Free Gambler’s Woman by Unknown

him, she had done the same But real life was a respectable position with a sophisticated research and testing firm. Working the night shift in Vegas was a weekend illusion, a dangerous fantasy that had somehow become incredibly alive during the past couple of days. Alyssa turned back in her seat, staring blindly at the magazine in her lap.
    She had allowed herself to be utterly and completely seduced by her fantasy this weekend.
    Never in her life had she succumbed so totally to the spell of a man. Never had she been the type to become involved in weekend flings or one-night stands. The knowledge that she had done exactly that during the past couple of days left her feeling dazed and a little out of control of herself. This wasn't a side of herself that she knew or understood. She lowered her lashes uneasily as she contemplated the unsettling facts.
    Even though she had gone over some invisible edge this weekend, she had only herself to blame. Hadn't she been dancing closer and closer to the precipice each time she'd gone toLas Vegasduring the past few months?
    No, damn it, she hadn't been in this kind of danger until this past weekend, she corrected herself forcefully. There had never been a man involved in her fantasy. There had been no temptation or seduction of that sort whatsoever. Not until she had encountered Jordan Kyle.
    And Jordan Kyle was unlike any other man she had ever met.
    Since that disastrous year of her marriage to Chad Emerson, Alyssa knew she had found it relatively easy to keep from becoming entangled in any truly serious emotional commitment. She'd had enough to do proving herself in the business world. But humiliation at her own stupidity still surged to the surface occasionally when she thought about that painful year and a half after her graduation from college.
    Her father had done his best to raise her, she realized. But he'd been so hoping for a mathematical prodigy to more or less take his place in the upper reaches of the academic research world that he'd firmly guided his daughter into math. Alyssa hadn't minded. She loved the subject and had a flair for it.
    But having a flair was not the same as having a true genius for it. Reluctantly, because she longed to please her father, she'd focused more and more on applied mathematics rather than pure mathematics.
    Applied math was the kind that was needed on a day-to-day basis in the working world. From her end of the spectrum came the statisticians, the engineering mathematicians, the practical math people, without whom ail the work of the geniuses such as her father would have been wasted. People in applied Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    math were the ones who took the brilliant discoveries and techniques and turned them to useful purposes in the areas of accounting, computers, engineering, insurance and a thousand other fields. The geniuses wound up teaching and conducting research at the finest universities in the country.
    She knew her father had been vastly disappointed when it became evident that she wasn't going to follow precisely in his footsteps, and it hurt Aiyssa to know she had failed him. But in her senior year of college, she thought she had found a way to pacify him. That was when Chad Emerson had first started paying attention to her.
    From a very practical point of view, it was often far easier for a graduate in applied math to get a paying job right out of college than for one with a more theoretical background. Chad Emerson, for all his brilliance, apparently had had a very down to earth grasp of that basic fact He'd also fully appreciated the unquestioned eminence of the man who was her father. Joseph Chandler could be a tremendous asset as a father-in-law. He held an important post at a fine university.Chadhad wanted to assure himself of not only getting Into the right graduate school but of making the right contacts. Being brilliant was great, but politics always helped.
    Alyssa