“Except yourself,” Cameron reminded her.
“But that’s just it,” Tracy said. “I’m not sure I have a self now, at least not one I care about. It sounds terrible but it’s actuall
y amazingly freeing. I have no boundaries, no limits. I feel reckless.” Incongruously, she started to laugh. “I daresay I sound like a lunatic!”
“Not to me.”
As suddenly as it had started, Tracy’s laughter stopped. When she spoke again she was deadly serious.
“She was here, in Geneva. Althea. I know she was. I lost her this time but I’m getting closer.”
“Well, if I can help in any way, any way at all, I’d like to,” said Cameron. Reluctantly releasing Tracy’s hand, he pulled a business card out of his pocket. Scrawling a separate, private cellphone number on the back he handed it to her. “Call me any time, Tracy. About anything.”
Tracy took the card. “I will,” she said gratefully. “And thank you for dinner.”
“The pleasure was mine.” Cameron stood up. “I’d better go. I have early meetings tomorrow.”
Tracy watched him leave. She still couldn’t quite believe she’d spent the entire evening talking so intimately with a man she barely knew. But perhaps it was because they barely knew each other that she felt able to talk to Cameron Crewe. To reveal her true feelings, her true pain. We’re like two Vietnam vets. Strangers, but also family in a way, bonded by the loss of our children.
The curtain of loss that had fallen over both their lives had given them a sort of emotional shorthand. Like a fast forward button in their relationship. But fast forward to what?
Tracy could still feel the warmth of Cameron’s palm over hers. Guiltily, she recognized the long-forgotten stirrings of arousal in her body. Faint traces of a part of her that had once been there, once known intimacy of a different kind.
Life goes on. Isn’t that what people say? Tracy didn’t agree. It seemed to her that life had no business going on, not without her darling Nicholas. What she was doing now wasn’t living. It was existing. A mere mechanical matter. Inhale, exhale. Eat, sleep. Day, night. Anything more would be a betrayal.
Tonight had felt like something more. Talking to Cameron Crewe, looking into his sad, intense eyes. It had felt good.
That mustn’t happen again.
BACK AT HIS GENEVA apartment—Cameron Crewe kept apartments in every city where he did business—Cameron lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
That mustn’t happen again.
He’d been too open with Tracy Whitney. Too unguarded. Cameron knew from experience how dangerous it was to open one’s heart. What devastating consequences could follow.
And yet he’d felt a powerful connection to Tracy. He’d felt compassion. And kinship. And something else too. Something much more dangerous.
Desire.
Cameron wanted Tracy.
The realization filled him with excitement, and with fear.
He closed his eyes, switched on his iron discipline, and forced himself to sleep.
CHAPTER 13
FULL HOUSE.”
The fat man grinned, revealing a set of the ugliest teeth Hunter had ever seen, and reached forwards across the table to scoop up his winnings. Hunter’s arm shot out to stop him.
“Sorry, Antoine.” Hunter slowly laid four beautiful jacks slowly out on the table. “I believe that’s my game.”
The Frenchman made a noise that was part anger and part disbelief. Jack Hanley, or whatever his real name was, had shown up in Riga a week ago and proceeded to clean up at every major poker table in the city. The stakes weren’t particularly high tonight. The Frenchman could afford to lose, as could the Latvian businessmen at tonight’s game. Still, there was something about Jack Hanley, a certain American arrogance dressed up as humility, that was starting to get on everybody’s nerves. That and the fact that he always quit when he was ahead.
“Is that really the time?” Hunter glanced at the antique grandfather clock in the corner of the room. “I think I’d better call it a night.”
Ignoring the grumbling of his fellow players—it was after midnight after all—Hunter grabbed his coat and headed into the night.