Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) (10 page)

She supposed she should turn
back and see how Joe and Shelly were doing at the poker tables, but now that
she had gotten used to the idea, Alanna was enjoying the fact she could make
herself visible, and then invisible. A couple of times she tried to manifest—to
sit on a bench located at the front of one of the huge, bubbling fountains and
teleport herself to a bench located at the back—but she didn’t seem to have the
ability to move herself through space. At least not yet. But the
visibility/invisibility switch appeared to be largely under her control and
surprisingly useful for shopping.

Normally she might have felt
uncomfortable going into a boutique like Marc Jacobs and just walking around,
so it was a kick to go into invisibility mode and be able to float from one
pricey shop to another without having to worry about a salesperson swooping
down on her. She even went into Tiffany’s, slipping unseen past the uniformed
guards and weaving her way among the shoppers. She stopped to observe a
breathless young woman in front of one of the glass cases. She was busty and
blonde and leaning on the arm of a man old enough to be her grandfather, but of
course this was Vegas, so the man was undoubtedly not her grandfather. The
salesperson had removed a dark blue velvet panel with six obscenely large
diamond rings on it and the girl was trying on one and then the other, lifting
her hand to the light and turning it left or right and squealing.

The scene created an emotion
in Alanna that she couldn’t quite name. Memories had been coming back to her as
she walked—the pleasure of the strong noontime sun falling on her face, the
fact that sometime she must have loved hazelnut, her attraction to some things
and her revulsion at others. As she had approached Caesar’s Palace she had
noticed that she could name the statues as she passed them—she knew Zeus from
Poseidon, she could recognize Medusa and Athena and Mercury.

So she knew her Greek myths,
she liked gelato and sunshine and high heel boots. Alanna recalled the way she
had felt sitting in first class on the flight out to Vegas, that dim sense that
she had been there before, and she could only conclude that in her previous
life she had been fairly wealthy, well-educated, and accustomed to travel. And
yet being in the expensive shops had made her uneasy, so uneasy that she had
opted to slip behind a rack of clothes and emerge invisible. It made no sense.

She stood beside the giggling
blonde and looked down at the rings. They really were magnificent and she had
the sudden urge to try one on. But of course to try on a ring, one had to have
a finger, or at least a finger that was visible to a sales clerk. Alanna walked
out of Tiffany’s and stood for a moment in the broad, open mall. She had looked
at all the clothes but had not felt this urge to try any of them on so this was
a new and surprising turn of events. Why did she have such a sudden, profound need
to see a diamond on her hand? There were clues to her past identity everywhere,
but Alanna didn’t seem to be able to follow them to any conclusion.

*****

“Okay,” Joe was saying.
“Ready for a test?”

Shelly dipped her chin down
ever so slightly to signal “yes” to Joe. She had grown more comfortable at the
table in the last couple of hours and while she didn’t pretend to understand
all the strategies Joe had been whispering in her ear, she was definitely
becoming more familiar with the rhythms of the game. In Texas Hold’em, everyone
got two cards dealt down and then three cards were dealt face-up in the center
of the table. They called these the flop and they were part of the hand of
everyone at the table. After rounds of betting a fourth card was turned up,
rather sensibly called the turn. And after more raises, checks, folds, and
calls, finally a fifth card, called the river, was turned up, too. There were a
lot of jokes about being saved on the river or destroyed on the river, the idea
that this very last card could so dramatically change the game. Shelly would
smile and nod at the jokes, as if she understood what everything around her
meant. The men seemed to be gradually accepting her as a comrade in cards.

A strange game, Shelly
thought. Not at all like stud poker. Everyone at the table shared the five
cards that were turned up so the real mystery was what everyone had in the
hold, which is the two cards they’d been dealt face down. In fact, reading the
hold appeared to be the whole challenge of the game, but Joe was evidently good
at it. He had been telling her when to fold, when to call or raise and Shelly
had gradually added nine more stacks of chips to the five she’d started with.

She’d taken six pots, maybe
seven. It wasn’t exactly the big hit she’d been hoping for, just more of a slow
rise, and she wished there was some way she could turn in her chair and confer
with Joe about taking bigger risks. She stretched her arms and glanced back
over her shoulder, but when they made eye contact, he only shook his head.
Patience, he seemed to be saying. You had to be able to wait until just the
right moment. Shelly had never learned that lesson.

Chapter Nineteen

Alanna took a slow walk
around the fountain, a spot she’d found to be a good locale for materializing
and dematerializing and when she re-entered Tiffany’s she was not only visible,
but looking good. She didn’t understand exactly how this had happened, or why,
but she had manifested in a Miu Miu dress with her hair expertly coiffed and
when she strode into Tiffany’s there was a genteel stampede among the
salespeople, all headed in her direction. She told the woman who got there
first that she wanted to look at diamond rings. Perhaps a strange request
coming from a woman alone, but apparently not all that strange by Vegas
standards for the saleswoman promptly escorted Alanna to the case.

“That one,” Alanna said,
pointing to a simple, square cut diamond. Simple, yeah. Simple and humongous.

Her hands were beautifully
manicured too, Alanna was relieved to note as the saleswoman handed her the
ring. “A wonderful choice,” the woman murmured, smiling as she slipped the ring
out of its gray velvet holder. She must look like the bored mistress of some
high roller, like a kept woman killing time in the shops while her sugar daddy
sat hypnotized at the tables.

She had been slowly regaining
shards of memory all morning but, as Alanna pushed the ring onto her finger,
she was hit with such a strong wave of emotion that for a second she felt
dizzy. She pressed her thighs against the glass case, forced herself to breathe
in deeply and smile. There was no doubt about it, this was a hint impossible to
ignore. She’d worn a diamond ring before. Not as big as this one, of course
not. But she had worn a square-cut solitaire diamond in her previous life. She
was sure of it. For a split second she almost saw the face of the man who had
given it to her, she almost recalled his name. It was so tantalizingly close,
this memory, yet still not hers to hold.

“Lovely, is it not?” the
saleswoman asked mildly. “It’s beautiful on your hand.”

Was it lovely? Alanna
couldn’t answer. The ring felt heavy on her finger. It was beautiful, that was
without question, but the same force that had compelled her to put it on now
seemed to be compelling her to take it off. Had she been engaged before she
died? Or maybe married? That was the only thing that made sense, but if she had
been engaged, why could she not recall the name or face of her fiancé? Where
was he right now? Still alive and mourning her loss?

“Would you care to see
another?” the saleswoman persisted and turned away to another case for just the
slip of a moment.

Before Alanna could answer,
she realized that she was already fading from sight. She had always suspected
somehow, on some level, that if she wore an engagement ring, some part of her
would evaporate. Now she remembered she had told the man that. She couldn’t see
his face or recall his name but she could hear her own voice saying: “But if I
marry you, I might disappear.” Now with a real ring on her finger, sure enough,
it was happening.

Before she completely de-manifested,
she remembered saying to the man, “Our connection has to be deep enough to last
a lifetime.” The man’s face faded as Alanna struggled to hold on to her physical
form. But she was dissolving and there was nothing to be done about it.

“Ma’am?” the saleswoman said
as she turned back holding a new tray of glittering gems in her hands, but all
she heard back was the clatter of a three-carat, square-cut diamond ring, as it
landed on the clear glass countertop.

*****

“All right baby, this is it,”
Joe hissed and Shelly did her best to remain calm. She had a pair of jacks in
the hold and had caught a third in the flop. The minute she’d seen that third jack
come up she’d wanted to throw every chip she had in the pot but Joe had
persuaded her to do something he called the “slow play,” to make minimal raises
with each cycle and thus make it more likely that other players would stay in
the game longer. Stoke the pot, he’d told her. Stay calm.

Joe was smart. Shelly saw
this more with every hand. She had originally thought that he was giving her
good advice because he had been moving around the table looking at everyone
else’s hands, but it soon became clear that experienced poker players only take
a quick glance at their hold cards and for the rest of the time keep them down.
Joe wasn’t spying on the other players and he had no special powers at the
table. Just his sharp mind, his ability to read faces, his knowledge of the
game. And Joe evidently liked a calculated risk.

But that had proven enough
because a quick survey of her chips showed Shelly she had parlayed her measly
three hundred dollars into three thousand and that three thousand was a drop in
the bucket compared to the size of the pot in front of her now. Five people had
stayed in the hand waiting for the river.

The dealer’s swift hands
moved across the table. A fourth jack.

Shelly couldn’t help it. A
small whistling sound escaped from her lips.

“Don’t react,” Joe warned
her. “We don’t want anyone to fold.”

And they didn’t. Cowboy
checked. Jazzman, who had already folded, regretfully shook his head. Chains
raised.

Grateful Dead called and
re-raised.

“Hmmm . . .” Joe said.

Hmmm? Hmmm? Shelly wanted to
turn around and slap him. But she knew what he was thinking. Two jacks were
showing. Everybody at the table had at least that much. One of the jacks was a
spade and the ten of spades was showing too, along with the eight.

“Dead might have a straight
flush,” Joe said. “That’s about the only thing that could beat us.” Shelly let
her shoulders rise and fall, hoping Joe would understand her mute question, and
he did. “A straight flush is unlikely,” Joe went on. “Very unlikely. He’d have
to have the nine of clubs and the queen of clubs in the hold
.
”

Everyone at the table eyed
Shelly, waiting for her to make her move. She shrugged again.

“No, don’t move all in,” Joe
said. “Raise another thousand.”

Shelly felt like screaming.
She might not be a long-term student of the fine art of Texas Hold’em but she
knew that four of a kind was a damn fine hand. She had won all of her previous
pots with a lot less than that. Joe was smart, sure, but he was beginning to
sound like every other man in her life. Telling her to be cautious. Telling her
to hold back. Meanwhile, her heart was pounding and her face was flushed and
every man at the table was glued to her. The power of the moment was heady with
Shelly not only the center of attention but also the center of control.

“All in,” she said, and
pushed her entire stack— just shy of three thousand dollars—to the middle of
the table.

Chapter Twenty

Ben sat back in his airplane seat and said a little
prayer,
It was a non-specific
prayer directed toward a non-specific
deity
, but he supposed it was better than nothing.
When he
’d awakened th
at
morning there had been a text from Shelly.
Not exactly full of information or gushing with
love, but it had felt like an invitation.
She missed him.
The room at the Bellagio was great.

Ever since he had been so cold to her in that
parking deck Ben had been kicking himself.
He
’
d known from the start that she was a gambler.
He
’d know she had this compulsion and yet he had
fallen in love with her
anyway
, h
ad
asked her to marry him.
He should have stood by her and not run off like that.

Okay, so it hadn’t
been the most romantic proposal on record.
In fact, as the plane now taxied and
began
its ascent
, heading west toward Las Vegas, Ben knew exactly where he had gone wrong.

His exact words had been “We should get married.
Provided you get that gambling thing under control,
that is.”