Unlucky (20 page)

Which was true, but where did that leave her? It probably took the spotlight off Jake, which was a good thing, but what if Silas decided he wanted to pay Reginald back for setting him up by removing Mallory from the game--permanently? All the tales she'd heard about Silas Hebert while growing up came rushing into her mind, making her pulse race. Even though most of them had come from her parents, she figured at least half had some truth in them.

Enough to scare the daylights out of her.

She blinked once and took a huge swallow of the cold water she'd brought for herself.
Focus on the game
. With any luck--mostly the bad kind--this whole fiasco would be over by this afternoon. At least the Silas Hebert part.

She checked the cards on the table and wasn't surprised to see Jake and Silas the only two remaining in this hand. But then Silas saw Jake's bet and raised him double that. Of course, Silas might have thought the table was still in his favor and Jake was bluffing. In that case, a bet that large would make sense.

Jake considered the raise for a second, then pushed over a stack of chips. "Call," he said, and flipped his cards over--an inside straight, seven through jack.

"Not bad," Silas said, and gave him a smile, "but not enough to beat a full house." He flipped his cards over and revealed the pair of fives and three tens.

Jake hesitated for just a moment, but managed to contain his surprise. Mallory was glad Silas was looking directly at him, because she was certain she'd done a horrible job in concealing her own.

What the hell had happened?

Surely it was a fluke, a mischance. The next hand would go the way she'd set it up to. But as Jake lifted his hand for the next round, she could see his mouth tighten ever so slightly. She wondered for a moment what that might mean but got her answer just seconds later as he folded his hand and bowed out of the round.

Okay, she could pass off one hand lost as a fluke, but two? Two was something more than a fluke but not yet a disaster.

Mallory stared at Jake, but he didn't even glance up. She knew he was maintaining his distance to avoid risk, but part of her wished he'd turn his gaze on her, if only for a moment, so that maybe she could see what was going on in his head.

What was he thinking? Was he worried?

Because if he hadn't been before, now might be a good time to start.

Jake studied his cards in confusion. The hand just wasn't there. The best he could hope to make of the mess was a pair, maybe a three of a kind as a long shot. Which wouldn't have bothered him at all if things were going the way they were planned. According to the rules of poker, Jake should fold this hand and hope for better on the next round. According to the laws of Mallory, this hand should still yield something better than what the rest of the players held.

But Jake hadn't pulled a winning hand all afternoon.

He'd watched Mallory serve the drinks and touch all the players as she went. She'd even given Silas the extra whammy, but the man had continued to play good poker, belying Mallory's touch. The rest of the players were back in a slump. It wasn't that Jake's hands had been bad--just not good enough to edge Silas out on anything.

It was almost as if he and Silas were playing straight up--no Mallory involved.

Jake folded when his turn came and tried to control his frustration. He needed to get a grip. Yesterday, he would have cheerfully sent Mallory to Antarctica if it meant removing her from his table. Now, he not only wanted her at the table, he needed that supernatural bullshit of hers to start working.

Jake was way better than the average poker player, but he'd seen enough of Silas's ability to know he wasn't going to beat him in a straight-up match.

And that left him with nothing.

Mallory paced back and forth across her tiny living room, watching the road for Jake's white rental car. Where was he? She looked at the clock again. Two minutes after six. Calm
down. He's only two minutes late
.

She sat for a moment on the edge of the couch, but sitting made her jumpier than the pacing. Hopping back up, she grabbed her work gloves and was just about to go outside to Scooter's shop and cut something in two when Jake's car rounded the corner and pulled into her driveway.

She glanced out her kitchen window at the pier she and Scooter shared, but his boat wasn't at the dock. Obviously the trout were biting. With any luck, she and Jake would come up with a new plan and he'd be gone before Scooter had a chance to get in the middle of it. Of course, that meant Jake needed to have come up with a plan on his own, because Mallory had drawn a huge zero on that end. Unless one wanted to sink to the Reginald St. Claire method of dealing with those who had a winning streak that ran a bit too long.

The players had no sooner settled into the afternoon game when two of them rushed from the room, clutching their stomachs as they exited the casino. According to her uncle's "rules of play," each player was limited to a maximum of twenty minutes away from the table at any time other than breaks. If at any given time a player ran over the twenty-minute mark, half their chips were automatically forfeited to the dealer.

Which put Reginald up about forty thousand for the moment and made Mallory wonder what the hell he'd dropped into those drinks.

Jake brought the car to a stop in front of her garage and hopped out, giving her a nod as he crossed the lawn to the porch where she stood. "Scooter's gone?" he asked, and looked over at the cabin about thirty yards from Mallory's.

"Yeah, for now. But he'll only be out as long as the fish are biting or until he runs out of beer. All he took was a six-pack, so we don't have that long."

Jake shook his head, and Mallory could see a look of begrudging admiration on his face. "I've never in my life seen a human being drink that much and still function like normal."

Mallory laughed. "Well, Scooter's normal is not as far a stretch to cover as the rest of ours, but yeah, his drinking ability is definitely at a professional level. I'm pretty sure he was single-handedly responsible for last quarter's profit increase at Coors." She waved one hand at the door. As Jake stepped onto the front porch, T.W. rose from his sleeping spot in the corner and angled off toward them.

Jake stared, his expression a mixture of confusion and surprise. "What the heck is that?"

"T.W.'s a basset hound."

"I didn't think they could live to be a hundred, and why does he keep twisting his head that way?"

"He's deaf as a doornail, but refuses to believe it, so he keeps twisting his head, thinking he'll be able to hear better out of the other ear."

T. W. came to a staggering stop in front of Jake, sniffed his pants legs, then lay down on the porch in front of his feet, obviously exhausted from all that strenuous activity. Jake stared at the dog for a moment then looked up at Mallory. "Did you do that to him?"

It took a minute for Mallory to understand what he was asking, then she broke out in laughter. "God, no. He was like that when I adopted him from the animal shelter. On his last leg in more ways than one, you could say. But he's perfectly safe. My bad luck doesn't seem to apply to animals."

Jake looked down once more at the dog and nodded. "What's T.W. stand for?"

"Train Wreck." Mallory grinned, and stepped inside the cabin, motioning for Jake to follow. As soon he stepped inside behind her, the entire cabin seemed to grow smaller, as if his mere presence had filled the room.

There were a million things in the world she had to worry about at that moment, not the least of which was Silas Hebert, Jake's bust and her money, but for some reason Mallory couldn't focus on any of them. Having Jake in her house made her feel strange, an uneasy nervous kind of anxiety, and it took her a minute to realize that he was the first man besides Scooter, Harry, or J.T. who had ever crossed the doorstep.

Of course there was also the fact that the cabin was all of three rooms. And since her couch doubled as her bed and she hadn't bothered to roll it back in, Jake quite literally was standing in the middle of her bedroom, looking around with undisguised interest.

"I like your place," he said finally, and Mallory stared at him in surprise.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Not at all. I'm into simple and functional. This is perfect for one person, and since you've combined bedroom and living, you only need to buy one television."

Mallory scanned his face, waiting for the punch line, but Jake just stood there, in the middle of her tiny cabin, wearing a look of genuine approval.

Which made him even sexier than before.

"You want something to drink?" she asked as she took the three steps into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

"No thanks."

She bent down and stuck her head inside the refrigerator, willing the cool air to chill the flush that had started to climb up her body, creeping up her toes toward places better left chilled. She grabbed a Coke can and rubbed it across her forehead, wondering if rubbing it anywhere else would help the problem or cause more trouble.

Deciding she probably didn't want the FBI to know she'd felt up a Coke can, she pulled herself away from the cool air and walked back into the living room, plopping down on her recliner. "Sit anywhere," she said, and waved a hand at Jake.

Jake considered his options for a moment, apparently as uneasy about the bed situation as she was, then finally selected an antique rocking chair in the corner.

"Do you have any idea--?"

"I have no idea--"

They both started speaking at the same time, then stopped and Jake motioned for Mallory to continue.

"I wondered if you had any ideas on how to work around this?" Mallory asked. "I've been racking my brain all day and I can't come up with anything."

Jake blew out a breath. "I was hoping you'd figure out how Silas is beating your bad-luck touch and we could go back to the original plan."

Mallory slowly shook her head. "I just don't know. It's almost like I never touched him. But it worked on all the others, so I don't know how he managed to get out of it. This has never happened before."

She started to continue when her cell phone rang. Glancing at the display, she saw the number for J.T.'s Bar. What now? "I should probably take this," she said, and flipped the phone open to answer. "J.T.?"

"Mallory, I've got something to tell you," the bar owner said. "And it don't look good."

"What's up? Is Father Thomas in some kind of trouble?"

"If only it were that simple. No, I'm afraid
you
might be in some kind of trouble."

She sucked in a breath. "Why? What's happened?"

"Stanley's been steaming open mail again. And this time he steamed open an overnight envelope for none other than Silas Hebert."

Mallory felt her back tighten. "What did he find?"

"He found a bunch of information about you--personal information--pages and pages of it. What the hell is going on, Mallory?"

"I don't know exactly," she said, deciding that her words weren't exactly lying. "But I'm going to find out."

"Now, don't you go doing anything foolish."