of those players could and frequently did play in high-stakes games where a hundred thousand or more dollars could be bet in a single night—or a single hand. But today the high-rolling Jersey boys were all sitting at a three-dollar table.
With a blonde.
And what a blonde.
Not a kid, definitely thirty, somebody who’d looped the track once or twice. But she was gorgeous, with the face of an angel and the body of a showgirl, even if she wasn’t exactly flaunting it in that navy suit. And who wore a navy suit to a card room?
Something was up. And whatever it was, Tanner wanted to know about it. And he definitely wanted to know about the blonde. He wandered closer and heard Marty say, “How much money you got, Hope?”
Hope. So that was the blonde’s name. Well, he could hope, too.
“About forty dollars,” she said.
“Enough for today,” Sharp Eddie said.
“Yes, because I have to leave by one-thirty or so,” Hope said. “Don’t let me lose track of the time.”
The blonde was calling the shots? A hot dominatrix blonde and the Jersey posse at the three-dollar table, like they were all having a tea party. Definitely a story there.
“Hey, Marty,” he said approaching the table.
Marty the Sneak looked up, nodded, and stretched his hand out to shake.
“Tanner,” he said.
The other men nodded, too. They’d all met many times over the years in clubs and casinos all over the world, although Tanner mostly stuck to Vegas because he hadn’t wanted to travel much while his daughter, Troy, was young
Tanner caught Hope’s eye and then his breath.
Close up, her skin was luminous and lightly tanned, so clear and soft that she seemed to radiate light. She had high cheekbones and delicate ears with a beautiful curve to her neck. Who ever realized that bone structure could do that to a face? He felt a rush through his head and a yearning that was way deeper than attraction. More painful, too.
She has blue eyes. Big, blue eyes. Which were, he realized, now that she was looking at him, expressive. She had opinions. Hope might not play cards, but she might play other games. Games that entailed whips. Handcuffs. Tight leather cutaway outfits.
He wanted to sit at her table, too.
“Let me introduce myself,” he asked, when he’d been standing there way too long and it looked like Marty never would. He held out his hand to her. “Tanner Wingate.”
“Hope McNaughton,” Hope said, as she shook his hand. “Have we met?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, holding her hand, feeling a roughness that no amount of moisturizing could smooth over. She works with her hands. “I’m sure I’d remember.”
“Your name sounds familiar.”
“Well—I win sometimes. Maybe that’s it.”
“You’re a professional card player?” Hope asked, taking her hand back, her voice suddenly twenty degrees cooler.
Now what brought that on? Tanner smiled, he hoped, winsomely. “I know a card player named McNaughton,” he said. “Derek McNaughton. You related to him?”
“No,” Hope said.
Tanner watched in amazement as the pupils in her eyes constricted. She was lying to him. She was sitting there with that angel’s face and those you-can-trust-me eyes and butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth look, and she flat out lied to him. Her eyes—those big, blue, wide-open eyes—gave her away.
She was hiding something. And he wanted to find out what it was.
He glanced over at Marty, to see if he could pick up anything from him. Marty was watching the green felt on the table. Marty knew how to hide his tells.
“So how do you guys know each other?” Tanner asked.
The men all looked at Hope.
“They’re my uncles,” she said.
The pupils of her eyes had enlarged, back to the size they were before they’d started this conversation. So now she was telling the truth? She lied about knowing Derek McNaughton, but she was telling the truth about these guys being her uncles? Because no way were these guys her uncles.
The “Jersey boys” were all in their fifties or sixties. Marty was single, and as far as Tanner knew, without family. Sharp Eddie was married with a couple of grown kids. Weary Blastell and Isaiah Rush were African American and had met when they’d played football for Ohio State. Isaiah had been a fullback with visions of the pros until he tore out his knee, but Weary played with the Green Bay Packers for seven seasons until injuries and cold weather forced him into retirement. Pete Wisniewski, despite his father’s Polish name, got his looks from his Chinese mother. And Jim Thickpenny, the disgraced