I sighed and rolled over onto my back, staring at the ceiling, thinking of the burning of widows in India and the other extreme religious rituals I was getting paid to think about these days.
The poor widows only lasted a second against memories of Matt.
The man worked through three shirts a day.
And yes, I was counting. From my office window I was watching it all—the sweat that dripped down his neck, the way the sun hit his green eyes and turned them the color of bottle glass. How he used the bottom edge of his shirt to wipe his forehead, revealing a white slice of muscled abdomen.
I knew I’d overreacted to the card situation, but it had been such a shock after all these years to see cards being played at the Manor. We used to play all the time. But after Tyler left, he’d taken all the fun out of the place, and there’d been no cards. Then Katie had been born and I had done everything I could to make sure the Notorious O’Neill garbage stayed in the past, or at least outside the walls of the house.
And Matt had brought it back in.
Like a draft through a cracked door, all sorts of things had come in with Matt Howe.
Desire was curling around me like a hot breeze, tighter and tighter until I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe without wondering what that bead of sweat against his neck might taste like, and where I might follow it. Down his neck, over the ridge of his collarbone, the swell of his chest.
“Mom?” Katie asked and I turned to look at the little girl, startled and embarrassed by my thoughts. “Do you like Matt?”
“Do you?” I asked, hot with discomfort. Thinking these thoughts in my daughter’s bed. What was wrong with me?
Katie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“That’s how I feel, too,” I said and pressed my lips to Katie’s forehead.
7
MATT
The dim light from under Margot’s door guided me through the dark house.
The hallways didn’t so much as creak as I walked through them, avoiding the rotten spots I’d discovered. At the door, unsure if I was about to be the object of a Mrs. Robinson situation, I took a deep breath and knocked, the door creaking open slightly under my fist.
“Come in, my dear boy,” Margot said, and I stepped the rest of the way in the room to find her sitting at a table, shuffling through a deck of cards. A cigar was smoking in a crystal ashtray at her elbow.
Behind her was nothing but shadows.
“Drink?” she asked, pointing to the tray of bottles on her dresser.
“Sure.”
It didn’t look like seduction, but I wasn’t entirely sure of what it did look like.
“Poker,” she said, the cards roaring as she shuffled them. “You’re here to play poker.” She quirked an eyebrow at me “Perhaps you were thinking I brought you here for something else?”
“Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect.”
“Five card,” she said. “You can expect five card and as soon as—”
The door opened behind me and I nearly groaned, thinking I was about to be scolded by Savannah again, but it was Katie who came creeping in the door.
“She’s asleep,” Katie told her grandmother. “She snores.”
“So do you,” Margot said. Katie climbed up on a chair, setting three cookies on the corner of the table like thousand-dollar chips.
“Five card stud,” Margot said, beginning to deal.
“Threes and nines wild,” Katie added.
Margot stopped shuffling. “Aren’t we past the training wheels?”
“One game with wild cards. Just one.”
Margot sighed. “Fine. Threes and nines wild.”
A long-standing, backroom poker game, between an eight-year-old girl and eighty-year-old woman.
A small pile of cards grew in front of the empty seat and Margot paused, both of them turning to stare at me.
“You in?” Katie asked.
“Does your mother know you do this?” I asked Katie.
Katie and Margot laughed. “No way,” Katie said.
“Savannah has strong feelings about gambling,” Margot added.
“And drinking,” Katie supplied.
“All things O’Neill,” Margot said, lifting the cigar, the smoke curling across her face, obscuring her expression.
“Are there things about the O’Neills that warrant strong feelings?”
Like gem theft?
“Mom says we have to rise above our roots,” Katie said.
“What are your roots?” I asked.
“Sit down, boy,” Margot said a smile as old as Eve on her face. “Maybe you’ll find out.”
“What the hell,” I muttered and sat down, picking up my cards.
“You ARE a shark,” Margot cried an hour later, after I’d cleaned them out. Again.
“Yeah,” Katie agreed, throwing the last of her chips at me. I ducked, laughing.
“I never said I didn’t play cards,” I said, raking the chips across the table. I’d played a lot of cards. More, probably, than any one man should, thanks to my father.
“Who taught you?” Margot asked, squinting at me through the smoke of her small cigar.
“My father.” I stacked the chips without looking at the girls. The smell of cigar, the slick feel of the cards under my fingers, the stacks of blue chips in front of me, even the camaraderie of sitting with other players around a table, taking stock of each other all while pretending not to—it all coalesced into a bittersweet nostalgia. “He taught me how to play poker, tie a perfect Windsor and play Rachmaninoff.”