"Why are you wrong for her? It seemed to me you complemented each other very well."

"I run a casino. My peak hours are when sensible people are tucked into their beds." He jammed his hands into his pockets. "She's lived a sheltered life.

More, a repressed one where she's been held back, held down. She's just starting to realize what she can do and be and have. I don't have any right to interfere with that."

"You're making this black-and-white, sinner and saint. I don't think either of you qualify. You're a businessman, and a good one. She's an interesting, refreshingly enthusiastic young woman."

"Who walked in here a few weeks ago," Mac reminded him. "A few weeks ago and at a turning point in her life. She can't possibly know what her feelings are."

"You underestimate her. But regardless, aren't your own feelings important?"

"I've already let my feelings take over more than once. She walked in here untouched." Mac turned back, his eyes swirling and dark. "I changed that. I should have kept my hands off her, but I didn't. I couldn't."

"Now you're going to punish yourself for being human," Justin concluded. "You're going to deny yourself a relationship that makes you happy, and your reasoning is she'll be better off."

"She's dazzled," Mac insisted, wondering why saying it all out loud this way made it sound so wrong and so foolish. "And only seeing what she wants to see. She bought a house, for God's sake."

"Yes, I know."

"And—you know." Mac stared at his father.

"She took your mother to see it the day after she signed the contract. I went to see it myself. It's a fine piece of property, an intriguing, attractive home."

"It's ludicrous to buy a house in a place you've only been for a few weeks, and when you've spent most of that time in a hotel casino. She's living in a fantasy land."

"No, she's not. She knows exactly what she wants, and I'm surprised you don't realize that. If you don't want her, that's a different matter."

"I can't stop wanting her." It was like an ache that couldn't be eased. "I was sure I could."

"Wanting's easy. The first time I saw your mother I wanted her. That was as natural as breathing. But loving her terrified me. Sometimes it still does."

Surprised, Mac lowered to a chair. "You make that part look easy, too. You always have. You're so… matched," he decided.

"Is that the problem?" Justin leaned over, put his hand over Mac's.

"No, not a problem. It's just that marriages work in our family. The odds are against it, but they work for us." He studied the gold band on his father's finger. Thirty years, he thought, and it still fit. That was a kind of miracle. "I figure they work because we're careful to find a mate—in the literal sense of the word. A match."