The Winning Hand Read Online Free PDF Page A

hers so that their faces were closer, their eyes more level. He spoke gently, as he might to a cornered puppy. “What kind of trouble are you in, Darcy?”
    “I’m not … I would have been if I’d stayed, but …” Then her eyes widened. “Oh, I didn’t do anything. I mean I’m not running away from the police.”
    Because she was so obviously distressed, he smothered the laugh and didn’t tell her he couldn’t imagine her getting so much as a parking ticket. “I didn’t think that, but people generally have a reason for running away from home. Does your family know where you are?”
    “I don’t have any family. I lost my parents about a year ago.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It was an accident. A house fire. At night.” She lifted her hands, dropped them into her lap again. “They didn’t wake up.”
    “That’s a lot to deal with.”
    “There was nothing anyone could do. They were gone, the house was gone. Everything. I wasn’t home. I’d just moved into my own apartment a few weeks before. Just a few weeks. I …” She pushed absently at her fringe of bangs. “Well.”
    “So you decided to get away?”
    She started to agree, to make it simple. But it wasn’t the truth, and she was such a poor and guilty liar. “No. Not exactly. I suppose that’s part of it. I lost my job a few weeks ago.” It still stung, the humiliation of it. “I was going to lose my apartment. Money was a problem. My parents didn’t have much insurance, and the house had a mortgage. And the bills.” She moved her shoulders. “In any case, without a paycheck, I wasn’t going to be able to pay the rent. I didn’t have that much saved myself, after college. And sometimes I … I’m not very good with budgets, I suppose.”
    “Money’s not going to be a problem now,” he reminded her, wanting to make her smile again.
    “I don’t see how you can just give me almost two million dollars.”
    “You
won
almost two million dollars. Look.” He took her hand, nudging her around until she could see the screens. “People step up to the tables, every hour, every day. Some win, some lose. Some of them play for entertainment, for fun. Others play hoping to make the big score. Just once. Some play the odds, some play a hunch.”
    She watched, fascinated. Everything moved in silence. Cards were dealt, chips were stacked, raked in or slipped away. “What do you do?”
    “Oh, I play the odds. And the occasional hunch.”
    “It looks like theater,” she murmured.
    “That’s what it is. With no intermission. Do you have a lawyer?”
    “A lawyer?” The amused interest that had come into her eyes vanished. “Do I need a lawyer?”
    “I’d recommend it. You’re about to come into a large amount of money. The government’s going to want their share. And after that, you’re going to discover you have friends you’ve never heard of, and people who want to offer you a terrific opportunity to invest. The minute your story hits the press, they’ll crawl out of the woodwork.”
    “Press? Newspapers, television? No, I can’t have that. I can’t have that,” she repeated, springing up. “I’m not going to talk to reporters.”
    He bit back a sigh. Yes indeed, he thought, this one would need a hand to hold on the walk throughthe forest. “Young, orphaned, financially strapped librarian from Kansas walks into Comanche Vegas and drops her last dollar—”
    “It wasn’t my last,” she insisted.
    “Close enough. Her last dollar in the slot and wins a million-eight. Darling, the press is going to do handsprings with a lead like that.”
    He was right, of course. She could see it herself. It was a wonderful story, just the kind she wanted to write herself. “I don’t want it to get out. They have televisions and newspapers in Trader’s Corners.”
    “Hometown girl makes good,” he agreed, watching her. Suddenly he realized something else was putting panic into her eyes. “They’ll probably name a street after you,” he