who to be angry with. She felt sadness and grief and regret and longing and fear, so much of everything she wanted to find a hole somewhere and crawl into it, cover her eyes and ears and wait for it all to go away. She wished she could cry, at least, but she’d lost that ability a long time ago.
Then there was Holt. This man who’d made such a shambles of her nice, ordered life. This man taking up so much space in her kitchen she felt as if there wasn’t enough air left for her to breathe. She wished he’d never happened, wanted to hate him, wanted to be angry with him, at least. And she was.
“It was just that stupid Miley,” she said between clenched teeth.
“You don’t know that.”
Having no other place to send it, she threw him a look of bitter fury. “I know, okay? I don’t need the hassle. Let it go.”
He leaned against the counter and folded his arms, and his calm only infuriated her more. “Why are you so sure it’s him?”
She picked up the coffeemaker’s glass carafe and rounded on him, words tumbling from her lips in a rapid mutter. “Because I know him. This is just the kind of thing he’d do. Hang around, wait for me to leave, then just… waltz in. He figures he’ll find what he’s looking for, and if not, well, he thinks he’s going to scare me, at least. I told you-the guy’s a weasel.”
“What’s the story with this guy Miley?” He asked it as he took the carafe from her hands and turned to the sink to fill it with water.
She stared at his shoulder, unable to bring herself to lift her gaze higher. She couldn’t look at his face. Not now. She was too full of feelings already. In silence she watched him pour the water into the coffeemaker, set the carafe in place and switch it on. Then he turned to her, the question he’d asked repeated in his sharp blue eyes and upraised eyebrows. She caught a breath and said, “Do we have to go into this now?”
“Yeah, Billie, I think we do.” He leaned against the counter and folded his arms, and she could see no quarter in his face, or hear any gentleness in his voice. “I heard him threaten you. He scared you enough that you pulled a knife on him. So, yeah. We need to go into it
For a long moment she just looked at him, her heart-shaped face set and angry, and Holt was conscious of a little thrill of combative excitement. But he was more determined than she was, or maybe she was simply beaten down by the emotional bombardment she’d taken today. Anyway, after a moment she closed her eyes, let out a hiss of breath and muttered something under her breath. Something that meant capitulation.
She postponed it as long as she could, though, opening cupboards and banging drawers and taking milk out of the refrigerator in angry silence. With everything assembled, she stood and glared at the gurgling coffeemaker as if doing so could make it finish its job faster and give her a few more moments reprieve while she poured and served. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, she lifted her hands and let them drop, then turned on him.
“I was going to tell you the whole story-the other day, in your hotel room. You’re the one that told me you didn’t want to hear it.”
“Yeah, well…” What could he say? He couldn’t very well tell her what had been in his thoughts that evening… couldn’t tell her how she’d haunted him, and how the pictures she’d painted of her life on the streets still did. “I didn’t know the guy was still around. I thought he was past history.”
“Yeah, well…so did I.” She closed her eyes and he could see her fighting for control. After a moment she hitched in a breath as if girding for a difficult task. Clearly, he thought, this wasn’t a woman accustomed to laying her troubles on someone else.
“Okay.” She exhaled slowly. “He showed up about a week ago-a few days before you did, actually. He said he’d managed to come up with the buy-in for the big no-limit hold ’em tournament that starts in a couple days at the Mirage.”
“I thought he’s been barred from playing,” Holt said, frowning.
“He is. Which is why he wanted me to sign up instead.”
“Ah.”
“I told him no,” Billie said, her voice tight and vehement. “I’m done with that life. Don’t have any desire to get back into it.”
“I take it he didn’t take no for an answer.”
“He did not. Turns out he had a pretty good reason not to.”
The coffeemaker chose that moment to announce the conclusion of its task with a belching, gurgling crescendo, and she turned to pick up the carafe. She poured two cups and handed him one, then set about doctoring her own cup with cream and sugar. She stirred, tasted, then leaned her backside once more against the counter, arms again folded, cup in one hand. She didn’t move to sit down at the table, and neither did he.
Her eyes had a dark glint that wasn’t amusement. “Miley always imagines he’s smarter than everybody else. Or that everybody else is dumber, maybe. Anyway, he’d borrowed money from some pretty scary people to finance some scheme or other, and things evidently didn’t turn out the way he hoped they would, so now he owes these guys some serious money.”
“How serious?”
She drank coffee, frowned as she swallowed. “Seven figures.”
“What?
“Well, not
“Why would he think you could help him with that kind of money?”
Her smile was sardonic. “You don’t follow tournament poker much, do you? A major tournament like the one at the Mirage, the winner will take home way over a million dollars. Even the runners-up get pretty big bucks. You know that tournament I was in, the last one before I quit? That was a fairly small one. I went out in third place, and my share after taxes was over a quarter mil.”
Holt nodded. “I heard him say that. Sounded like he thinks you’ve still got it.” He watched her closely while he sipped his coffee.
Her gaze hardened and slid past him. “Yeah, well, I don’t.”
“Why do you suppose he thinks you do?”
She gave a little huff of laughter and gestured with her cup. “Maybe because of the way I live? Do I look like I just spent a quarter of a million bucks? Even if I paid cash for this house-which I did, by the way-and even considering I already gave him a chunk of the money-”
“Why did you? By the way…”
She drank the last of her coffee and put the cup on the counter. She felt calmer, now, at least. Talking about past history seemed to be helping take her mind off the present. She shrugged. “I guess…I felt like I owed him. It was the first time I’d played without him, and he’d put up part of the buy-in. So, I gave him his share and I figured that was it. We were done.”
“So,” Holt said, “let me get this straight. Your ex-partner gets in trouble with some loan sharks, he’s desperate, he comes to you to ask you to get into a poker tournament in order to win the money to bail him out. You say no dice and he comes back, this time demanding money which he thinks you have stashed away from your last big tournament win. You tell him you don’t have it, he threatens you, you pull a knife, he leaves…is that why you think he’s the one who broke in here today? You think he came back looking for the money?”
She shrugged and held out her hands. “What else?”
He frowned. “Who keeps that kind of money stashed in their house?” She just looked at him. The lightbulb evidently went on, and he sucked in air. “Ah-I get it. You lived on the street…”
“…and, I was used to hiding my stash of whatever I’d managed to acquire. Even after I met Miley, I didn’t have much use for banks. He probably figures I’m still like that.”
“Are you?”
She snorted, making it clear it was all the answer she was going to give him. After a moment he said, “So, it was true, what you told him? You really don’t have the money to give him?”
She straightened with an indignant jerk. “Yes, it’s true. Do you think I’m that heartless? The guy’s a weasel, but he saved my life, probably. Of course, I’d give him the damn money. If I could.”
Holt waited. The silence grew electric, and he knew she wouldn’t tell him unless…
“Okay…sorry,” he said, reaching past her to set his coffee cup in the sink, “but I have to ask. What
