Gambling on Love

By reading any further, you are stating that you are at least 18 years of age. If you are under the age of 18, it is necessary to exit this site.

An Excerpt From: GAMBLING ON LOVE

Copyright © JANE DAVITT, 2011

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

Chapter One

The tires of his car skidded on a patch of ice and Gary gripped the steering wheel tighter, feeling sweat break out over his body. His shoulders ached, but he couldn’t relax and sit back. The snow whirling around the car was falling too thick and fast for that.

Turning around would’ve been sensible, but the lack of anywhere remotely suitable to do that and his own stubborn belief that turning back was bad luck, always, kept him inching along what was little more than a track.

“Should’ve stayed on the I-90,” he muttered under his breath. “Scenic mountain route, my ass. Like I didn’t see enough of them growing up.”

He’d left the I-90 to fill up with gas at Missoula and stretch his legs. Being this close to home after so many years away had felt strange, like trying to put on jeans he’d outgrown. He’d known when he’d planned his route that it would take him close, but he hadn’t planned on stopping. A glance out of the window in passing maybe. Nostalgia only went so far. He’d left when he was eighteen and in eleven years away, he’d never regretted that decision.

The map had shown that he could take a road running parallel to the highway and closer to the mountains that seemed to challenge him silently. He’d fumbled his lucky quarter out of his pocket. Tails for the road less traveled…and tails it was.

Gary never argued with the results of the coin toss. He’d found the quarter when he was nine, his eye caught by a silvery glint on the sidewalk. The dropped coin had been lying not flat, but on its edge, a minor miracle that’d saved it from being spent on candy because clearly it was no ordinary coin. To keep it from being lost in the rest of the spare change in his pocket, he’d carried it home clutched in his hand and slipped it inside a small drawstring bag that’d once held marbles. The bag had changed over the years, but it was the same quarter. A boy at school had once swapped it out, thinking Gary wouldn’t realize. One bloody nose later, Steven had flung the contents of his pockets at Gary and dared him to pick out his quarter from the five or six scattered on the floor.

Gary hadn’t hesitated, his fingers closing around his quarter with complete certainty, even before he’d verified the date and the tiny nick on the edge.

Now he was left wondering if the coin had steered him wrong for the first time. He was lost and he didn’t know how it’d happened. Getting lost in a city or in the suburbs, where the subdivisions seemed designed to take a visitor in endless loops and down a dozen dead ends was one thing, but out here, where roads were as rare as second chances, how in God’s name had he managed it? Not to mention the embarrassment of getting turned around in what was virtually his own backyard. Well, okay, twenty or thirty miles away from it, so maybe he should cut himself some slack.

He could’ve sworn he hadn’t strayed from the single road marked on his inadequate map. He hadn’t turned abruptly or chosen a direction at a crossroads, yet somehow, here he was, climbing up instead of following a road through a valley, and heading into the first really big snowstorm of the winter. That’d been what the gas station attendant had called it, at least. From what Gary could see as he’d stood shivering in a thin, January wind, the gas he was pumping moving sluggishly into the tank, the area must’ve had a few smaller ones already. White drifts cloaked everything that wasn’t a road or the forecourt to a business.

It’d been too early to stop driving and get a room for the night and the decision to continue on and out-run the approaching storm had seemed reasonable at the time. No more than a few flakes had been fluttering down and the roads were clear, salt and grit keeping the ice at bay. He’d lost time already that day by waking late, forced to check out in a rush, still damp from a hasty shower with the water running hot for a stingy minute or two, no more than that.

Regretting his decision wouldn’t do a damn thing to help him now, but he wasted a few moments on indulging in a fantasy, mentally rewriting the afternoon so he stayed on the highway, without making that damn coin-flip, racking up the miles, and then pulled off as night fell at a clean, comfortable motel with soft beds, hot water in abundance, and a diner nearby with waitresses just falling over themselves to keep his coffee cup filled.

It made a nice mirage, but the reality of the situation required his full attention, so Gary shook off the daydream and concentrated on guiding his car around a series of tight bends, praying he was the only idiot using the road.

His car was a beat-up station wagon, a late ‘90s Ford Taurus in an uninspiring silver-gray. It was holding the road well enough, and the heater worked fine, but Gary mourned the loss of his company car, a BMW complete with enough bells and whistles that even after driving it for six months, there were some functions he’d never gotten around to figuring out. He hadn’t really earned it—company cars were reserved for partners, not their secretaries, but Peter had tossed the keys at him one morning during a meeting and Gary had caught them with a grin. Saying thank you for them later on his knees—his mouth too busy to form the actual words—had been as much fun as seeing the stunned fury on Christopher Talbot’s face when Peter had given Gary the car. Talbot didn’t own the company, but he often acted as if he did, and Gary had always enjoyed watching Peter remind Talbot of whose name was on the door.

And now, with Peter dead, there was no one to prick Talbot’s self-satisfied bubble from time to time. Gary couldn’t help thinking wherever he was now, Peter was well and truly pissed about that.

Gary had bought the Taurus from a dealer for cash, and driven it back to his small apartment, his nostrils filled with the stink of stale take-out food. Maybe the previous owner had lived in it, because there was a pair of socks wedged under the driver’s seat. He’d almost hoped someone would steal it from the underground parking lot, but it was clearly lacking in thief-appeal. Gary had loaded it up with everything he owned, a jumble of expensive luggage and battered cardboard boxes, and prayed it would at least get him out of the city.

Before he’d handed over the keys, he’d taken one last look around the place he’d lived in for five years, though for most of them it’d been an address, not a home. Peter’s house had been Gary’s true home, even if he’d never officially moved in. Toward the end, Peter had asked him to, but his children, suddenly solicitous, had been around too much for Gary to feel comfortable with spending more time there. Talbot didn’t like him, but Kristina and Mark loathed their father’s lover.

“Our father is not gay,” Kristina had told him once, genuine color swamping the carefully applied cosmetics on her face, every word precise. “My brother and I are proof of that. I don’t know how you’ve persuaded him to turn his back on everything our name stands for, but you disgust me. And, no, it’s not because you’re gay. You don’t get to make me the villain that way. It’s because you’re a predator.”

As far as Gary could see, the Thornfield name was only respectable when it came to the present generation. Peter’s father had stayed out of prison because he knew who to bribe or intimidate, and Peter, though he’d quietly diverted the business into more legitimate channels, had all of his father’s ruthlessness, hidden under a charm that seemed genuine to most people.

Gary couldn’t imagine anyone less vulnerable to a scam than Peter. Telling Kristina the details of how he and Peter had hooked up and the way their relationship worked would have been cruel, so he never had. Sometimes he’d been so fucking tempted, though, especially in the days after Peter’s death, when grief and loss had shredded his control and left him raw and ripe for a fight with something he could hurt.

Empty of his bits and pieces, the apartment had seemed even smaller, but he hadn’t allowed himself to stand there staring out at the city lights of Seattle for long. The road south, a long journey the way he’d planned it, was waiting for him.

Gary wasn’t in a rush to reach his destination. When he did, it would draw a line under everything he’d had with Peter and he wasn’t ready to do that yet. Peter had also made it quite clear that Gary was to use the journey as a way to clear his head.

You’ll drive there, not fly—what can you see from the air but clouds, after all, and God, how boring are they? Drive, explore, and if you get lost, don’t panic—but you never do. I like that about you, along with many other things I’m sure I’ve mentioned from time to time. If I believed in an afterlife, I’d tell you I’ll miss you, but I don’t, so I’ll tell you that as I write this, with you waiting for me on my bed and wondering what’s taking me so long to finish reading a report, I’m missing you as if you were already lost to me.

The thought of that is annoying enough that I believe you’re not going to get much sleep tonight, Gary. I’m going to make the most of you while I can. I can hear you moving, restless, impatient for me to come and fuck you, and that’s the only thing keeping me here writing this. I love you when you’re eager for me. I’m beginning to wonder if I love more of you than that, but I’ve left it too late to burden you with that discovery.

You’ve let me be in charge of you for years. Allowed me to dictate more than letters to you. I don’t see why my death should change that immediately, do you?

Drive. And take your time.

He’d planned to drift south-east in stages rather than go as arrow-straight as the roads would allow. Even without Peter’s instructions, it was the same way Gary dragged out any treat, from eating a Boston Crème donut, to opening a gift, to sex. His childhood had contained too few indulgences for him to ever take one for granted. He’d spin out the pleasurable anticipation until he just couldn’t stand it, not another second of waiting, and the donut got crammed into his mouth, the wrapping paper was torn to confetti…and Peter had gotten to hear him at his most demanding. On paper, his route was a series of unnecessary curves, swooping from state to state, wasteful of mileage and gas, but it took him to places he’d never visited, as well as through his childhood home, and there was a certain appeal in both of those outcomes.

The first day, he’d left mid-afternoon and stayed the night in Spokane, after racking up two hundred and seventy miles or so. The car seat made it feel like more, a spring in it digging viciously into his back.

The idea of leaving his route at Missoula, with no more in the way of supplies than a few bottles of water and an energy bar he’d bought along with his gas, guided by a road map folded so often the print along the creases had been rubbed away, might have been taking Peter’s wishes too far, though. Gary was in a reckless mood these days, but that was no excuse for being an idiot.

Gary had seen plenty of news reports about people freezing to death in their cars, or abandoning them to walk in search of shelter and then dying, when he was growing up. Despite that, unlike getting eaten by a shark, the possibility of being killed by a snowstorm had never troubled his nightmares. Snow came every winter and it was a pain, sure, but he wasn’t an idiot, so it wasn’t a danger. Snow was for fun, like snowmen and sledding and hot cocoa with marshmallows afterward. He’d been inconvenienced by delayed flights in the winter, like most people, but that was as far as it went. Now, with the road rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the rough terrain bordering it, he was giving serious thought to pulling over. The only thing stopping him was the fear that if he tried to wait out the storm, the car would end up buried in a drift, and the fact that he’d eaten the energy bar half an hour ago.

Whatever boost a few mouthfuls of compressed granola and dried fruit had given his system—he placed energy bars above sawdust, but significantly below Brussels sprouts when it came to taste and he loathed sprouts—it’d worn off now. His belly was rumbling discontentedly. He craved a stiff vodka tonic to wash the taste of flat bottled water out of his mouth and a medium rare steak and a heap of golden fries, hot and salty, to fill his stomach. .

“It’s a road,” he said, talking aloud because he’d fallen into the habit of doing that on the long drive, the radio long since turned off, music an annoyance, not a companion in his mood. At first, he’d pretended Peter was sitting beside him, and carried on a conversation with thin air. That had left him feeling unbearably lonely, so he’d stopped. Besides, Peter would’ve hated the thought of someone, even Gary, putting words into his mouth. “It’s got to lead somewhere, and any time soon, you’re going to start recognizing places.”

Gary didn’t dwell on the fact that a road this empty and poorly maintained probably led to something like a summer campground, useless to him now since it’d be closed for the winter. From memory, there should be some ski lodges around, but they’d be higher up than he was. Not that he’d ever been to one, apart from on a school field trip once. By the time his class had been fitted out with skis, boots and poles, it’d been almost time to go home. Skiing was something the rich tourists did, not him.

The snow eased off a little, enough for Gary to be able to see something of the road ahead. It was climbing steeply, unless he’d left the road and was driving up the side of the mountain. Instead of being plastered against his windshield, the flakes were now whirling wildly in the wind buffeting the car like a petulant toddler. They were hypnotic, mesmerizing his tired eyes to the point where he was looking at them, not the road. The whip back and forth of the wipers added another strain to the lullaby and Gary yawned, blinking to keep his eyes from sliding shut. The heated air inside the car was stale and dusty.

With a vague idea of seeing for himself just how cold it was, he reached out for the switch that would open the driver’s side window, automatically going for the place it would’ve been on his BMW. Sighing when his fingers met nothing useful, he groped around on the door, risking a single look sideways. It was nearly dark outside and the interior of the car was shadowed and dim.

He located the switch and depressed it, the hiss of the window fighting to descend but hampered by the buildup of snow on the glass lost in the wail of the wind outside. Cold air surged in through the window, cold air, noise and snow.

“Shit!” Gary shuddered when the side of his face nearest the open window received a wet slap, the snowflakes that struck it melting instantly and leaving his cheek damp and chilled. He breathed in the fresh air like medicine, inhaling it with quick, shallow breaths, and decided enough was enough. He’d gotten his answer. It was freezing cold out there. Maybe that was something he should’ve taken on trust.

With one hand gripping the wheel, he dropped his other hand to the switch again, glancing down at it automatically. That brief moment of inattention cost him. The car lurched to the side, finally leaving the road, the passenger-side tires riding a ditch half-filled with snow. Gary yelped and slapped his hand back on the wheel, the window not completely closed. The miniature snowstorm inside the car was the least of his worries. With a strength that panic increased, he managed to get the car back onto smoother terrain, feeling as if it was his own muscles lifting the car, not the laboring engine.

His heart pounded, the shock of the near-crash as painful a jolt as an air horn blasting nearby would have been.

Relief flooded through him. Close call, for sure, but he’d made it. Exhilaration made him stupid and instead of decreasing his speed, he pushed down on the gas pedal without thinking, sending the car forward in a smooth rush of speed. The road ahead dipped slightly, curving to the right, and gravity added to the car’s forward momentum, making Gary feel like a kid on a rollercoaster, clinging to the safety bar and praying he wouldn’t throw up in front of his friends.

The lights of a vehicle approaching from the left caught his eye, a vague yellow blur. It was the first sign of life he’d seen in over an hour and it raised a lot of questions that needed to be answered on the spot. A side road—or was he the one expected to give way? Was he joining a bigger road, one that might lead away from the mountains and back to civilization and more familiar territory? Should he turn off and follow it? Yeah, maybe he should.

He braked, too hard, too fast, and felt the back tires skid, the car going into a lazy, stomach-turning spin, tires smooth with packed snow failing to find a hold. He fought to break out of it, and ended up facing the right way, but on the wrong side of the road.

The other vehicle was a pickup truck with a snow plow on the front, its color vague in the dim light, looming up too fast for Gary to do anything about the inevitable collision. Thoughts passed through his head, treacle-slow. The truck wasn’t moving, so the driver must’ve come to a halt, waiting for Gary to pass. That also meant the driver wouldn’t be able to maneuver out of Gary’s way. The glacial pace of the passing seconds abruptly changed to a blur, as if time had realized it was lagging behind, and Gary gave the wheel one last, despairing wrench.

It wasn’t enough to guide the Taurus safely past the truck. Through the open window he heard the sound of the collision, a teeth-gritting scrape of metal on metal, and then felt it a split-second later, the speed of the car thrown back at him like a punch. He was thrown forward, the seat belt cutting into his chest, then slammed back, his head striking the rest with a dull thud. Pain blossomed, red and hot, an explosion of color behind his eyes, and he tasted blood from a lip cut by his teeth.

An instinct for self-preservation finally awoke and he fumbled for the keys, turning the engine off and putting the car into park, his movements sluggish, but the actions too familiar to require much thought. Silence poured through the window with the snow, the wind choosing that moment to die down, and Gary realized the other driver had turned off his engine too. Not unconscious then. He raised his head and squinted through the dusk, but the headlights on the plow, set higher than the front of the Taurus, had escaped being broken. The dazzle of their beams prevented him from seeing the truck’s driver or any passengers clearly even though only a few yards separated him from the other vehicle.

Concern and guilt had him scrabbling to free himself from the seatbelt, torn between being glad the airbag hadn’t gone off and peevishly wondering why the hell it hadn’t. The collision had been hard enough, for God’s sake.

He got out of the car, the wind rising to greet him, and fumbled with the zipper of his coat. It was a leather jacket, warm enough for driving and fiendishly expensive, but pitifully inadequate for standing out in a snowstorm, even though it was silk-lined. Zipped to his chin, it provided another layer for the cold to work its way past, but that was about it. He’d forgotten how cold it got out here in the winter. His chest was tight with the chill of the air he was breathing, his bare hands already turning numb. The snow lay in unpredictable drifts, the road scoured clear by the wind in places, hidden under three or four inches of snow of snow elsewhere. As Gary made his way around the back of the Taurus, circling it to get to the truck’s driver the quickest way, snow sifted like sand into his shoes, soaking his socks. He rammed his hands into his coat pockets to get a moment’s relief from the biting chill, but had to take them out again when a misstep left him staggering, flailing for balance.

The pickup was dark blue or black, snow and wind feathering white patterns onto the paintwork and obscuring the driver’s side window, though Gary could see the vague shape of the driver. He or she wasn’t trying to get out of the pickup, which was worrying. Someone had turned off the engine, though, Gary reminded himself—or was that a side effect of the crash? Gary hadn’t been under the hood of a car for anything more challenging than checking the oil level in the last decade. He knocked on the driver’s window, calling out a greeting the wind reduced to a whisper.

The door opened, forcing him back, the soles of his shoes sliding on the snow. Annoyed at the way he had to fight to keep his balance, he blinked away the snow clogging his eyelashes to stare up at the driver framed in the doorway, twisted around in his seat. Man. Tall. White. Pissed. The words popped into his head and bounced around. He had nothing else to attach them to.

The man was dressed for the weather, snow boots to his knees, a heavy waterproof jacket and thick pants concealing his body. Before Gary could get a good look at him, the man put on a fleece hat over thick, shaggy dark hair, pulling it down low enough that in the inadequate light provided by the truck’s interior bulb, Gary could get only a general impression of annoyance from the man’s tight lips and narrowed eyes.

“Are you okay?” Gary blurted out. Peter had taught him never to admit to any liability, but that part of his life was behind him now, and out here in the wildly blowing snow it didn’t seem to matter. “I just—I skidded and I—”

“Can you move your car?” the man asked, tugging thick gloves into place, his voice deep.

There was something about his voice…some echo of familiarity. Gary tried to pin it down, but his thoughts were whirling like the snowflakes. “What? I uh, I don’t know—” Warm air flowing out from the open door made Gary step forward, drawn to it, his body shivering convulsively now, his teeth chattering. It brought him closer to the driver too, but it didn’t look like the man was angry enough to punch him, just pissed, understandably so. Gary knew car accidents could bring out the worst in people, but the man was taking events calmly enough so far. “Shouldn’t we wait for the police to come? They’ll want to take photos for the insurance report.”

The man snorted. “Yeah, I can see me sitting around on my ass waiting for Jerry to haul his tail out here and take some pretty pictures of us frozen to death.”

“Oh my God,” Gary said, finally listening to what his brain was screaming at him and wondering why it’d taken him a full minute to recognize the man. “Abe?” He shook his head, shock making his words a gibe. “I might have known. You always did like wrecking my life.”