Authors: Kay Keppler
“Out it is. Give me a minute to change my clothes.”
When he came out of the shower a few minutes later, Troy was still getting dressed, so he wandered into the kitchen and pulled out the phone book. He looked up “McNaughton,” and there were a few of those, but no Hope, and no “H.” Faith lived in Mesquite Springs, Kenji had said, but the Las Vegas phone book didn’t cover small towns forty miles away. Maybe the sisters lived together.
“What are you looking for?” Troy came into the kitchen, looking so fresh and young that his heart ached.
“Oh, nothing, really.”
Troy just stood there, her head tilted to one side, watching him.
“Okay, then, smartypants,” Tanner said, sighing in mock resignation. “I met a card player today, and she’s got the same last name as another card player from Vegas, and she denies knowing him. And that seems weird. I mean, what are the odds? So I wondered if she was in the phone book.”
“Do you want to ask her out on a date?”
“What did I tell you?” Tanner asked, picking up his keys. “No dating for
anybody
until they’re twenty-five. Now, if you’re ready, let’s go.”
Chapter 6
After Tanner and Troy finished dinner, he dropped her at her best friend Lizbeth’s house. The two girls planned to go to a movie, and if Tanner knew anything about teenagers, flirt with boys. At least he hoped that’s all they’d do.
“Remember that I’ll know everything you do,” he said. “So be careful.”
“I will. Jeez, Dad. Lighten up! I’m going to college next week.”
“It’s not too late to rethink that plan.”
Troy grinned as she got out of the car. “Lizbeth will drive me home. We won’t drink, do drugs, or have sex. I’ll be careful.”
“Okay. Have fun.”
“If that’s even possible if you know everything I do.” She laughed, tossing him a saucy glance, her ponytail bouncing, as she turned and ran up the lawn of her friend’s house.
He watched her go, remembering how his own parents had given him the same warnings. And just like Troy, he hadn’t really listened, never thinking that anything could happen to
him
. And as a consequence, he’d become a father at nineteen, his whole world turned upside down.
Not that he would alter anything if he could. He’d wanted his daughter with a fierce protectiveness ever since the day she was born, when she’d wailed and clutched his finger as the only safe haven in a cold, cruel world. He’d been surprised at the depth of his emotions then, but never doubted them—not when his girlfriend’s parents came to put the baby up for adoption, not when, in desperation, he’d asked Jack’s father, a corporate attorney, to represent him when he asked for permanent custody. The court case had seemed to drag on forever, but in the end, Troy was his.
And that’s when the work had really started. He’d moved back home, finished college at night when his folks could watch his baby daughter, and he watched her in the daytime when they worked. His parents had really come through for him.
Those first few years were tough for all of them, but it had been more than worth it. Raising Troy had been incredible, the hardest, most fun, best thing he’d ever done. Troy had made him the man he was. A better man than he’d started out to be.
He drove home, believing, hoping, that Troy was smarter at eighteen than he’d been, and let himself into the house. He checked his messages. One. From agent Frelly.
“Call me when you get in,” Frelly growled.
Tanner sighed. What were the odds? Frelly would want him to go back to the casino. Maybe he’d found a way for Tanner to get in Big Julie’s game tonight.
He called the number the agent had left and Frelly picked up on the first ring.
“You gotta get over to the casino,” Frelly said. “We can fit you into Big Julie’s game tonight.”
“So soon?” Tanner asked. He tried to keep the doubt out of his voice. He’d only talked to the agents this morning. Surely replacing one of Big Julie’s regular card players with a total stranger couldn’t be that easy. Big Julie would be suspicious of substitutions.
“Yeah,” Frelly said. “One of his regulars ate a peanut. Guy’s allergic to peanuts. They hadda call an ambulance. Darla’s at the Desert Dunes waiting for you. We hid a camera in Big Julie’s bathroom. You go in pretending to take a leak. You take out the camera and hide it someplace in the room where they’re playing. It’s tiny. You won’t have no problem. Darla will show you how it works.”
“How am I getting into the game?” he asked. “I can’t just show up at the door and ask if Big Julie wants to play.”
“No,” Frelly agreed. “The floor manager will call Big Julie and ask him, since his seventh player is in the ICU, if he wants to play with you, because you are in the house and you’re not bad but not that good, either—”
“Hey!” Tanner said. “I’m very good.”
“Yeah, well, the point to remember here is that you won’t be playing that good with Big Julie, because we need him to win.”
Tanner thought. It sounded thin, but the point was to get him in Big Julie’s game. If this half-baked subterfuge got him there, fine.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go down there. You’re staking me, of course.”
“Much as I hate to do it,” Frelly said.
Tanner rolled his eyes. “Then it’s showtime.”
But when Tanner got to the casino and went to the manager’s office, Darla told him the gig was off.
“Big Julie is too despondent to play because his regular has gone into anaphylactic shock with the peanut,” Darla reported. “Tonight’s game is cancelled. Sorry about that.”
Tanner thought about the chores he might have done that evening instead and felt philosophical.
“Will Big Julie still be feeling despondent next week, too?” he asked.
“I think he’ll be feeling better,” Darla said.
“I’d like to know how you guys do it,” Tanner said, as he opened the door that lead out to the floor. “That peanut. That was no accident.”
“Hey,” Darla said, grabbing her purse, preparing to follow. “Peanuts are everywhere. A person’s got to be careful.”
Tanner cut through the casino, thinking that if the action looked good he might as well play a few hands, when he saw Hope McNaughton, sitting alone at the bar, still wearing that ridiculous navy suit, clutching a glass and looking like she was going to throw up.
It was a man’s duty, not to mention his pleasure, to rescue a damsel in distress, so Tanner changed course and headed her way. Not that Hope, who must be five eight at least, was his idea of a damsel, exactly. In that suit, with that bright pink top underneath, she looked more like a really hot accountant, who, when she wanted to balance her ledgers with you, just took off her glasses and let down her hair before she really, really cooked your books.
Tanner shook his head, trying to get a grip, and then he slid onto the stool next to her, signaling the bartender for a beer before he nudged her elbow gently with his own.
“Tanner Wingate, remember me? We met today? Friend of Marty’s?”
Hope turned and looked at him blankly.
“I guess I didn’t make that good an impression.”
Hope blinked and seemed to come back into focus. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Tanner Wingate,” Tanner said again. “We met earlier.”
“Oh, right.” She sat up a little straighter. “The card player.”
“That’s me. So, what’s up?”
“Not much.” Hope took a pull out of her drink and set the glass back on the bar, smacking it against the edge as she did so. Some of the drink slopped onto the polished surface, and the bartended wiped it up as he set down Tanner’s beer.
She was just unbelievably beautiful. She looked like a tipsy Botticelli angel as she sat there, all lush hips and thighs and breasts and wavy blonde hair. But Botticelli angels rose naked from the sea and plucked spring fruit under the threat of cupid’s bow. They didn’t wear navy suits and camp out on bar stools, and now that he thought about it, Botticelli angels didn’t seem so cranky, either. The Botticelli vision faded, but duty still called. And if he rescued Hope, maybe she’d be really, really grateful. Another vision—one of black leather thongs and whips—entered his mind.
“I know something’s wrong,” he said, trying to exude empathy. “Want to tell me what it is?”
Hope closed her eyes and leaned into the bar, holding her head in her hands. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really. Thank you for your concern. I don’t need any help. You can go now.”
Oh-kay
. No Botticelli angels. No leather thongs. Not for him, not tonight. One of the cable TV stations had scheduled a weeklong marathon of Perry Mason reruns; maybe if he went home now he could catch the start. Old television programs and a bowl of popcorn were starting to look good compared to his evening so far.
“You want me to call Marty for you? Since you’re, well, upset.”
Hope took another pull from her drink. “I’m not upset,” she said. “Don’t call Marty on my account. I have to do this myself.”
Tanner looked at her. Hope was an adult, and she was a friend of Marty the Sneak and all those Jersey people, so she had to have a head on her shoulders because Marty was a pro and he didn’t fool around with losers. But people who sat on barstools clutching drinks and telling others that they can handle their problems themselves, usually couldn’t.
Tanner took a sip of his beer, wondering what he could do, what he
should
do. He probably should just call Marty and have him come and take care of Hope. Whatever the problem was, Marty clearly was already involved in it.
“It’s a long story,” Hope said.
Finally
. “I love long stories,” Tanner said, smiling to encourage her. “Tell me.”
The bartender hovered and Tanner waved him away.
“I need to raise a lot of money,” Hope began.
Tanner’s heart sank. Too many lives had been ruined by people who thought they could get rich by gambling or playing cards. It just didn’t happen. In the casino games like roulette, the game was slanted so the house usually won. In cards, winning depended on the players’ skill and the luck of the draw. Tanner himself had played professionally for almost twenty years and had done very well overall. Still, he’d had many, many losing nights. All professional card players had ups and downs.
And now here was Hope McNaughton, with her nice sister Faith, the organic farmer, and niece, Amber, who wanted to be a chef—her nice family no doubt at home, and here was Hope, sitting inebriated on a bar stool, thinking she’d get rich quick.
Gambling could be a sickness, and when he saw people throwing their lives away, it made Tanner angry.
“Go home, Hope,” he said, trying to be gentle. “You don’t need a lot of money. You need to spend time with your family.”
Now Hope sat up very straight, and her eyes blazed. “ ‘I love long stories,’” she mocked his words in a high-toned voice. “ ‘
Tell
me.’” She brought her voice back to normal, if strident with contempt could be called normal. “First you
ask
me to tell you, and now you won’t listen. You don’t know what I need.”
“I know that playing cards to get rich quick isn’t the answer.”
“There’s nothing you can tell me about card players,” she snorted
.
“Vegas would be so much nicer without them.”
“So you want to join the ranks?” Tanner asked, annoyed in spite of himself. “Think about what you’re doing. But think about it at home.”
Hope dug a bill out of her purse and dropped it on the bar, sliding carefully off the stool.
“I’ll go home,” she said, as she walked away, “if you’ll go to hell.”
Tanner watched Hope walk a little too carefully toward the ladies room.
That went well.
From the moment he’d thought about hot accountants who could cook a guy’s books to the second she told him to go to hell not five minutes later, Tanner had reached a new record in alienating women. Not even Troy could get that mad at him that fast.
The door to the restroom drifted shut after her. She’d probably be all right, but he pulled out his cell phone and called Marty. And then while he waited to make sure that someone came and took care of her, he pulled out a deck of cards and started practicing his old tricks. He needed to be ready next week, when Big Julie would not be too despondent to play cards.
Hope splashed water on her face in the ladies room, feeling the coolness take some of the heat from her cheeks. She was furious with Tanner Wingate, but she knew she was angry because his cautionary words reflected her own fears. She’d been sitting at that bar nursing a drink, terrified and upset at what she’d done.
She’d lost two thousand dollars.
She’d needed to earn the two hundred thousand for her stake, so she’d been playing at the thirty-dollar table. Then, faster than she could have imagined, she was two thousand down. She’d lost a couple of big pots in a dozen or so hands, and when she looked down and saw her chip pile, how small it had shrunk, she’d felt sick. She’d jumped up and left the game.