Brand New Me

by Meg Benjamin

  Tom stared at her, dumbstruck. So did Dempsey. Deirdre smiled at them both, then picked up her hand.

  “Like hell,” Dempsey blurted.

  She turned toward him, raising an eyebrow.

  “Is there a problem Mr.…Dorsey?” Toleffson’s voice rumbled from behind them.

  Dempsey paled slightly, licking his lips. “No. No problem.” He arranged his cards in his hand.

  “You start, Cr…Cary.” Deirdre gave him a smile that could have caused sugar shock.

  Dempsey stared at his hand for a long moment, then threw down the seven of hearts. Tom added the seven of diamonds.

  Deirdre gave them all another saccharine smile. “Oh good, we’re all being nice.” She placed her seven of spades in the row above Tom’s card.

  Dempsey stared at his hand again. “Shit,” he muttered and played the eight of diamonds.

  Tom dropped the six of spades.

  Deirdre glanced at him, her eyes dancing, then played the six of diamonds. “You are naughty,” she murmured. “You’re holding that last seven, aren’t you?”

  Dempsey stared at him for a long moment, then threw the nine of diamonds on the eight. For the first time since they’d sat down at the card table that night, Tom’s shoulders began to loosen up.

  Judging from the muttered obscenities from Dempsey’s side of the table, he didn’t have much of a hand. Tom, on the other hand, had a very good one. Amazingly good, in fact. Only one ace and no kings, several short runs, and a seven protected by a six and a nine. He used the seven to squeeze out most of the cards he needed to fill out the runs, while Dempsey fumed and occasionally passed.

  Deirdre’s hand wasn’t bad either, judging from the fact that she passed less than Dempsey did.

  Tom’s ace was the sticker, as he’d guessed it might be. He played all his other cards, then sat holding his ace, watching the number of cards in Dempsey’s hand diminish, while Dempsey’s shit-eating grin returned.

  Tom glanced at Deirdre, and did a double-take. She had only two cards left to Dempsey’s five and his one. Tom narrowed his eyes as Dempsey muttered again and threw out a chip. He’d be willing to bet one of her cards was the other missing ace. If she had that and the two of clubs, she’d win since she played before he did. All she had to do was play her ace, then she could get rid of the two before Tom could play his own ace.

  And then they’d have to play another hand of poker, once Toleffson left. Good thing he was used to staying up until two.

  Deirdre glanced at him, and then back to her cards. And then she played the two of clubs.

  Tom stared at her, half-tempted to call her on it. Once upon a time, he would have refused to be helped. Once upon a time, he’d have insisted on doing everything on his own. His bar, his problems, all his.

  Once upon a time, he’d been an idiot.

  Dempsey snarled and flipped the jack of spades.

  Tom flipped his ace of clubs on the table, and leaned back in his chair. “I’m out.”

  Dempsey stared at him blankly, then threw his remaining cards on the table. “This is bullshit! You hear me? Total bullshit!”

  Tom shrugged. “You lost the game Dem…Dorsey. That’s the way it goes.”

  Dempsey pointed at Deirdre. “She cheated.”

  “No I didn’t.” Deirdre smiled. “I made a choice. One of several. This one happened to work out.”

  “Goddamn it,” Dempsey began.

  “Could I see some ID, Mr. Dorsey?” Toleffson’s voice was quiet, but it brought Dempsey to an immediate halt.

  “Why?” he asked warily.

  “You’re making a bit of a disturbance here. Plus I like to know who’s passing through my town. Just routine. You do have, ID, don’t you Dorsey?” Toleffson stood up. He was taller than Dempsey by several inches, although Dempsey looked like he had him on weight.

  “I…it’s in the glove compartment in my car. I’ll go get it.” Dempsey started for the door, but Deirdre stepped into his path.

  “Not quite yet, Cary. You were going to sign a statement for me, remember?”

  Toleffson folded his arms across his chest. “What statement would that be?”

  “Oh, it turns out Cary here has some information about the riot that broke up the Faro. He’s going to sign a statement about it that we can give to the TABC at the licensure hearing. Actually, this is a great coincidence, Chief. You can witness his signature.”

  She ducked behind the bar and emerged with a printed sheet. “Here, you go, Cary. Just put your signature at the bottom. Your real signature, that is.” Her jaw squared as she looked at him.

  Dempsey swallowed hard, then glanced at Toleffson. “I sign this, and you’ll let me go out to my car to…ah…get my ID?”

  Toleffson glanced from Deirdre to Dempsey, and then to Tom. “You have any opinion here, Ames?”

  Tom smiled. “I think ol’ Cary’s statement would be a good thing to have. And I’m damn sure Deirdre wrote it out just right for the TABC. She’s a very good businesswoman.”

  Toleffson’s mouth narrowed to a thin line as he looked back and forth between them. Then he shrugged. “Read it and sign, Dempsey. Then you can get out of here.”

  Craig grabbed the pen from Deirdre’s hand and scrawled his signature at the bottom of the page. For a moment, his gaze locked with hers. “I know you cheated,” he growled. “I didn’t lose.”

  She sighed. “Whatever. Have a safe trip back to Houston.”

  Dempsey gave her one more burning look, then stalked out the door.

  Deirdre shook her head. “You’d think he’d have learned by now not to sign anything without reading it first. Sort of fits with his other business decisions, though. Now if you could just sign here as a witness, Chief.” She pointed to the bottom of the page.

  Toleffson sighed, pulling out a ballpoint. “Do you know for a fact he won’t be back here to break up the place again?”

  “Let’s say I’m ninety-nine percent sure he won’t. Of course, with somebody like Craig you can never be entirely sure. Still, given that you’re likely to arrest him if he shows up again, I’m guessing not.” She looked up at Toleffson from beneath her lashes. “You are likely to arrest him if he shows up again, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yes, ma’am, I’m more than likely.” Toleffson signed, then replaced his Stetson carefully on his head. “In fact, if he delays at all in getting his ass out of town tonight, I might reconsider and throw him in the slammer right now, just on general principles.”

  Deirdre gave him a sunny smile. “I’m sure he’s aware of that, Chief. Nice doing business with you.”

  Toleffson grinned back. “Yes, ma’am. You take care now.”

  Tom watched him walk out the front door. A few moments later, he heard someone whistling “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You” as he walked down the street.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Deirdre went back with Tom to his place once they’d closed down the Faro again. By now, she had a couple of T-shirts, a pair of jeans, and some underwear tucked into his bureau. She figured eventually Tom might develop the cojones to ask her to move in. Or she’d ask him to move in with her, although that made less sense since she was living in Docia’s apartment with no furniture and Tom had his own house. But she knew they’d do one or the other. She was fairly sure she was in love with him. She just had to wait for him to wake up to the fact that he loved her.

  Not that he looked very awake right then, just tired.

  Deirdre yawned, rubbing a hand across the back of her neck as they walked up the steps to his front door. “Well, that was interesting.”

  He nodded, turning the key in the lock. “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “We should probably get some sleep.” She followed him through the living room. “We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.”

  “Got that right.” He stepped into the dining room and froze in the doorway. She heard his quick intake of breath.

  “What?” she said, moving beside him.

>   Craig Dempsey sat in one of the dining room chairs. A bottle of tequila was open on the table in front of him. He was holding a large black handgun pointed at the center of Tom’s chest.

  Tom took hold of her arm, jerking her behind him. “What do you want, Dempsey?”

  “We’re gonna play that last hand,” Craig snarled. “No way am I losing to you, shithead. And no way is this settled. Seven-up. Jesus.”

  “Okay, we’ll play. Let Deirdre go.”

  Dempsey shook his head. “And have her head straight for that chief of police? I don’t think so. Besides, she’s gonna be the dealer. I’m not trusting you.”

  Tom started to object again. Behind him, Deirdre squeezed his hand. She wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

  “Okay,” he said. “If we’re playing, let’s go into the living room. The light’s better.” He moved slowly back into the other room, keeping Deirdre behind him.

  Craig lurched to his feet, grabbing the neck of the tequila bottle in his other hand. Judging from the way he was walking, he’d already had more than a few samples. But he still held the gun steady, and it still pointed straight at Tom.

  “How are you going to hold your cards, Dempsey?” Tom drawled. “In your teeth?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Craig snapped. He motioned toward the couch with the gun. “Siddown.” He placed the tequila bottle on the coffee table, then narrowed his eyes at Deirdre. “Go get some cards. And no funny stuff or your boyfriend buys the farm.”

  Deirdre decided he’d probably been watching too much Spike TV. She went to Tom’s bookcase.

  “Top shelf,” he called after her. “On the left.”

  She found the deck of cards and brought them back, regarding Craig with narrowed eyes. He was still looming at the side of the table. “Are you going to sit down? Or do I have to toss you the cards?”

  Craig thumped down into a chair across from her, his gun jumping slightly. Deirdre swallowed. Guns and drunken idiots were never a good combination.

  “Just out of curiosity, how did you get in here, Dempsey?” Tom asked.

  “You ought to lock your windows, Ames.” Craig’s lips spread in another insolent grin. Obviously, he was pleased with himself. “Course if you had, I’d have had to break it, so I guess you had no way of winning here.”

  “And the gun?” She raised an eyebrow. “I never knew you were a gun nut, Craig.”

  “I got a permit,” he snarled. “I’m legal.”

  Also shit-faced, she figured. She ruffled the cards, then set them in front of Craig. “Cut.”

  Craig shook his head, nudging the gun in Tom’s direction. “Let him.” He leaned back in his chair, dangling the hand that wasn’t holding the gun off the armrest.

  Deirdre slid the cards in Tom’s direction. He divided them neatly in half and passed them back across the table to her.

  “How exactly are you going to take me back to Houston if you win?” Deirdre kept her voice casual. “Because you know I won’t come willingly. You’re forcing me to play at gunpoint, after all. Do you think this is what my father wanted?”

  Craig narrowed his eyes. “Told me to use my judgment. This is my judgment.”

  Got that right. Her hands stilled. “So he didn’t actually tell you to break up the Faro?” she said slowly.

  “Used my judgment,” Craig repeated. “Best way to get you out.”

  She flipped him a card, wishing it was a poison dart. “Did you ever tell him what you did?”

  Craig shrugged. “Don’t need to. He wants results. I got ’em.”

  Her teeth were gritted so tightly they ached. “Oh yeah. You definitely got ’em.” She flipped Tom a card as she heard a familiar scratching sound.

  “What’s that?” Craig’s glance darted around the room.

  “Doris.” Deirdre tapped the deck on the table.

  “Who’s Doris?”

  Tom’s mouth moved up into a faint grin. “That’s Doris,” he said, nodding toward the floor next to Craig’s chair.

  Doris stared up at him, her beady black eyes bright.

  Several things happened so quickly that it took Deirdre a while to sort them all out. Craig leaped to his feet, yelling. As he yanked his hand upward, Doris fastened onto the flesh at the side, sinking her teeth deep. Craig waved the hand frantically. Doris, no doubt thoroughly terrified, hung on for dear life.

  Craig brought his gun hand around, pointing the weapon in the general direction of Doris’s head. Tom picked up the bottle and brought it down on Craig’s wrist, splashing tequila across the table as the gun went flying. Deirdre went flying after it.

  “Get it off me,” Craig screamed. “Shoot it! Kill it! Get it off me!”

  “Oh for the love of Mike,” Deirdre muttered as she walked back, the gun dangling from her hand. “It’s just an iguana.”

  Craig babbled something, and then his knees began to fold.

  She watched, fascinated, as his body slid slowly, almost gracefully to the floor. “He fainted,” she said when he was stretched out full length. “The big sissy fainted.”

  Tom shrugged. “Passed out, more likely. Too much tequila and adrenaline aren’t a healthy combination.” He pulled his cell off his belt, punching in 911. “This is Tom Ames again, Toleffson. We’ve got a home invasion here.” He listened for a moment, then shrugged. “Nah. It’s just Dempsey, and he’s out cold. But we need somebody to come collect him.”

  Erik’s voice on the phone was loud enough for Deirdre to hear, although she couldn’t make out the words. She figured that was just as well, given the volume.

  She knelt beside Craig’s prostrate form. “Is the chief coming?”

  “Yeah, he said he’s on his way.” He knelt beside her. “We probably need to detach Doris. I don’t want them taking her along with him.” He stood up again, and walked toward the kitchen.

  “How did she get out anyway?”

  He returned, carrying a pair of grilling gauntlets. “I opened the cage as we walked by. I figured she might provide a distraction.”

  “Some distraction. She might have gotten hurt.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t think she’d go this far.”

  Doris was still clamped tight to Craig’s hand. Deirdre thought she could see blood seeping around the wound. “Is her bite dangerous?”

  “She not venomous, but she’s got some teeth on her.” Tom pulled on the gauntlets, then knelt on the other side of Craig. “And I’d just as soon she didn’t sink them into me instead of Dempsey. Get that tequila, please.”

  “You want a drink? Now?”

  “Nope, but Doris might. Take one of those tissues and soak it. I’m going to flip her upside down. You wave the tissue in front of her nostrils so she gets the fumes.”

  Deirdre thought of several things she needed to ask, most importantly exactly where Doris’s nostrils were, but she decided to ignore them. She saturated the tissue in the tequila, then watched Tom flip Doris upside down, pulling gently on her dewlap as he did. Deirdre waved the tissue in the general vicinity of where she thought the nostrils might be, hoping that Doris didn’t decide to go from Craig’s hand to hers.

  After a moment, Doris opened her mouth. Tom flipped her right side up and delivered her speedily to her cage. Deirdre stared down at the neat circle of bloody indentations on Craig’s hand. It looked like he might need stitches.

  Or at least she really hoped so.

  Tom was still awake at three a.m. Not that it was by choice. After turning Craig over to Toleffson and promising to show up in the morning to sign a statement, he and Deirdre had had a thoroughly enjoyable victory celebration in his bed. Deirdre had promptly dropped into the sleep of the just. Tom hadn’t. Now he lay there, feeling her soft weight in his arms, and wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.

  It couldn’t be over now. Could it?

  Deirdre moved in his arms, snuffling. “Go to sleep,” she muttered.

  He kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She r
aised her head, yawning. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  “Not without you. Now tell me what’s bothering you.”

  He took a breath and blew it out. “I know what you did.”

  She raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Come on, Deirdre, I made my living playing poker for a few years. I know the feel of a shaved deck. I wasn’t sure until we played seven-up.”

  She shrugged. “Docia showed me how years ago, when I was a kid. She gave me a shaved deck for magic tricks, and then she showed me how to play cards with it. I tried it a couple of times—never for money, though. I thought I could help you if you played blackjack. But I don’t know poker very well. When you switched to five card draw, I couldn’t do much. Does it matter?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to beat the SOB on my own. Besides, it’s hard to throw somebody the right cards on five-card draw. You were just as likely to screw things up. I was afraid you’d try.”

  “I thought about it. You scared me to death when you lost those first two hands.”

  He shook his head. “It takes a hand or so to learn how to read somebody. Between trying to figure Dempsey and trying to keep you from messing up the game, it took me a couple of hands. But that’s why I said three out of five.”

  She grimaced. “I should just have given Craig lousy cards. It would have been more effective.”

  “You made up for it in seven-up.”

  She grinned. “I did, didn’t I? Good thing I gave myself the deuce, though.”

  Tom stared down at her, unsmiling. Part of him wanted to yell. He’d never used a crooked deck in his life.

  Deirdre’s grin curdled slightly. “Don’t you dare get all holy with me about being an honest player, Tom Ames. Not with Craig Dempsey. Not after what he did to the Faro. If I could have tackled him and forced him to sign the damn statement, I would have, but he outweighs me by a ton. So I used guile.”

  Tom blew out a breath. “Still…”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You need to learn to let other people help when they want to. Like Clem and her dinner menus. And Bobby Sue with Leon. And me. We care about you.”