Certified Male

by Kristin Hardy

  “Nice work. But I know you haven’t told me everything.”

  For an instant her heart stopped. “What do you mean?”

  “About the business.”

  “Have you heard something is wrong?” How could he have found out, she wondered wildly.

  “No, of course not. I’m sure it’s all fine and dandy with you at the helm. But that’s what I’m talking about. I know you’ve been unhappy about closing the store down,” he told her. “You haven’t said anything about it, but you didn’t have to—I know.”

  Gwen breathed a silent sigh of relief. “I’ll miss it,” she told him, “but I’ll find something else I like. Maybe go to work for Stewart.”

  “It’s not the same as running your own shop, though, is it?”

  Her throat tightened.

  “There’s something I want to toss out to you, just food for thought. Your grandmother and I have been talking.”

  “In between throwing boomerangs?”

  “In between,” he agreed. “We’ve talked it over and the business is yours if you want it.”

  Gwen’s jaw dropped. “You mean you want me to run the store?”

  “No, we want to turn the whole business over to you, lock, stock and barrel. If you want it.”

  It was as though the world had been dropped in her lap. “Grampa. I—I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t answer right away,” he returned. “Think about it and we can talk next month once we’re all home. Oh, we can’t give it to you outright, there are the other kids to consider. But if you’d like it, we’ll find a way to make it happen.”

  “Like it?” Gwen spluttered, “I’d love it.”

  “Well, take some time and think it over. Owning your own business is a big job, remember.”

  “It’s exactly the right job,” she told him. The door opened behind her.

  “Gwen.” She heard Del’s voice. “They’re calling us back to the tables.”

  “Be right there,” she told him. She’d get the stamps back, she thought with renewed purpose. She’d take care of her grandparents and she’d start into business right.

  “You have to run?” her grandfather asked.

  “I have to get back to the game,” she said without thinking. “You’re wonderful, Grampa. Give Grandma a big hug for me.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess it is Thursday night back there,” he said, clearly thinking she was at the weekly home game. “You going to come out ahead tonight?”

  “I’m going to come out ahead on everything,” she promised him.

  A ROUND OF APPLAUSE BEGAN IN the bleachers and spread throughout the room. Gwen looked up, blinking. That was it, she realized, stunned. A player at the other table had just gone out and now they were nine. The long night was over. She caught Del’s eye and suddenly the excitement surged through her. They’d made the cut. They were in the serious money.

  Without thinking, she rose and ran the few steps over to his table. He grabbed her in a huge bear hug and swung her around. “We did it,” she laughed. “We’re in.”

  And then his mouth was on hers, all heat and promise, and the room and people around them faded away. Everything faded away except the immediacy of him, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his body.

  “God, I want you,” he murmured in her ear.

  It was intoxicating. Being in the running to win two million dollars was nothing compared to the way he made her feel.

  “Are you two going to come up for air long enough to accept congratulations?”

  Gwen opened her eyes to see Roxy watching them.

  “Sorry.” She could feel the heat of a blush on her face.

  “Don’t worry about me. The news cameras are having fun, though.” She pointed to the black circles of the lenses pointed their way.

  “Settle up your chips, folks,” the tournament manager reminded them, walking through the tables. They all straggled back to their seats to count up their chips and sign and staple the colorful clay disks in Ziploc bags.

  The final day of play in the tournament would begin the next afternoon and run until only one of them was left.

  “So, where should we go to celebrate?” Roxy asked, her arms around both of their shoulders. “The Ghost Bar over at the Palms?”

  “I’d settle for dinner,” Gwen said.

  “Dinner was only a couple of hours ago.”

  “For those of us who could eat.”

  “Nerves, huh?” Roxy winked at her. “Okay, let’s go over to the Hard Rock and hit Nobu. I adore the tuna on miso chips. Meet in the lobby in, say, five minutes?” She waved and peeled off to the ladies’ room.

  Gwen and Del headed down the escalator into the casino and headed toward the elevators.

  “Hey, Redmond, made the final table,” came a voice from behind him. “Congratulations.”

  Del turned to look at the source of the voice.

  It was Kellar. “Hey, I been leaving messages for you, you know?”

  “I’ll talk with you later, Kellar,” he said and continued toward the elevators.

  “No.” Kellar’s voice became more insistent. “You’re a hard guy to track down.” He followed them into the marble-lined elevator lobby.

  “Kellar, let it go,” Del snapped, punching the call button. “Later, okay? This is not the place.”

  “That’s what you said before and it’s later now. I’m not going to hold you up, I just need a list of your sources on the stamp story.” Behind them one of the elevators chimed.

  “The stamp story?” Gwen asked.

  “Yeah. For the paper.” He gave her a pugnacious glance. “I’m taking over.”

  “Really.”

  Del felt Gwen’s hand drop away from his as she turned to stare at him. Without saying a word she turned and got on the elevator. Del followed.

  Kellar blinked. “Hey, Redmond, you can’t do that,” he protested.

  “Watch me.”

  The atmosphere was glacial as the door closed. Gwen didn’t say anything, just punched the button for her floor. When the doors opened, she got out without a word or a backward glance. Del followed her.

  She did turn then. “Get away from me.”

  “Gwen, don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Shut me out. Let me tell you what’s going on.”

  “Why?” She glared at him. “So you can pump me for more information for your article, you and your buddy?” She headed toward her room. “When you talked about changing your career, you never told me that my family was going to be the means to your end.”

  “I didn’t mean it to happen like that.”

  “Oh, yeah? Exactly how did you mean it?” She slammed her passkey into the lock and shoved the door open.

  “Look,” he said, following her into the room. “I proposed that story before I knew about your grandfather, before I knew about much of anything except that stamps worth a lot of money were missing and someone had stolen them. I wasn’t even sure that they weren’t stolen property to start with.”

  She threw down her key and turned to face him. “I told you they were ours. I told you I had proof.”

  “And you’d told me your name was Nina. I barely knew you at the time.”

  “I thought maybe you’d believe me.”

  “You’d just told me you’d been jerking me around for days, when you’d been swearing the whole time that there was nothing going on. What was I supposed to believe? Everything I knew about you in the beginning I found out on the Internet. You didn’t give me any information.”

  “Obviously you had enough to pitch a story, though, didn’t you?”

  “It was stupid, okay? I admit it. I did it without thinking during a phone interview with the city editor.”

  “A phone interview?”

  “For a news job I thought I wanted.”

  Her gaze was filled with disgust. “Of course. That’s what really matters, right? Whether you get the job, no matter who else pays. So you pitched the stor
y.”

  “And I unpitched it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Yesterday morning I told the editor that I wasn’t going to do it, that there wasn’t enough meat to it. Why do you think Kellar’s sniffing around now? He’s hungry and he wants to dig something up.”

  Her eyes blazed. “So it doesn’t really matter that you’ve gotten off the story—thanks to your little discussion with them, it’ll still be in the paper.”

  “It would have been in the paper anyway, the minute you turned Jerry over to the cops.”

  “What is this, a way to make yourself feel better? I keep telling you I want to keep the police out of it.”

  “You mean, as long as you got back the stamps, you were planning to let Jerry walk?”

  “I don’t know,” she burst out. “I thought I’d get the stamps first and then I’d figure it out. Of course, that was before you blew the whole thing out of the water. Goddammit,” she said furiously, rounding on him, “I trusted you.”

  “Did you, now,” he said, equally angry. “When was that? When you were telling me you were Nina? When you wouldn’t tell me why you didn’t want to call the cops? When you wouldn’t show me proof of ownership or even tell me where the stamps came from? You wouldn’t even tell me who they were stolen from. Just when did you start opening up to me?” His voice dripped with frustration. “You’ve been playing a game with me from the beginning, pretending to be someone you weren’t, telling me whatever was convenient at the time. You’ve been showing me the flop but holding on to your pocket cards. Well, this isn’t poker, Gwen, this is life. It’s supposed to be real.”

  “I haven’t been pretending to be someone else.”

  “Oh, no? You think I haven’t noticed every time you’ve put on your game face, every time you were doing Nina for me?”

  “Doing Nina for you? Nina’s the one you wanted. Nina’s the one you’re hung up on.”

  “I’m the one who’s hung up on Nina? Sorry, that would be you.”

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded, two spots of color burning high on her cheeks.

  “You’re the one who’s in love with Nina because she lets you do the things Gwen doesn’t have the nerve to do. You don’t trust Gwen for the important stuff. I see little flashes of her come through when you’re not acting, and she’s pretty gutsy. I like her. A lot. But you don’t let her out often. You keep her inside, give all the flashy stuff to Nina when Gwen’s the one who really gets it done.”

  “Maybe Nina’s not just some role I’m playing. Maybe Nina’s a part of who I am.”

  “I don’t know who you are, do you? I’m not into hidden pictures, Gwen. That was what happened with my ex-wife. I don’t want that. I can’t do that again. I don’t want to always be wondering who you really are.”

  “Then I guess you don’t want me,” she said softly.

  20

  IT WAS THE NIGHT HOURS THAT were the hardest. Gwen tossed restlessly, searching for oblivion that never came. Instead the awful scene with Del played itself over and over in her head. Her dreams, when she dozed, were dark and chaotic, full of faceless threats chasing her down shadowy passages. And in that dawn moment when the veil of sleep thinned to consciousness, loss crouched there waiting for her.

  There was no point in searching again for the sleep that would not come. Lying in bed only gave her more time to think. Instead she rose, beaten with exhaustion yet unbearably present. In the shower she turned up the heat as high as she could tolerate, standing under the pulsating spray. After she got out, she concentrated on the little things: drying her hair, rubbing lotion into her skin, applying her makeup. She wished she had Roxy’s skill with makeup; then again, it was unlikely that any cosmetics would entirely disguise what she’d been through in the previous twenty-four hours.

  Activity, she told herself, doggedly getting out her computer and working. Finally it was late enough that she could legitimately call Stewart. It took tracking him down by his cell phone, but eventually she reached him. “Stewart, Gwen.” She wasted no time on pleasantries. She had none.

  “Gwennie?” Concern sharpened his voice. “What’s going on?”

  “You said for me to call if I needed your help.”

  “You’ve got it. What’s up?”

  “Can you get out to Vegas by this afternoon?”

  He answered without hesitation. “Of course.”

  “It’s not strictly legal,” she warned him. “In fact, I don’t think it’s legal at all.”

  “Does it have to do with getting Hugh’s stamps back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t think it matters.”

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” The reminder was as much to herself as to him.

  “I don’t really give a damn,” he said pleasantly. “You need help, I’m there. It’s seven o’clock right now? I’ll see you at one.”

  “Good.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Watch my back.”

  LIKE THE SHOWER, THE POOL drew her with the lure of oblivion. The water sluiced over her in a mind-numbing rush. As though she were a machine, she scythed her arms through the water in a rhythmic stroke, pulling herself along, concentrating on the feel of the water in her hands, the slide of it against her body, the number of laps.

  Concentrating on anything but Del.

  How painfully ironic that she’d feared he cared only for Nina, when apparently just the opposite had been happening. Only when he’d walked out had she realized just how much she’d let him into her heart.

  Only then had she realized she was in love with him.

  She’d been so preoccupied with the stamps, the tournament, the chase, that Del had snuck up on her blind side. In a terrifyingly short time he’d become necessary to her.

  And he’d betrayed her. The things he’d said about how concerned he was, how frightened for her, how much she’d meant to him, had been so much talk. Maybe she meant something to him, but his career meant more, obviously. He’d backed off on the story? Maybe. And maybe not. She had only his word to go by and right now his word didn’t mean very much.

  But that wasn’t what tore at her deep down. What tore at her was that he couldn’t accept her for who she was, couldn’t understand that she could be both Gwen and Nina, that she didn’t have to be one or the other. He’d fallen for Nina, he’d wanted Nina, he’d seen Nina and yet he’d castigated her for being Nina. You’re the one who’s in love with Nina. It wasn’t true. She wasn’t turning into Nina. She’d realized, perhaps, that Nina was one part of her—a part she’d always denied. Did that make it wrong? And why, when Nina was the one who’d attracted him, was he now using Nina as his excuse to walk away from her?

  She couldn’t bear it, Gwen thought.

  She had to.

  Suddenly she noticed the legs of a person standing directly in her lane. To avoid running over them, Gwen stopped abruptly. Treading water, she popped her head above the surface and blinked.

  It was Roxy. “Hey, enough already. You know you’ve been swimming for almost an hour and a half? You’re going to kill yourself.”

  An hour and a half? Had it been that long? Now that she’d stopped, Gwen felt almost dizzy. “I was just…I was…” Her arms and legs suddenly leaden, she gave up, wading the last few steps to the side of the pool through chest-high water. It was all she could do to get out of the pool and collapse on her chaise.

  “So, what’s going on?” Roxy settled on the chaise next to her. “You suddenly decide to start training for the Olympics? You were like maniac woman there.”

  “I was just thinking.”

  “That must have been some thinking,” Roxy said flippantly. “What’s on your mind, the final?”

  “What?”

  “What, she says. You know, the final? That pesky game that could win you a couple million dollars?”

  Gwen shook her head wanly. “Aw, hell, Roxy, I don’t care about the tournament,�
� she said, folding her arms over her face. It seemed like the least important thing in her life just then. It seemed like a part of another life. And she’d have to see Del again at the final.

  She’d have to face Del.

  “You know,” Roxy said conversationally, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say this smelled like man trouble. Of course, you being smart enough to not get involved, it probably couldn’t be that.”

  “I broke things off with Del last night,” Gwen said in a small voice, staring very hard at the brilliant, cloudless blue of the sky overhead.

  “Aw, hell, hon.” There was a wealth of sympathy in the three words. “Was he an asshole? They usually are, you know. Kind of goes with the DNA. ’Course, he didn’t really seem like the type,” she added thoughtfully.

  An asshole? No, Gwen couldn’t say that. He’d betrayed her, though by his lights what he was doing was right. The problem was that he didn’t want her. It didn’t make him an asshole. It just made everything impossible.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it? You’ll feel better.”

  She wanted to, more than anything she wanted to just spill it out. And yet, hadn’t she had a very clear object lesson what happened when she let information go? “I can’t.”

  Gwen could feel Roxy staring at her. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “It’s complicated. There’s…something going on.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I’d tell you if I could. It’s just that I told Del and now everything’s a mess.”

  Roxy looked at her for a moment. “Yeah, sure,” she said finally. “I understand.” But Gwen swore she saw a spark of hurt in her eyes. “Well, if we can’t do talking therapy, we’ll have to do therapy of another kind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Retail therapy,” she said briskly. “Come on.”

  HER CHARGE CARDS—AND POSSIBLY her feet—would never be the same. Gwen walked into the lobby of the Versailles with her hands loaded with shopping bags. Shoes, makeup, resort wear, lingerie—they’d done it all. Somewhere in the mad shuffle of going from store to store, stopping for drinks and coffee, listening to Roxy’s jokes, Gwen had actually found her mood lifting just a bit. She didn’t need Del Redmond. She didn’t need any man who could worm his way into her life that easily, who could abuse her trust, using what she’d told him in privacy to damage those close to her. She didn’t need Del Redmond at all.