It Takes a Thief

by Kay Hooper

  "Not offhand, no."

  Dane said something a great deal stronger than "damn."

  "It's your own fault," Skye reminded him dryly. "You will keep on making promises." With no change in tone, he added, "Speaking of which, how's Jennifer? You haven't mentioned her the last couple of days. Have you even seen her?"

  Dane had hoped to avoid that subject with Skye; though the men he played poker against might well believe his composure was nearly inhuman, his partner knew only too well there was a very normal, feeling man beneath the tranquil mask. But Dane had to answer, because in their life, the truth was all too often possible only between the two of them.

  "No. She's wise enough not to get burned twice," he said finally, steadily.

  "Are you both so sure she would be burned?" Skye didn't sound surprised, as if he'd expected this.

  "She isn't willing to risk it. I can't blame her for that." Dane shifted restlessly. "I have to get back, or Kelly will come looking for me."

  "Wait." Skye was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was unusually sober. "If you walk away from her, you'll never be the same. Neither will she."

  "What she feels about her father's betrayal runs deep. I don't know how to fight it ... or even if I can."

  "You'd never hurt her the way he did."

  "How do I convince her of that?"

  "Any way you can. As long as you do." Skye's low voice, curiously disembodied because he was hidden in darkness, might have been the voice Dane had been trying to Ignore since he had left Jennifer at her house days ago. The voice urging him to try, to keep trying until he somehow found a way through the wall between them. He had tried to ignore the voice because he knew what he would risk in the attempt, and the gambler in him was wary, mistrustful of the odds against winning.

  He would have to risk everything. Not the way he would willingly risk material things to keep his promise to Jennifer, but a different, far more painful risk. Himself. Everything he was, his weaknesses as well as his strengths, his self-doubts and inner torments along with his certainties and convictions. With her own wounds, Jennifer would never trust and believe in him until she saw him clearly.

  Loving her, Dane was willing to bare himself to her, but after so many years of too many gambles, he was half afraid she would see nothing worthy of trust or belief when he found a way to shine a light on all the dark places in his soul. And that would be no surface rejection, mistrusting him because he was a gambler, because of what he did. That would be a rejection of what he was, of the very foundation of him – and it would be one he'd never survive.

  "I have to go," he told his partner quietly. Then, just before he turned away, he added, "I hope you brought along some coffee; you may have a long watch after I leave him the morning."

  "No problem," Skye murmured.

  Dane strolled back up the hall toward the parlor, mentally pulling on his mask – and finding it less of a mask now. There was, he realized, something to be said for accepting what had to be, even if it was potentially painful.

  Risk hell to win heaven. He thought that now, finally, he was willing to risk everything.

  * * *

  It was past four a.m. and the men in the parlor had discarded their jackets and loosened their ties. In the last three hands, Dane had folded early, yet the majority of the money on the table still lay before him. Kelly's luck had been in and out; he had won the last hand with a skillful bluff, but had been forced to run the stakes far too high in order to do so.

  Dane had been unobtrusively watching the other man, waiting for certain signs, and he saw them now. Kelly was clearly feeling the strain and yet, like so many gamblers, he continued to grow more intent, almost feverishly certain that the next hand would be the best. Dane knew that the other men hardly noticed their host's increasing desperation because the signs were almost Imperceptible, but after twenty years of card playing Dane saw them clearly.

  It was time to make his move, and Dane made it with the sure skill and total concentration of a professional. He took the next two hands in rapid succession, deliberately winning with colossal bluffs and making certain every man at the table realized it. By the third hand, after winning with a pair of threes that any one of the others at the table could have beaten, he had them caught in blind determination, and he knew It.

  Kelly dealt, and Dane watched very carefully to make certain the other man used no tricks. If he had, Dane's only choice would have been to fold instantly rather than risk losing. But there were no tricks, and Dane found himself holding three kings, an ace, and a deuce; since the dealer's choice had made aces wild in this game, it meant he had four of a kind. He discarded the deuce, and in its place. Lady Luck smiling brilliantly down on him, was dealt another ace. He had five of a kind now, kings. The winning hand.

  It was far better than he had hoped for, and his only task was to continue raising the stakes until he forced Kelly to bet all the cash he had. He knew the older man was blindly bent on recovering his losses, just as the other men were, all caught in the gambler's compulsive drive to win.

  There was a round of discards and newly dealt cards, and then all settled down with the hands they had decided to play. At first singly and then in Increasing numbers, hundred-dollar bills fluttered to the center of the table.

  "I'm out," one man grunted, tossing his cards down because he had nothing left on the table to bet.

  Ten minutes later, a second man folded. It had come down to three players.

  "Call. Raise three hundred."

  "Call. Two hundred up."

  "Call. Another five."

  "Damn. I'm out."

  Two players now, Dane and Kelly. Dane watched the other man calmly as they played, vaguely curious, as always, to observe the signs of desperation, of reckless-ness. He had seen it before, often, but had never felt it himself. Satisfied when he beat the odds, mildly annoyed when he didn't, Dane had always considered poker just a game. He had more than once bet most of what he had, but material possessions had never meant a great deal to him, so in that sense he never bet more than he could afford to lose.

  As Skye had observed, Dane enjoyed the game for Its own sake, and though he had perfected the composure and skill of a professional gambler, he could shrug off winning as easily as losing with little Involvement of his emotions. That was his professional edge.

  He watched Kelly now, knowing the older man had a good hand simply by the excited glitter in his eyes. But knowing that his own hand couldn't be beaten gave Dane the leisure not to worry about strategy or tactics; all he had to do was keep raising the stakes. And since Dane never changed expression, nor gave himself away with a single movement or mannerism no matter what kind of hand he held, Kelly had no way of knowing that he had already lost every cent on the table.

  The clock on the mantel ticked loudly in the tense silence while the pile of money grew steadily higher.

  "Half a million on the table," one of the other men murmured in a kind of fascination, having obviously kept a running tally of the money bet.

  Dane glanced at him, then returned his gaze to the cards he was holding. He had measured Kelly's remaining stake, and knew his opponent had twenty thousand left to bet; as for himself, he had fifty thousand in cash, and a cashier's check in his pocket for another hundred thousand. He was wondering now how far Kelty was willing to go tonight. But the only answer to that would be to find out.

  He stacked his cards facedown, saying pleasantly, "It's almost dawn; why don't we finish this up for the night?" He drew the cashier's check from his jacket pocket and placed it, along with the fifty thousand in cash, into the pot. "Your last raise of ten thousand . . . and another hundred and forty thousand."

  One of the other men grunted in surprise – or perhaps in awe – but that was the only sound.

  Kelly's gaze was fixed on the mound of bills for a long moment, then lifted to Dane's steady, unreadable eyes. "I can't cover that in cash," he said, his voice strained. "Not with what I have on ha
nd."

  Dane shrugged slightly, and gave him the accepted gambler's answer, one they all understood very well. "Then you'd better fold."

  Kelly looked at the hand he was holding, then shook his head. "I can have it by tomorrow night," he said in an attempt at casual certainty. "Get it from my bank later today."

  That was a bald-faced lie, and Dane knew it. At best, Kelly had a few thousand left in his bank account. What he did apparently have, however, were the means to print his own money. But Dane had no intension of letting on he knew that. He shrugged again. "I'll take your I.O.U. in that case," he said calmly.

  Two minutes later, a scrap of paper with Garrett Kelly's promise to pay one hundred twenty thousand dollars lay, along with his last twenty thousand in cash, in a pot that now totaled over three quarters of a million dollars.

  "Call," Kelly said hoarsely.

  Dane picked his cards up, fanned them out, and lay them faceup on the table. Kelly stared as if he couldn't believe it, while his unsteady fingers put his own cards on the table. He had a royal flush, in spades. Ironically enough, he had used a wild ace in place of the ace of spades – because that had been one of Dane's wild cards.

  The sky was gray in the east as the men left the house, talking casually, men who could lose tens of thousands of dollars each and not mind very much. Except for one of them.

  Kelly walked Dane out to his car, and he was composed in the way very desperate men can sometimes be, especially if they're gamblers with an irrational belief in luck. He was even smiling as Dane opened the door of his Ferrari and prepared to get in.

  "I know we hadn't planned a game for tonight," he told Dane, "but how about it? Just you and me. It'll give me the chance to get even."

  "Fine with me," Dane told him casually. "It'll have to be the final game, though, win, lose, or draw. I have to be getting back to Miami."

  Kelly nodded agreeably. "Same time, then?"

  "I'll be here." He got in and started the car, then followed the long, dark lane away from Belle Retour.

  * * *

  Jennifer thought of risks. Each night, restless in her bed, she thought. And felt. Sometimes during those long, lonely hours, she finally faced the inescapable fact that what she was feeling, what tormented her almost beyond bearing, was only partly caused by physical desire for a heartbreakingly handsome and charming man. Her body, she acknowledged with both relief and pain, had not become a separate entity apart from her mind and heart, beyond her control.

  It was only that her body, free of the restraints of reason and bitter memories that held her mind and heart, had responded instantly to a truth too primitive to be denied. And now, alone in the dark, she faced that truth fully.

  She was falling in love with Dane Prescott.

  And it hurt. She wondered dimly if she would have felt with such depth and power if he had been a different kind of man, and knew somehow that she wouldn't have. An irony of life, perhaps, or of fate that she, with all her mistrust and bitterness toward gamblers, would fall helplessly in love with one.

  Her mother knew from long experience of her daughter that Jennifer would resist Interference; she was bound by her own nature to fight her way through her emotions alone. But she talked to her quietly when Jennifer had returned from her afternoon with Dane so shaken she could hardly think.

  Francesca, with her acute perception of emotions, didn't hesitate to pinpoint the root of her daughter's confusion. "My baby . . . you must obey the greatest rule of life. Do not anticipate pain. It is a part of life, and of love. But if you wait for it, fearful and nervous, then you blind your heart to the joy of love."

  "What if it happened again?" Jennifer had asked. "Dane's a gambler, he – "

  "Do you love this man?"

  "I – I think so. I didn't want to, but – "

  Intensely, Francesca said, "Trust your love. And trust him. You must trust, Jennifer, or your doubt will destroy you both."

  Struggling to lay those last doubts to rest, Jennifer finally asked her mother a question she had longed to ask for years. "What about you, Mother? How can you still feel like that after what Dad did to us?"

  Francesca smiled gently. "We had twenty years together, my baby. He loved me, and he made me happy. Should I stop loving him now, or stop believing in love, because the ending was a painful one? No."

  "He lost your home," Jennifer whispered.

  "He lost himself. Rufus was sick, Jennifer. I do not believe that your man has that sickness. But I do not know. Nor do you. Just as you do not know how many happy years lay ahead of you. There is little certainty in life, so there must be certainty in love. Give all your heart to this man – or give none of it. Anything less will only hurt you both."

  Jennifer thought about that as the days passed. But her emotions were jumbled and uncertain. Still, she had to reach some kind of understanding, some peace with herself. She was falling in love with the last man she should have, and that was something she had to face and deal with.

  But the days passed.

  He probably has left anyway, she reflected tiredly as she showered and dressed. It was barely after eight in the morning, and she had met Dane less than a week before; she hadn't seen him in days. Now, in the silence of the house, her mother sleeping, Jennifer went to turn on the automatic coffee maker and then to get the morning paper.

  The white Ferrari was parked in the driveway.

  She didn't notice it until she straightened from picking up the newspaper, and by then Dane had gotten out and was coming toward her. She stood perfectly still, holding the rolled-up paper with both hands, strongly aware of a suddenly racing heart.

  "I didn't know if you'd be up yet," he said quietly when he reached her.

  Jennifer felt hungry, starving, and she couldn't stop looking at him. Odd, she had forgotten how incredibly handsome he was, but those eyes, like none she'd ever seen before . . . those eyes she remembered so well. "I'm an early riser." she managed to say. "You are too, I guess."

  He shook his head slightly. "Not really. I usually have more late nights than early mornings. The game just broke up a few hours ago."

  So that's why he's here. "It's over, then?" she asked.

  He knew what she was asking. "No. Not quite. One more game tonight, and it will be. But I wanted to see you. Will you come have breakfast with me?"

  Jennifer hesitated, fighting herself. "That wouldn't be very wise, would it?"

  Dane smiled crookedly. "No."

  Tomorrow, she thought, he'd be gone. "All – all right. Let me leave a note for my mother."

  Five minutes later, she found herself back In the gleaming white sports car and heading for Lake Charles. Unwilling to let a silence grow between them, she ventured, "Aren't you tired?"

  He shrugged. "No, I'm used to late nights. I'll catch a few hours' sleep later today."

  Catch, she thought vaguely. Something on the run, something elusive. It bothered her. And he was tired, she realized, despite his words. There were no obvious physical signs, but she could sense something finely honed in him, as if some surface protection had been worn away by strain.

  After a moment, she said, "Who won last night?"

  "I did." He was matter-of-fact about it.

  "Did Kelly cheat?"

  Dane was silent for a moment, then shook his head. "No. And he lost a great deal last night. Jenny. So if cheating were a habit with him, he would have done it."

  A little tightly, she said, "Are you saying he didn't cheat when he won Belle Retour?"

  "I'm saying he probably didn't." Dane's voice was steady. "Men who cheat at cards tend to make a habit of it. Kelly obviously doesn't do that. He's just a very good player."

  Jennifer looked blindly through the windshield. So she was left without even that, facing the knowledge that her home had been fairly taken away from her. "Did you cheat to win last night?"

  "No."

  That answer sounded a little tired, she realized, and she couldn't leave it. "I'm sorry. It's just tha
t I can't forget what you said. That, if the stakes were high enough, you probably would."

  Dane was silent for a few minutes, until he turned the Ferrarl Into the parking lot of a restaurant and stopped. Then he shut off the engine and half turned to look at her. "How high is high enough? That's what you asked once. I've played when the stakes were higher than you can imagine. But I never lost sight of what I was doing. It's just a game. Jenny," he said softly.

  She looked at him mutely.

  "Just a game. A game of cards. A game of skill and tactics and bluff. Stop damning me because I happen to be good at it."

  "How can it be just a game to you?" she asked, trying to understand. "You've told me, more than once, that you're a gambler, a professional."

  "Yes, I am. But the very fact that I am a professional should assure you that I would never risk anything I cared about in a game. Would a carpenter live in a badly built house? A race car driver get Into a car he knew could fall apart on him? Would you. an artist, deliberately corrupt your talents?"

  "You're comparing apples and oranges."

  Dane reached for one of her hands, holding it strongly in his own. "No, I'm not. Jenny, you believe that because your father lost everything in a game, your getting involved with me is somehow a danger to you. That I could hurt you the way he did. But you're wrong. You're the one comparing apples and oranges when you compare your father to me. Amateur gamblers are reckless. Professionals aren't."

  "You said that every gambler knew one day the stakes might be everything." She kept her voice even.

  He carried her hand to his lips and held it there for a brief moment, gazing steadily into her eyes, then held her hand in both his. "That's the point. Jenny. To an amateur gambler, everything is everything; he'll stake anything he can call his own, including his home and his self-respect. But to a professional, everything is only what he can afford to lose, and that never includes a home – or any harm to someone he loves."

  Jennifer could feel his tension as well as her own, but she was still trying to reach an emotional understanding of what he was saying. Her mind acknowledged his meaning, but her heart remembered the pain of her father's betrayal.