Timber Creek

“He’s not cute,” Laura said vehemently.



She raised her brows and gave the girl a pointed look. “Come. On.”



“All right,” Laura relented. “Fine. Eddie’s cute, okay? But he’s, like, twelve.”



“He’s your age.” She swallowed her real comment, which went a little something like, You might be special, but the clock ticks for you as much as it does for the rest of us. The whole thing made her want to needle the girl, so she added in a feminine purr, “Plus, he’s some ball player. Did you see the home run yesterday?”



Laura took over dish duty, which spoke volumes to Helen. If the older Bailey girl was resorting to manual labor without being asked, she really was troubled by something. “Yes, I saw that home run,” she said tightly.



Helen couldn’t help it; she decided to bait her. “Of course you did. It took them five minutes to find the ball in the bushes. He’s so good at all the outdoor sports.”



“Some people call that a ski bum.”



“He has his own business.”



“Yeah, one that’s trying to take us down.”



“Seems like your mind’s made up,” Helen said, but what she thought was, what she wouldn’t do for a ski bum.



Forget cute. If she could find herself a bum half as reliable as Eddie Jessup, she’d be on him like white on rice.



Seven



Crossing the border into Nevada, a man didn’t need to travel far till he spotted his first casino. They were everywhere, especially once you hit the bigger towns, a common sight on street corners, with signs that cried LOOSEST SLOTS IN NEVADA! and TEN DOLLAR PRIME RIB. Those slot machines were as prevalent as ATMs—in grocery stores, motel lounges, strip malls.



There was no end of ways to lose money in Nevada, and Rob Haskell had tried every one.



He sat at the table at one of the seedier joints outside Reno. Usually his game was Texas Hold ’Em, but he’d gotten a feeling about Seven Stud, and the Seven Stud table was where he’d sat since nine o’clock the night before. The last time he checked his watch it’d been two A.M. It was when he’d gotten his thousand-dollar marker. Actually, not a marker—an investment. His luck was just that close, he could taste it.



Going home hadn’t even occurred to him.



Oddly, home was what drove him. His wife was such a hot number—always had been. And somehow, even after all these years, he’d never felt good enough for her. He’d seen how the men at the tavern flirted with her. Even that Damien Simmons did double takes whenever she was around. Some day he’d be as rich as Damien. He’d be the one driving around in the hot car, wearing the nice suits, not the crappy Up Country Hardware apron he had to put on for work.



Smoke choked the room. He thought he was probably hungry. Thirsty, too. He’d finished his last Scotch and soda hours ago—he’d nursed four of them over several hours, having calibrated his exact tolerance through the years. But these things registered only at a distance. Mostly he was aware of one thing and one thing only: the cards in his hands.



Dealers and players came and went around him, but they were also a blur, a parade of cowboy hats, cigars, toothpicks, and garish pinky rings on beefy fingers. There were women, too, in a procession of faces and ages and races, manicured fingers glittering with overlarge gemstones, hair sprayed into perfectly dyed helmets, and eyes schooled into careful blanks behind large-framed glasses.



He shifted in his chair. He sensed it was morning, and it was hard to ignore his fatigue. Distantly, he thought of Helen, and shoved her image from his mind. It just made him feel like a failure, and there was no room for failure. He had to imagine himself a winner. And so, although he knew in his head he should’ve been getting on home, he sat in that chair, and if something didn’t happen for him in the next hand, it’d be coffee for him till something did.



It’d been this same Seven Stud table all night, and with his blurring vision, the cards swam over green felt. But he couldn’t leave now—he was still riding that hunch.



Plus there was the marker to consider. One G. That was one thousand dollars that needed to go to the mortgage. To food. To whatever it was Helen spent their money on. As it was, they’d needed to deal with the unexpected expense that was her new minivan when she’d totaled the Dodge by slamming it into Phoebe Simmons’s Mercedes on a patch of black ice.



That was his luck these days—a big, dead patch of black ice.



But not tonight. Tonight, when he’d gotten in the car, the clock had read 7:07, and it was a sign. Sevens. He’d been itching for some Seven Stud, and this would be the night he’d come away a big winner.



The game was dealt two cards down, four up, and the last one down, and it was time for that last card. Everyone but him and some woman had folded. It’d been an epic game, and there had to be at least a thousand in the pot, probably closer to two. After he paid his marker, it’d be a tidy chunk of change. He’d had better nights, but there’d been much worse, too.



It was time to bet. He eyed the woman’s hand. She had a pair of eights showing, but he had no clue what else she might be hiding. He knew what he had, though—he had a winner. He was sitting on the proverbial ace in the hole, working an inside straight. Not much beat a straight, ace-high.



The woman eyed his cards, eyed him, then put a blue hundred-dollar chip in the pot.



With a silent nod, he called her bet, put in his own chip. He was in. He hesitated a moment, then raised her a hundred.



As he always did, he slid his hand in his pocket and rubbed his old buffalo nickel between thumb and finger. Forget rabbit’s feet or lucky pennies—his lucky charm was a nickel, the same one he’d had in his pocket the day he met Helen.



The dealer kept up a monotone patter as he doled out the last card. Rob had a ten hiding next to his ace, plus a queen, a pair of twos, and a king showing. All he needed was a jack, and that pot would be his. That pile of chips was a car payment. Maybe he’d even take Helen out to celebrate. All that money could be a leg up to a fresh start.



The dealer eyed his hand, drawing out the moment. “The man’s got a lady, a pair of deuces, and one cowboy showing.” He dealt the final card, and it made a crisp flick sound as it was placed before him. It was the sound of hope. “Down and dirty. Good luck, people.”



He put his fingers atop the card, rubbing it on the felt, willing it to be the card. He’d seen only one other jack, and he liked his odds. He peeled up the corner, peeking.



A seven. A damned seven. Was that what all those signs had meant? That he’d be screwed by a seven? All he had was a pair of twos, and he wasn’t beating anyone with a pair of damned twos.



He kept his poker face but wanted to scream. He wanted to punch a hole in the table. To collapse onto the felt, hiding his face in his hands.



He was desperate. He owed a thousand-dollar marker. He had no choice. He had to bluff. He wouldn’t be scaring anybody with a pair of twos, but if he bluffed well enough…Maybe the woman didn’t get her card, either. Maybe if he went balls-out, bluffing with a pair of deuces, she’d fold. Maybe.



He shoved the rest of his chips to the center of the table and gave her a slow nod, thinking maybe it’d scare her off. All in. She met him there.



“Time to show me what you’ve got,” the dealer said.



The woman flipped over her cards. It was a full house—three eights and two sixes. And all he had was a pair of damned twos.



“Eights over sixes,” the dealer said in his monotone, sweeping the chips her way. “The boat wins it.”



She grinned a yellow tobacco smile as she began to stack Rob’s chips into neat, color-coded piles.



He was bust. It hadn’t been luck he’d had a premonition of—it was disaster. He was done. Nothing left. As it was, he’d need to figure out how to talk his way into a credit for that marker. He calculated his next paycheck—one week till he could pay it all back. What would he do in the meantime? Maybe dip into Helen’s purse—he’d done it before, God help him.



He checked his watch. Ten A.M. Damn. How had that happened?



The kids would be in school. Or would they? No, it was summer. His oldest would be home doing whatever he did, while Emmett and Ellie Lynn would be at daycare.



Was that right? He tracked his mind back to yesterday. He’d had his shift at the hardware store till seven, which meant it’d been Friday, which made today Saturday—Helen would be working at the tavern, and the kids would be…somewhere.



It meant he needed to get home and get to sleep before she got off her shift and the rest of them returned, one loud bunch, clueless to his crisis. He couldn’t bear to face any of them, and sweet sleep was the easiest road away from the shame. He’d go home and strip and crawl into bed, where he could fall into blackness.



Someday he’d hit his big pot, and then he’d stop. Someday he’d show Helen he was a winner.



Eight



Laura reached the parking lot, panting hard. She’d pushed herself that morning, doing a hilly seven-mile run rather than her usual leisurely four, but not even the scenic route to the old fire road and down around Granite Lake was enough to clear her mind. She slammed her heel onto one of the posts that lined the driveway and leaned over to stretch out her hamstrings.



Eddie. Cute, cocky Eddie. His face swam in her vision, making it go red.



He’d been getting the best of her since they were kids, and here he was again. Him and his construction project. It would put her family’s business under. He claimed it wouldn’t, but she wasn’t stupid. Sure, it might bring new people at first, but eventually Fairview would add a darling gift shop, and then would come the old-timey saloon, and finally they’d build a folksy little diner that felt homey but was really run by the corporation, and eventually tourists would forget the Big Bear Lodge even existed.



But would Eddie listen? No. He only laughed it off. He had that attitude, that guy attitude, the kind that came with being easy and well-liked and hot.



Damn his hot.



She stood tall and grabbed her foot, stretching it behind her to get her quads. Her muscles trembled, and still it wasn’t enough. Because, in addition to her worries about the family business, it was Eddie’s hot she couldn’t get out of her head.