LifeLine

Chapter Twelve

He ran another twelve hands. The simulated players developed texture the more he worked with them, the behavioral patterns Emma had constructed becoming legible in the way patterns became legible through repetition. By seven forty-five he could read seat three's chip organization from his peripheral vision, could feel the shape of a hand by watching the outlines of the players rather than his own cards.

He dismissed the holographic table and sat in the quiet room looking at the actual window and the actual Strip and thought about the evening ahead.

He'd go down at nine. The serious players wouldn't arrive before eight-thirty, and he wanted to be settled before they came in, wanted to be part of the room's established furniture rather than a new variable people were still assessing. He'd start low, run the conditioning over two hours, and let the hand come when it came.

He was reaching for the room service menu — the real one, to order something that might still be warm — when the knock came at the door.

He looked at the time on the Lifeline. Eight-seventeen.

He wasn't expecting anyone.

He went to the door and looked through the peephole.

Claire.

She had changed out of her uniform. The blazer was gone, replaced by nothing — she was wearing the white blouse she'd had on under it, but without the professional armor of the jacket it was a different garment entirely, fitted in a way the jacket had obscured, the fabric doing specific things in specific places that the front desk had not provided adequate opportunity to observe. Her dark hair was down now, loose around her shoulders, and she was holding a bottle of wine by the neck with the casual confidence of someone who had thought about this and decided.

Connor opened the door.

She looked at him without apology or performance, the direct look of a woman who had made a decision and was comfortable with it. "I'm off at eight," she said. "I thought about the way you said you'd keep it in mind and decided I'd rather not wait to find out if you actually would."

Connor looked at her. At the blouse and the hair and the bottle of wine and the specific quality of her expression, which was warm and certain and entirely without the managed professionalism of the front desk.

"That's a reasonable approach," he said, and stepped back from the door.

She came in the way she seemed to do everything — directly, without hesitation, taking in the room with a quick sweep that registered the floor-to-ceiling windows and the Strip beyond them and the charcoal jacket he'd hung over the chair and the room service tray with its evidence of a man who had been thinking rather than preparing for company.

"Nice view," she said.

"It's something," Connor agreed.

She set the wine on the table and turned to face him and the window light caught her at an angle that did considerable justice to the blouse and everything it was doing. She reached up and began working the top button in the specific unhurried way of someone who had arrived at a decision well before now and was simply executing it.

"I owe you an apology," she said.

Connor watched her fingers move to the second button. "For what?"

"For the way I looked at you when you checked in this morning." The blouse opened at the collar, revealing the clean line of her collarbone, the edge of something pale and lace-trimmed beneath. "I made an assumption I shouldn't have made."

"People make assumptions," Connor said. "It's human."

"It's lazy," she said, and moved to the third button. "I prefer to look more carefully." The blouse fell open enough to show the lace in full — ivory, delicate, the specific kind of deliberate that announced itself as a choice rather than a default. She looked at him steadily. "You're looking more carefully now."

"I am," he said.

She smiled — the real one, not the front desk version. She shrugged the blouse off her shoulders and let it fall, and she was standing in the window light in the ivory lace and the dark slacks and the expression of a woman who knew exactly what she looked like and was comfortable with that knowledge, and Connor was a man who had been alone for long enough that comfortable had started to feel like a permanent condition rather than a temporary one.

He leaned toward the door frame and said, very quietly, "Emma."

Yes, Emma said, the word carrying the specific quality of someone who had been watching and had already understood where this was going.

"Stop watching. Give me an hour."

Of course, she said, warmth in it.

He straightened and looked at Claire, who had moved toward the bedroom doorway with the unhurried certainty of a woman who had not been wrong about this from the moment she'd decided to come up.

He followed.

In the doorway he paused.

Claire was already at the edge of the bed, her fingers working the clasp of her slacks, glancing back at him over one shoulder with the expression of someone who found waiting unnecessary. She stepped out of the slacks and set them aside with the same casual confidence she'd brought to everything, and she was standing in the ivory lace from collar to hip and looking at him like a question she already knew the answer to.

Connor reached back and closed the bedroom door.

He turned.

Claire had pulled her hair over one shoulder and was gathering it into a ponytail with practiced efficiency, keeping it out of her way, her eyes on him the whole time.

He whispered, almost to himself, "Make it two hours."

Noted, Emma said, warm and quiet and entirely inside his head, where she always was.