Count on Love. Melinda Curtis

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СКАЧАТЬ eight showing, and flicked her hole card over. A six, giving her a stiff fourteen. The rules dictated she had to take another card, and she snapped one down. Another eight. Once again she was busted.

      The guy beside Annie turned over his two original cards with a puff of smoke from his cigar. A seven and a five added to the seven dealt him gave nineteen. He gathered up his chips, tossed one to the dealer and headed to the cashier window.

      Annie slipped her jacket on, collected her winnings and followed him, curious as to how much he’d won. She tried to stand unobtrusively behind him in the cashier’s line, but had to step closer to hear the attendant count out his money. A quick glance showed her Sam was still engrossed in his call.

      “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight hundred and eighty-five dollars.”

      That much? He’d either been slipping his winnings into his pockets or he’d started out with a lot of chips. Only fifty dollars in chips had been out on the green felt. He hadn’t bragged or otherwise given away in the least the fact that he’d won and won big. Only disciplined pros gambled like that. They had to be if they wanted to remain inconspicuous. Occasional players couldn’t keep their good fortune to themselves. At a larger casino with extensive video cameras and pit bosses, the man’s image would have been compared to a bank of known card counters and if a match was made, he’d be escorted out soon after his next win. The gambler certainly knew casino limits.

      Moving quickly, he stepped back, almost on top of Annie. She scrambled out of the way and dropped some of her chips.

      “Excuse me,” she said as she crouched to pick them up, avoiding looking into his eyes.

      His penny loafers paused too close in front of her face. She just knew that he knew that she knew what he’d been doing. At any moment, Annie expected him to drag her up by her hair and use her for a shield as he made his escape, or knock her aside so that she wouldn’t follow him.

      As if she had the courage to stop him. Annie’s heart hammered. She crouched, frozen.

      The brown loafers shifted, then quickly moved away.

      Annie sighed and stood, knees spongy with relief, forcing herself not to turn around to see where the man had gone. That was Sam’s job.

      She poured her chips out to the cashier, who frowned at the obvious breach in protocol.

      “Sorry,” Annie said with an apologetic smile, helping the woman stack the chips.

      CHAPTER THREE

      ANNIE THRUST THIRTY-SIX dollars at Sam, who was still huddled over his beer with the cell phone glued to his ear. At the other end of the bar, the cashier who’d handled Annie’s chips whispered in Tiny’s ear.

      “I need you,” he said, before hanging up and pushing her hand away with a frown. Obviously, she’d interrupted him making a hot date. “What did you think you were doing out there?”

      “What did I…” For the love of Pete. “I thought I was helping you out.” What did he think she was doing? Annie tossed the bills he’d refused on the scarred, dark wood bar.

      Sam leaned closer, as if sharing a secret. “He could have made you.”

      It didn’t matter that Annie’s own imagination had tumbled in similar directions just moments ago. What had Sam done about his fears? Nothing. Never mind that he had broad shoulders made for defending others. He was only interested in protecting his tush, not hers. “Well, the least you could do is back me up if you thought he was such a threat.”

      “I never left the room.”

      Annie rolled her eyes. “Did you even notice he’s gone? What do I need to do to get your attention, bare my breasts?” She had been stripped of her prospects, classified as an unacceptable employee and given the heebie-jeebies by a professional gambler. Events had pushed her beyond the rules of propriety she’d conditioned herself to live by.

      “Que pasa, Knight?” a deep voice boomed from the other side of the bar. Tiny filled the space behind the counter. “Was the guy a cheat or just lucky?” He cracked his knuckles just by squeezing his hands into fists.

      “We can’t say for sure,” Sam said at the same time Annie declared, “Oh, yeah.”

      The two of them exchanged frustrated glances.

      Sam recovered first. “This is Annie Raye, my card-counting expert.”

      She arched a brow at Sam before extending a hand across the bar, to be swallowed in Tiny’s giant one. “Nice to meet you.”

      The man’s shadowy eyes looked her up and down, then up and down again with a glance meant to put her in her place. And then he scowled. “Wait a minute. Brett Raye’s daughter?”

      The way Tiny said it, as if he’d heard of her before, made Annie queasy. By now her name should have meant nothing. Which could only mean one thing.

      Dad.

      Why couldn’t he let her reputation fade?

      “You’ve heard of her?” Sam asked, looking slightly perplexed.

      Annie started to sweat again.

      “Brett Raye isn’t welcome here.” Staring in the area of Annie’s cleavage, Tiny rolled his tongue around in his mouth as if searching for some bit of food he’d missed at lunchtime, to make room for a bit of Annie. “And after today—”

      “He’s a player,” Annie interrupted, fighting the urge to slump her shoulders and hide behind Sam. Instead, she buttoned her jacket up to her neck, even though the combination of pearls and material nearly choked her. She wasn’t a woman men stared at like that, or someone who got tossed out of casinos. At least not anymore. “Isn’t that what you wanted to know?”

      “Is he better than you?” Tiny asked.

      Sam’s laugh came out in a sharp burst of disbelief, unexpectedly refueling Annie’s temper.

      “Mr. Tiny, I don’t gamble for a living,” she stated, refusing to look at Sam. What did he find so amusing? “Besides, it’s not a point of being better than anybody. Professional gamblers know which dealers they can beat and what days they work. They know which house managers will toss them out right away and which will let them get by. They may play thirty minutes one day and then not play for as many as five days. They stop playing before the amount they win attracts unwanted attention. They’re inconspicuously efficient.”

      Tiny looked over at his blackjack dealer, who was leaning against the table and studying her nails. “Are you saying Yolanda ain’t doin’ her job?”

      “No, no, no.” Of all the things she’d said, Tiny had to focus in on the one negative he could most easily deal with. Annie didn’t want to get the older dealer fired. This was just as much Tiny’s fault as Yolanda’s since he’d made the counter.

      Tiny eyed the bills on the bar. “How much did you win?”

      “Just sixteen dollars.”

      He shook his head. “In less than ten minutes, betting the minimum. I’d fire her ass if she weren’t my old СКАЧАТЬ