s foolish to wait. This is fine.”

Gray pulled out her chair. His hand brushed hers. It was accidental, but nothing could have prepared him for the electric tingle that shot from her fingers to his. She pulled away as if he’d burned her. Was she feeling the same kind of fear as when he kissed her, or was it different this time? He wanted it to be different, more than he could recall having wanted anything in a very long time.

The realization caught him off balance. He looked at Dawn, saw the same surprise mirrored in her eyes.

A waitress appeared beside the table and introduced herself with the kind of senseless good cheer that usually made Gray long for the days when nobody gave a damn if you knew what their name was. Now, he embraced the intrusion and when she handed him a wine list, he gave it far more attention that it deserved before asking for a California Chardonnay.

“Is that okay with you?”

Dawn said it was. Then she buried her face in the menu. He did, too. Something crazy was happening. He didn’t know this woman. What little he did know was disturbing. What was he doing, sitting across from her, feeling as awkward as a kid on his first date?

“Well,” he said, and almost winced. He sounded more jovial than the waitress. “Tell me about the weather here. Is it always so hot?”

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Now they’d talk about the weather, and then maybe the food, and after a while he’d catch her checking her watch and he’d do the same thing, and he’d wonder, later on tonight, why in hell he’d imagined wanting to be with her…

Except, it didn’t work out that way.

They began with weather but quickly, easily, moved on to other things. Books. Movies. The impossibility of tourists squeezed into polyester bermudas, Hawaiian shirts, black socks and shoes. Dawn was easy to talk to. She had a nice sense of humor, and, after a while, an easy smile. They talked about the casinos, and gambling, and he felt something inside him soften when she explained, earnestly, how she’d once been a dealer and how she’d never felt comfortable about it because so many people didn’t seem to know when to stop.