Working on a Full House

by Alyssa Kress

  Cherise gave Valerie a stern look. "Not only could this guy have been an ax murderer, but God knows what social disease he might have given you — "

  "None," Valerie returned crisply. "We used condoms."

  "Nevertheless, it was stupid." Cherise shook her head. "If you went to bed with this guy, it's dollars to donuts you made up an emotional connection to justify the deed."

  Valerie's mouth opened to provide yet another denial but nothing came out. She had made up an emotional connection. She'd given in to the fantasy that she was important to Roy, a femme fatale. She'd given in to the fantasy he was the man her imagination had made him out to be.

  Temporarily, that is. She'd given in to the fantasy temporarily.

  Cherise crossed her arms over her chest and raised one slim eyebrow. "You jumped from the frying pan into the fire, didn't you?"

  "No."

  Cherise sighed and uncrossed her arms to lean across the little table. "You did. You gave up your hopeless love for Peter only to fall hopelessly in love with this Mr. Yummy in Las Vegas."

  Valerie's eyes widened. "Oh, no. That's not true."

  "No?"

  "I'm not in love. I...know it was all pretend." For heaven's sake, the guy was a complete stranger.

  Cherise frowned at her.

  Valerie took a deep breath. "I...allowed myself to believe the pretty things he was telling me. I let myself feel like I was beautiful. But I knew — and know — that it was only a dream, not real."

  "A dream, huh?" Cherise's stern frown softened. "It was that good?"

  A smile stole over Valerie's face. "Better."

  One corner of Cherise's wide mouth twitched. "On a scale of one to ten...?"

  "Um... " She wouldn't lie. "Twenty."

  Cherise laughed out loud. Valerie laughed, too.

  Still smiling, Cherise said, "Whereas Peter was only a...?" She tilted her hand back and forth.

  Valerie pretended to think about it. "Five," she replied. "At the most."

  Cherise slapped her hand on the table and guffawed. Valerie joined in, laughing all the harder because she, for one, knew it was actually true. Five, at the very most.

  The waitress interrupted. "General Tsuo Chicken," she announced, and leaned down to place the plate in front of Valerie, who was wiping her eyes.

  "And I'll take that Chow Mein Salad." Cherise snapped up a paper napkin from the holder beside the soy sauce. She used it to wipe under her eyes. "Thanks."

  With an uncertain smile toward the both of them, the waitress nodded and backed away.

  Valerie blotted her own tearing eyes. "God."

  "You said it." Cherise plucked out another napkin. "Well, at least it was a worthwhile experience."

  Valerie snorted back another outburst of laughter. "On that front, definitely."

  Cherise shot her a sidelong look. "But on some other fronts?"

  Valerie sighed. It didn't help that Cherise looked sincerely concerned. She'd be even more concerned if she knew how terrible Valerie felt about never seeing Roy again — even though she reminded herself, over and over, that she didn't really know him, not truly.

  Slowly, she pulled her disposable chopsticks apart. "Look, I went to Las Vegas to forget about Peter, to forget about the humiliation of losing him to somebody else. To...make myself feel better." She shrugged. "Mission accomplished."

  Cherise stabbed her chopsticks into her salad, meanwhile sending Valerie a penetrating look. "Do you feel better?"

  "Oh, yeah." Valerie nodded emphatically. "I had a great time, Cherise. Honestly, it was one of the best times in my life. But it's also over. Finis. I understand that."

  "And that's okay with you? It being over?"

  Was it okay with her? An arrow slashed through her every time she recalled her last sight of Roy, the spent wolf, on the bed. But that image was part of the fantasy. The real Roy was probably somebody far different from the man with whom she'd spent the night. He had to be, right? No one-night stand could be as sweet and caring as Roy had seemed to be.

  Valerie gazed down at her General Tsuo Chicken and shrugged. "Oh, sure. I'm back in reality now." She made herself look back up at Cherise with a carefree smile. "Nothing to worry about."

  ~~~

  Yes, it was nothing to worry about. Valerie went back to work after her lunch with Cherise with this thought in mind. True, the memories were still potent, but they would fade. She'd be able to stop second-guessing herself, wondering 'what if.' With time and distance, she'd be able to set Roy into a comfortable drawer labeled, "great one-time experience."

  Indeed, by the second week anniversary of her wild night in Vegas, the whole episode seemed almost unreal and Valerie felt...back to normal. Besides, she had other things on her mind. Nicky Gordon was presenting quite a mystery. His blood test had returned normal, but he'd come back to the office that Monday, continuing to complain of fatigue.

  She was in her office after examining Nicky and pondering his chart when she pulled forward her calendar, checking the duration of Nicky's mysterious fatigue. Valerie put her pen on the date of the first time she'd seen him, then counted the squares forward to the date today.

  "Fourteen days," she murmured. "And he'd been feeling fatigue before he came in for the first appointment, too." She sat a moment, tapping her pen on the day's date. It was a long minute, as her thoughts were deeply on Nicky, before she realized something significant about the date. Her pen stopped, pressed on the calendar. Her stomach sank to her toes.

  "No," Valerie muttered. "Oh, no."

  Her pen backed up four days. She couldn't be sure, not until she went home and checked her calendar there, but...wasn't she supposed to have gotten her period by now?

  Her heart started to pound. "I could be wrong," she suggested. "I have to be wrong." They'd been so careful. That last time he hadn't even — No. Even if her period was late, it had to be for some other, unrelated reason. Early onset menopause. Something.

  Valerie wanted to rush home immediately and check her calendar that had her personal notes on it, but she still had five patients to see.

  Somehow, she made it through the day. Half of her behaved like a professional, taking in information on her patients, processing it, and reacting appropriately. The other half of her was a taut bow. Four days late. She was never late, not even when she'd wanted to be, certain such a fact would finally bring Peter to think of matrimony.

  Valerie arrived home from the office in record time. She went straight from the garage to the kitchen. Still in her jacket, holding her keys and her purse, she stalked over to the calendar hanging on the wall by the telephone. "Please, please, please," she muttered. "I have to be wrong."

  She tapped today's date with a key, then flipped the calendar to see the previous month — and saw her characteristic tic mark, discreet, something only she would understand — and realized she had been wrong. Her period wasn't four days late.

  It was five days late.

  Valerie struggled to keep breathing. "No," she protested. "It's just not possible." They'd been careful! They'd done everything they were supposed to. And besides, he was the wrong man. Wrong in a thousand different ways.

  Not to mention, a baby. A real, live extra person.

  "Okay, okay. Calm down." Valerie dropped the page of the calendar she'd been holding up. "Five days late does not necessarily equal pregnancy." But her heart was pounding.

  She had a pregnancy test upstairs in a bathroom drawer. She'd bought it when she'd been going out with Peter, hoping she'd need it one day.

  Valerie put a hand to her forehead. Yes, she'd once hoped and planned on getting pregnant. She'd looked forward to starting a family. But that was when she'd been seriously involved with an ordinary sort of man, one who could conceivably be an integral part of that process. A man she actually knew.

  "Okay, okay. Just go upstairs, pee on the stick. We'll put this question to rest." Valerie set her purse and keys down and shrugged out of her jacket. Her heartbeat began to ca
lm. There was no way she could be pregnant. She didn't know why she was even worrying. They had been careful.

  "Good, good. We'll just take the test, see that one pink line, and have a good laugh about it all." Valerie laughed a little already as she went up the stairs. It was silly to get all worked up over a few measly days.

  Ten minutes later Valerie sat down, hard, on the off-white Kohler toilet in her pretty, hand-tiled bathroom. The white pregnancy test rod was in her hand and two pink lines were staring back at her.

  Two lines.

  Valerie swallowed, unable to stop staring at the two lines. They might have been careful.

  But she was, indeed, pregnant.

  "God," Valerie whispered. A baby...a baby.

  Fathered by Roy.

  Her stomach sank like a lead ball. She didn't even know Roy's last name, let alone how to get in touch with him... Assuming she even ought to get in touch with him.

  "God," Valerie said again, and set her free hand on her belly. "Oh, my God."

  CHAPTER SIX

  "Roy! My man. Where on earth have you been?"

  At the voice, Roy started. From his seat on a deep sofa in the sumptuous lobby of the Venetian, he glanced up from his laptop computer. Before him stood shaggy, blond-haired Kenny Doubletree, a brilliant card man who had the good fortune to look like a brainless beach bum. "Ahem. I've been around." Roy closed the lid of his laptop.

  "Such a warm greeting," Kenny complained, but he was grinning as he dropped to a seat next to Roy.

  Kenny was relentlessly good-humored. Roy had no idea why such an amiable person insisted on befriending a lone wolf like himself, but Kenny hadn't given up since they'd first met over a side action table at the Bellagio three years ago.

  "I didn't see you at the Bellagio on Friday," Kenny remarked.

  Roy shrugged.

  Kenny gave him an odd look. "I didn't see you there last week, either."

  "That tournament is small potatoes."

  "True," Kenny had to admit. The charm of the Bellagio weekly tournament was the relatively small buy-in, only a thousand dollars. On the down side, you had to beat ninety percent of the players to get in the money. Nowadays, that was a lot of players. "Better to find yourself a juicy little side game," Kenny agreed. "Hey, and I know of one, if you want in tonight?"

  Roy regarded Kenny sidelong. If the man was actually inviting him to a game, it meant he thought there'd be enough well-heeled players at the table to allow both of them to make a killing.

  The opportunity once would have given Roy a happy jolt. Today it did nothing. He did his best to sound apologetic, however. "Nah. Maybe next time."

  "Next time," Kenny repeated, and gave Roy the odd look again.

  "I'm not in the mood." Noting Kenny's look, Roy added, "Is that a problem?"

  "No." But Kenny drew the word out, as if he had to think about it. "I'm just wondering..." A broad smile split his face. "I'm wondering if your mood has anything to do with the brunette I saw you with — oh, must have been two weeks ago now."

  It was a brilliant check-raise, although one would expect nothing less from a master like Kenny. On the other hand, Roy was no slouch at the game. His smile was bland as he asked, "What brunette?"

  Kenny laughed. "You know what brunette. The one who was scooted up close while you stood watching the pirates get creamed outside of Treasure Island. Only you weren't watching the pirates, bud. You were watching her." Kenny's grin widened. "Like a man long gone."

  Roy snorted, but the truth of Kenny's observation pierced him. That night he had been long gone, gone in a weird dream land, gone in a vain attempt to forget the emptiness of his big life achievement.

  Kenny made a tsking sound. "I haven't seen you over a poker table since."

  Roy managed not to flinch at the observation. "So?"

  "So." Kenny clasped his hands around one knee. "Who is she?"

  "Nobody." Roy pressed his lips together. "She went home the next day. No big deal." And it hadn't been a big deal. Whatever high emotion had happened between them could be pinned on the in-between stages they'd both been going through in their lives. She'd been letting go of a boyfriend. He'd been trying to figure out what to do with himself next.

  "No big deal," Kenny repeated, and grinned.

  Roy wondered what it would take to wipe the fatuous look off Kenny's face, an expression that was particularly galling given the web page Roy had been perusing right before Kenny strolled up.

  "You don't want to play poker because you can't," Kenny claimed. "You are way distracted."

  Roy narrowed his eyes. "Actually, I'm leaving tomorrow for Atlantic City and the Caesar's Hold 'Em tournament."

  Kenny's grin faltered, which satisfied Roy. "What?" he asked.

  "It is one of the big circuit tournaments." Roy had not, until that moment, thought of going to Atlantic City or entering the tournament, but Kenny's taunting inspired him. Besides, it would be a good idea to get away, far from Las Vegas. Roy stretched an arm across the back of the sofa. "All the best players will be there. It'll be...stimulating." Maybe stimulating enough to get him interested in the game again.

  "Huh." Kenny eyed Roy suspiciously. "You'd rather drag yourself across the country to play in a tournament than stay right here and make an easy killing?"

  "Like I said, it should be stimulating. Unlike shooting fish in a barrel."

  "But you've told me a hundred times that competing for the sake of competition is a boring waste of time."

  Roy smiled. "That was when I had to care about the money."

  "You never had to care about the money." A cryptic statement, Roy thought. Then Kenny tilted his head. "I suppose the next thing you're going to tell me is you're entering the World Series of Poker this year."

  Roy blinked. "Now, that's an idea."

  With his head still tilted, Kenny frowned. "You haven't entered that competition in years. There's a curse on you about it. Everybody says so."

  Roy's smile faded. "There's no such thing as a curse."

  "There is where you're concerned. You've gone for it, what, five times? And always busted out before you could land in the money."

  Two of those five times he'd busted out with a pair of aces in the hole. "It does take luck," Roy allowed delicately, "as well as skill." Every poker player understood, and lived in awe of, the deity Luck.

  Kenny snorted. "When it comes to the World Series, you have no luck, buddy."

  Roy had always thought so, too, but now his eyes narrowed. "This year it'll be different." He paused. "It'll matter." Roy knew that if something mattered, he wouldn't rest until he'd made it happen. Look at his thirty-five million. He'd started underage and faking his way into games. His father had predicted he'd come crawling home, begging to go to college like he ought to have done in the first place. But Roy had not crawled back. He'd crashed on some couches a few times, but he'd made it, and then prospered. So far, he'd done everything he'd set out to do.

  "But why make it matter?" Kenny was still frowning. "You're not into the World Series thing, a title, publicity. That's not your deal."

  "Maybe it's my deal now."

  "Then something's wrong."

  No, there was nothing wrong. Entering the big, prestigious contest would be good, Roy assured himself, glaring at Kenny. It would be healthy. He'd have a goal again, something he could sink his teeth into.

  It had to be better than sitting around hotel lobbies surfing the Internet.

  Roy made an effort to soften his glare and hefted himself from the luxurious sofa. "I'd better run if I hope to make a plane tomorrow to reach that tournament."

  "Yeah." Kenny was still regarding him askance. "Gotta win that title."

  Roy laughed and folded his computer under his arm. Unfortunately, the heat of the sleep mode reminded him of the web page waiting in its digital memory, the page he'd closed when Kenny had arrived. Of all ridiculous things in the world, it was a page listing the pediatric facilities of the California town of Palmwoo
d, with phone numbers.

  As if Roy had any use for such a thing. He didn't have a kid and he didn't live in Palmwood. He would delete the page once he got back to his rooms at Mandalay Bay. He had something to do again, a goal, a focus.

  "When will you be back?" Kenny asked.

  Roy lifted a shoulder. "June, I guess, when the World Series starts."

  "June?" Kenny sat up straight. "You won't be back for months?"

  It was Roy's turn to look oddly at his friend. "Yeah, so?"

  Kenny opened and closed his mouth. "So."

  Right. So. Roy had nobody waiting for him, nobody who cared — That is, nobody he had to answer to. He could leave for months if he wanted. "I've got training to do," he told Kenny.

  "Training," Kenny repeated. "For the World Series."

  "Right." Roy sincerely wished Kenny would stop putting the idea down. Bad enough he wasn't a hundred percent sure of it, himself. Did the World Series matter? And once it was over in July, then what would he do? He'd need another goal.

  Kenny shook his head. "That does it. I'm telling the Prof."

  Roy blinked, and then laughed, silently blessing Kenny for hitting his funny bone. "You're going to tattle on me to Dr. Franck? I'm not afraid of Isaac."

  "Aren't you? I sure am."

  Roy shrugged. "Our poker buddy professor can't tell me anything about myself I don't already know." Roy was in a constant struggle to prove his existence was worthwhile. He knew that. It was his legacy from a rigid and authoritarian parent. "It was nice talkin' to you," he told Kenny.

  "Likewise," Kenny said dryly. "See you in June."

  "Right. June." Roy slapped Kenny on the shoulder, then made his way out of the Venetian. He had a new goal. This was good, but all was not right. As he walked down the strip toward Mandalay Bay, the cubes were not aligning in his head, figuring out intermediate goals, possible obstacles, strategy.

  Roy shook his head. He was tired, that was all. Tomorrow would be different. He'd wake up early, find a flight to Atlantic City, and energize.