Unlucky (8 page)

Scooter nodded. "He said he was going back to his suite for a shower. He'll be back after that."

Crap. They were right back to the old, unattractive, naked man thing. The bathroom was probably the only place Reginald could go that Mallory wouldn't follow, but she didn't have the time to wait on Reginald to finish showering.

Mallory motioned Scooter over to a corner of the kitchen and glanced around to make sure no one would hear. "Something's not right here, Scooter. This list of players is all wrong. My uncle is so mad about some of them being here, and that doesn't make sense. It's almost like he didn't make up the invitation list. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Scooter scrunched his brow for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, I guess it's kinda weird that he would put Father T at your table. Heck, Father T blabs everything people say in confession, and he's supposed to have a contract with God on keeping that a secret. He's probably already told everyone you're a cooler."

Mallory nodded. "That's what I'm afraid of. I figure I can pass most of it off as him being drunk, but I don't know that it can last for a week."

"So what are you going to do about it now? It's too late to change everything."

"For now, I'm going to keep him drunk, which shouldn't be difficult. But if I knew what my uncle was up to, I'd have a much better idea of how to play this out long-term." She thought a moment more, then looked Scooter directly in the eyes before she could change her mind. "I need you to do something for me."

"Anything for you, Mai, you know that."

"Good. I need you to stay as close to my uncle as you can without him noticing. Remember everything he says, even if it doesn't sound important. Whatever he's up to is bound to be a huge problem, and I have no intention of being caught in the middle."

Scooter's eyes widened and he gave her a big grin. "You want me to play Sherlock Holmes? That's the coolest thing ever."

Mallory stared at Scooter in surprise. "You read Sherlock Holmes?" Surely not. In the seven years she'd lived next to him, Mallory had never seen Scooter read anything but road signs or advertisements for a sale on beer. Well, and that one time she'd caught him in his bass boat with a copy of
Penthouse
, but neither of them spoke of the matter and she did her best to keep it in the far back reaches of her mind.

"Of course, I read Sherlock Holmes," Scooter said. "Spent most of junior high with a book under my desk instead of listening in history--I mean, who cares about dead people? Heck, Mallory, every boy wanted to be Sherlock Holmes--or Dale Earnhardt."

"That's great, Scooter. You play Sherlock Holmes, then. We'll save Dale Earnhardt for a car chase, if it comes to that."

Scooter scratched his head. "Um, Mai, I don't know how to tell you this, but Senior ain't driving anymore since the accident and all. If you want a car-chase person, then I might have to be Junior."

"Junior, it is."

Scooter rose to his full height and stiffened his posture. "'My name is Sherlock Holmes,'" he said, in the worst British accent Mallory had ever heard. " 'It is my business to know what other people don't know.'"

With a nod, Scooter flattened his back against the casino wall, glanced both directions, then slowly crept toward the hall. When he reached the end of the wall, he pulled his pocketknife from his jeans, opened it and stuck the blade into the open walkway, apparently attempting to use it as a mirror.

Mallory gave a silent prayer of thanks that no one had been entering the kitchen when Scooter had decided to stab at the open doorway and watched in dismay as he gave her a thumbs-up and inched sideways through the opening.

Mallory hesitated a second or two but finally strode off toward the coffeepot, already regretting having put Scooter up to anything requiring stealth and finesse. It didn't take a genius to know this was going to be a disaster.

Jake shuffled the cards again while stealing glances at Mallory as she served the drinks to the players. The woman was a complete anomaly--clearly smart enough to rein in the Redneck Lynch Mob that the players had formed against him this morning, but not smart enough to figure out that all that incidental touching she managed to do while serving was a complete waste of time.

And Reginald St. Claire was only making the situation worse by encouraging her ridiculous beliefs. Jake noticed that Mallory was the only attendant not carrying her own tray. A kitchen worker had trailed behind her with the drinks and placed them on the serving table, then reminded her to call him for pickup before dismissing himself. Jake surmised Mallory was encouraged not to carry anything breakable. At least not in mass quantity.

Why in God's name she'd brought the drunken priest more alcohol, Jake didn't even want to know. At this point, the priest was the least of his worries. Based on the players' lack of reaction to Mallory, women were obviously not going to be a distraction and that clearly put all the responsibility on Jake. They had barely even looked at the mound of partially exposed breasts as she leaned in to place drinks in front of them. They were too focused on the game, which was a real shame. Breasts that stood at attention with no bra,
if
she'd been telling the truth, were worth at least a glance.

He was just trying to decide if there was a tan line buried somewhere in that shirt when he felt someone's eyes on him. He lifted his gaze to the table beside them and saw Brad smiling at him. The other dealer gave him a thumbs-up and grinned. Jake held in a sigh and turned back to his table. His only objective at this tournament was to fly below the radar until he was ready to bust Silas, and twice already Brad had caught him acting like a horny sixteen-year-old.

If he didn't get his act together, Brad might want to hang out or something equally as painful. Drinking beer, entertaining loose women and watching NASCAR. Or, even worse, one of those fishing shows. If it was hunting season, he'd probably be expected to kill something and wear a funny hat.

He waited until Mallory had taken her seat at the end of the table to start dealing. The first hand had gone well. Silas had won a bit of money, and Jake had been smart enough to bow out early. If he continued to play smart, he might have a chance. All he needed was one exchange of cash.

At least he hoped that would be enough.

Finished with the deal, he pushed the card shoe over to the left and lifted the edge of his cards from the table. No fucking way. The handful of hearts seemed to smile up at him. A royal flush on the deal? The odds of pulling a royal on the deal were less than him actually knowing those NASCAR drivers, like Mallory had suggested. Granted, a royal flush wasn't as bad as drawing five of a kind, but neither hand was believable.

Before he could stop himself, he glanced over at Mallory. She was staring directly at him, the briefest of smiles on her face. No fucking way. She could not have made this happen. But it was obvious from the amused look on her face that Mallory knew he'd drawn a good hand.

Disgusted, he glanced around the room, wondering if St. Claire's security people were closely watching the camera that showed his hand. He needed to ditch a card but couldn't afford for one of St. Claire's flunkies to see it happen.

He raised one hand to stroke his jaw and tried to clear all expression from his face. If he dropped one card, Mallory might think he'd pulled a straight on the draw and was gambling the last card on the royal. What the hell. It was early in the game and he could always defend his choice by saying he had to take the chance. It might not be the most brilliant or conservative of moves, but no one would be able to fault him for trying it.

If St. Claire's goons were watching the cameras, he could always say they were mistaken. He seriously doubted they were recording everything, so unless he kept tossing away winning hands, he shouldn't have a problem.

Mind made up, he yanked the ace out of his hand and tossed it on the pile of discards. The worst thing that could happen is she would assume he was a risky gambler. The last thing she should guess is that he was intentionally trying to throw the hand.

Pulling cards from the shoe, he dealt replacements to all the players and dropped a single card with the rest of his own, praying for anything that didn't make a winning hand. And frustrated at himself for fearing the worst. He had nothing to worry about and that was just reality. The shoe contained six decks to help cut down on the card-counting ability of some of the better players. So even though the card existed in the decks another five times, the odds of him drawing another ace of hearts were incredibly minute.

Even so, he found himself clenching his jaw as he lifted the edge of the card off the table.

When the red "A" made its appearance, it was all he could do to hold his blank expression in place. He blinked once to make sure he was seeing clearly. A second glance revealed a red diamond, and he slowly let out the breath that he'd been unaware he'd been holding. It wasn't the loss he'd been hoping for, but it wasn't another royal flush, either.

He turned his attention back to the table and waited for his turn to bet. Silas had opened with five thousand, so Jake knew he was holding something worthwhile. The man next to Silas folded and it was on to the drunken priest.

The priest studied his hand for a moment, then swayed a bit in his chair, studied the cards again, took a drink of Jack Daniel's and cleared his throat to speak. Jake steeled himself for the onslaught of garbled scripture but the priest elected to butcher the shortest verse in the Bible.

"Father Thomas wept," he said and tossed his cards, facedown, onto the table.

The man next to Father Thomas gave a sigh of relief, and despite himself, Jake almost smiled. On the previous hand, they'd gotten the entire 23
^rd
Psalm. Sort of.

The other player folded also, so it was left to Jake to bet. He knew what he should do--what he would do if he were playing for real and for keeps--he'd see the five and raise it another. Hell, if he were playing for keeps, he'd have run the table on the royal, but winning some cash wasn't his primary objective. In fact, it wasn't an objective at all. It was only necessary to win enough to keep him in the game and force more money out of Silas.

Mallory knew he had drawn a good hand and if he folded, she'd be able to tell something wasn't right. Then she'd run straight to her uncle.

Damn it.

Call or raise? It should have been simple, and by God, it was. He grabbed some chips off the stack in front of him and tossed them onto the pile.

"I'll see your five and raise you five," he said, and lifted his gaze to the hard stare of Silas Hebert.

Silas studied Jake's face for a moment, then tossed in the required chips. "Call."

Jake laid his cards on the table and watched Silas carefully for any change in expression. Silas seemed momentarily surprised with the display, but finally nodded and flipped his cards over, displaying his own straight, six through ten, but not the same suit.

"You almost pulled it," Silas said to Jake.

Jake nodded. "Would have been a first."

Silas studied him again. "Would have been the first time in over thirty years of card playing that I'd seen it."

Jake met the man's eyes, forcing himself not to look away, but he felt his confidence drop. Silas was issuing the challenge. He had his doubts Jake had drawn the hand fairly and was letting him know he'd be watching very closely from now on.

Jake reached across the table for the spent cards and put them with the other discards. No problem, he thought. The royal was a fluke, a freak of nature and statistics colliding to give him a heart attack. He wasn't cheating, so there was nothing Silas could catch him doing. From now on, the cards would flow normally, and he'd have to rely on his own playing ability to control the table. He could do this. He'd been preparing for years.

As he reached for the shoe, he looked over at Mallory, perched sideways on her stool, her long legs seeming to flow endlessly from the seat. As his gaze moved up the long lines of her body to her face, she gave him a smile, then winked.

It was going to be a very long day.

It seemed to Mallory that lunch would never come. The play on the table was definitely swinging to Jake's advantage, and she couldn't be happier with the results. That first hand was almost overkill, but since then, things had settled down to a steady stream of chips in Jake's direction. Not that Mallory believed for one moment that Jake gave her any credit for his growing pile of chips. Hell, based on the way she was dressed for the tournament, Jake probably didn't give her credit for an IQ higher than her bra size.

And for absolutely no reason she could explain, that bothered her.

She knew he found her attractive--had caught him eyeing every square inch of her body outright. And the blush that crept up his neck when she winked had
clinched it. But the reality was, Jake McMillan probably thought she was a two-bit hustler, like her uncle. He had no real cause to suspect differently, and definitely no reason to attribute to her an advanced degree or a high IQ.

Which should have been nothing new, really. Certainly men, especially men in Royal Flush, rarely acknowledged intelligence in a woman. Of course, they would have had to be smart enough to recognize it, but that was another issue. The reality was, in Royal Flush intelligence wasn't exactly what men were looking for in a mate. A late-model truck with good tires and a bass boat got you a heck of a lot more mileage than a college education.

Not that Mallory was in the market for a man. She'd dated a couple of guys since college but always with the same result--one disaster after another.

Guy #1 had been really sweet and tried desperately to work around the issues. Fortunately for him, he'd only run the gamut of car repairs, failed watches and one twisted ankle while dating her. Well, and that one incident with his suede jacket and a trout, but that could have happened to anyone. Still the jacket had been the last straw, and Guy #1 had waved a hasty good-bye from the parking lot of J.T.'s Bar, his car already loaded with his belongings. Apparently, it wasn't enough to just stop dating her. He'd decided leaving the state was required, and just like that, he was gone.