Page 51 of Elusive Promise

"I'm not interested."

"Yes, you are."

"You need to deal the next hand."

"Fine, but I better win this time."

As if he'd willed the cards to come up his way, Jared got blackjack, and it was her turn on the hot seat.

"Are you going to ask me my most embarrassing moment?" she enquired.

"I don't think so." He thought for a moment. "What scares you the most? And it can't be about Jasmine. This is about you. What worries you, Parisa?"

"Can I just say spiders?"

"No, because you'd be lying."

She sighed. "True. Spiders don't scare me at all. I don't know. I'm not that fearful."

"Try harder."

"Well, I guess it would be…time."

He arched a questioning eyebrow. "Time scares you?"

"Yes. Too much time to think. Too little time to do what needs to be done. Time that moves too fast, takes me places I'm not ready to go. Time that moves too slow, and I can't get where I need to be. Time that ends before I'm ready."

"So, it's time," he said dryly.

She smiled and gave a helpless shrug. "I can't control time, and I don't like that."

"I get it."

"Do you? Because I sound like a lunatic."

"Does the fear of time come from the night you almost lost your life, almost didn't make it into the helicopter?"

"Probably. I had a lot of nightmares after that." She paused. "But the real problem is that I think too much. My brain is always working. And when I have too much time to think, I worry that I'm not doing enough. I hate to fail, and I hate to waste a second. It's bugging me even now that we're not doing something to save Jasmine or find Ben."

"I can get obsessed like that, too," he admitted. "It sometimes makes me do crazy things…like following a woman from the hospital to a safe house and waiting for her to wake up."

They exchanged a smile of complete understanding, and it deepened the connection between them. "That was crazy," she agreed.

"You're not the only lunatic in this room."

"I guess it's good to have company."

"We'll get back to it all tomorrow, Parisa."

"I know."

"Do you want to keep playing cards?"

"No, I think that's enough truth for tonight. I'm going to lay down on the couch. You take the bed."

"Not a chance. It's all yours, Parisa."

"It's your bed."

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