Diagnosis: Danger (16 page)
Natalya stiffened. She knew it. He was telling her that she’d leaped to conclusions about their relationship. They might never get to the stage where her being able to have children even mattered. She could feel her cheeks burning as she looked down at the floor. “Right.”
“First, I’m going to have to take you home to meet my parents.”
Her head shot up. “Excuse me?”
“Was the gunshot too loud?” he asked innocently. Lowering his head, he whispered against her ear. “I want you to meet my parents.”
Natalya felt numb all over again. But it was a good numb. She wanted to throw her arms around him, but instead, she deadpanned, “Why?”
“Well, I’m not sure how it goes in your culture, but a good Italian boy always brings the woman he intends to marry home to meet his mother.”
She’d thought about it, wanted it, mourned it when she thought it was no longer a possibility. But to hear him actually say it made her almost lightheaded. “Marry?”
Amusement echoed in his voice. “That gunshot really did wreak havoc with your hearing, didn’t it?”
“But you didn’t ask me,” she pointed out in her own defense.
“I just did.” And then he blew out a breath, feigning resignation. He took her hand in his, then pressed it against his chest. Against his heart. “Natalya Pulaski, I love you and I want you to marry me. It doesn’t have to be soon,” he added, not wanting to crowd her, “but it does have to be.”
Natalya looked at him innocently as the sound of sirens in the distance became audible. “And I have no say in it?”
“Only if it involves the word ‘yes.’”
She smiled, lacing her arms around his neck. He slipped his around her waist. “Then lucky for you, that was the word I was thinking.” The sirens grew louder. “Your people are fast. I’d better go and make sure the door’s unlocked,” she told him, assuming that he’d shut it in his wake when he’d walked in.
She glanced down at the man who had wanted to kill them both. It was over, Clancy was avenged. She felt a weight lifted from her heart.
Mike made no effort to release her.
“Not before I make this official,” he told her as she turned her face up to his.
Just before he kissed her.
Set in darkness beyond the ordinary world.
Passionate tales of life and death.
With characters’ lives ruled by laws the everyday world can’t begin to imagine.
NOCTURNE
It’s time to discover the Raintree trilogy…
New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard
brings you the dramatic first book
Raintree: Inferno.
The Ansara Wizards are rising and the Raintree clan must rejoin the battle against their foes, testing their powers, relationships and forcing upon themselves lives they never could have imagined before…
Turn the page for a sneak preview of the captivating first book in the Raintree trilogy,
Raintree: Inferno
by Linda Howard.
Available from next month exclusively from Intrigue.
by
Linda Howard
D
ante Raintree stood with his arms crossed as he watched the woman on the monitor. The image was in black and white to better show details; color distracted the brain. He focused on her hands, watching every move she made, but what struck him most was how uncommonly
still
she was. She didn’t fidget or play with her chips, or look around at the other players. She peeked once at her down card, then didn’t touch it again, signaling for another hit by tapping a fingernail on the table. Just because she didn’t seem to be paying attention to the other players, though, didn’t mean she was as unaware as she seemed.
“What’s her name?” Dante asked.
“Lorna Clay,” replied his chief of security, Al Rayburn.
“At first I thought she was counting, but she doesn’t pay enough attention.”
“She’s paying attention, all right,” Dante murmured. “You just don’t see her doing it.” A card counter had to remember every card played. Supposedly counting cards was impossible with the number of decks used by the casinos, but there were those rare individuals who could calculate the odds even with multiple decks.
“I thought that, too,” said Al. “But look at this piece of tape coming up. Someone she knows comes up to her and speaks, she looks around and starts chatting, completely misses the play of the people to her left—and doesn’t look around even when the deal comes back to her, just taps that finger. And damn if she didn’t win. Again.”
Dante watched the tape, rewound it, watched it again. Then he watched it a third time. There had to be something he was missing, because he couldn’t pick out a single giveaway.
“If she’s cheating,” Al said with something like respect, “she’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
“What does your gut say?”
Al scratched the side of his jaw, considering. Finally, he said, “If she isn’t cheating, she’s the luckiest person walking. She wins. Week in, week out, she wins. Never a huge amount, but I ran the numbers and she’s into us for about five grand a
week. Hell, boss, on her way out of the casino she’ll stop by a slot machine, feed a dollar in and walk away with at least fifty. It’s never the same machine, either. I’ve had her watched, I’ve had her followed, I’ve even looked for the same faces in the casino every time she’s in here, and I can’t find a common denominator.”
“Is she here now?”
“She came in about half an hour ago. She’s playing blackjack, as usual.
“Bring her to my office,” Dante said, making a swift decision. “Don’t make a scene.”
“Got it,” said Al, turning on his heel and leaving the security center.
Dante left, too, going up to his office. His face was calm. Normally he would leave it to Al to deal with a cheater, but he was curious. How was she doing it? There were a lot of bad cheaters, a few good ones, and every so often one would come along who was the stuff of which legends were made: the cheater who didn’t get caught, even when people were alert and the camera was on him—or, in this case, her.
It was possible to simply be lucky, as most people understood luck. Chance could turn a habitual loser into a big-time winner. Casinos, in fact, thrived on that hope. But luck itself wasn’t habitual, and he knew that what passed for luck was often something else: cheating. And there was the other kind of luck, the kind he himself possessed, but it depended not on chance but on who and what he was. He knew it was
an innate power and not Dame Fortune’s erratic smile. Since power like his was rare, the odds made it likely the woman he’d been watching was merely a very clever cheat.
Her skill could provide her with a very good living, he thought, doing some swift calculations in his head. Five grand a week equaled $260,000 a year, and that was just from his casino. She probably hit them all, careful to keep the numbers relatively low so she stayed under the radar.
He wondered how long she’d been taking him, how long she’d been winning a little here, a little there, before Al noticed.
The curtains were open on the wall-to-wall window in his office, giving the impression, when one first opened the door, of stepping out onto a covered balcony. The glazed window faced west, so he could catch the sunsets. The sun was low now, the sky painted in purple and gold. At his home in the mountains, most of the windows faced east, affording him views of the sunrise. Something in him needed both the greeting and the goodbye of the sun. He’d always been drawn to sunlight, maybe because fire was his element to call, to control.
He checked his internal time: four minutes until sundown. Without checking the sunrise tables every day, he knew exactly when the sun would slide behind the mountains. He didn’t own an alarm clock. He didn’t need one. He was so acutely attuned to the sun’s position that he had only to
check within himself to know the time. As for waking at a particular time, he was one of those people who could tell himself to wake at a certain time, and he did. That talent had nothing to do with being Raintree, so he didn’t have to hide it; a lot of perfectly ordinary people had the same ability.
He had other talents and abilities, however, that did require careful shielding. The long days of summer instilled in him an almost sexual high, when he could feel contained power buzzing just beneath his skin. He had to be doubly careful not to cause candles to leap into flame just by his presence, or to start wildfires with a glance in the dry-as-tinder brush. He loved Reno; he didn’t want to burn it down. He just felt so damn
alive
with all the sunshine pouring down that he wanted to let the energy pour through him instead of holding it inside.
This must be how his brother Gideon felt while pulling lightning, all that hot power searing through his muscles, his veins. They had this in common, the connection with raw power. All the members of the far-flung Raintree clan had some power, some heightened ability, but only members of the royal family could channel and control the earth’s natural energies.
Dante wasn’t just of the royal family, he was the Dranir, the leader of the entire clan. “Dranir” was synonymous with king, but the position he held wasn’t ceremonial, it was one of sheer power. He was the oldest son of the previous Dranir, but he would
have been passed over for the position if he hadn’t also inherited the power to hold it.
Behind him came Al’s distinctive knock on the door. The outer office was empty, Dante’s secretary having gone home hours before. “Come in,” he called, not turning from his view of the sunset.
The door opened, and Al said, “Mr. Raintree, this is Lorna Clay.”
Dante turned and looked at the woman, all his senses on alert. The first thing he noticed was the vibrant color of her hair, a rich, dark red that encompassed a multitude of shades from copper to burgundy. The warm amber light danced along the iridescent strands, and he felt a hard tug of sheer lust in his gut. Looking at her hair was almost like looking at fire, and he had the same reaction.
The second thing he noticed was that she was spitting mad.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
®
and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with
®
are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
First published in Great Britain 2008
by Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella 2007
ISBN 978-1-408-91477-9
There are more fantastic eBooks available FREE at
www.everyonesreading.com
Feel free to
or
today!
Sign-up to receive our eNewsletter today for the
latest news, information and special offers!
