The Baby Gamble (Texas Hold'em)

For now, however, she was going to the office. And she’d pray that she found some positive inspiration when she got there.

SHE’D TALKED ABOUT the importance of honesty and self-awareness, and Mike thought it was the best column she’d ever written. Annie didn’t know about that—she wrote three columns a week, and also covered most of the small town’s more newsworthy stories—but she felt one hundred percent better than she had earlier that morning.

Strapping the laptop case to the rack on her bicycle outside the River’s Run offices on Main Street, she threw one leg over the bike and started off. Becky Howard, the high-school nurse, only had half an hour for lunch, and Annie was eager to talk to her best friend—to tell her about the previous night’s encounter with Blake.Everyone in River Bluff knew about Annie’s past—her fairy-tale marriage to Blake Smith, his disappearance and declared death, her second marriage and then Blake’s homecoming. She’d felt as if the eyes of the world had been upon her the morning she’d gone to meet Blake’s plane. People she’d never spoken to in her life had been waiting to see if she’d stay with Roger or return to Blake. And most—with the exception of Roger’s friends and loved ones—couldn’t help being a little saddened by her choice.

Many had told her so, thinking she’d turned her back on true love.

Only Becky had understood. And maybe Blake.

Her mother certainly hadn’t. But then, June Lawry and Annie hadn’t seen eye to eye since Annie had been in junior high.

River Bluff High School was on the outskirts of town, part of a complex that also housed the junior high where Annie had been the day her father had shot himself. Avoiding that part of the school grounds where she’d heard the news, she unlatched her laptop from the bike carrier—theft happened even in River Bluff, if you made the temptation great enough—and left her yellow ten-speed unlocked in the rack with a dozen other bikes.

Becky wasn’t in her office.

Nor was she in the lunchroom. Or the teachers’ lounge.

Fifteen minutes of her friend’s lunch break had already passed and Annie had no idea where to look next.

“Hi, Ms. Kincaid.”

“How you doing, Katie? Tell your mom thanks for the apple jelly. It was great!”

“I will.” The blond senior smiled as she continued on her way down the hall, and then turned. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Shane is, would you?”

“I hope in class,” Annie said, wondering why the girl would be asking about a boy who was three years younger than she was. Wondering, too, why the girls here all thought it was okay to expose themselves in those extremely low cut pants and two-inch shirts.

And when had Katie gotten that butterfly tattooed on her lower back? Her mother must have shed some tears over that.

SHE FOUND BECKY IN HER silver Tah

oe—sitting alone in a parking lot filled to capacity with cars, but no people.

One look at the tears on her friend’s face and Annie opened the passenger door without waiting for an invitation.“What’s wrong?” she asked, sliding in and closing her door with a quick jerk on the inside handle.

“Oh.” Becky gave her an embarrassed glance, sniffled and made a swipe at her face, as if she could erase the evidence of her distress. “Hi. I didn’t know you were here.”

Annie frowned. If someone had hurt her friend…

“I’ve been thinking about you all morning,” Becky said, her attempt at a smile weak at best. “Tell me how it went.”

As far as Annie was concerned, her trials and tribulations were a low priority at the moment.

“What’s wrong, Bec?” Her friend’s auburn curls had pulled loose from the ponytail she always wore when she worked.

Naturally curly hair was only one of the many things Annie and Becky Howard had in common.

“I just sent a student to a hospital in San Antonio for tests.”

Annie’s skin grew cold. “Is it serious?”

“I think he has an ulcer. He’s been vomiting blood.”

Staring at Becky’s bent head, Annie tried to read her friend’s mind. Certainly a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old with an ulcer had a serious problem. It would be indicative of some pretty severe emotional struggles, if nothing else. But it was still treatable.

She’d watched Becky work a car accident one time on the side of the road; they’d passed just after the crash occurred, and had stopped to see if they could help. One young man had died, but Becky had saved the life of another.

And she’d never shed a tear.