She was still trying to come to terms with the idea she could, however unlikely, be pregnant. Now she began to understand what it would mean if she was. She would be part of Giovanni’s life. Part of this. The high fashion and high rollers, the titled and the privileged.
Freja had spent her whole life as an odd duck. She had learned to embrace her status as an outsider and press forward on that left foot so she wouldn’t be shunned completely. She didn’t expect to be accepted into the different cultures she encountered, but it meant she’d spent most of her life feeling apart from everyone around her. She’d had her father for company and later Sung-mi, but even they had eventually fallen away. She had never found “my people, my home.”
Then she’d come to America and encountered the strangest culture shock of all. In New York, everyone stuck out so no one did. She hadn’t realized how comfortable she’d been there until she failed to blend in again.
She didn’t belong here! This crowd drowned odd ducks in orange sauce and ate them with roasted beets.
She didn’t even want to belong here. She had grown up on a shoestring, not living in poverty, but often a witness to it. She still lived very frugally, not liking to see waste when she knew how hard some people worked for the little they had.
“I’m going to try my luck at the craps table,” Giovanni said.
She nodded. “I’m going to read the...” She gestured absently at the display of framed stories about children the charity had helped.
It was an excuse to steal a moment to catch her breath, but soon she was losing herself in each of the success stories. Children hurt by land mines or illness or pure bad luck were all finding purpose and achieving bigger things than ribbons and bronze medallions. They wore smiles and pride and confidence. Each photo lifted Freja’s heart a little more until she was smiling to herself with happiness for them.
Darn him, this was a good cause. She couldn’t be angry with him for being wretchedly generous in supporting it. She went to his side and set a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m losing. Give me some lady luck.” He showed her the dice in his hand.
She blew on them and he threw.
A roar of approval went up around the table.
It was the beginning of a hot streak that had people betting in an increasing frenzy. She blew each time while Giovanni stacked up chips before him. She couldn’t help holding her breath, then bursting with a cheer of laughter with everyone else when the sevens kept coming up. She was completely caught up in the play as the stakes rose higher and higher.
Suddenly Giovanni said, “That’s a million.” He pushed his stack of chips toward the stickman. “Donate it to the foundation.”
There was another loud reaction from the spectators, this one a mix of shock and approval with a few moans that their luck was changing as someone else moved in to throw the dice.
Freja and Giovanni ran a small gauntlet of congratulations before settling into a quieter area of the room to sample the canapés and enjoy complimentary champagne sent over by Clair.
“Please don’t ever put me through a roller coaster like that again. I don’t think my heart can stand it.” Freja set her hand on her chest, still breathless. “I thought you were here because you’re a big softie who can’t resist helping injured children, but you’re actually an adrenaline junkie who enjoys risk, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?”
He might have meant it as light banter, but she heard the edge in his voice that invaded sometimes, the one that made her feel as though he saw something in her that wasn’t there. The crash of his gaze into her own made her heart stutter and trip.
Every time she thought she was coming to know him a little, he had one of these mercurial shifts that disoriented her again. He did have a taste for risk. For one second, he let her see there was an atavistic barbarian in him willing to fight to the death if he had to.
She ought to have gone cold with premonition, but something in her leaped toward that Neanderthal the way a stray fleck of metal latched on to a magnet.
She was so shocked by her reaction, she yanked her gaze from his and tried to steady her breathing, but she was left teetering upon an intrinsic difference between them—as if they needed more proof beyond this enormous wealth gap.
“No,” she said quietly but firmly. “Some people enjoy the tension of a haunted house, but I don’t put myself in scary situations if I can avoid it. I’ve been genuinely frightened and I braved it out because I wanted to survive, but I don’t like it. I’m here in spite of my fear.”
“You’re afraid right now? Why?” His steel gaze kept swooping into hers, catching like talons into her heart.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? We’re very different, but we might wind up tied to each other for life.”
“I’m not frightened of that.”
“Of course you’re not!” She laughed, but there was mild hysteria in it.
He narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means it’s one thing to lower into a cage and admire the shark. It’s quite another to swim in the open water with him. I’m not a shark.” She tapped her breastbone.
“You want me to believe you’re a goldfish? I don’t.”
“And you want me to believe after that display—” she pointed in the direction of the craps table “—that you’ll be happy stuck in a bowl with me and a guppy you didn’t ask for. I don’t.”
“You don’t know me,” he bit out.
She choked on the irony of that while he sat back, mouth pinned flat with frustration.
After a moment, she sighed and leaned forward to set her hand on his sleeve.
“The fact that my experience is strange enough to write a book about it makes people think I’m a lot more interesting than I am. I don’t actually want to be the most interesting person in the room. There’s a lot more security in being exactly the same.”
“Is that what you want? Security?” A muscle in his cheek ticked. “Because I can definitely give you that.”
“Financial security is important.” There was no denying that. “But I’m talking about emotional security.” And neither was likely to be found in a casino, she thought with a droll observation of the fortunes on the table and the straying eyes on the faces.
Or him, she acknowledged as she brought her attention back to Giovanni and fell into the turbulent eyes of a creature far more dangerous than a shark. Not the merciless stare of a predator about to pounce, but the calculating intelligence of a man.
So compelling and so inscrutable.