The All-Star Antes Up (Wager of Hearts #2)

by Nancy Herkness

  Miller gave him one of his provocative stares. “I would think arrogance went with the territory. You’re a quarterback.”

  Luke met Miller’s look with one of those smiles that made defensive linemen take a half step backward. “I’ve got plenty of arrogance on the field.”

  That stopped Miller’s jabs. He returned to Trainor. “So have you figured it out yet?”

  “You’re damned annoying,” Trainor said, but there was no heat in his voice. “All right, pride. She played me and I’m pissed about it.”

  “What are you going to do?” Miller asked. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes glinting. Luke poured himself another glass of Trainor’s scotch.

  “Nothing,” Trainor said. “I don’t care enough to expend the energy.” The truth of it showed in the flatness of his tone.

  “Disappointing,” Miller said.

  Luke disagreed with the writer. You couldn’t let them know you were hurting. “It’s the only way to go.”

  He wished he’d kept his mouth shut when Miller swiveled toward him. “Have you had your heart broken?”

  “Half a dozen times,” Luke said. “I got over it.” The last time was in college.

  “Ah, yes, the stoic, monosyllabic jock.” Miller was amused. “If I wrote you in a book, you’d be too much of a stereotype and my editor would complain.”

  Luke had learned silence at the home dinner table, letting his family’s academic debates rage around him as he mentally reviewed plays for the next game. It had turned out to be a useful skill because it kept people guessing. He let his gaze rest on Miller.

  The writer shifted in his chair and blew out a breath. “Since we agree that women are nothing but trouble, maybe we should play cards. It would distract us from our problems.”

  “Cards? Where the hell did you get that idea?” Trainor snapped.

  “Don’t they say, ‘Unlucky at love, lucky at cards’?” The writer gave them a one-sided smile. “Although it’s hard to predict who will get the good luck in this group.”

  Luke took a swallow of scotch and leaned forward. “I don’t buy it.” The two supremely successful men drinking with him didn’t get into the Bellwether Club by sitting back and just waiting for good things to happen. “Everyone at this table knows you make your own luck. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “Luck is the residue of design,” Trainor said with a nod.

  “We’re all big on quotations tonight,” the writer noted.

  Luke had a flash of insight. DaShawn looked forward to retirement because he had someone to share his future with, someone to give him a focus and purpose, someone who needed him.

  Luke faced retirement with profound dread.

  He slashed his hand down to silence Miller’s blathering. “How important is finding a woman you want to spend the rest of your life with?” Trainor took a sip of his drink while Miller lounged silently in his chair. “Pretty damned important,” Luke continued. “How much effort has any of us put into the search?” He gave Trainor and Miller each a hard look.

  Trainor shook his head. Miller shrugged. Luke went on. “I’m guessing not a lot. We see the same women at every event. Friends or colleagues fix us up. Maybe we even get a napkin slipped into our pocket and call that number.”

  He wasn’t proud of that, but he’d done it when he was younger and the woman was hot.

  “Speak for yourself on that last one,” the writer said with a smile that was part envy, part amusement. Trainor chuckled.

  Luke didn’t let Miller throw him off stride. In fact, not much threw him off stride, including women. But maybe the time had come to change that policy. Maybe he needed a Marcy. That way, he wouldn’t feel so goddamned depressed about his best friend leaving the game. “Our problem is lack of focus. We aren’t making it a primary objective in our lives, so we’re failing.” When you were on the field with bodies, voices, and refs swirling around you like a dust storm, having the primary objective in mind made all the rest fall away.

  “So we should be wife hunting instead of running a business or winning football games or writing the next bestseller?” Trainor shot back. “If you’re that desperate, hire one of those executive matchmakers.”

  Luke dropped the temperature of his stare to frost level. “That’s like using a ghostwriter.”

  He got a belly laugh from the novelist.

  “At least the transaction would be honest,” Trainor said, an edge of cynicism in his voice.

  Luke leaned in, resting his forearm on his thigh. “How badly do you want a wife and family?”

  Trainor swirled his drink around in his glass as he considered the question for several seconds. “I’m listening. Miller?”

  “Hell, yes, I’m still looking,” the writer said. “What’s the point of all this if you’ve got no one to share it with?” He swept his free hand around the bar where just one leather chair cost more than a scalper’s ticket to the Super Bowl. Miller turned back to Luke. “And, of course, you need a passel of sons to toss footballs with in your white-picket-fenced yard.”

  “I’m hoping for daughters,” Luke said. He didn’t want any of the ugly competitiveness that had gone on between him and his brother. “But, yeah, I want kids. So what I’m saying is, we need a plan.”

  The writer hummed softly under his breath, then held up his hand. “I have a better idea.” Miller’s eyes gleamed with unholy glee. “Gentlemen, I propose a challenge.”

  A challenge was interesting.

  “We go in search of true love. We keep looking until we find it.”

  Luke sat back in disgust. “This challenge is a load of garbage. How do you prove you’ve found true love?”

  “A ring on her finger.” Miller gave him a barbed smile. “Sorry, Archer.”

  Luke remembered when DaShawn showed him the engagement ring he’d bought for Marcy. His friend was lit up like a kid at Christmas as he opened the velvet box. “I didn’t get her the biggest diamond,” DaShawn had said, flipping the box back and forth so the stone caught the light. “But I got her the most perfect diamond, because she’s the perfect woman for me.”

  “A ring doesn’t prove anything,” Trainor said.

  “I’ve spent—what?—half an hour with you gentlemen,” Miller said. “And I am confident you would not put a ring on a woman’s finger unless you believed you would spend the rest of your life with her.” The writer sat back in his chair.

  Luke gave Trainor an assessing scan. Miller was right. Something about the CEO said he had integrity. Maybe it was that straight-up posture or his clear gray eyes.

  Trainor thought about it before he shook his head. “You’ve had too much to drink. And so have I.”

  The two nearly empty bottles on the table suggested that maybe they’d all had too much to drink, but that didn’t change the magnitude of the goal. This was a game changer, so it required a concrete incentive to get everyone’s attention. “I say we make it a bet,” Luke said. “We need to stake something valuable on the outcome.”

  “The stakes are our hearts.” Miller sounded depressed.

  “We need to bet something more valuable than that,” Trainor said, the edge back in his tone.

  “All right, a donation to charity,” Miller said.

  Luke shook his head. “Too easy.”

  Miller lifted a hand for silence, and Luke caught a spark of slyness in the writer’s eyes. “Not money,” the writer said. “An item to be auctioned off. It must have intrinsic value, but it must also be something irreplaceable, something that would cause each of us pain to lose.”

  Now Miller was talking.

  “Who chooses this irreplaceable artifact?” Trainor asked.

  “You do.” Miller waited for their reaction.

  “So this is an honor system,” Luke said as the gears whirred in his brain.

  The writer placed his hand over his heart in an exaggerated gesture. “A wager is always a matter of honor between gentlemen.”

  Luke snorted. He’d se
en plenty of wagers that had nothing to do with honor.

  “A secret wager,” Trainor said. “We write down our stakes and seal them in envelopes. Only losers have to reveal their forfeits.”

  “I think we require Frankie for this,” Miller said. He turned in his chair to get the bartender’s attention. “Donal, is the boss lady still awake?”

  The bartender nodded. “Ms. Hogan never sleeps, sir. I’ll call her.”

  “Miller, it’s well after midnight,” Trainor said. “Leave the woman alone.”

  Luke nodded his agreement, but Donal was already speaking with his boss. He hung up and said, “She’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  Miller asked Donal to bring them some stationery before he swiveled back to face the table. “I’ve done a lot of stupid things when I was drunk, but this may be the most ridiculous one.” He skimmed a glance over Trainor and Luke. “We can cancel this right now before it goes any further.”

  “I’m still in,” Trainor said, his voice taut.

  “You backing out, Miller?” Luke asked. The writer had started this.

  “Pardon my moment of sanity,” Miller said, shaking his head before he drank a slug of bourbon. “Gentlemen, I suggest we ponder our stakes.”

  Luke knew exactly what he was going to wager. When you needed the win, you left everything you had on the field.

  Trainor sprawled in his chair, frowning as he tapped his fingers on the arm. After a few moments, his expression changed. The CEO had made up his mind.

  “That’s a downright unpleasant smile, Trainor.” The writer had also sunk deep into his chair. Luke was ready to catch the glass dangling from Miller’s lax grasp.

  “I’ve decided on my wager,” Trainor said, his smile broadening.

  “Are you sure it’s something that would draw a high bid?” Miller asked.

  “I guarantee it.”

  The writer switched his focus to Luke. “Have you made your decision?”

  “Made it five minutes ago.” He decided to up the ante to see if Miller would stay in the contest. Pulling a pen out of his pocket, he lifted his glass off its napkin and wrote a large number on it. Spinning the napkin around so his fellow bettors could read it, he said, “Just to sweeten the pot, we should add a significant monetary donation to the charity.”

  Trainor raised his eyebrows but said, “Done.”

  Luke gave the CEO credit for committing without hesitation. He’d picked a number that could make even a billionaire think about it.

  Miller read the number and nodded his agreement.

  Luke sat back. He’d made sure they all had their heads in the game.

  The big paneled door swung open for a third time, and Frankie Hogan strode into the bar. Her silver hair caught a gleam from the brass chandeliers, and her dark blue blazer and white blouse reminded Luke painfully of the Patriots’ uniform colors. As she approached their table, all three men rose to their feet, dwarfing the tiny Irishwoman. Luke’s knee popped. He winced and hoped no one else had heard the sound.

  “Gentlemen, I understand there’s illicit gambling going on in my establishment.” Her rasp of a voice reminded him of a referee at the end of the fourth quarter, except for the Irish accent. “I want a piece of it.”

  Miller chuckled. “Frankie, we’re wagering on matters of the heart, and you haven’t got one.”

  The Bellwether Club’s founder gave a snort of laughter at the insult. “Clearly, I can feel pity, because I let you join my club.”

  Frankie Hogan was Luke’s kind of person. She didn’t take crap from anyone. When she’d made her massive fortune, she’d applied to some fancy clubs and been turned down, probably because she was new money, Irish, and a woman. In his eyes, that made her achievements more impressive, not less, but the old-money snobs didn’t think so. So she’d turned the tables on them by starting her own club and shutting out the people whose only accomplishment was having rich parents.

  She settled into the chair Trainor held for her. “You’re famous for your honesty and your ability to keep a secret,” Trainor said as they all sat, and Donal brought over paper, envelopes, and Montblanc pens.

  “Along with ruthlessness, cunning, and sheer cussedness,” Miller interjected.

  Luke added his glare to Trainor’s, and the writer shut up. Trainor continued. “So we’re entrusting you with the personal stakes in our wager, sealed in separate envelopes. Each one of us can win or lose individually, but it takes the agreement of all three to declare someone a winner.”

  Frankie considered his terms before saying, “I’ll want to read them to make sure they’re legit.”

  When Trainor looked at him, Luke nodded. Miller did the same.

  “What’s the time frame?” Frankie asked.

  “One year,” Luke said. He had to get through the rest of football season before he could focus on the wager. “Anyone who hasn’t claimed their stakes back by then is declared a loser.”

  “A long-term game,” Frankie said, her voice carrying a hint of surprise.

  Trainor nodded. “One year. Miller?”

  Miller didn’t miss a beat. “Agreed,” he said. Was the man simply too drunk to know what he was consenting to? The writer met Luke’s gaze steadily and with a gleam of amused intelligence in his eyes. He knew what he was doing.

  “I’ll lock them in my private safe,” Frankie said. “Who’s going first?”

  Miller threw Luke a challenging smile as he grabbed one of the shiny black Montblanc pens and wrote his name on an envelope. He slid a sheet of heavy paper to his side of the table. “I’ll trust my fellow bettors not to read over my shoulder,” he said as he wrote down several words before holding it out to Frankie.

  The club’s owner accepted the sheet and glanced down at it. As she folded it and slipped it into the envelope, she leveled an assessing gaze on the writer.

  Luke didn’t bother with the ceremonial pen. He used his own to record his stakes in bold capital letters. Frankie read his wager and gave a low whistle. He allowed himself a tight smile. He wasn’t going to lose.

  It was Trainor’s turn. When Frankie read the paper he handed her, she frowned. “Are you sure?” she asked the CEO, concern in her Irish lilt.

  His answer was bald and definitive. “Yes.”

  Frankie sealed his bet into the envelope. “You’ll inform me anytime someone is approved as a winner, or else we will meet in my office in one year’s time.” She tapped the envelopes into a neat stack on the table. “I certainly hope whatever you win is worth what you all might lose.”

  “It will be life changing,” Trainor said.

  Luke hoped he was right.

  “That explains the stakes,” Frankie said, picking up the envelopes before rising. “Good night, gentlemen.”

  All three men came to their feet as she made her exit. Miller scooped up his glass, lifting it high. “To our wager of hearts. May we be guests at each other’s weddings.”

  If Miller had to be on the guest list, Luke just might elope.

  Chapter 1

  At 8:45 a.m., Miranda Tate’s desk phone buzzed.

  “I need you in my office now.” Her boss’s voice held an undertone of glee, which meant he believed he’d caught her in a mistake.

  She should have known something was up when Orin came in half an hour earlier than his normal day shift. The head concierge at the luxury condominium never worked an extra minute if he could avoid it.

  “I’ll be right there,” she said, keeping her tone neutral.

  She slipped her feet into the black high-heeled pumps she’d kicked off under her desk and stood. Smoothing her slim, charcoal wool skirt down so it touched the tops of her knees, she moved to the mirror hanging on the back of her door. There she checked that her long, dark hair was still neatly tucked into its low ponytail.

  After straightening the collar of her blouse, she opened the door of her office and strode across the lobby’s granite floor, her heels clicking on the stone. The Pinnacle had been built with the
finest materials, but this gold-and-gray floor was her favorite, reminding her of hot desert sand swirling around cool river rocks. Sometimes she still couldn’t quite believe she worked in such a spectacular building whose residents were on every A list in their respective fields. It was a far cry from milking cows in upstate New York, but she’d worked darn hard to get here.

  Her boss, Orin Spindle, had chosen his office for its impressive size rather than its convenience, so she had to hike down a lengthy hallway to reach it. Although Miranda was an assistant concierge, the small, elegant office she shared with her fellow assistant Sofia Nunez was much more accessible to the building’s tenants, which meant they tended to come there first. Depending on his mood, that either irritated or relieved Orin.

  His door was closed. Not a good sign. Miranda knocked lightly.

  “Come in.” Her boss nearly sang the words.

  She braced her shoulders and turned the knob. Once inside, her first impression was that Orin’s capacious office was crowded. The impression resolved itself into the presence of two very tall men seated in the black leather armchairs in front of Orin’s desk. Since there were no chairs left, Miranda walked to the side of the desk. “Good morning,” she said with a polite smile.

  Dismay clenched a fist in her chest when she recognized the men as the Archer brothers.

  Almost anyone in the New York metropolitan area would be able to identify Luke Archer, the superstar quarterback of the New York Empire, winner of four Super Bowls, and a media darling for his blond hair, blue eyes, and laconic charm. He lived in the building, but she rarely saw him since he was either training, playing, or at his ranch in Texas during the off-season. And his penthouse had its own private entrance. He made very few requests of the concierge service, partly because he had a full-time assistant and partly because he was showered with invitations to every exclusive event in the New York metro area without having to ask.

  His brother, Trevor, was a different story. She’d heard that he had a PhD from Harvard, but he didn’t seem to have done much with it. He had the same blue eyes as his brother, but his hair was light brown, and his physique was lanky, rather than superbly muscled like the athlete sitting next to him. When Trevor visited his brother, he availed himself of the concierge services with gusto. In fact, she’d had a problem with him last night, but she couldn’t imagine Orin calling her in about that.