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encourage your false impressions of me, and I don’t want to—could you please let go of my wrist?” She waited, her dark gaze unwavering, until Dev complied. The Mona Lisa smile flickered, then she passed her tongue over her lips and cleared her throat. “Thank you. I wish…I wish we’d met under different circumstances.”
    And before he could think of an appropriate response, she jumped out of the runabout and marched off toward the hotel. Though she garnered several strange looks from evening strollers, she sailed past with the regal poise of a duchess.
    A man was in a wheelbarrow full of trouble when watching the back of a woman made his pulse rate spike and his fingers tingle.

Chapter Nine
    T he invitation from Edgar Fane arrived two days later. Thea read the lazy scrawl of words, with every breath a dull spike lodging deeper in her chest. So. Her wish had come true at last, but the fulfillment was tinged with the taste of gall: Dinner at Mr. Canfield’s Casino was not the scenario she had envisioned.
    The Casino might enjoy a reputation for first-class cuisine, and it might be patronized by the country’s wealthiest and most powerful personages. But for Thea the dignified red brick building also housed a glittering palace of iniquity, a den of vice, preying upon weak minds with more money than common sense. From local gossip she’d learned that reformers had managed to close down the gambling there for a couple of years, but like the racecourse it had reopened for this summer’s season.
    She should have known a wretch like Edgar Fane would entertain guests at a gambling palace.
    Her father loved gambling more than anything else on earth, including his family. He’d been playing roulette the night he’d met Thea’s mother. After winning a small fortune, he convinced himself, and her, that together they’d change the course of each other’s lives. In a way, he wasright. The unwelcome appearance of a baby nine months later introduced an equally unwelcome dose of reality.
    Her father dumped Theodora with a letter of apology on her grandparents’ doorstep, then disappeared for three years. Only the infrequent postcards reassured the family that he was alive. Charles and Mathilda Langston loved her as their own; until she died Mathilda never gave up believing the prodigal son would see the error of his ways. But some of Thea’s earliest lessons, learned snuggled in Grandfather’s lap, included the evils of gambling.
    Apparently she had shed that particular lesson along with her conscience. Life, she reminded herself defiantly, was an uncertain stew of happenstance.
    So for thirty-six hours Thea suffered a Coney Island roller-coaster ride of elation, fear, guilt and determination. Now the time was at hand, and she would not, would not permit the shy, morally upstanding little girl she used to be to dominate her thoughts. Tonight she planned to practice every feminine wile she’d gleaned from years of reading literature and talking to many of the authors of it who enjoyed “rusticating” on Staten Island. By the end of the meal Edgar Fane would…he would—
    Mrs. Chudd poked her head through the door to Thea’s room. “Bellhop’s here. A Mr. Simpson is waiting for you in the lobby,” she announced in her flat nasal voice.
    â€œHave the bellhop tell Mr. Simpson I’ll be right down.” Nerves cramped her stomach and chilled her skin.
    â€œMrs. Chudd? Won’t you come along? It would be more appropriate.”
    â€œGot no use for rich food.” She skimmed a long look at Thea, her pale eyes briefly flickering with curiosity. “You been fine all month, ferdiddling on your own. So I’ll stay here, same as usual.” Jaw jutting, she nodded twice, started to turn away. “Not having a spell, are you?”
    â€œNo.” Thea forced her lips to stretch in a rubbery smile, and beneath the