Up by Five (24 page)

And the knot in her stomach loosened a bit.

They pulled into the shop parking lot a minute later.

“Want me to come in or stay out?” Conner asked.

She looked over. In. She wanted him to come in. “I get to pick?” she asked.

“I’m here for you. Tell me where you need me.”

She wasn’t sure what to do with that. She had lots of people on her side, a lot of people’s support. But she didn’t have anyone who was all about her.

She couldn’t get used to it.

“Two months, Dixon.” Calling him by his last name helped her keep some distance.

He didn’t ask what she was talking about. He nodded. “I’ll take what I can get.”

And that seemed liked such bullshit. Conner Dixon didn’t want to fall in love, he didn’t want to be serious. He wanted to keep things superficial and fun. That was his attraction to her, she knew. She was easy. Not
easy
—well, okay,
easy
too—for
him
anyway. But she knew that her ability to handle anything, to
not
call him in the middle of the night for help, and her general lack of major baggage and hang-ups was all very appealing. So appealing that he thought he could be in love with her.

He was in love with things about her.

She could accept that. And he’d get over it.

“Come on then,” she said, getting out of the car.

He met her at the front fender and they walked into the shop together.

Her brothers were in the office. Josh was sitting in their father’s creaky, old office chair, a cup of coffee in one hand, looking like hell. Grant was perched with one hip on their Uncle Tim’s desk that sat perpendicular to their dad’s. Reed was leaning against the counter across from them.

“I see I’m late for the Sunshine Club meeting,” Gabby said dryly, trying to ignore that the knot in her stomach had drawn painfully tight.

“You brought company,” Reed commented, eyes on Conner.

“Yep. Is there a problem?” Gabby asked him.

“Just family dirty laundry.” Reed glanced at Josh.

“I’ll wait outside,” Conner said, stepping back through the office door and pulling it shut behind him.

Gabby missed his big, comforting presence immediately.

God, she was losing her mind.

She tucked her hands into her pockets and regarded her brothers. “What’s going on?”

“Josh has something to tell you,” Grant said.

There was no more mention of Conner or the fact that he’d come along. Conner was a nonissue as far as they were all concerned. Because Gabby said he was a nonissue. The men—and women, for that matter—in her life took her at face value. If she said she was fine, she was fine. They didn’t prod or poke or push. Because there were plenty of people and issues in their lives that
did
need their attention. In her family, you had to ask if you wanted something. If you needed help moving a dresser, six people would show up, but you had to tell them you wanted them to show. If you wanted a second helping of potatoes, that bowl wasn’t going to get passed to you unless you said something. Loudly.

She would bet good money that Conner’s sisters were bombarded with help and attention, whether they wanted it or not.

She almost laughed.

How Conner had thought he could keep his friends and sisters from falling for one another was beyond her. If you were Conner’s friend, you knew his sisters and you were moving dressers and eating potatoes with them from minute one.

“Josh, go,” Reed said with a frown at his youngest brother.

Gabby focused on Josh. “What’s up?”

“I, um…needed to borrow some money.”

She felt her spine tense. “Okay.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

Shit, fuck, dammit.

“How much?”

“Two thousand.”

“Two thousand
dollars
?”

“No, two thousand forks.”

Grant kicked him. Josh sighed.

“Yes, two thousand dollars.”

“He knows you’re the only one who has that kind of money saved up,” Grant said.

“It’s my school money.” Gabby frowned at Josh. “How long until you can pay me back?”

“This weekend.”

Reed scoffed. “Maybe. And you’re not telling her everything.”

Gabby frowned. “What’s going on?”

“I’m entering a big tournament this weekend.”

She knew he was talking about poker. Josh played in big games on nearly a weekly basis. He often entered tournaments. When he won, he won big. And when he didn’t win, he usually managed to at least cover his losses, but she, Reed and Grant had begun to suspect that he was getting in over his head.

“No way am I giving you money. That’s for school and you know it.” She couldn’t believe he’d even ask.

“Winner gets thirty K.”

Her eyes widened. “Thirty thousand?” That was a big game.

He nodded. “Six tables of five each. Everyone’s in for two K. Donovan’s not keeping anything for himself.”

Grant rolled his eyes. “There’s no way you’re going to win.”

“Second place is twenty, third is ten.”

“And nothing after that. You really think you’re in the top three that will be playing?”

“I have to be.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“To cover the two he needs to enter and the five he borrowed from Dad,” Reed said.

Gabby looked from Reed to Josh. “You owe Mom and Dad five thousand dollars?”

He shrugged. “I’m not worried.”

“Of course you’re not. You never worry about anything,” Reed said, clearly frustrated. He pushed off the desk. “You have a problem, little brother.”

“I’m fine,” Josh said with a scowl. “I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re not already in the game?” Gabby asked. If he didn’t have the money to enter, he wasn’t officially at a table yet.

She knew that in spite of his application to the fire department, Josh really believed he could make a living playing poker. And some guys did.

But thousands didn’t.

“I think you need to sit this one out. We’ll help you pay Mom and Dad back,” Gabby said, mentally calculating what she had in the bank and what she would need for her first two semesters. Dammit. She didn’t want to dip into her savings. She’d worked her butt off and gone without a lot of luxuries—her cell phone was a piece of crap and she’d gone down to two fancy lattes a week—to get that nest egg together.

“I can do this,” Josh said, pushing out of the chair. “I’m good. I can play with these guys.”

Josh was a great poker player. He was calm and cool, almost unreadable. But Gabby could beat him. Partly because she knew him well enough to read what tiny hints were there. Partly because she was more careful than Josh was. She took risks but calculated ones. Josh got easily caught up in the drama and excitement and often got carried away.

“You don’t have the entry fee,” she said. “I’ll help you pay Mom and Dad back.” What they’d been thinking—loaning him money in the first place—was beyond her. “But I’m not giving you more money to gamble with.”

Josh was clearly pissed now. “I have the money. And an invitation. I’m in the game.”

“An invitation?” she repeated. “It’s a private game?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s the guy?”

Josh hesitated. “Uh. Richard Donovan.”

Gabby stared at him. Richard Donovan was a bigwig with Omaha National, a Fortune 500 Company. He was one of the richest men in Omaha, even the entire Midwest. He was worth millions. Maybe more.

“So you’re in this guy’s private game where you think you’re going to win ten thousand dollars?” Gabby recounted.

Josh shrugged. “I’d rather win twenty.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“I’m not giving you two thousand dollars.”

“I already borrowed it.”

“The money?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so why do you need money from me?”

“It was your money he ‘borrowed’,” Reed said. “He got it out of your dresser drawer.”

She turned to face Josh. He stretched above her by four inches, but she got right up into his face. “What the hell is he talking about?”

“I found the money in your dresser drawer, okay? I’m sorry. I know it was a shitty thing to do, but I was desperate. I have to play in this game. Some of the guys invited are huge. If I impress them, it could mean even bigger invitations.”

She wasn’t sure which idiotic thing to comment on first. “My dresser burned in a fire a few nights ago, if you recall. I don’t have a dresser, not to mention one with money in it.”

He frowned. “In your bedroom at Conner’s.”

Her whole body went ice-cold. “Are you fucking kidding me? You went through drawers at someone else’s house?”

“It was
your
dresser.”

“You were intentionally trying to
steal
from me?” She couldn’t believe it.

“I’m going to pay you back
this weekend
.”

“
If
you win. And you know that’s a big if, Josh!”

“Well, thanks for the support and believing in me.”

She pulled a long, supposedly calming breath in through her nose. He was only twenty-two. And he clearly had an addiction. Besides being an idiot. He wasn’t deliberately trying to hurt her.

But it still did.

“I’m so sorry for not believing in my thieving, lying little brother,” she snapped, the calming breath not doing a damned thing.

“Well, now you have to let me play because it’s the only way for me to get the money back,” he said.

Let him. Right. Like she had any say in it. She didn’t
want
to have any say in it. She wanted the people around her to make good, logical, safe decisions without needing a flipping baby-sitter. She wanted them to be in control of themselves. Like she was. She knew what she wanted and she was going to go for it, even if it meant sacrificing something else she really wanted.

If she could walk away from Conner for medical school, then Josh could walk away from the fucking poker table for his own well-being.

“There’s one other way to get the money,” she said, a sense of calm smoothing over her jangled nerves.

“What?” Josh asked.

“I can win it back.”

Josh stared at her. “You want to play?”

“Not exactly. But I have a better chance of winning than you do.”

“Why would you do that? Just to bail me out?”

“No.” She looked up into her little brother’s face. “I should let you go down and maybe learn a lesson here, but I can’t.”

“Why not?” Reed asked. “He stole from you.”

“That’s why,” she said. “He didn’t steal from me.” She pinned Josh with a serious look. “He stole from Conner. My friend. The guy who let me stay at his place when mine burned down. The one who’s been there for me and hasn’t asked for anything in return. You took
his
two thousand dollars.”

“Fuck,” Grant muttered.

“Dammit, Josh,” Reed said angrily.

Josh just stared at her. “It wasn’t yours?”

“No.”

“And you’re willing to enter the game to win it back for him?”

“I’m going to win it back for
me
,” she told him. “I’ll pay Conner back out of my account. Then I’ll replace the money in my account…and Mom and Dad’s money…with the winnings.”

Josh swallowed hard. “This doesn’t help me make any contacts in the poker world.”

She couldn’t believe him. “No, Josh, it doesn’t. You’re welcome for that too, though I don’t expect you to appreciate it right now.”

“Gabby—”

“Just don’t, okay?” she asked, stopping him. She hated what was happening with Josh, she hated that she hadn’t realized how bad it was until now. She hated that it was now dragging Conner into it too. He didn’t know, of course. And she’d get to the bank tomorrow first thing and replace the money in his drawer, hopefully
before
he knew about it. But it made her sick to think that he’d let her into his house and welcomed her family in, simply because they were her family—and then this had happened.

It didn’t matter that Josh hadn’t meant to take Conner’s money. It didn’t matter that he meant to pay it back. For all she knew, Conner needed that money tomorrow for something important.

This was a perfect example, though, of how letting someone into your life let everyone in
their
life in too—for better or worse.

Keeping things light and superficial made sense if you didn’t want a big, freaking mess. And Conner wasn’t the only one who’d like a little less chaos in his life.

“Just give me the details,” she said to Josh.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Grant asked.

“I have a better chance of winning than Josh does. And I want my money back.”

“The tables are all full by now,” Josh said smugly.

“Except that someone at one of those tables is going to get sick at the last minute,” Reed said, stepping closer to Josh. “Right?”

“If I don’t play, I forfeit the money.”

“Gabby’s going to play in your place. With that money. There won’t be any forfeit,” Reed said.

“What if I
don’t
get ‘sick’?” Josh asked

“Then I’ll help Conner press charges against you,” Reed said flatly.

Gabby stared at her brother. There was something in Reed’s eyes that made her think he was completely serious.

Apparently Josh thought so too.

“Okay, okay, geez, calm down,” Josh said.

If the warning was enough, that was good with Gabby. Sometimes it was okay to have a brother who was a lawyer. He was a legal aid attorney, so he didn’t have money to lend, but still, he could make threats with the best of them.

“So you’re sick at the last minute and I’ll be ready to fill in,” she said to Josh.

“But you can’t just waltz in there,” he told her stubbornly. “Even if you’re replacing me, Donovan has to go for it. This is a private game. You have to have money
and
an invitation.”

She thought about that. She had no idea how to make this work. “I’ll figure it out.” Right now she needed to get Conner back to his apartment without him knowing anything was wrong—or that any of it involved him.

But they had to work tomorrow. She wouldn’t be able to get to the bank until Friday.

Dammit.