The Gambler Read online

  “Give me a shirt,” I said, stepping into the living room.

  Dad pointed to his open duffel on the couch, still looking through the window. “She looks like police.”

  “She is,” I said, slinging through Dad’s shirts. There were a bunch of them, which made me nervous about his travel plans. Or lack thereof. “Do you even play golf?” I asked, finally picking a gray shirt from the golf-themed collection.

  “What are police doing here?” Dad asked, tight-faced and still.

  “Calm down,” I said. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

  Dad cocked his head and pursed his lips. “I’d almost say too bad. Shame for a woman like that to be wasted on a badge.”

  Something red and boiling bubbled through me, making my hands twitch. My eye pound.

  “Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll handle her.”

  Dad whistled low through his teeth and I wanted to put my fist through something.

  “Later,” I said, shoving my feet into my worn down boots. “Try and stay out of trouble.”

  “No guarantees, son,” Dad said, a big grin across his face. “No guarantees.”

  * * *

  “So,” I said as we approached the sedan and the passed-out would-be car thief in the backseat. “How much trouble will this kid be in?”

  Juliette stopped at the curb. “You didn’t have any luggage last night. Where’d you get that shirt?”

  Crap. Didn’t think that through. Chief Tremblant was no dummy, clearly.

  I shrugged. “It was in The Manor,” I said, pushing at the too-big gray golf shirt. “That Matt guy must have left it.”

  Juliette nodded, her jaw tight under the aviator sunglasses she wore. “You see anything strange around the house?”

  “Strange?” I asked, painfully aware that I was lying to police already, much less Juliette.

  I’m back in town less than a day, I thought, bitter and tired. And I’m already down this road with her.

  Thanks, Dad.

  “Broken windows?” Juliette asked. “Any sign of entry at all?”

  Nothing except a sixty-year-old thief looking for a fortune in gems.

  I shook my head. “Nothing as far as I could see,” I lied, the words uncommonly thick in my mouth. Part of being a Notorious O’Neill was the ability to lie like it was poetry, and I’d forgotten Juliette’s effect on that particular family trait. She made me sound as practiced as a choir boy lying to the Holy Father.

  Something about her eyes, the way she looked at me as if she expected the worst but hoped for better—it was like static electricity. It made me want, so badly, to be a different man. And so the lies—they just curled up and quivered in my mouth.

  Complicated. Complicated. Complicated.

  “So,” I said, easing into the passenger seat, turning to look in the backseat. “About the kid—”

  Bright sunlight splashed across the mess that was the boy’s face. Burns. Bruises. Stitches at his lip and eye. Somebody had gone to town on the boy, with fury. Hate, even.

  Well. Shit.

  Juliette started the car, the sound of the engine ripping through my head.

  “What happened to him?” I asked through a dry throat. I turned back around to stare out the windshield at the trees and sunlight, birds and foxes at the side of the road, everything normal and right in the world.

  But the boy’s face stuck in my head.

  Juliette’s hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “His father,” she said.

  “Did that?”

  Juliette nodded and I swore. Richard was no prize, and frankly neither was my mom—but to do that? To a kid?

  “He tried to steal your car to get away. He was going to pick up his ten-year-old sister and leave town.”

  “In a 1972 Porsche? The clutch is pretty tricky. I doubt the kid would have been able to get it out of the parking lot.”

  “I’m guessing he wasn’t thinking too clearly,” she said, her voice that sweet sad drawl I remembered and it curled through me like smoke. Made me want to touch her, feel her skin.

  Lord, this whole situation sucked. My car. This tragic beat-up kid in the back. Juliette. It was enough to bring the fire ants back.

  No way I could send that kid off to jail.

  “Tyler, I need you—” she said, and that voice and those words were a sledgehammer against my head. “I need you to not press charges. Just pick up your car. Let this go.”

  “Let this go?” I asked, incredulous. I wasn’t going to send the kid off to jail, but I didn’t think the boy should go running off to freedom quite so easily, either. “Juliette, I’m not one for letting things go—”

  “Really?” she asked. “Could have fooled me.”

  I wasn’t about to get into this right now. Not with this kid’s beat-up face stuck in my head and Suzy having been violated outside a church of all places.

  “Tell me,” I said, leaning back against the passenger door, watching her. “What’s going to happen if I let it go?”

  “The real question is what will happen if you don’t.” She pushed her sunglasses on top of her head, displacing her long black hair. Shorter than it had been, but still so bright and so dark it reflected blue in places. “DOC,” she said. “I’m just trying to keep him out of jail. You remember how that felt.”

  Her level gaze sawed me in half, cut through all that bullshit I carried and laid me to waste. Reminding me, in a fractured heartbeat, of every noble and kind thing she’d ever done for me, and how I’d never done a single thing to deserve it.

  “Juliette,” I breathed, regret a suffocating pain in my chest.

  She shook her head. “This isn’t about us, Tyler. It’s about the kid. It’s about giving Miguel a chance.”

  5

  JULIETTE

  * * *

  I held my breath, waiting, praying that the guy I hoped existed, buried deep under Tyler’s selfish, childish nature, would speak up and tell me he wasn’t going to press charges.

  It seemed like such a long shot.

  Suddenly I was struck by a gut-wrenching fear that keeping Miguel out of the system wasn’t the right thing to do. Too many people knew what I was doing now—Dr. Roberts, who was putting himself and his career on the line for a kid he didn’t know and a woman who held him at arm’s length, and Tyler, who’d proven to be about as trustworthy as a toddler on a sugar high.

  Maybe I needed to reassess this situation, but how? What other alternatives were there, for me or for Miguel? I pulled in front of the gates at the impound yard behind the station and faced Tyler.

  “So much for defending Suzy’s honor,” Tyler said and I nearly collapsed with relief. “I won’t press charges, but what happens now?”

  “Well, you get your car and go about your business.”

  “What happens to the kid?” Tyler asked. “Some kind of public service? A community thing? Picking up trash on the highway?”

  I shook my head. “I…I don’t know yet.”

  “Don’t know yet?” Tyler asked. “Aren’t you chief?”

  “We don’t have any kind of program—”

  “So he steals my car and you just let him go?” Tyler asked.

  “Of course not, Tyler. I’m not saying he won’t be punished in some way, I just haven’t figured it out. But I will.”

  “You could always ask your father,” Tyler said, something in his voice ugly and mean. “He had some creative ways for dealing with kids who broke the law.”

  He was right. And frankly, he was right to be mad. But ten years after Tyler had left me without word or warning, I wasn’t about to apologize for my father’s mistakes.

  “That wasn’t about the law,” I said through my teeth.

  “That’s where I think you’re wrong. I think with you Tremblants it’s always about the law.”

  I wanted to snap at him, to turn my head and scream every foul and hateful thing I’d ever thought about him. I wanted to punch him and scratch his face—hurt him li
ke he hurt me.

  But what would be the point?

  “You have no idea, Tyler,” I said instead, wrapping myself around the meager victory I’d won for Miguel.

  TYLER

  * * *

  I signed the last of the papers and followed Juliette out into the impound yard. It broke my heart to see poor Suzy surrounded by junkers with wreaths of parking tickets under their wipers.

  She deserved so much better.

  I watched Juliette, the sun turning her hair to ebony. Her body, so tall and strong. Her grace had become something disciplined. Something controlled. Powerful.

  It was making me nuts. It was why I’d tried to provoke her in the car, watching her hands on the wheel, her eyes on the road. Queen of her kingdom.

  That was a shit move, O’Neill.

  “Here you go,” she said, unlocking the gate, swinging the chain link back. She stood back, her hand on her thin waist, her black pants tight across her thighs. Her hips.

  I swallowed, tossing my keys in my palm. Trying to be casual. Pretending that something wasn’t shaken inside of me.

  When I’d made the stupid decision to come back to Bonne Terre it had never occurred to me that Juliette would still be here. If I’d have thought I’d run into her, I never would have come. Because it hurt to look at her, it hurt to be reminded of what I’d felt that summer—of who, for three short months, I’d let myself believe I could be.

  “Thank you,” Juliette said, brushing off her hands, “for being cool about—”

  I put my hand up, shaking my head. The years behind us, those nights in the bayou, what I’d done to her in the end.

  “It’s the least I could do, Juliette.”

  And I’m sorry. More sorry than I can say.

  For a second her face softened, and she was the girl I’d known.

  “It’s a good thing you’re trying to do,” I said. “With that boy.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end thought better of it and just nodded.

  I slid my key into the lock of Suzy’s door, every instinct fighting against the stupid impulse I had to touch her. Just once more. For all the years ahead.

  Do not, I told myself, trying to be firm, trying to be reasonable, get yourself worked up over this woman again. Don’t do it.

  “You know,” I said, turning to face her again, the sun behind her making me squint, my eye pound. “Your dad was right.”

  “About what?” she asked on a tired little laugh that nearly broke my heart.

  Don’t do it, you idiot.

  The air around us crackled. She will take off your head and feed it to a dog, man. Do not be stupid.

  But in the end I ignored the voice because she was a magnet to everything in me searching for a direction. I stepped close, close enough to breathe the breath she exhaled. Close enough to smell her skin, warm and spicy in the sunlight.

  Her eyes dilated, her lips parted, but she didn’t move, didn’t back away and my body got hot, tight with a furious want.

  The air was still between us, as if we were frozen in time. But inside I raged with hunger for her. Always for her.

  I lifted my hand, slow, careful, ready for her to snap but she didn’t. I placed my calloused, shaking fingers against the perfection of her cheek. Her breath hitched and for a moment—the most perfect moment in ten miserable years—Juliette let me touch her.

  And then, like the good girl she was, she stepped away from the riffraff.

  “You’re way too good for the likes of me, Juliette Tremblant,” I murmured.

  I got in Suzy and slammed the door. The humidity inside the car was an insulation between me and her, an insulation I needed. I needed metal and barbed wire and pit bulls straining at their leashes between us, because I knew, like I’d always known—underneath her totally justified anger, her reluctance, her disgust—I knew Juliette Tremblant wanted me as much as I wanted her.

  I can’t see her again, I thought, starting the car, Suzy’s rumble a welcome sound. Familiar. This was my world. Suzy, my father waiting at home, the clothes on my back, my money in the bank.

  And there was no place in it for Juliette.

  And there was no place for me in Bonne Terre.

  I was an O’Neill. One of the most notorious of them all, which meant that Juliette and the past and those fledgling dreams I thought I’d forgotten about were wasted.

  And whatever I thought I was going to find in Bonne Terre, whatever peace or solace I was looking for—it wasn’t here. It wasn’t anywhere. Not for me.

  Gaetan was right—I was always wanting what other people had. Coming back to The Manor, looking for the kid I’d been, the family I’d known.

  I got hotel rooms and card games. One-night stands with women so beautiful they could only be fake. Late nights and later mornings, days vanishing under neon signs. That was my life. That’s what I got.

  And it was time to get back to it.

  JULIETTE

  * * *

  I shook. From the inside, through my blood and muscles, from my hair to my fingers, I shook with something I hadn’t felt in so long.

  Anger. Yeah. Sure.

  But desire.

  Desire that churned through me and over me and under me.

  I slammed the impound door too hard and the chain link rattled and bounced back at me. So, I slammed it again. And again. My hair flying, the gate rattling and crashing.

  “Damn him!” I slammed the gate so hard it bounced, rebounded and stuck shut.

  Damn him.

  “Chief?”

  I turned and found Miguel standing beside the back door of my sedan.

  Great, I thought, just what I need. Miguel with an earful.

  “You okay?” Miguel asked, his concern fierce and palpable.

  “I’m fine,” I said, and took a deep breath. “And, actually, so are you. The owner of the Porsche isn’t going to press charges.”

  “Tyler O’Neill?” Miguel asked.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I recognized him in the car. I’ve seen him playing poker on TV. He’s rich, huh?”

  “Hard to say,” I said. “Not much ever sticks to Tyler.” I turned back to Miguel, narrowing my eyes. “You were just pretending to sleep in the backseat, weren’t you?”

  He nodded, unapologetic. Probably a skill he’d learned to survive.

  “I’m not going to jail?” Miguel asked, as if he couldn’t believe it. I put my hands on his shoulders and waited until he looked at me. The impact of his wounds could still take my breath away and I wondered again whether I really was doing the right thing, or if calling in the social workers wasn’t the way to try and save this boy.

  “It’s not too late,” I told him. “I can call the Office of Community Services—”

  Miguel shook his head. “I’ll run. I swear it.”

  He wasn’t lying. And while I didn’t doubt that I’d be able to find him, if he took his sister, who knew what kind of trouble might find them before I did. Two kids, no money—it was a disaster in the making.

  “Okay,” I said. “But we’ve got to keep you away from your dad. Where is he now?”

  “It’s Monday, so he’s sleeping it off and then he’s back out at the refinery until Saturday.” The refinery was over the state line, and employed many of the men and women of Bonne Terre. Due to the commute, many of them, like Miguel’s father, spent part of the week in a cheap hotel closer to the refinery.

  “Your sister?”

  “She’s at Patricia’s. I’m gonna pick her up for school tomorrow.” Patricia was an old friend of Miguel’s mother, who did what she could for the kids, but the woman was eighty, had very little money of her own and barely spoke English. Her status was questionable and so she kept herself under the radar. When push came to shove with the law and the kids, I could not in any way put that on Patricia. Patricia could lose everything.

  “All right.” I ducked my head, looking hard into his good eye. “Tomorrow afte
r school you come right here. In fact, after school you come here every day.”

  “To the police station?” he asked, horrified as any good delinquent would be.

  “It’s your only choice, Miguel. And considering what I’ve done for you, if you don’t show up I’ll be—” He looked away. “Miguel,” I snapped and he looked back up, sighing. “I will be very, very insulted.”

  Miguel nodded, his lip lifting slightly. Nearly made me cry to see it. Here he was, face beat in, future up in the air, and the kid could still smile. Sort of.

  Maybe I could make this work—as long as Dr. Roberts didn’t tell anyone and Tyler kept his mouth shut. And if no one in the station cared about an attempted grand theft I made disappear, or wondered why Miguel was cleaning squad cars every day after school.

  And particularly if no one else saw Miguel’s file.

  “Chief!” Lisa came running out into the impound yard, her blond ponytail a little flag out behind her.

  “What’s up?” I asked, a little surprised to see Lisa away from her FreeCell game.

  “Mayor wants to see you,” Lisa’s eyes flipped over to Miguel. “About the boy. He asked for his file.”

  TYLER

  * * *

  “Dad!” I called, slamming the front door shut behind me.

  “Yeah?” Richard stepped in from the kitchen into the hallway, a sauce-splattered apron tied around his trim waist. Good God, the man was playing house. “Let’s go,” I said to Richard’s blank face. “Let’s go back to Vegas. Play some cards, get a steak as big as our heads.”

  “I’m making lasagna.”

  “Screw the lasagna!” I cried. “It’s time to go.”

  “But we just got here. We haven’t found the gems.”

  “Dad, if it’s about money, I’ve got more than—”

  Richard shook his head. “I’m not taking your money.”

  I blew out a long breath and stared up at the ceiling. This totally misplaced sense of honor my father had could be such a pain in the butt. “You will live in my suite, charge meals to my room and wear my damn clothes, but you can’t take money from me?”