Count on Love

Hesitation. Most un-Annielike.

She closed her phone and made a beeline for her decrepit Toyota. Giving up wasn’t like her, either.

Sam walked alongside and still she said nothing. Normally, he let a woman in a snit stay that way as long as it didn’t interfere with his plans. His agenda for the rest of the day included trolling some of the other small casinos to see if the card counter was going to stretch his streak. If Annie wanted to stew about something, Sam didn’t care in the least. It was time to say goodbye.

“You all right?” he asked instead.

“Peachy.”

Translation? Take a hike.

Sam should be happy. Annie wasn’t going to follow him. So, this was it. He was almost disappointed. “Thanks for your help. As bluffs go, yours was first-class. You nearly had me believing you could spot a card counter.” He pulled forty dollars out of his wallet.

She spun on him, late-afternoon sunlight glinting off her curls. “You thought I was bluffing?”

She might have a shady past, but he’d met a lot of gamblers since he’d arrived in Vegas, and she didn’t fit the mold in the slightest. “Yeah, why do you think I didn’t follow the guy when he left?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Laziness? Incompetence? You spent more time on the phone than watching the game.” She snatched the twenties from his hand. “Your pity money is insulting. You know what I wanted.”

Sam made sure Annie knew he’d watched her tuck the bills into her purse. “Just the fact that you’re going off the deep end without much provocation tells me you couldn’t handle the stress of working at Slotto.”

“You have no idea what went on in there, do you? If you change your mind about that background check, let me know.” Annie slid into her seat and shut him out.

“GRANDPA’S PHONE.” Maddy answered with practiced ease, as if she were his receptionist. No doubt she’d heard her mother take several business calls. Maddy stretched her arm to hand Brett the now ice-cream-sticky phone from the backseat. “It’s for you.”

“They sent Sam Knight.” Ernie sounded rattled.

Brett had known the Vegas casino community would respond to their card-counting venture quickly. He slowed to a stop at a red light. “He’s good.”

“We haven’t gone into the Sicilian. Or any of the other major houses.”

“I thought we’d have more time.” And that they’d send someone less well connected. Sam Knight worked for Vince Patrizio. Brett and Vince shared a past that Brett preferred not to revisit.

“It gets worse.”

“Can I talk again?” Maddy waved her hand in the air at Brett’s shoulder, talking louder than the voice in the tiny speaker pressed to his ear.

“Not just yet, puddin’. Say again, Ernie.”

“Annie was with him.”

“My…” Brett’s voice cracked. “My Annie?”

“Police!” Maddy shrieked, turning her face away from the black-and-white cruiser that had stopped next to them. She kicked frantically against his seat.

With a curse, Brett closed the phone and tossed it onto the empty passenger seat. The officer looked over and Brett tried to smile, while watching Maddy out of the corner of his eye. She was still screaming as if the devil himself had pulled up beside them.

“What’s wrong, puddin’?”

“He’s got a gun,” she wailed, chocolate-ice-cream-spotted hands over her eyes. “Don’t shoot!”

Brett spun in his seat and bit back a curse. His no-account former son-in-law had been arrested while driving Maddy somewhere. When Annie had casually mentioned that detail, Brett had had no idea what effect the incident had had on his granddaughter.

The light turned green and the police car took off.

“He’s gone, puddin’.”

A symphony of honking arose behind them.

Maddy cracked open her eyes, releasing a large tear. Her lower lip trembled as she let out a ragged gasp.

“Police are here to protect us,” Brett said. Unable to ignore all the honking, he turned around and drove. There would be time to wonder about Annie later. Right now his granddaughter needed him.

“No guns. No guns,” Maddy chanted, hiccuping.

“YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO BUY groceries,” Annie’s dad said when he opened the door to her that afternoon.

“I bought meat and vegetables.” She avoided looking Brett in the eye in case he could tell just by glancing at her that she’d played again after all these years. Annie hurried to set the bags down on the counter. “And milk.”

Her father laughed self-consciously. “I guess you’re right. Can’t raise a child on peanut butter and crackers, can you?”

Instead of pointing out that that was exactly how she’d been raised, Annie swept Maddy into her arms. “I hope you didn’t eat too much ice cream.”

Her daughter hugged her tightly. “We—”

“We had one scoop,” Brett interrupted.

With one arm around Annie’s shoulders, Maddy looked at her grandfather and grinned. “The music was loud. I had to dance.”

“Sometimes you’ve gotta dance,” he crooned, doing a little jig.

Sliding to the floor, Maddy giggled and then grabbed her plastic princess dress-up shoes. She swayed and clacked the heels together like a tambourine, creating an uneven beat.

“Are you feeling all right?” Annie asked. Her father didn’t dance.

“Right as rain.” He reached for Maddy, who came willingly into his arms. “I’m a grandpa, you know.”

The sight of the two of them, so happy and at ease, only made Annie feel more alone. She’d been that girl once. Annie sidled around the dancing pair into the small kitchenette. The day had been full of too many ups and downs. She’d done well at the casino and had been irrationally disappointed that Sam hadn’t offered to call Carl Nunes on the spot…or to offer Annie the card-counting-expert job. At this point, even temporary employment had its allure.

Who was she kidding? She’d be a fool to want to get tied up with Sam.

“How did the job go, Annie?”

Oh, it went, all right. Annie froze in the middle of putting milk in the refrigerator, staring inside as if searching for something. The light was burned out and the top shelf was cracked and covered with duct tape. She’d come full circle.

“I’m not sure the job is going to work out,” she said, as casually as she could manage through her tight throat. She’d graduated early from high school and breezed through the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on an academic scholarship. How had she become such a failure?

“That’s too bad.” Her dad deposited a giggling Maddy on the boxy brown burlap couch. “You’ll find something you like in no time, though. You always did manage to get yourself out of a bind quicker than most.”