The Gambler

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Son, come on out a minute, would you?” Jasper said.

  See, my gut said don’t do it. But this was Juliette’s father and if things were going to be different between us didn’t I need to help that happen? Didn’t I need to trust that him showing up on my door in the middle of the night wasn’t a bad thing?

  So, I stepped out of the doorway and onto the old wooden porch. “What can I-“

  Owen’s right hook knocked me sideways and his fist in my stomach pushed all the air from my body. Gasping, I fell to my knees.

  Jasper crouched down beside me, his knees creaking as he did it. He wasn’t a young man and rumor was his health wasn’t great. That’s why he brought Owens to do the dirty work.

  “Let me tell you how this is going to go, son.”

  “Stop. Fucking. Calling. Me. Son.”

  I wasn’t anyone’s son.

  He stood up and I got Owen’s boot across my chin. I lay, spitting blood, trying to get my breath and wondering why I’d ever allowed myself to believe this was going to end any other way.

  “You ready to listen?” Chief Tremblant asked.

  “Fuck you.”

  “You god damn O’Neills, never know when to quit, do you?”

  He stepped aside and Owens stepped in with glee on his face.

  Yeah, I thought. This seemed about right.

  This is what you get for dreaming.

  2

  Ten Years Later

  * * *

  TYLER

  * * *

  I was welcomed back to Bonne Terre the same way I’d been kicked out of it.

  With a fist in the face.

  “I never did like you,” Lou Brandt whispered in my ear while I spit blood into the dirt outside of St. Pat’s church. “Or your family.”

  I rolled over and grinned, wincing slightly when my lip split and hot copper blood flooded my mouth. “I’ve always liked you, Lou,” I wheezed. “And your wife.”

  Lou reared back, his steel-toed work boot poised for another conversation with my rib cage, but Gaetan Bourdage got a thick arm around Lou’s barrel chest. “Come on, now, Lou,” he said. Lou strained against Gaetan’s arm, his big fat head turning red and purple.

  “You’re trash,” Lou snarled. “You think winning all that money changes things?”

  “No, actually,” I said, checking to make sure I still had my back teeth. “It just makes me rich trash.”

  “You’re a fucking cheat!” Lou cried.

  “Oh, shut up,” I moaned. “You’re a crappy card player, Lou. You always were and the ten years I’ve been gone, you’ve just gotten worse.”

  Lou strained against Gaetan’s arm with renewed fury. “Someone should have shut your mouth for you years ago.”

  “They tried,” I muttered.

  “Go on inside,” Gaetan said, his accent thick as the swamp air. “This boy just ain’t worth it.” If I didn’t know Gaetan, I might just be hurt.

  Instead I searched for my cap, finding it trampled in the dust.

  “You’re right,” Lou said, finally easing off. He spit and the thick glob landed in the dirt near my hand.

  I reared up off the ground because spit? Really? But Gaetan’s gaze nailed me to the dirt.

  Stay put, his eyes said. I can only save your sorry ass so many times.

  Lou wandered back to the church and the Sunday night poker game that had been going on in the basement ever since the church had been built, and I hung my pounding head between my knees.

  “Welcome home,” I muttered.

  “Whatchu doing back here, Ty?” Gaetan asked. The old man crouched, his thick silver mustache trembling with anger.

  “A guy can’t—”

  “No,” Gaetan said, “if that guy is you, then no. Boy!” Gaetan pulled me up, and even though I towered over the old man, I was cowed slightly. Coming home had been a bad idea, but coming to the St. Pat’s poker game was just stupid.

  But then I had a thing for stupid.

  “Whatever made you come back, I hope it was worth getting your face beat in.” Gaetan pulled a red handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it over. I pressed it to my lip.

  Beat in was a stretch, but I wasn’t about to get into it with the Cajun.

  “I don’t know, Gates,” I said, instead. “The look on everyone’s face when I walked in there was pretty priceless.”

  “Priceless?” Gaetan snorted. “Every man in there thinks you cheated.”

  I bit my tongue and jammed my cap back on my head, trying hard to swallow down the urge that I’d spent the past ten years destroying. Of course, one night back in Bonne Terre and the need to defend myself came crawling back, like a kicked dog.

  “I didn’t cheat,” I said, ready to go back into that church and fight anyone who said otherwise. “Not tonight, not when I was a kid. I never cheated.”

  “I know that,” Gaetan said, scowling, his bushy eyebrows colliding to create a mutant caterpillar. “But you took a lot of their money when you were a boy and they haven’t forgotten that.”

  The satisfaction of taking the money off those men who looked down their noses at my family, called my grandmother names behind my back and watched me out of the corner of their eyes, was still so sweet.

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  Gaetan cuffed me upside the head.

  “Hey!”

  “You took their money ten years ago and now you come back a rich man to take more?” Gaetan shook his head.

  “It’s a poker game,” I said. “The point is to take each other’s money.”

  “You—” Gaetan curled a hand in my shirt, pulled me down close to the old man’s height until I could smell the whiskey and peppermint on his breath. “You have always taken too much. Always. Even as a boy you could never be happy with what you had. You needed what everyone else had, too. And everyone in this town remembers that about you. You shouldn’t have come back here.”

  I’d been telling myself the same damn thing the whole drive from Vegas to Bonne Terre, but hearing it from Gaetan, a man I’d always considered a friend, stung.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Then why come back?” Gaetan asked. “You’re a rich man. A celebrity. You’ve got that girlfriend—”

  I snorted.

  “Fine,” Gaetan said. “No girlfriend. But why are you back?”

  I shrugged. “I have to have a reason?”

  “This isn’t about your mother snooping around these parts, is it?”

  I wished I could tell the old man, but I didn’t want to implicate my friend, should it come to that. Instead, I said nothing and Gates sighed.

  “You best not drive,” Gaetan said, pointing at my head and I gingerly touched the swelling around my eye.

  Lou was a crap card player, but the guy could throw a punch.

  I glanced back at my beloved 1972 Porsche, its black paint melting into the shadows. “She’ll be okay here?” I asked, and Gaetan snorted.

  “Last car stolen in Bonne Terre was the one you stole when you left.”

  “I doubt that,” I said, reluctant to leave Suzy alone and vulnerable outside a place as unwelcoming as St. Pat’s.

  “Merde, Ty, it’s just a car.”

  “Don’t tell that to Suzy.”

  “Suzy?”

  “Suzette, really.”

  “Lord, Ty, you don’t change. I’ll watch her myself.”

  “Thank you. In that case, I might as well take in some night air,” I said, remembering the path through town past the police station and Rousseau Square down to The Manor as if it had been yesterday.

  I’d get Sweet Suzy back in the morning.

  “Okay then,” Gaetan said. “You come by for dinner or Maude will have your head.”

  “Will do,” I agreed with a grin that split my lip. “Hey, Gates?” The old man stopped, his bowed legs turning him around. “You really mayor?” Once upon a time he was the best trumpet player I’d ever known. Maybe everyone gave up on a dream.

&
nbsp; Gaetan nodded. “Sure am, boy, so you best watch yourself.”

  He winked and walked back into the church, through the lit doorway that led down to the basement. With one last damning look over his shoulder, Gaetan jerked the door shut.

  There was a slam and lights out.

  Two janitors. The high school wrestling coach. Gaetan and Father Michaels. Suddenly, all too good to play with me.

  The reigning World Series of Poker champion.

  Which only continued to prove what I’d known down in my gut all along—the world changed but Bonne Terre stayed the same.

  I sighed, pushed my A’s cap down farther on my head and made my way back home.

  The September night was thick and dark, the suffocating blanket I remembered and hated. Two steps and I had that dirty, clammy sweat that made me ache for the white tile shower in my suite, the cool hum of forced air.

  Christ, my eye was beginning to pound.

  Coming back here had been a dumb idea. I’d been fine, years had gone by without me caring, the memories fading bit by bit, but one word that my mother might be back in town and here I was, choking on the dirt outside St. Pat’s.

  No doubt the kitchen in The Manor would be empty. None of Margot’s sugar pies to welcome me home.

  I crossed Jackson and headed for the square, thinking I’d cut through the magnolias in the park and save myself some time, when a dark car slid around the corner, crawling along the curb.

  My alley-cat instincts, honed on this very street, woke up and I stepped into the shadows of the trees.

  Stupid of me to cross Jackson under the streetlights—anyone looking knew my path home.

  The wrought-iron fence was cold against my back. It would be just like Lou to follow me, or call one of his softball buddies to come out here for a little middle-of-the-night batting practice.

  The car eased past me, got to the corner and stopped under the streetlamp.

  Exhaust filling the golden pool of light with gray smoke.

  Well, shit. I did not like that. At all.

  I circled around the other side of the fence, hugging the shadows, between the leaves and the light. If it was Lou’s buddies, they wouldn’t be expecting me to approach from the side. My foot caught on a branch and I grabbed it from the ground and tested its heft.

  Pretty weak, but with some surprise on my side I might do some damage before they took care of what was left of my face.

  As I cleared the side of the blue car, blood pumping, smile easing nice and slow across my face, I saw that there weren’t a bunch of men in it. In fact, sitting in the driver’s side, staring me right in the eye with ten hard years of hate, was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known.

  “Juliette,” I breathed. For a second my life stopped and all I saw were those hazel eyes and lips so pink and perfect. And sweet. The sweetest.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Tyler?”

  JULIETTE

  * * *

  I was not, repeat, not going to touch Tyler O’Neill. Not with my fingers. Not with a ten-foot pole. Perhaps later, when given a chance, I’d touch him good with my fists, but at the moment, there was going to be no touching. Too bad, since it was the only way I was ever going to convince myself the man standing in front of me, as rumpled and bloody and heart-stoppingly handsome as he’d been at twenty—was real.

  And not a figment of all of my furious revenge fantasies.

  “Just out for a stroll,” he said, tossing the branch he’d been holding onto the dirt.

  “Sure you are. What are you doing back in Bonne Terre?” I asked.

  “Savannah said The Manor is sitting empty,” Tyler said and shrugged, as if his arrival out of the blue after ten years was perfectly natural. “Seems like someone should be watching over it.”

  “You?” I asked, laughing at the very notion of Tyler being down here for any unselfish reason. “Please.”

  He stared at me for a second and then smiled. That heartbreaker smile.

  My heart fluttered against my chest, a small mechanical bird powered by that smile.

  He glanced out at the buildings lining the square, the hardware store and Jillian’s Jewelry Shop. The café and the bank. He watched those buildings as if they were watching him back. A threat to be monitored.

  “You’re right,” he said, but that was all he said.

  I bit my lip against the other questions screaming to be heard.

  Why did you go?

  Why didn’t you write? Call?

  What did I do?

  But what would be the point? Ten years of silence were all the answer I really needed.

  “Who’s been working on your face?” I asked.

  “Old friends,” he said, touching his eye with careful fingers and wincing anyway.

  Something dark and vicious inside of me really liked that he was in pain.

  And I hated that I liked it since I’d sworn off feeling anything about this man years ago. But he was here, standing so close I could shoot him, and these feelings—all the old anger and hurt and rage—resurfaced as though they’d just been waiting for the chance.

  I’d call him tomorrow, fill him in on what was happening out at The Manor over the phone. Then I’d hang up and never waste another minute thinking about Tyler O’Neill.

  I put the car in gear. “Have a good night, Tyler,” I said, liking all the cool “go screw yourself” I managed to fit into those words.

  “Wait.” His hand touched the open window of my car and I pressed my foot back on the brake.

  “What?”

  “I got an e-mail from Savannah. This guy she’s with—”

  “Matt?”

  “Right, is he—”

  I laughed. “You going to stand there and pretend to care, Tyler?”

  “She’s my sister,” he snapped. “Of course I care.”

  “Then you should show up once in a while.”

  Tyler’s grin was gone and he was looking at me with cold blue eyes that, without a word, damned me straight to hell. Silent, he turned and walked away.

  I watched him go, the same long legs, the wide shoulders and narrow hips that looked so damn good in faded and torn blue jeans it made me want to bite something.

  Ten years. Ten damn years and he comes back here as if nothing ever happened.

  I rested my head against the steering wheel. Maybe nothing had happened. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, a broken heart didn’t mean anything. I’d been twenty, after all, a couple of years of college under my belt, law school at Oklahoma State glimmering in the future—I should have known better than to get tangled with Tyler O’Neill. A high school drop-out who made his living winning Sunday-night poker games and playing piano out at Remy’s. He was so opposite from me, he was like a different animal, a force of nature I couldn’t ignore. At twenty-one he’d been the only thing that could have distracted me from my plan. And he had. He totally derailed my plan.

  And now he was back and Savannah was my best friend and things were strange around The Manor these days.

  And it was my freaking job to deal with it.

  I took my foot off the brake and rolled up next to him.

  “Do you want a ride?” I asked, not looking at him. “You’ve still got another mile to go.”

  “I know how far it is.”

  “Then climb in and I’ll drive you.”

  He circled the front of the car, stepping through my headlights, the low beams catching the bright red of his blood on his pale face. Gold-blond hair under his cap and those eyes. Oh, man, those eyes.

  And then he was in the car with me and I could smell him, toothpaste and cigars and him. Tyler.

  A million memories of hot days and cool nights flooded me. His hands under my skirt, those eyes memorizing every detail of my face, those lips telling me a hundred lies.

  “Thanks,” Tyler said as subdued as I’d heard ever him. “How have you—”

  I cut him off. There would be no “how have you been’s?” I knew
how he’d been, rich and dating a hot French model whose popularity had them all over every magazine in the grocery store. All month long I couldn’t buy a carrot without looking at Tyler holding hands with some stick-thin blonde.

  “You should know a few things about what’s happening at The Manor,” I said, turning left around the square, past the Bonne Terre Inn and toward the road out of town.

  “Savannah and Margot are both gone,” Tyler said. “And Mom was around a month ago. Savannah told me.”

  “Not just around,” I said, sparing him a glance only to find him watching me. Awareness like icy hot prickles ran down my spine. “She broke into the place twice, maybe three times. Scared the bejesus out of everyone, especially Kate.”

  “Everyone okay?”

  Again I squelched the urge to tell him that if he cared, he should have been there, but I knew it all boiled down in the O’Neill family dynamic with their mother. She’d left scars on her children that could be seen from space.

  “Fine,” I said. “But Savannah didn’t press charges, so Vanessa is out there somewhere.”

  “Why did she come back?” he asked. “It’s been twenty years since she left us here. Why now?”

  “She thinks there are gems hidden in the house,” I said.

  “Gems?” Tyler asked, shaking his head. “The Notorious O’Neills just don’t know when to quit. How in the world would gems get hidden in The Manor?”

  “Stolen gems from a casino seven years ago. Your mother was involved.”

  “Of course.”

  “But so was your dad.”

  “My dad?” Tyler looked blank for a moment as if the word dad had no real connection to him, wasn’t even a word he understood. But then there was the shadow. His face changed, and Tyler became harder. Older. As if what his parents had done to him was a weight he carried, a weight he’d grown used to. Sometimes, though, he got knocked back by how truly heavy it was and how long he’d been carrying it.

  Not that I cared. I used to, of course. He’d put on that brooding, grieving, lost-little-boy thing with me ten years ago and my skirts had literally fallen off.