Free Gambler's Woman by Jayne Ann Krentz Page A

didn't alleviate the feeling of
rejection that struck her like a hammer when her former friends, the
ones Chad had cultivated, no longer found her particularly interesting.
It was Chad's intelligence and upward mobility in the academic world
that had drawn them. They had nothing in common with his wife.

And all the common sense in the world couldn't dispel. She notion that
she'd somehow disappointed her father for not being able to hold on to
Chad. She'd brought a brilliant mathematician into the family, a man
who could have been a true son to the elder Chandler, only to lose him.

Alyssa's reaction had been abrupt and single-minded. If she wasn't good
enough for the academic world, she'd damn well prove she could hold her
own in other spheres! Namely, a sphere where her brand of math was
appreciated, sought after and paid for. She dedicated herself to the
business world, where she had since proved more than able to rise
steadily to the top.

In the area of statistics and probability theory, she had shown real
flair, and Alyssa was determined to
be as successful at her job as Chad and her father were in their
worlds. She measured her success by
the salary and title she held. They were the only gauges she had. Her
father had been accidentally killed
in an automobile crash just about the time Alyssa was starting to
demonstrate her true abilities. She'd never known for sure whether or
not he had really respected her progress in die corporate world. Not
knowing had seemed to make it ail the more imperative to succeed. She
had driven herself relentlessly
for the past two years.

Then, a couple of months earlier, because of Ray and Julia Burgess, she
had discovered the world of gambling. It had proved a wonderful escape
from the self-inflicted pressures under which she worked. What would
Chad or her father have said if they had ever learned that her one area
of "genius" in the realm of mathematics had proved to be an intuitive
ability to play cards and roll dice? She didn't really have to wonder.
They would have been thoroughly disgusted.

But the fantasy world of gambling offered her exactly what she had been
needing. It freed the cheerful, fun-loving, playful side of her
personality. It was when she was in that world that the mischievous
smile
lit her eyes, and sometimes that smile carried over into her real world
when she returned. She needed the escape. She needed to throw herself
into the exciting fantasy where her one true talent reigned supreme.

She had known from the beginning, of course, that her "escape"
represented a very real threat to her carefully built career. And the
goals of that career and its accompanying life-style were too much a
part
of her to even consider abandoning them. The trick, she told herself,
was to keep the fantasy world separate from her real world, and she'd
been quite successful at managing that feat. Perhaps she even took a
certain pleasure in managing it Even Alyssa wasn't fully aware of the
hidden smile that played in her eyes these days when she took on the
challenge of juggling her two lives.

The excitement of her new, secret world had put a flare of energy into
her life and a subtle recklessness into her way of looking at things.
Until this weekend, however, she had thought she had both under full
control. Jordan Kyle had taught her differently. He had materialized
out of her fantasy and had at once made it far more real and therefore
more dangerous than she would have dreamed possible.

What did he really think of her? The world of gambling was still
largely a man's world. When women played, for example, it was assumed
they played with some man's money. No Las Vegas gentleman would be so
ungallant as to allow a woman companion to risk her own money! The
attitude toward women in places like Las Vegas and Reno was as
traditional and conservative as that of mythical small-town America.
Women fit either into the category of showgirl-hustler or wife-mother.
A woman who manipulated the world