Betting on Hope (15 page)

Too bad Tanner was a card player. She’d be tempted otherwise. Those shoulders. He didn’t get those by sitting indoors all the time. Those hands, too. They were big. Calloused. Nicked. They were hardworking hands, although his nails were clean and trimmed. His arms, what she could see of them, were tanned. Strong-looking.

But she knew what card players were like. They played fast and loose, in more ways than one. And she’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.

“Do you think they’d mind if we spent twenty minutes just playing?” she asked, glancing around to see how crowded the coffee shop was. “It’s time to step up my game. I want to move to the thirty-dollar tables.”

“You want to play just to ask questions, right?” Tanner asked. “For practice. Not for money.”

“We can play for money.” Hope swallowed. They’d take her, that was for sure. They were both pros, much better than she was. She didn’t mind losing to Marty, but losing money to Tanner would bite.

“
Not
for money,” Marty said, scowling at Tanner. “We’re here to
help
.”

Hope dug a pack of cards out of her new straw bag. It had a wooden toggle clasp and embroidered blue flowers. Hope hadn’t been sure about the bag, but Baby had insisted. And now Hope saw she was right. It
made
the outfit. That and the blue wooden bangle bracelet she wore.

She shook her head to clear it and dealt the cards just as the waitress came by with the water pitcher and an inquiring look. Tanner slid her a twenty.

“Just twenty minutes,” he said with a slow smile, and the waitress smiled back, pocketing the money and walking away.

Fast and loose
. A good reminder to stay away, no matter how broad the shoulders were.

“You can pay me back later,” Tanner said, glancing at Hope before he picked up his cards.

“Ha,” Hope said. “You tip waitresses for table time, you’re on your own. I only tip dealers.”

Tanner slid a second twenty to Hope. “Twenty for the dealer, too,” he said, “if I get twenty minutes alone with her.”

“Does that kind of line usually work for you?” Hope asked, irritated, pushing the twenty back and finishing the deal. She pointed to the cards in front of him. “We’re here to
play
. So—play.”

They played ten quick hands. Hope lost them all.

“Okay,” Hope said, sitting back, ready to learn from the experts. “My cards aren’t bad. I don’t see what I’m doing wrong. What did you see?”

“You have to be more aggressive,” Tanner said. “Bet instead of call. Call instead of fold.”

Marty nodded. “He’s right, Little Hope. You gotta go for it.”

Yes.
She might not like the messenger, but she wanted to hear the message. “When?” she asked.

Tanner shook his head. “In the third hand—you couldn’t decide if you should call or fold when all the cards were out. Marty had bet into a big pot. What did you do?”

Folded. “
I thought Marty had a full house. Jacks full of sevens.”

“But he didn’t. He had two pair.
You
had the winning hand.”

She nodded. “Two pair. Kings and nines.”

“Okay. So how much did that pot cost you?”

She remembered. “One hundred fifty dollars. If we’d been playing for money.”

“Right. When you’re not sure—call. You might lose the bet. In fact, you’ll probably lose the bet. But when you fold the winning hand, you lose the
entire pot.
”

She glanced at Marty for confirmation.

Marty shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “If your bet is ten bucks and you
call
and you lose, you’re out the ten. But if there’s a hundred in the pot and you
fold
the winning hand, you’re out the hundred. So you can call nine times and be wrong and make it good with the tenth call. So call.”

Tanner nodded. “In general, you have to be a
lot
more aggressive,” he said. “You want the other players to fear you. Respect you. When they do, you can control the game better. You won’t win otherwise.”

Hope nodded. He would be a formidable player, she realized. She wouldn’t want to face him in a showdown.

“He’s right,” Marty said. “And you gotta work the pots better. Control them better.”

Hope frowned, turning to him. “What do you mean?”

Marty thought a minute. “Say, you hold king-queen. The flop shows king, jack, nine. The next guy bets. What do you do?”

Hope looked at him, not sure.

“You
raise
,” Tanner said.

“Right,” Marty said. “You used to know this, Hope.”

Hope shook her head, feeling exasperated with herself. “I never really
knew
it, Marty. I used to
feel
it. When I was a kid, I just played my guts out.”

“You should still play like that,” Tanner said. “What happened?”

“Life, I guess,” Hope said, looking at Marty, not wanting to say,
my card-playing, card-cheating father abandoned me and we got poor and I shut down.

“You should have seen her,” Marty said, a dreamy smile on his face. “Just a kid, and she could play your socks off. Well, don’t you worry, Little Hope. You don’t ever really forget how to play. We’ll get it back for you.”

“I hope so,” Hope said. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure that in that situation I’d know to raise. That’s a good hand.”

“Right,” Marty said. “It’s a good play, so you raise. And it’s good strategy, because you flopped the top pair. When you raise the other bettor, you cut down his pot odds by making him put in more money to win less.”

“Pot odds,” Hope said.

“The amount you bet relative to the amount you’d win,” Tanner said.

Hope was amazed. “You
think
about that?”

Marty nodded. “You got to,” he said. “If you’re gonna make your play count.”

“Explain, please,” Hope said, feeling like she was on the cusp of something big—graduating from high school. Buying a clingy top. Whatever.

“Okay,” Marty said. “Suppose there’s forty bucks in the pot when your guy bets ten bucks. If you
call
with your ten dollar bet, there’s sixty bucks in the pot for his ten-dollar bet. Six to one. You with me?”

“So far,” Hope said, waiting for the payoff.

“Okay. If you
raise
, there’s eighty dollars in the pot for his twenty-dollar bet. Four to one.”

Tanner tapped the table. “And if you raise, you might drive out other players, which is good. You don’t want anyone else to benefit from lucky draws on the turn or the river.”

Hope put the cards back in her bag, grateful to them both. “You don’t need regression analysis, Marty. There’s nothing wrong with your math. Thanks for your help. Tanner, you too. I’m thinking they don’t teach the right stuff in business school.”

Marty looked embarrassed. “It’s just what we do, Little Hope.”

Tanner shrugged. “I’m here to help. At least after losing this game you’re not sitting in the bar crying over your beer.”

“I wasn’t crying before,” Hope said, annoyed with him all over again, sliding out from the booth.

“Of course not,” Tanner said, rising and picking up the check. “And I don’t drink beer.”

Chapter 11

On Monday morning Hope called her boss. She’d only phoned the uncles on Friday, just three days ago, but already the software company seemed like a million light years away. The thought terrified her. She’d worked so hard to get her job—and in three days she’d forgotten all about it.

“Brian?” she asked when her boss answered. “Listen, I know it’s sudden, but I have to take my two weeks’ vacation now, starting today. Something’s come up.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes, it’s just—well, some family came in from town unexpectedly—”
the uncles, so it wasn’t really a lie
—“and I have some related business to take care of.”
Like win two hundred thousand dollars and then the ranch in a poker game.

How could the chief financial officer of a software startup tell the CEO
that?

“Anything we should know about before you go?”

Don’t bet long shots. When in doubt—call, don’t fold.

“Just—I’ve got the annual report done, and the one- and five-year projections are complete except for the graphics.”

“Yeah, I saw them on the server,” Brian said. “No problem, Hope. We’re all set. Take the time. See you in two.”

She thanked him and sighed as she hung up.
That was that.
Now at least she’d have the time to play and earn her stake. Whether she
would
earn it was another matter. She’d played the thirty-dollar tables last night and she’d come out about even. The play was much tougher at that level. Professionals played the thirty-dollar tables, and they weren’t fooling around.

Of course, neither was she.

The uncles had watched the action for most of the evening, just as they’d watched in the afternoon, looking for tables with a few weak players. Even so, Hope was only three hundred dollars ahead, and that was mostly a fluke. She’d have to do a lot better than that—and soon. She had to succeed at the thirty-dollar tables, because if she played day and night for the rest of the week at the twenty-dollar tables and won every hand, she still couldn’t earn two hundred thousand dollars in time to win the ranch back.

But she’d held her own at the thirty-dollar tables. She’d played hard and she’d done okay. Today she’d have to do better.

She had seven thousand dollars, and she needed only one hundred ninety-three thousand more.

Hope had dressed for the casino and was rinsing out her coffee cup at the kitchen sink when she looked up and spotted a strange car in the driveway and two men she didn’t know push open the barn’s heavy sliding door and step into its dim interior.

Why were strangers entering the barn?
They couldn’t be up to any good. She thought of the Mafia and the horses and what a lot of dry hay in hot weather could do, and she dropped the cup, leaped for the screen door and sprinted over to the barn, fear and anger making her run faster than she ever had.

When she got to the barn, she slid in as quietly as she could and grabbed a pitchfork that hung by the door. She couldn’t see the men, but she could hear their voices. They were in the tack room.

Holding the pitchfork in front of her, she approached the small space where she stored riding gear, rags, saddle soaps, and leather. A young man had pushed aside some equipment and was thumping the panel on a cupboard; a middle-aged man was holding a tape measure against a wall.

“Who are you and what are you doing?” Hope demanded from the doorway.

The men jumped. The older man dropped his tape measure.

“Jesus, you scared me,” he said, reaching down to pick it up. “We’re appraisers. Didn’t somebody from Cantwell, Lederer, and Sharp call you? The law firm? That guy Sharp said he’d talked to you, and he’d get in touch.”

“Nobody called,” Hope said, her voice tight. “What’s this about?”

“We’re supposed to assess the buildings,” the man said. “For the sale.”

Hope’s anger surged.
They sure didn’t waste any time.

“The place isn’t sold yet,” she said. “And until it is, you’ll have to leave.”

“There’s just been a misunderstanding,” the man said, taking out his phone. “You can put down the pitchfork. I’ll call—”

“No, you won’t,” Hope said, taking a firmer grip on the pitchfork. “The place isn’t sold, the deed isn’t transferred, and until it is, you have no business being on our property. I haven’t given permission, and I won’t. Now, you’ll have to leave.”

“But—” the man started.

“I have my own lawyers to call,” Hope said, bluffing. “You really want to get tied up like that?”

The man sighed.

“Come on, Jimmy, let’s go,” he said to the younger man. “Looks like we’ll have to come back later.”

Yeah, a lot later.
If she had anything to say about it, they’d
never
be back.

Hope brandished the pitchfork at them as they preceded her out of the barn, feeling better as she did. Could she be arrested for assault if she poked them in the backside? Probably, more’s the pity.

She marched them over to their car and watched them get in and drive away. There, that was that. Although next week would be a long one if she had to play cards
and
drive away the greedy vultures trying to make a buck off her family’s misfortunes.

Tanner waited for Hope at the concierge desk, reading a brochure about Las Vegas points of interest while he passed the time. He was filling in for Marty, who had been unable to tear himself away from a lucrative no-limit game that had run unexpectedly long. Tanner was only too happy to oblige. If he’d known that his acquaintance with the Jersey players would have yielded the incredible payoff of getting closer to Hope, he’d have pushed sooner to get to know his east coast competition better.