Read Online Love's Gamble by Theodora Taylor - Free Book Online

Cole. Pru, on the other hand, was as curious about this as she seemed to be about most things, asking the manager several follow-up questions about the lodge and its amenities. He supposed that curiosity was part of what made her a natural detective.
    However, after the manager left them alone, she barely glanced at the large rustic room, which they’d been told was one of the only rooms that had its own bathroom. One Max quickly availed himself of after the long drive.
    When he came back out to the bedroom, she was still standing near the door, her arms crossed over the peach swing top she’d changed into, along with a denim pencil skirt. He noted that she had slipped the large diamond he’d given her at their nightclub ceremony onto her left ring finger. But he also noted that she was standing at the door, about as far away from the bed in the center of the room as she could possibly get.
    “All right, let’s get this over with,” she said, uncrossing her arms.
    Max, too, was eager to get the business with his brother done with, so he could get around to properly celebrating with Pru.
    However, if the way Pru’s shoulders stiffened when he strung his arm around them outside their room was any indication, she had no intention of letting him get anywhere near her tonight.
    “Look, this is important to me, sweetheart,” he reminded her. “You want your brother at BIT, so it’s time to play your part.”
    Pru’s shoulders relaxed a little. But not much. “You’re not playing your part so great either.”
    He gave her a quizzical look. “What do you mean? Anybody who saw us right now would think I was into you.”
    Pru stopped and shrugged off his arm before turning to face him. “No, they’d think you want to hook up with me, because
this
isn’t how a guy looks at a woman he’s seriously into...”
    She schooled her face into a surprisingly dead-on impression of Max’s smirk, complete with his patented wicked gleam. Then she said, “
This
is how people look at each other when they’re really in love.”
    He expected her to peg him with a simpering gaze, filled with longing—the kind that women who claimed to be in love with him had worn. The kind of gaze that had let him know in the past when it was time to let go of the current girl he was with and move on to the next one.
    But Pru didn’t gaze at him like that. Instead she looked at him. Just looked at him, her eyes clear and calm, with a soft twinkle in them.
    She was right. This look was nothing like the one that had come before it. He’d taken a few fists in the stomach before, and this look felt exactly like that. A total gut punch.
    “Where did you learn to do that?” he asked her.
    She let the expression slip from her face. “My parents were the real deal. I remember how they used to look at each other. Plus when I was just an amateur detective, showgirls with possibly cheating boyfriends were like seventy percent of my cases, I had to learn to tell the difference.”
    She laughed, mistaking his stricken expression for performance fear. “Don’t worry. You can do it. Just don’t think about it as giving me a fake lovey-dovey look. Focus on not sounding smug when you talk to me. And when you look at me,
really
look at me.”
    Max laughed and Pru’s face lit up. “Exactly,” she said. “When you look at me, just kind of laugh. But sincerely and on the inside. Got that?”
    Max did get it. He looked down at her with the same soft twinkle in his eyes, wondering if she had any idea how pretty she was when she smiled up at him like this.
    “Max! Pru!”
    They both looked up to see Cole now standing outside the doorway of his room, which as it turned out was located directly down the hallway from theirs. Close enough for Max to see his older brother clearly now, but not close enough that Cole could have possibly heard what they were talking about. So to Cole, Max and Pru might actually have looked like what they were only pretending to