Lucky Streak (Lucky 2)

And yet she had no choice.

“Well?” he snapped at her. “It’s a black-and-white question. I said, Marshall was the one cheating, not you.” His voice hardened on that one word.

“Not exactly.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Not for lack of trying,” he reminded her in a biting tone.

“I know.” She rose and smoothed the wrinkles in the silky pajama pants she wore, trying to find the words to explain. “Let me start at the beginning. I was born in Vegas and my mom died in childbirth.”

“I already know that. Go on.” His words held the strength of steel. His patience was obviously wearing thin.

But she had to do this her way. “My dad was a Vegas con. He knew how to count cards and that’s how he made a living. I’m not going to say I condone it, but I grew up around him and his friends. Other than the years I lived with my grandparents, that’s really all I knew.” As she spoke, she felt the prick-ling of the hair on her arms as it stood up on end.

“So you learned from him,” he said, his voice now flat, his expression carefully neutral.

He must have made an extremely good interrogator, Amber thought. She just wished she wasn’t his subject. But she was, and everything she stood to lose suddenly loomed in front of her. All the possibilities she’d dreamed of—a second chance in a new place, with a good, decent man. A life away from Vegas and the sin that came with that city. For Amber not to lose those things, she had to reach Mike. But she couldn’t begin to read his emotions and her stomach continued to churn.

“I did learn from my father. Don’t all children? Of course, it helped that I had a photographic memory,” she said lightly. She laughed.

He didn’t. “I thought you said you were a concierge in Beverly Hills. Was that a lie?”

As he spoke, deliberately cold, thinking the worst of her, Amber saw a flicker of hope in his blue eyes that told her he wanted to find something to hold on to between them, too.

She grabbed on to that emotion and like a lifeline, she clung to his gaze. “I haven’t lied to you,” she said, her voice steady and reassuring. “I admit that I left things out, but only because I didn’t think you were ready to hear them. But I haven’t lied.”

Mike exhaled a slow breath, conflicting thoughts filling his head. She hadn’t lied. But she had done things he couldn’t have begun to imagine.

He reminded himself that he shouldn’t be surprised. He’d known she wasn’t telling him everything. Giving her the benefit of a doubt, he attempted to look at her life from every angle. A young girl who’d never had a mother with only a con-artist father and older grandparents from whom to learn. A child with a natural affinity for her father’s so-called craft.

Unfortunately, any way he viewed the situation, she was a thief, stealing from poker opponents and later, from him.

He and his wife weren’t just polar opposites. They diverged on the fundamental concept of honesty and integrity. Those notions defined his life.

The cop and the con. As he looked at her beautiful, imploring face, he couldn’t find any middle ground.

“If you didn’t lie, then how did card counting fit into your Beverly Hills life?” he asked at last.

“It didn’t. Not until my father got sick.” She ran her hand through her curls.

He couldn’t help noticing her hands shook. This wasn’t easy for her, either. But she’d had time to prepare for this conversation. He was hearing it all for the first time.

He forced himself not to think, just to listen.

“I had health insurance through the hotel, but it didn’t cover my father. And when I went to look at the nursing homes I could afford, it made me sick. I couldn’t put him in one of those places.” Her voice cracked as she spoke and her pain affected him, slicing deep.

How could it not? He had a father he loved, too. One who, he admitted to himself, he’d thought of institutionalizing rather than allowing the man to live alone, never knowing what he’d do next. Whether he’d step over the line that defined sanity. Could he have left Edward in one of those places? Mike wondered.

He wanted to reach out to her, to hold her and tell her he understood her pain. But he couldn’t. Because as much as he empathized with her emotions, he didn’t understand her choices.

In the wake of his silence, Amber drew a shaky breath and continued, “So I contacted Marshall.”

“And you became partners,” Mike said. He heard the disappointment in his voice as the memory of his first meeting with Amber came back to him in vivid detail.

A lovers’ quarrel, Marshall had said.

Ex-partners, Amber had claimed.

The illegalities had never been mentioned.