Fired Up

like a strat-talent.
    Chloe picked up her fork. “Vegas is always reinventing itself, blowing up old hotels and casinos and building new ones in their place. There’s always new computer technology in the gaming machines. New theme-park resorts on the Strip. Newer and more astonishing high-tech shows in the casino theaters. But underneath it all nothing changes. It’s as if it exists in another dimension.”
    Jack shrugged and ate some of his eggs. “That’s the appeal. This town is built on sex and sin. Get too far away from your core business, and you lose your customers.”
    Chloe’s fork paused in midair. Her brows rose. “You know, sometimes I forget that you’re a coldhearted zillionaire businessman who makes his living investing.”
    For some reason the coldhearted bothered him.
    “What’s your problem with Vegas?” he asked.
    “Who said I had a problem?”
    “No offense, but it’s obvious.”
    She sighed. “I’m not a prude, and I have no particular issues involving games of chance. But the energy in a casino bothers me.”
    “Yeah? How?”
    “What do you see when you look into that other room?”
    He glanced at the entrance of the casino again. “Rows of slots. Lots of flashing lights. Croupiers waiting for players. A woman in a sexy outfit carrying a tray of drinks.”
    “At seven forty-five in the morning,” Chloe said drily.
    He forked up more eggs. “It’s a casino. Not as fancy as those on the Strip but, still, a casino. It is what it is.”
    She glanced over her shoulder and contemplated the dark gaming floor for a moment. He felt energy pulse and knew that she had opened her senses.
    “To me it looks like someone splashed hot, radioactive acid all over the place,” she said. She turned back to her eggs. “Layers and layers of it. Years, decades of the stuff. There’s a reason they call gambling a fever. It’s like a drug. It affects dream psi in a major way.”
    “People with a lot of talent, you and me, for instance, tend to get lucky when we play,” he pointed out. “The psychic side of our natures gives us an edge.”
    She regarded him with stern disapproval. “Do you gamble?”
    “All the time.” He smiled. “But only when I have enough information to calculate the odds.”
    Her expression cleared. “You mean your venture-capital business. Obviously that line of work does require that you take risks.”
    “So does yours.”
    She brushed that aside. “I meant financial risk.”
    He drank some coffee and thought about how to get back to the subject that seemed to matter as much as the lamp did this morning.
    He put the mug down and looked at her. “About last night.”
    He could have sworn she flinched a little, but she gave him a dazzling smile.
    “You know,” she said, “I doubt that in the entire history of civilization there has ever been a good conversation that started with about last night.”
    He got an odd sensation of heat but not the sexual kind. It took him a couple of beats to realize that he was probably turning a dull red.
    “You know we need to talk about it,” he said.
    “Why?”
    She was still smiling, but she was starting to get a deer- in-the-headlights look in her eyes. He knew he was pushing into dangerous territory.
    “Don’t know about you,” he said neutrally, “but it’s never been like that for me.”
    She cleared her throat. “I absolutely agree that it was a very unique experience.”
    “Unique.” He drank some more coffee. “Okay, that’s one way to describe it.”
    “But, as you said, there have always been stories about what it’s like when two strong talents get together,” she added earnestly. “In that way, I mean.”
    “I’ve met other strong talents,” he said, keeping his voice even. “My ex-wife was a Level Eight. Can’t say that it’s ever been like that for me. You?”
    “Like I said, it was unique,” she declared briskly. “Let’s just leave it at that. We have other priorities at the moment.”
    “What are you afraid of?”
    She exhaled slowly and put down her fork. “You don’t know what it’s been like for me all these years. I’ve never even been able to share a bedroom with anyone, let alone a bed. I’m uncomfortable just being in the same room with someone who is taking a nap in a chair. When I was younger there were no sleepovers with friends. No trips to camp because I couldn’t bunk with anyone. In college I had to rent my own apartment because I couldn’t deal with a