Lucky (21 page)

Dieter’s vision was blurring. The woman’s face kept going in and out of focus like a bad home movie.

“You bitch,” he whispered, and then swallowed blood that was rattling at the back of his throat.

Lucky shrank within Nick’s arms. Even in death, the man was still cursing her existence.

“All of you betrayed me,” Dieter groaned. “You…my best friends.” His bitter laugh ended on a cough that bubbled blood up and out of his mouth. “Paulie was a cheat. J. J. knew it and didn’t stop him. And you…” He looked up, his eyes connecting with the shocked expression on Lucky’s face. “…you cursed spawn of that Houston bastard. Johnny Houston was no friend of mine…or of Paulie’s. He left us all. Damn him…damn all of you to…”

The ground came up to meet him. Grass tickled his nose and then slid through the gap in his mouth. He groaned and gasped. If he’d had a final breath, he would have used it to laugh again. He should have known that all things came full circle.

If Nick hadn’t been holding her upright, Lucky would have already been on the ground. Her legs went out from under her the moment she heard Dieter cursing Paulie’s name and her father’s in the same breath. She groaned.

“No,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands as she swayed. The implications of what she’d just heard were too horrible to bear.

“It’s over, sweetheart,” Nick said gently, and turned her away from the sight. “You’re safe. I’ve got you, and I’ll never let you go.”

“No…no…no.” She pushed herself out of his arms and staggered toward the ground where Paul Chenault still lay.

She stood, wavering on unstable legs, above the old man as he struggled to pull himself to a sitting position.

“You. It was you,” she whispered, unaware that guests were scrambling to their feet and hastening toward all exits in desperation to escape what else might be coming.

Nick stepped between them. Lucky’s belligerence toward his father had come out of nowhere, shocking him as badly as it seemed to be doing to Paul.

“Lucky, darling, what’s wrong?” Nick asked, and tried to take her by the arm.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, and twisted away. Her eyes glittered with a fierce, cold fire as she pushed Nick aside.

“You! You’re the Paulie who ruined my father’s life.”

Nick jerked as if he’d been shot. After everything that had happened today, this was the last thing he would have expected to hear.

“Lucky, baby, you’re imagining things. Dad didn’t even know your—”

“Dear God.” Paul’s voice shook as he leaned back in his chair. “That’s it! For months you’ve reminded me of someone. J. J. was your father, wasn’t he?”

Lucky shrank from his touch as if it were filth. Only
with great effort did she resist the urge to run and never look back.

“What have I done? Dear God, what have I done?” she moaned, and started to pace. She’d been living in the house of her father’s greatest enemy. Eating his food, sleeping with his son. Falling in love. She started to shake.

“Lucky, stop it,” Nick urged, and tried to pull her into an embrace. “Talk to me, baby. Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix anything if—”

“Nothing can be fixed!” Lucky cried, and then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. If she started crying she would never stop, and there were things that had to be said.

Nick froze. Something awful, worse than the threat that Dieter Marx had presented, was sucking up the air, and taking sanity with it.

Paul was silent. And from a distance away, Fluffy saw and suddenly understood more than she thought she could bear.

“We called him Johnny,” Lucky said, her fury all the more evident by the stillness of her body as she glared down at the man on the ground.

“I can’t believe I never saw it. Even your name should have been the clue. It’s this stroke,” Paul muttered, and hit his forehead with his hand. “It made me forget so much…too much.”

“Did you forget that you cheated him?” Lucky asked.

Instinctively, Nick moved between Lucky and his father while Cubby helped him into his chair. It was a protective gesture that he hardly understood, though. Whom
did he protect, and from what? His father from Lucky’s wrath? Or himself from the pain?

“Get away!” Lucky shouted, and pushed him aside. “I have to know. I’ve lived my entire life hearing Johnny cry in his beer, blaming everyone and everybody except himself. All he ever said was, ‘Paulie stole my luck. If I hadn’t lost the Houston Luck, I’d be a rich man by now.’” She threw up her hands. “Talk to me, Paul. Is it true? Did you cheat at poker and steal a family heirloom from your best friend?”

Fluffy was near enough to Lucky to see the spasm of muscles in the young woman’s cheek as she struggled to overcome hysteria. She wanted so desperately to comfort the child she’d come to love as a daughter, but she didn’t budge. Getting old had taught her one valuable lesson, and that was that truth would free a person in a way that love never could. Even if it hurt, it was better than living a lie.

Paul paled and closed his eyes, unable to look at Nick and admit his guilt, then wondered if the errors of his youth were actually going to be the downfall of this family after all.

“Dad! My God. Tell her! Say it isn’t so,” Nick whispered.

He was nearly doubled over from the pain of the truth. Each of Lucky’s words was another thrust against Paul’s guilty conscience. But the horror in his own son’s voice was what might kill him.

Lucky was close to a shout as she answered Nick for him. “He can’t answer without condemning himself.” She was almost sobbing as she turned back to the old man.
“You can’t, can you, Paulie? You palmed the ace and took the watch, and Johnny ran and never looked back.”

Paul slumped forward in his wheelchair, staring at the ground before him, but actually seeing a rerun of the portion of his life he’d tried long and hard to forget. Then he finally found his voice.

“He wouldn’t stop gambling. He even lost his business in a poker game. He used to fix cars, did you know that? He was a good mechanic.”

Cubby’s huge hand gripped the old man’s shoulder. “Sir, I don’t think you should be—”

Paul pushed him away, needing to get it all said. “Every time he sat down to a game, he lost sight of what mattered. He forgot that it was day. Didn’t care if it was night. He lived for a winning hand.”

“Dad…”

“Let him talk,” Lucky snapped, ignoring the fire of Nick’s glare.

“I bailed him out of jail. I paid off wise guys to keep him from getting killed. I baby-sat him until I fell asleep and then woke to find him gone. But he always resurfaced, begging for a loan.”

Lucky shivered, unwilling to forgive. And because of her childhood, unable to forget.

“It got so bad that he forgot to eat.” Paul sighed. “The last time he came begging for a loan, we got into a fight. I told him he was ruining his life. That he was sick and needed help. I told him he should get away from Las Vegas before it ate him alive. He laughed and dangled his watch in front of my face. Oddly enough, it was the only thing
he’d never wagered, and for that I was grateful. I knew how devastated he would be when he someday came to his senses and realized that he’d gambled away all he had left of his family name.”

“I’m listening,” Lucky said.

Paul grimaced. He could tell by the tone of her voice that what he was about to say, she would not like to hear.

“Then hear me well,” Paul urged, and lifted his head. His eyes burned as he looked into the face of his old friend’s daughter. “He was drunk. He dared me to a game. Said he couldn’t be beaten because he had his ‘luck’ with him. I didn’t bother to point out that he’d had that damned watch with him while he lost everything from his health to his reputation, and it had done him no good. When he got like that, there was no talking. I played his damned game. And yes, I cheated. But only to keep him from losing it to someone else. I would have given it back. But the next day he was gone.” Paul’s shoulders slumped. “I never saw him again.”

Lucky took a deep breath, but her words came out in disjointed disbelief all the same.

“Oh, my God…it’s all true. I’ve been living with the enemy.” Her frantic gaze swept across Nick’s face as her chin trembled. “Even sleeping with the enemy.” She crossed her arms across her chest, but it was too late to protect her heart. She’d already lost it.

Nick couldn’t talk. And he was deathly afraid to move. Every way he looked at it, his father’s past had risen like a phoenix and was now destroying all that he held dear. In his eyes, the club was tarnished. A man had died trying to enact revenge for what he considered a betrayal of trust.
And now the woman he loved was looking at him with hate-filled eyes. He wanted to shout,
It isn’t my fault!
But he could tell by Lucky’s expression that if he bore the name, he shared the blame.

“Don’t blame Nick,” Fluffy warned. “All of this happened before he was born. Hell, honey. Even before you were born. Don’t let your fathers’ pasts ruin what you two have.”

Lucky turned away. “We have nothing. I feel nothing…except an overwhelming urge to bathe.”

Nick groaned. “Jesus Christ, baby, don’t do this to us.”

“That’s a bit drastic,” Fluffy said, hoping to interject some sense in this terrible unveiling.

“Fluffy, my dear, Johnny had a saying,” she said as she looked into the old woman’s face. “If you sleep with snakes, you’re bound to get bit. Well, I’ve been bit and am dying as we speak, and it’s all my fault. I let prestige and pretty clothes and money and…Oh, hell.” She glanced back at Nick through tears. “I even let a man’s pretty face get in the way of what I am.”

“Don’t, Lucky. Don’t cut me out without a chance.” But Nick’s plea went unheard.

“I am my father’s daughter, after all,” she said, and then turned to Paul, who blanched with each accusation that fell from her lips. “I can’t explain it. But I know as certainly as I’m standing here that you destroyed my father’s faith in himself when you stole that watch. And I can’t stay with the man who did that and ignore what it did to our lives.”

“You could try to understand,” Paul said.

“Not if I ever intend to look at myself in the mirror again, I can’t.”

“Please! You’re his daughter. Take it now,” Paul urged. “It’s in the library safe. Nicky…go get it. Give it back. I never wanted to keep it for myself. I was keeping it to give to him.”

“I wasn’t the one who wanted it,” she said, and this time, in spite of it all, tears overflowed. “It belonged to Johnny. He’s the one who suffered the loss.” She hiccuped on a sob and then pushed Nick away as he tried to restrain her from leaving. “Get away from me…all of you,” she cried. “I don’t belong here. I never have.”

Paul moaned and slumped within his wheelchair. Nick sprang toward his father and caught him before he fell to the ground.

“Cubby! Call 911,” he cried, and felt his world slipping further and further out of orbit as Paul’s head lolled against his knee.

The bodyguards reacted instantly, but Will Arnold beat them to the scene.

“An ambulance is already on the way,” Arnold said as he reached Nick’s side. He glanced down at the man who had died in a pool of his own blood. “Dieter Marx can wait. I think your father needs it more.”

In spite of Nick’s suffering, Lucky didn’t have it in her to sympathize. Her father was already dead. In spite of the heat of the day, she felt cold from the inside out.

When she shuddered, then slumped, Fluffy would not restrain herself any longer. She wrapped her arms around Lucky and tried not to cry. It would, after all, serve no purpose except to make her makeup run.

“Don’t, darling,” Fluffy whispered, and patted her gently as she held her.

“Don’t what, Fluffy? Don’t die? It’s too late for that. I’m already dead.”

Lucky’s lips twisted and she turned toward the house with tears running down her cheeks. Her life was as good as over. She’d let the glitter of Las Vegas color her perception of what was right and wrong. She’d known better than to give herself so completely to a man…and a gambler at that. This was no more than she deserved.

Nick clutched his father’s unconscious body as he knelt. He knew he needed to get to Lucky, to make her understand that they could overcome everything that had come between them. But to get to her, he would have to leave his father…maybe to die alone.

“Lucky! For God’s sake, wait!” he cried as he got to his feet, but she kept walking toward the house without looking back.

“Don’t you walk away like nothing ever happened between us!” he shouted, and had the slight satisfaction of seeing her falter. But she didn’t turn, and she paused only momentarily before hastening her step.

He groaned, then dropped back to his father’s side, staring down at a man he no longer knew through a wall of unshed tears. Seconds turned into minutes as he contemplated the possibility of going after Lucky. But when his father moaned, and then slowly opened his eyes in frightened confusion, Nick’s heart shattered. To keep his woman, he would have to lose his father.

He lifted Paul’s head into his lap and waited while the sound of sirens in the distance drew nearer. There was nothing more to be said. He’d made his choice.

M
anny was not prepared for the total devastation so apparent on Lucky’s face as she walked into Club 52. He had no idea of what had gone on at the family estate, or that Nick’s father was being admitted into a hospital to be put into intensive care. His first thought was that someone had died. His second thought was that for her to be this distraught, it had to have been Nick.

“
Querida!
What has happened?”

Not trusting herself to speak, she simply shook her head and walked into his office. Without question, he followed her inside.

“
Madre de Dios!
Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

Lucky sank into a chair. Concentrating on the design in the carpet seemed to have the utmost interest for her. She would not, or could not, meet his gaze.

“I need to ask a favor of you,” she finally managed.

“Anything.”

“I need a place to stay.” Her lips twisted as she fiercely willed herself not to submit to threatening tears.

“But what about Nick’s…?”

She looked up. No life burned behind the green gaze. Only an emptiness that went on forever.

“Are you running away?”

Lucky shuddered, then buried her face in her hands. “Yes. No!” She sighed and looked up. “I don’t know. I need time. Time to think. Time to get past the shock.”

Of what?
But Manny never voiced the question. “I take it this place you are in need of should not be in Las Vegas.”

She nodded and swallowed several times before answering. “It would probably be better. Just until I’m able to think without crying.”

It was all he could do not to hold her. But he could tell it would be a gesture she would not welcome.

“Do you want to work, also,
querida?
”

She nodded. “I must, Manny. I have to stay busy or I will go mad.”

“I cannot stand this any longer,” Manny said. “I will help you, but you’ve got to help me understand. What terrible thing has come between you and Nicky?”

“Our fathers…their pasts. Either way you say it, it still means the same.”

Manny threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. “This makes no sense…but I will help.”

A slight smile broke the chill of her features as she slumped with relief.

“Thank you, Manny. I won’t ever forget this.”

“De nada.”

“Manny, there’s only one condition. Don’t tell Nick.”

He grew still, considering what she had just asked. “I will not bring it up, but if he asks, I also will not lie to him,” Manny finally said. “That is my condition.”

They sat, staring eye-to-eye, assessing the veracity of each other’s request. Finally, Lucky sighed. “Whatever,” she said. “Just help me. I can’t help myself.”

“It is done.”

Within the hour, and with less in her bag than she’d brought from Cradle Creek, Lucky watched the city limit sign come and then go as they rode west. She didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer an explanation as to where they were going. Nearly an hour later, Manny pulled the car into the parking lot of a casino.

“I know it is the middle of nowhere,” Manny said. “But all you have to do is call and I will come. You can be back in Las Vegas within an hour.”

Lucky looked out the window, squinting against the glare of the sun. There, on either side of the highway in the Nevada desert that would eventually lead to the California border, sat two casinos. The Prima Donna was to her left, Whiskey Pete’s to her right.

“Good lord,” she muttered. “And a Ferris wheel too?”

Manny shrugged. “For the children,” he said. “They have to do something while their papas and mamas play the games.”

“But I don’t have a car. Where will I stay?”

Manny pointed toward a trailer park north of the Prima Donna. “For the employees,” he explained. “Some of them never leave…until they quit or get fired.”

Lucky closed her eyes, counted to ten, and crawled out of the car. “Let’s go before I change my mind,” she said.

“It’s not too late.”

But the look on her face told him he was wrong. “No, Manny. The day I arrived in Vegas, it was already too late. I just didn’t know it.”

Within the space of two hours, Lucky had a job, a place to stay, and was standing beside the sparsely furnished trailer home as the sun began to set, staring blindly at the disappearing taillights of Manny’s car. A chilly wind whipped across her cheeks, sending a spray of sand into her eyes. She didn’t care, because if anyone saw her crying, it would be explanation enough for the tears running down her face.

She sighed, then went inside to change. As soon as her on-the-job orientation was over, she would be hard at work. But not behind the felt of a blackjack table. In fact, not at anything that had to do with the games. It was her only request. Taking tickets at the noisy merry-go-round on the ground floor of the casino was a far cry from the opulence and elegance of Club 52.

She couldn’t have asked for anything better to take her mind off of Nick Chenault.

“Where did she go? Dear God, Fluffy, you’ve got to tell me. I need to find her. To make her understand.”

Lucille LaMont could hardly look at Nick Chenault’s face and tell him she didn’t know, but it had to be said, because she truly did not.

“I don’t know, Nicky. And before you argue with me, I swear I’m telling the truth. All Lucky said was, ‘Fluffy take care of my things.’ And I got that message yesterday over
the phone. I don’t know where she was calling from, or who she was with.”

“Ah…”

It was all Nick could say as he braced himself against the pain. He couldn’t look at Fluffy anymore and see the sympathy on her face. She’d been his last and only hope. Three days had passed since Lucky walked out of his house, and as bad as things had been, he’d never expected it to be this final. Every day, he expected her to call and start a fight, or to blame him for what his father had done. He’d hadn’t been prepared for her total disappearance.

“She left nearly everything behind, except, of course, my heart, which she stole, and hasn’t thought to return,” he said, and lightly fingered a scarf of hers that he’d brought to Fluffy, unconsciously lifting it to his nose, inhaling the scent of lingering perfume. Tears shimmered in his eyes, but there was a bitter smile on his face.

“Nicky…I’m so sorry.”

Nick shrugged, dropped the scarf onto the stack of clothes that he’d returned, and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Not half as sorry as I am. The Chenaults have managed to ruin her life, when all I wanted to do was love her. I guess I should be thankful that my father is recovering, but dammit, I look at him and see a man I no longer know.”

Fluffy frowned. “I think she’s wrong to blame anyone but her own father for what happened in her life. And I think you’re wrong for taking your father’s mistakes upon your own shoulders. If she wasn’t so torn by the shock of it all, she could see through to the truth. She’s a good girl.”

“I’ve got to find her…to make her see that, if only
from your perspective. She’s proven that she won’t listen to me, or to anything I have to say.”

“She won’t listen to me either. Not now. I think she’s hurting too much to hear anything except the ghosts from her past reminding her of her guilt.”

Nick frowned. “Did she talk to you much about her past?” he asked. “When we were together, every time I brought it up she changed the subject or blew off my questions by making a joke of it. Maybe if I’d known where she came from I would understand why she hates and blames us so utterly now.”

“Then why don’t you go see?” Fluffy asked. “When she’s ready, I believe she’ll come back. My Lucky girl is not the type to run away from trouble. I think she’s somewhere licking her wounds and trying to decide what to do. When she does come back, what you know about the situation may make a difference in whether or not you two work things out.”

Nick got quiet. It was strange. Although he’d often wondered about her life before Las Vegas, he’d never thought about seeing for himself. Determination settled firmly right next to the hole that Lucky’s disappearance had left. It was a long shot.
But what the hell
, Nick thought.
I am, after all, a gambler
.

“Do you know where she lived?” he asked.

“Cradle Creek, Tennessee,” Fluffy said.

“I knew the name of the town. I meant the address,” he said.

The old lady shrugged, shifting the white feathered boa around her neck to a looser position. “It can’t be all that big. When you get there, ask.”

Fluffy had been right.

Nick came to a stop in front of the gas pump, and he tried not to stare at the unbelievable poverty that abounded in the area. In all his life, he’d never known people in America lived like this. The rental car he’d picked up at the airport in Nashville was nowhere near as elegant as his Jaguar, and yet it was as out of place in Cradle Creek as a butterfly on a dung heap. He got out of the car, and then the moment he did, realized he had nowhere to go.

“Hey, there. Wouldn’t be needin’ any gas now, would ya?” the owner asked, wiping his hands on a rag that was greasier than the belly that showed through the buttonless gap in his shirt and jacket.

Nick nodded, then as the man pumped fuel into the car, tried not to stare at the child who ambled out of the door behind him. No more than two or three, she walked dragging one little leg, leaving a small, narrow trail in the dust with her dirty, bare feet. The first thing Nick thought was that it was nearly November and the child had no shoes.

“Don’t pay her no mind,” the man said. “She’s one of my youngest girl’s brats. She ain’t quite right in the head.”

The child’s eyes darted from the keys dangling in Nick’s hands to the shine on his shoes. In a pique of sudden interest, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled through the dirt until she was hovering over the polished leather surface. Nick’s breath caught in shock. She wasn’t looking at his shoes, but rather the blurry image of her own reflection. And she was dirty. So dirty.

“Hi, baby,” Nick said, and squatted down to her level, trying to ignore the dry trail of dust-encrusted drool and the remnants of several meals upon her face and clothing.

The child tumbled backward in sudden fright. When her face crumpled, the last of Nick’s resistance gave way. In spite of her dirt, in spite of the slow, vacant stare, he lifted her into his arms. In that moment, for the first time in his life, the word “undernourished” became reality. He could feel her bones through the skin.

When she smiled, Nick’s eyes nearly filled with tears. “Hey, pretty baby…are you a good girl?”

“Hell no,” the man said, and yanked her out of Nick’s arms. “Get!” he said, and swatted at her tiny backside in an absent fashion, sending her sprawling in the dirt. She didn’t even cry from the insult.

It was all Nick could do not to deck him. “How much do I owe?” he growled.

“Twenty bucks oughta do it.”

Nick peeled off the note, then stuffed the rest back in his pocket, trying to remember why he’d come.

“I’m looking for an address,” Nick said. “Maybe you can help me.”

The man laughed. “Ain’t no street signs here. Who you lookin’ fer anyways?” Then he eyed afresh Nick’s car and his clothes. “What are you? The law?”

“Hardly,” Nick said. “I’m looking for Johnny Houston’s home. Can you show me how to get there?”

The man stared, then spit. He almost walked away before he remembered the wad of money he’d seen Nick put away.

“How bad do you want to know?” he asked, fingering the twenty Nick had handed him.

Nick’s lip curled. He should have expected this. “Not bad enough to give anyone who hits kids a dime,” he said. “Forget it. I’ll ask someone else.”

The man’s face turned red in anger. Before he thought, he blurted out most of what Nick had come to find.

“You want that Houston sonofabitch? Then walk up the hill about a hundred yards. ’Bout now I ’spect he’s ready for a visitor or two. It’s a certain thing ain’t no one here gonna flower his grave.”

“What was so bad about him?” Nick asked.

The man spit in the dirt again, and when the child would have toddled back out, he yelled, “Git on back in the house now, dammit! I’m busy! Can’t you see?”

Nick waited, forcing himself not to watch as the child tottered her way back inside.

“Because he took hard-earned money from poor miners who didn’t make enough to even pay me what they owed, that’s why. He never worked a day in his life in the town, ’cept polishing the table at Whitelaw’s Bar with a deck of cards. Now…if you’ll ’scuse me, I got me some things to do.”

Nick found himself alone. Unable to resist, he started up the hill behind the station to see for himself the grave of the man who’d garnered such disdain.

The air was chilly…almost cold. And in all his life, he’d never seen so many trees. He remembered Lucky saying how she used to play in woods so thick she had to turn sideways to get between the trunks, and wondered if she’d ever been as cold and hungry as the child that he had
held. From the looks of the houses hanging onto the sides of this mountain, he doubted if there were many here who at one time hadn’t gone cold and hungry.

Besides the obvious odor of poverty, another odor he didn’t recognize drifted past his nose. He looked down and noticed the odd-colored dust gathering on his shoes and pant legs as he walked through the grass. Puzzled, he bent down and swiped a finger across the toe of one shoe. It came away covered with a black, sooty streak.

Coal dust?

Smoke hazed the sky. Nick inhaled again and decided that it might be diesel from the refinery that he smelled. Although he could see the smoke, the mine was not visible through the trees. It was just as well; he had no desire to see a place where men were forced to bury themselves alive on a daily basis just to make a living.

Soon he broke out of the trees and into the hillside clearing that was the burying place of Cradle Creek.

Small, odd-shaped stones of every size and color dotted the hillside and up into the trees beyond, marking the residents’ final resting place. The names and dates on the rocks had been hand-carved. They lacked the professional touch of a stonecutter, but the love with which they’d been set seemed the same. And as Nick absorbed the solemnity of his surroundings, he realized that dying in the red was just as final as dying in the black. Death was the ultimate accountant.