most fascinating place she’d ever been, despite the fact that she was wearing a long coral-patterned gown when most of the other women were in short dresses or elegant pantsuits. But Cal was wearing an evening jacket and a black tie with his white silk shirt, and Nikki had garnered enough courage over boiled lobster earlier that evening to tell him how devastating he looked.
He’d given her a strange look over that remark, one she couldn’t puzzle out. She had the feeling he never knew whether or not people were lying to him, because he was rich. And she was suddenly glad that she wasn’t.
“You won,” he said into her ear, distracting her from the people-watching habit reporting had ingrained in her.
“Oh, I did?” she murmured vaguely, and asked how much.
He told her, and grinned at the stunned expression on her face.
When they cashed in the chips, she handed half a year’s salary to him, which produced an expression that was a cross between incredulity and disbelief.
“What the hell are you handing it to me for?” he asked. “You won it. It’s yours.”
“Oh no, it’s not. You staked me. Here.” She caught his big hand and pressed the wad of notes into it.
He stared at it as if it was a dead fish, lying green and lifeless on his palm. His deep-set eyes stared down into hers searchingly. “I assume you aren’t independently wealthy, if you work for a newspaper?”
She smiled. “No. My uncle owns the paper, and I wouldn’t starve, but my parents didn’t leave me anything substantial.”
“Then why turn down a sum like this?”
She stared down at it and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because it came too easily. I like working for what I get.” She tilted her head up at him. “You know, I’ve seen men go to carnivals and spend a week’s salary tossing nickels and dimes for plates they could have bought for a dime apiece. The fever gets into them and they won’t quit, and maybe they’ve got two or three children and a wife at home who’ll have to suffer because of that gambling impulse. I may sound idealistic, but I’ve no use for gambling. Maybe here nobody goes hungry if a player loses two or three thousand dollars. But I’ve seen the other side of the coin, and it’s not pretty.”
“You might consider donating it to charity,” he suggested.
Her eyes twinkled. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we both donate it to that little church we visited?”
One corner of his hard mouth curled. “Now, that’s an idea I like.” He pushed it into his pocket. “I’ll send a check over in the morning.”
“You’re a nice man, Callaway Steel,” she said as they walked toward the door.
He glanced down at her with a wry smile. “That’s a new wrinkle. I don’t think I’ve ever been called nice.”
“Life is full of new adventures,” she told him in her best theatrical voice. “Just think, tomorrow you could be eaten by a shark, or haunted by the ghost of the Jolly Roger... I wonder if he was?”
He blinked. “Wonder if who was what?”
“If Roger was Jolly.” She frowned. “Hmm, I’ll have to give that one some thought.”
“You do that,” he murmured, hailing them a cab.
The ride back to the hotel was far too short, and Nikki found herself trying to slow her steps as they went past the desk to the elevator.
“You’re dragging, honey,” Cal remarked.
“Tired feet,” she murmured sheepishly.
“Sorry to see it end, Nicole?” he asked wisely, watching her as they entered the elevator and the door slid shut behind them.
She looked up at him, and pain flashed for an instant through her slender body, visible for the blink of an eye in her pale, soft eyes.
“Let’s not be serious,” she said gently.
He reached out and traced her short, pert nose. “We can’t go through life like a couple of clowns. Although you do, don’t you?” he added shrewdly. “You use laughter to cover up a lot of hurt.”
She looked away toward the neat row of floor buttons on the panel. “And you see too deeply,” she countered.
“It wasn’t just the flood, was it?” he asked. “Was there a man?”
The elevator door opened in time to spare her an answer, but he wasn’t going to let it lie. She knew that by the set of his jaw as he strolled straight and tall beside her toward her room. She’d opened it with her key, but he threw the door back, moved her gently