Working on a Full House (33 page)

Roy squinted out at the backyard as his stomach knotted itself one way, and then the other. He had no idea how to do it. Unless... Unless he brought out the big guns.

Yes, Roy considered as he stared out at Valerie's backyard. Now might be the time to bring up the thirty-five million dollars he had in the bank.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Nothing was going to spoil Valerie's good mood as she sauntered through the staff entrance at work. Not only had Roy looked adorably confused when last she'd seen him, not only was she luxuriating in the continued after-effects of his lovemaking, but when she'd swung by the hospital on her way in to work, Nicky had completely stabilized, fever under control, carefree smile back in place, and even a joke about it all on his lips. Valerie had happily released him to return home, so long as he could keep the fever down for twenty-four hours.

Now she was humming as she strode up the hallway toward her office. She was in such a terrific mood that she almost didn't notice the argument taking place ahead of her up by the nurses' rack.

"Do you have any idea how out of place you are being?" This came from Cherise. She was stretched to her full height and looked every inch a vengeful tribal queen. Except for her eyes, Valerie noted. Cherise's eyes looked tired and bloodshot. This gave her perhaps even more of an intimidating aspect as she addressed Peter, who looked embattled but determined.

"She has a right to know," he said to Cherise.

"And who's to say she doesn't already know, huh, busybody?"

"If she does, then there's no harm done, now, is there?" Peter smiled in a way that showed all his teeth.

"My, my, my," Valerie crooned as she came up to them. "And so early in the morning yet."

Cherise visibly started before whirling to stare at her friend. Peter's head snapped backward.

"Valerie," he said.

"Don't you dare," Cherise muttered, apparently to Peter.

Valerie looked from one of them to the other. It was dawning on her that their argument had something to do with her. But her smile didn't fade. Right then, she felt like she could handle anything. "What is it?"

"Nothing." Cherise averted her bloodshot eyes.

Valerie started to ask Cherise if she was okay — she looked worse than merely tired — but was distracted by Peter, who spoke to Valerie in a lofty tone.

"It's up to you," he said. "If you want to know or not."

Valerie turned to him and laughed. "Well, if you put it that way, of course I want to know. What is it?"

Cherise made an angry sound, but Peter answered Valerie anyway. "It's about this man you say is your husband. Roy Beaujovais."

"What about him?" Valerie frowned. "And I don't just say he's my husband. He is." Funny, how easy that admission was this morning.

"I know him," Peter returned, looking arch. "That is, I know about him."

"You do?" Valerie didn't understand. Peter knew
about
Roy? "What do you mean?"

"I've read about him in books," Peter explained. "Poker books. I've been trying to improve my game."

Cherise stepped in here. "We don't even know if it's the same guy."

"Come on. How many Roy Beaujovaises could there be who play big money poker in Las Vegas?"

"What?" Valerie broke in, her brain in a fog. Roy was mentioned in
books
? Why? He was a rootless gambler, a man who often didn't have two dollars to rub together, as proved by the night they'd met. Devastatingly sexy, yes, but nobody to write about. Unless...

Suddenly terrified on Roy's behalf, wondering if someone had been so cruel as to use him as a cautionary example, Valerie grabbed Peter's sleeve. "What does it say in these books?"

Peter looked down at Valerie. "Why don't you read for yourself? They're in my office."

"For the love of God," Cherise muttered.

Valerie kept her gaze on Peter. "I want to see them."

Two minutes later, left alone in Peter's office and seated in his desk chair, she turned to the pages he'd helpfully marked with fluorescent green sticky backs. The books had titles like,
Cutthroat Poker
,
Beat the Odds — and the Table
, and
What the Best of the Best Players Recommend
.

Valerie's dread on Roy's behalf turned into something very different as she began to read. A coldness lodged inside of her, an icy block that grew the more she discovered how very little she actually knew the man she'd just gone to bed with, the man she'd so naively believed she'd figured out.

Numbly, she read one passage after another:

..."'the necessary ingredient is a thorough understanding of the odds,'" says Roy Beaujovais. His rivals credit Beaujovais with an almost mystical connection to the numbers, such that he can play with stunning success, night after night, pot after pot..."

..."'I've never seen him walk away from a game down in the money,'" says Kenny Doubletree, a frequent player at the games presided over by the reigning, if reclusive, king of poker, Roy Beaujovais. 'One could say it's against his religion. How much is he worth by now? God only knows. Could be ten million. Could be twice that much. The man has a system with his investments, the same as with his game...'"

"...While the general public has become familiar with the big names of poker, the colorful characters who show up on ESPN, others play quietly in the shadows, far from the buzz of publicity — and quietly amassing huge fortunes. After years playing big games with lots of cigars and no television cameras, Roy Beaujovais, for one, is said to be worth twenty million at the very least, and possibly much, much more..."

The reigning king of poker. Worth ten million. Twenty. Possibly
more. Valerie had to make herself breathe as she closed the last of the books. She stared at the leather blotter on top of Peter's desk and felt cut adrift.

She certainly had no idea where she fit into this farce.

Roy was rich and famous. Not only was he handsome as sin and incredibly sexy, but he was rich and famous, to boot.

As she sat there, staring at the desk, Valerie dimly wondered why this information should make a difference. Wasn't what was important the way Roy had behaved last night — how he'd behaved for the past six weeks? Why should it matter if he happened to be incredibly rich, and famous for his talent?

Her gorge rose. It mattered.

It mattered that he hadn't trusted her enough, or been close enough, really, to tell her this about himself. All those weeks talking on the telephone — and not a
word
.

More than that, though, it mattered that she couldn't possibly be to him what she'd been imagining she was. She remembered how it had felt when Peter had told her there was a woman he desired more than Valerie. This was like that — only magnified. She wasn't the center of Roy's world. How could she be, prim little, stodgy little her? She was so boring that a man as pedestrian as a doctor had rejected her.

Roy wasn't pedestrian. He was fabulously wealthy and enormously talented. He didn't need
Valerie
to provide him with anything. He could easily get whatever he wanted. He could easily get any
woman
he wanted. He could get one who was actually desirable.

Valerie put a hand to her head, her mind reeling. But he'd married her. Insisted on it. For heaven's sake, why? Perhaps it had been a means to maintain control... Had he feared she might play games with custody, blackmail the multi-millionaire otherwise? Feeling nauseous, Valerie stood up. Roy had feared she might be a gold digger.

No.
Could
he have thought something so insulting? Standing unsteadily, Valerie spent a moment reconsidering. Was she looking at this the wrong way?
Could
any of her assumptions about Roy — up until an hour ago — be true?

Could he love her?

For one minute, Valerie tried to shoehorn it in, her idea Roy might possibly have some feelings for her — with his incredible financial status. Her gorge rose again.

Ten million, twenty, possibly more — the choices he must have, the opportunities available! Women who could actually make a man cross a room...every time.

No. Impossible. She could not be as important to him as she'd so idiotically believed.

~~~

Six carats of diamond felt like two tons in Roy's pants pocket as he strolled, with seeming nonchalance, up the travertine walkway that led to Valley Pediatric. He was not anywhere near nonchalant. Indeed, it was only by dint of eighteen years' practice in not showing tells that he wasn't sweating like a pig.

God. Was he actually going to do this? Propose?

Roy walked down the corridor and into the waiting room. He stood just inside the door, barely noticing a toddler wailing and a teenager huddled next to her mother. He drew in and let out a deep breath. There was no going back. If the two of them didn't move forward in this thing, they'd end up falling backward. Maybe even...parting.

The very idea made Roy's stomach drop. No, he couldn't take the chance they might part.

He had to ask her.

"You're here to see Dr. Kendrick, right?" This came from the gangly guy behind the counter.

Roy shook himself back to the here-and-now. "Yes. Should I just go on back to her office like I did yesterday?"

"Uh." The kid was giving Roy a very odd look. "Yeah. I guess that'd be okay. Mr. Beaujovais, right?"

"Right."

Roy was aware of the kid watching him closely as he went through the door that led to the inner hall. The perusal might have given Roy pause if he hadn't had a host of other things on his mind.

In a white lab coat that looked just right on her, Valerie stood at the other end of the hall by a table of horizontally filed charts. She was writing something on a clipboard, but turned her head when Roy came through the door.

Right away Roy knew something was wrong. It was in the way she lifted her head, in the way she then stiffened. And if she tried to cover the moment in a smile, it was too little, too late. Something was definitely wrong.

His stomach shrank. What? What had happened in between saying goodbye this morning and now? Had he given her too long to think about it all, to regret the night she'd spent in his bed? To regret the leap she'd thus taken?

"Roy," she said, and set down her clipboard.

Oh, it was bad. Even though she was smiling and walking toward him, Roy could smell how off it all was.

He did his best, however, to display his own version of normalcy. "Valerie," he returned, and smiled back. But when he stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, his fingers hit the velvet of the box hidden there. He cleared his throat. "Whenever you're ready to go."

"I'm ready now." Valerie slipped out of her lab coat. "I'll just hang this up."

"Sure."

Roy had no idea what had happened to sour things as he walked Valerie out to his car. All he knew was that the box with the diamond ring in it suddenly felt light in his pocket, as if it might rise up and drift away.

"So..." As he started the car and moved into traffic, Roy felt the silence like a snake, waiting to strike. Desperate to keep the snake at bay, he asked, "So, how was your morning?"

"My morning? Oh...it was fine, just fine." Gazing out the front windshield, Valerie continued to smile.

Why the hell was she smiling like that? She was acting as if they hadn't spent the night in each other's arms. As if none of it had happened. A small layer of anger moved over the fear clenched about Roy's stomach. By God, it had happened.

Roy maneuvered the car through the crowded downtown Palmwood streets and pulled up in front of Avignon, a diminutive French restaurant he'd previously decided chic and discreet enough for a marriage proposal.

A valet waiting on the curb opened the car door for Valerie. She was standing on the sidewalk and regarding the faux Provencal entry when Roy came up beside her.

"Wow," she said. "French food, and it's only lunch?"

"Yeah, well..." There was no way Roy could explain his extravagance now. Valerie looked far from amenable to a marriage proposal. "Ahem. Shall we go inside?"

Valerie straightened her shoulders. "Sure."

The interior of the restaurant continued the theme of informal French country living, with heavy, solid furniture, and paintings of sunny grape-filled valleys. Roy noted with disgust that it would have been the perfect venue for his proposal.

"I've never been here," Valerie spoke up. "It looks nice." She ran an appreciative finger along the wood of the plank table as she lowered herself to a brocade-covered seat. Somehow, without being rude about it, she avoided looking Roy in the eye.

"Uh, I wanted to take you somewhere special."

She did look at Roy then, a sudden, piercing regard. But she didn't ask why he might have wanted to do that.

Tense with all the mystery, Roy decided it was time to lay some cards on the table. "I get the feeling you're not happy about something."

"Me? Not happy?" Valerie's eyelashes fluttered down. "Don't be ridiculous. What would I have to be unhappy about?"

There's the fact we made love last night
. Roy tried his best to unclench his teeth. "I can't guess what's wrong," he said very softly. "So why don't you just tell me?"

She spent a full minute staring into the space past Roy's left shoulder while her bright smile faded. "You're right," she finally said. "You're right. I promised myself I was going to be truthful. A long time ago I promised myself that — not that I kept my promise." She emitted a small, unhappy laugh.

"What are you talking about?" He wished she would stop talking in riddles.

Valerie shifted to look straight at him. "The prices at this cute little French restaurant, I'll bet they're through the roof. But you don't have to worry about that. Probably didn't even occur to you. Right?"

Roy just stared at her. She stared back. His insides slowly turned to lead. "You know," he finally said.

"About all your millions of dollars? Oh, no, I don't know the exact amount. Only what's been estimated in the half-dozen books Peter was kind enough to lend me, books in every one of which your name was mentioned." Valerie looked to the side and let out a gusty breath. "You're
famous
."