GUN looked around the ballroom, crowded with semicircular poker tables overseen by silent men openly carrying sidearms. It was loud and already smelled of sweat and testosterone, and they hadn’t even started dealing cards out of the shoes—the wooden racks that held up decks of preshuffled cards.
Hot women floated around the room, leaning down far enough in their skimpy dresses to flash tits out one end and ass out the other end. Those were undoubtedly some of the eye candy brought in especially for the pleasure of the players. He wasn’t entirely opposed to pussy, particularly if it was tight and hot. But he preferred boys. Or more accurately, men. And the more unattainable they were, the more he enjoyed their fall into his bed.
Speaking of unattainable, he didn’t see Collin. But the Brit had to be here somewhere. Poor guy was going to get chewed up and spit out by this bunch. He obviously wasn’t skilled enough to hang with the big boys once this tournament really got rolling.
Hell, he didn’t know if he was skilled enough anymore. It had been years since he’d run the complicated, lightning-fast mental calculations of odds and percentages required to excel at Texas Hold’em.
The game was simple. Each player was dealt two cards facedown that only they peeked at. Then, one by one, the dealer turned over five more cards. Everyone at the table paired their two cards with the dealer’s five to make the best possible poker hand, winner take all.
Excitement rippled across his skin as the women sashayed around, placing wire baskets of chips in front of each player. Everyone would start with a stack of chips whose denominations added up to one million dollars. The first thing he’d learned long ago was not to think of the chips as money but only as numbers printed on disks of clay. At the end of the day, poker in any form was just a bunch of mathematical calculations with an element of chance thrown in. And even that chance had its own mathematics if a person was skilled enough at the required calculations.
He sized up the other players at his table. He knew two of the five from his days as a pro in Las Vegas. They were both competent, if not the most imaginative of players. A third player looked and acted like a rich businessman who probably kicked all his poker buddies’ asses back home, wherever home was, but who was too excited to actually belong here. Players four and five were unknowns. One was a burly Eastern European, maybe Polish, and one a stone-faced Asian who wouldn’t give away a thing with his expression. Trick with guys like that was to watch their hands. And right now, Asia was fiddling with his chips compulsively.
A male voice boomed over the public address system. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the World’s Ultimate Poker Tournament. The game is Texas Hold’em, no-limit pots, ten thousand to open, minimum raise twenty thousand. We will play ten-hour sessions starting at 4:00 p.m. each day with a one-hour break halfway through. We will take a one-day break every three days until the field is reduced to one hundred players. When you are eliminated from the tournament, you will be expected to pack your bags and leave El Rocca immediately. Transportation to the airport will be provided.”
All pretty standard.
The announcer continued, “Once the field has been cut to one hundred players, there will be modifications to the rules, but those will be announced at that time.”
Interesting. He’d never heard of a tournament that changed things up midcourse. Maybe it was arrogant of him to assume he would be around to find out what those rule changes would be, but at one time he’d been one of the best poker players on earth. Before the burnout set in, and the drugs and sex and bad life decisions.
Not that he was innately self-destructive. He’d just gotten sick to death of his father continually interfering with his life, pushing him to enter the family business, demanding that he monetize his talent for numbers by making big money and succeeding at everything he did. The man was always nagging him and yanking his chain. Eventually he’d rebelled against all of it.
Chucking everything and everyone out of his life had been the first and best adult decision he’d ever made for himself. He barely scraped by nowadays, doing odd jobs, fixing peoples’ computers, and tutoring a few rich brats he met on the beach in math. Which was to say he did their math for them while they surfed away their school years. It would bite them in the ass later when it was time to start managing daddy’s fortune, but the surfer kids would figure that out for themselves. And in the meantime, he was surviving all on his own.
He’d slept on beaches and in the back of his car, worked as a dishwasher in a burger joint, and even panhandled to scrape together a few bucks to buy food or wash his clothes. All in all, it was a good life, though. No commitments, not beholden to anyone for anything, drifting along free of everything and everyone who’d made him crazy.
And then that invitation had come in an e-mail to him, asking him to play at the most exclusive poker tournament ever put together and offering to pay the stake money for him. Whereas the world championships of poker that were widely publicized only attracted the relatively honest players from around the world, this one promised to pull in the best of the best regardless of moral or ethical compasses. Not that the invitation stated the case so baldly. It merely emphasized that the tournament was open to all players, regardless of their standing with casinos or other gambling establishments.
Personally, he’d been banned from every major casino in America, and a bunch in Europe and Asia, on general principle as well. It wasn’t that he’d cheated. He simply was too good a card counter and too good a mathematician to let play. So this tournament had been right up his alley. The question was, who knew that about him and had sent him the invitation?
Moreover, who had known where to find him and how to contact him? He’d gone completely off the grid. At least until one of his surfing buddies announced that he’d gotten an e-mail containing a request to pass it on to Gun Elliot. It was all very mysterious, which also was totally irresistible to him. He had his suspicions as to the identity of the invitation’s sender; he only hoped he was wrong.
The announcer called the start of play, and cards were dealt, chips pushed out, and bets made. He folded out early in the first couple of hands on mediocre cards, which was a boon. It gave his stomach time to settle and his nerves time to steady before he actually started betting.
He won the first hand he played on a pair of queens. In the second hand, he got an unlucky turn on the river card—the fifth and final board card exposed—but he won his third hand easily, raking in a big pot.
The overexcited businessman turned out to be a shrewd better who was a hell of a lot better player than he let on, and Asia fiddled harder with his chips the better his cards were. The guy wouldn’t last long with such an obvious tell. But it wasn’t his job to point that out to the poor bastard.
Play was relatively slow as everyone worked the numbers and tried to pick up tells on their opponents. Gun kept up his beach bum façade to the best of his ability. For the most part it worked; the other players underestimated him consistently.
By the end of play that night, a dozen players had been eliminated, and another dozen or so were short-stacked on chips and on the verge of elimination. He was up $150,000 and well pleased with the day’s efforts, given how rusty he was. The hotel put on a free buffet for all the remaining players, and he piled his plate with salad, fruits, and raw vegetables.
“Hey, handsome. What’s your name?” A leggy California-blonde type draped herself along his entire left side.
“Gun.”
“Ooooh. That’s an awesome name. Mine’s Desirée. Desirée Moorhead.”
Best. Prostitute. Name. Ever. He looked up from the serving tray of pasta. “Is that seriously your name?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die. It’s on my birth certificate.”
“God. I’m so sorry,” he mumbled, moving on to the fruit and cheese trays.
“Can I be your dessert? I love to play with whipped cream. You can even eat my cherry.”
Gun grinned at the tanned blonde. That was one of the worst come-on lines he’d ever heard. But she delivered it with such sincerity that it totally worked.
“Thanks, Desirée, but I think I’m just going to finish my meal and get some sleep.”
“Some other time,” she purred.
Not freaking likely. But hey. Who was he to rain on her parade?
“What happened to the surfer breakfast?” a familiar voice asked from behind him.
“English. You still in the tournament?”
“Of course I am. You?”
He snorted. He was planning to win this thing, thank you very much.
“Are you already sitting with anyone?” Collin asked.
“Nah. These aren’t my friends.”
“Mind if I join you? A redhead named Angeline seems to think I’m the most sexually deprived man on earth. I swear, she’s stalking me.”
Gun grinned broadly. “The tournament director’s paying for their services. You should take her up on undepriving you.”
“She plays for the wrong team,” Collin murmured low.
He glanced up quickly, catching Collin’s gray gaze on him. Dude, that man was easy on the eyeballs. The Brit was square-jawed and clean-cut in a movie-star kind of way. His dark hair was thick and wavy, in spite of being cut short on the sides, and painfully neat. The guy’s suit was conservative, effectively hiding most of the wholly fuckable brawn beneath. But then, there was a lot more to Collin Callahan than met the eye.
Collin was astronomically not his type. He liked them a little dim, a lot casual, no challenge in the mental acuity department, and no strings attached. Just a fuck.
Not that he dared even contemplate getting involved with one of his competitors here. This was perhaps the biggest poker tournament of all time. No way was he going to risk his shot at taking home what was surely a massive prize just for a hot piece of ass. Still. Collin’s was a damned tempting piece of ass.
They ate and traded small talk over everything but cards—the weather, how gigantic the Rock of Gibraltar was in person, how wild it was to walk across the runway of the main airport to enter the tiny country from Spain.
And then Collin surprised him by asking frankly, “Why are you really here?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not just here for the vacation to the Mediterranean coast to play some cards. You have an agenda of some kind.”
Maybe it was the bald honesty with which the question had been asked that prompted Oliver to answer equally honestly, “I’ve been itching for years to prove that I’m the best poker player on earth. And now’s my chance.” Which frankly worried him about this tournament. It was as if someone knew his fondest wish and had set this whole thing up to lure him in. A patently ridiculous thought, he knew. Still, it had been a hell of a piece of bait to dangle in front of him.
“Why haven’t you just played a bunch of professional poker tournaments and proved you’re the best that way?” Collin asked.
Oliver winced. In for a nickel, in for a dollar. “I’m not allowed to play poker pretty much anywhere.” He added hastily as Collin’s eyebrows sailed upward, “I’ve never cheated or ripped anyone off. I’m just too good. The casinos have to ban me, or I’ll take their customers for too much cash at the poker tables.”
“Rough problem to have,” Collin muttered.
“Actually, it does suck. There are a finite number of casinos on earth, and I can only play each of them once or twice before they kick me out. I could have made a good living at it. Instead, I—” How to describe essentially being homeless to this neat, organized man? “—can’t,” he finished lamely.
“Who are the other top players to watch out for?” Collin asked, glancing around the dining room.
“They’ll emerge in the next two or three days and pull ahead in the overall chip count. Chance will get overwhelmed by the mathematically superior decision makers. Antonio Mastrianak, the bald guy over by the window, is a four-time world champ, and if I’m not mistaken will be the chip leader after today. He had a big-ass pile of chips in front of him when I walked past his table earlier.”
Collin folded his linen napkin beside his plate. “So tell me. What do you do during your downtime to relax besides surf?”
His gaze shot to Collin’s. Surely that wasn’t a proposition. Not out of Mr. Stuffy Pants. “If I can’t surf, I swim. If there’s a hot guy around, and we’re into each other….” He shrugged. There. That was as blatant an invitation as he could possibly throw down.
Collin shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Oliver was feeling no little frustration himself. He leaned forward. “I can’t read you, and it’s making me nuts. Am I sensing ‘I’ve got a hard-on and how am I going to stand up?’ discomfort out of you, or ‘Crap, I wish this guy would quit dropping hints’ discomfort?”
Collin opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Both.”
Surprised, Oliver leaned back in his seat and nodded slowly. “Outstanding. I can work with that.”
COLLIN was shocked at how forward Gun was being. He got that the guy was tense and looking to blow off some steam, and goodness knew, he was wound tight himself. Trying to pass as a real poker player among the best of the best in the business was beyond nerve-racking.
He’d read every book he could get his hands on and could recite back nearly every word of them. His boss had even arranged for a retired professional poker player to give him hasty lessons. But the reality of an actual tournament was so much more daunting. He had yet to figure out the most efficient order in which to do the various mental calculations that were necessary before every single action, be it placing a bet or folding. Frankly, he’d gotten damned lucky today to only be down about fifty thousand dollars from his original one million.
Collin asked, “Would you mind if we went back to your room and talked a bit? I’d love to pick your brain about something.”
Gun looked genuinely surprised. But then those brilliant eyes of his lit up like blue fire, and Collin’s dick leaped to attention, willing and ready to report for duty. Good grief. His own libido was dying to help him fail at this difficult assignment. He only wanted to talk, for God’s sake! Well, he wanted to do more than talk, but he had no intention of doing more than that.
When they got to Gun’s room, Gun offered him a beer out of the minifridge.
“No thanks. I need to keep my head clear.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” Gun replied, taking a swig out of a brown longneck.
“I have a question about how you play poker.”
“Hey, dude. Pros don’t talk shop, and certainly not in the middle of a tournament.”
Crap. He really, really needed someone’s help. And he suspected every expert the Wild Cards might call to ask for advice was already here. He opted for a sliver of honesty. “You might have already noticed, but I’m not actually a professional poker player. I was sent here by my employer with orders to do my best.”
Gun grinned around the end of his beer bottle. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“What gave me away?”
“Pretty much everything.”
“Okay, so here’s the thing I wanted to ask you. And I understand if you don’t want to answer me. But maybe this isn’t a trade secret or classified information. What order do you do the math in when you’re working a hand?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you calculate the odds on your own hand first, or do you start by working up the odds of what the other guys are holding? I assume you think about the odds of a certain card being turned over on the flop of the dealer’s cards last.”
“Well, yeah. The flop is the last thing to worry about. First thing to look at is how the other guys are betting. You have to get an idea of what’s in their hands before you start looking at the possible hands your cards might make based on what you think they’re holding.”
“So you read the other players first before you do any math.”
“Sure. If they’ll give you a hint. Some of the players here won’t give you a read at all, so you have to watch the pattern of their betting over a few hours and get a feel for when they fold and when they play a hand.”
“Yes, but pros bluff enough to make that difficult.”
Gun shrugged. “Most pros think they bluff randomly, but human beings are creatures of habit. They fall into patterns whether they want to or not. Even a bluffing pattern can be read if you look for it. Dude, I could teach you all the numbers of the game, although that would take weeks or months, but the human psychology of poker—that beast takes years to master.”
The good news: in Collin’s line of work, reading and interpreting human psychology was a key part of the job. He’d been a human intelligence analyst—first for the British SAS and then for Wild Cards, Inc.—ever since he’d graduated from university. Patterns of behavior, he knew how to spot.
He confessed, however, “I have no idea how to bluff.”
Gun frowned. “Sure you do.”
“Excuse me?”
“How old were you when you came out?”
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with—”
“You are out, aren’t you?” Gun demanded in shock.
“Well, sort of.”
“Explain.”
This was really none of Gun’s business. But Collin had been the one to initiate this whole conversation, so it wasn’t like he could really take offense at where it went. He sighed. “In my own life, I’m out. My coworkers and friends know. My family prefers to live in denial. They do technically know I’m gay, as in I told them outright once many years ago. But they declared it an unfortunate phase, and we never spoke of it again. They pretend I outgrew it, and I live my own life.”
“Perfect.”
He blinked at Gun’s strange pleasure at what was a constant source of pain in his life.
“We’re talking about bluffing,” Gun reminded him. “Closeted people become extremely proficient liars by necessity. They have to live a lie.”
Collin stared. He’d never thought of it in those terms before.
“Think about how you hold your face, your entire body, when you’re passing as straight with your family. How you check your words and gestures—every little nuance of behavior—and consider what it will reveal before you follow through with it. Bluffing is pretty much the same. You have to focus intently on what you’re doing.”
Huh. He definitely knew what Gun was talking about. There had been a time in his life when he’d lived in that careful, secretive space all the time. Maybe that was why he excelled at his particular line of work. And maybe it would make him a half-decent bluffer, now that Gun had pointed it out.
Gun was speaking again. “…trick, then, is to pick up on when other players are really focusing hard on their own physical actions.”
Collin nodded. “So you use the concentration required to pull off a good bluff to reveal the bluff attempt.”
“Exactly.”
“Then I should concentrate on my actions that intently every hand. That way, when I do bluff, I won’t give it away!” he exclaimed.
“Now you’re catching on,” Gun replied, grinning.
Lord, that man’s smile was sexy. It stole the oxygen right out of Collin’s lungs.
“How did you figure out the correlation between being closeted and bluffing?” Collin asked curiously. Gun struck him as the type who wouldn’t have given a flying fuck what anyone thought when he’d figured out he preferred boys over girls.
“My old man can be a bit of a control freak. I had to play along with my orientation being a ‘youthful rebellion.’ At least until I left home and went to college. My father was embarrassed by my lifestyle choices.”
Collin knew the bitterness in Gun’s voice all too well from personal experience. At least they had that in common. “He does know it’s not a choice, right?” he demanded.
Gun rolled his eyes, and they shared a look of commiseration. An awkward silence descended between them, and Collin took a deep breath and started to turn for the door.
“Wait,” Gun blurted. “Don’t go.”
Startled, Collin froze in the act of leaving.
Gun pulled out a deck of cards from a suitcase lying in the corner and plopped down on one side of the king-sized bed. Quickly he shuffled and dealt six pairs of cards faceup and five cards in front of himself, facedown.
Slowly Collin sat down beside him. Gun was making up reasons for him to stay? What did it mean? How could it mean anything other than the obvious?
Nonetheless, he listened intently as Gun rapidly explained how each imaginary player was likely to react given the cards in front of him. This was the thing the books and lessons had been missing—the synthesis of math and psychology. He leaned forward, studying the cards intently and running the numbers in his head from this fresh perspective that included behavioral factors.
“Okay, so you’re hand number six,” Gun said. “What will you do?”
He looked up and grinned. “I thought pros don’t give away their trade secrets. I’m not going to tell you what I’d do.” He knew what he would do in this case; he just wasn’t going to share.
Gun laughed, and his entire face lit up with humor. The sound of it was infectious, and Collin’s own grin widened.
Gun threw an arm over Collin’s left shoulder. “God, I like you, and I have no idea why. You’re so freaking proper and uptight.”
Their gazes met, and the laughter faded from their expressions. Gun’s eyes were absolutely mesmerizing, an endless sea of sapphire he could lose himself in. “Thank you for the lesson,” Collin managed to choke out past an inexplicable tightness in his throat.
“My pleasure,” Gun mumbled back.
They leaned in a little closer to each other. “What’s your real name?” Collin asked.
Gun’s mouth quirked up into a funny little half smile. “Oliver. Oliver Elliot.”
“Pleased to meet you, Oliver.”
“Likewise, my dear Collin.”
Oh my. They completed the short journey, and their lips brushed against each other’s lightly. It was a chaste little peck, not at all what he was used to from his lovers, who usually fell on him voraciously and went straight for furtive sex without fanfare or foreplay.
The muscular arm fell away from his shoulder, and Collin straightened, clearing his throat.
Oliver murmured, “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have done that. But you’re just so damned exasperating and irresistible.”
He smiled ruefully. “Thank you, I think.”
“Aww, man, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re pretty cool beneath all that starch and… wool.”
“I’m not entirely British, you know.”
“Get out!”
“My mother’s English. Dad’s American, so I’m a dual citizen. I was born in England but went to Princeton for university. My parents moved to America while I was there, so I moved back to England for graduate school and got a job in London. One thing led to another, and I’ve never gone back to the States.” Desperate to distract himself from the way his heart was pounding and those generous, warm, lips that made him think dirty thoughts, Collin asked a little breathlessly, “Where are you from?”
“California. San Jose, originally. Stanford University. Lived in Las Vegas for a while when I was still playing poker, and then I went to Santa Cruz. Best surfing in California day in and day out. And Mavericks is only about an hour away.”
“Mavericks?”
“Best big waves on the West Coast.”
“Another surfing reference, right?”
“Give the man a gold star!”
God, he was tempted to lean forward and kiss all that laughter and sunshine in Gun’s—Oliver’s—face. Nobody’d warned him this mission would include a guy he couldn’t keep his hands or mouth off of. It was supposed to be a routine in-and-out operation. Stick around a few days, just long enough to figure out what the deal with this tournament was, and then return to base. Which was why they’d sent in a desk jockey like him. Except he was mighty tempted to take his sweet time figuring out what was going on around here and prolong his time with Oliver.
“Do your friends and family call you Ollie?”
“Not if they want to live. Like I told you, my nickname on the beach is Gun, and that’s what everyone except my parents calls me. They tend to introduce me to people as their son, The Disappointment.”
“From what I’ve seen, you’re an impressive guy. Why would they be disappointed in anything about you?”
Oliver’s gaze softened. In what felt like a moment of candor out of the surfer, he mumbled, “They wanted me to work in the family business, but I refused. They cut me off financially, but I still refused to cave in to them. I’d rather be homeless than be their puppet.”
“Puppet” was an interesting word choice. It spoke of strings that went far beyond simple familial duty. Collin’s psychology-trained self red-flagged Oliver’s family dynamic for later investigation and analysis.
Oliver dealt several more rounds of cards and quickly analyzed them while Collin paid fierce attention. He learned more about poker in those few minutes than from all the books he’d read. What struck him most, though, was how blinking fast Oliver ran the complex calculations of various odds. Collin was fast, but Oliver’s mental speed was nothing short of stunning. The guy might look like a bum, but he had a world-class mind beneath that scruffy exterior.
“What did you study at uni?” Collin finally asked.
Oliver shot him a crooked grin. “What else? Math.” A pause. “I probably ought to disclose that I had a PhD in math by age nineteen. Did my postdoc work in probability. I was a full professor at Stanford by age twenty-four.”
“Wow. That explains a lot about why casinos hate you.” And maybe it explained a little about his odd attraction to Gun/Oliver. He never could resist a brilliant mind. “If you don’t mind my asking, why the whole beach bum persona? There’s got to be more to it than pissing off your family.”
Oliver gathered up the cards and shuffled them idly. “That’s a perceptive question.”
“And that’s not an answer.”
“You have to understand. My father is a powerful man. Intense. Saying he pushed and pressured me is like saying a volcano is a little bit warm. I had to get away from not only him, but everything he stood for. I couldn’t breathe.”
Collin made a sympathetic noise. He knew plenty about suffocating families. His might have been well-meaning, but their failure to acknowledge who he was still stung. There was a reason he’d stayed in England after college and never gone back to New Jersey. Having totally killed the mood by bringing up their shitty pasts, he rose to his feet. “Thanks for the poker lesson. I owe you one.”
Oliver moved swiftly around the end of the bed, blocking his path to the door. “You owe me one what, Collin Callahan? What do you want from me?”
Collin stared, startled. Another revelatory choice of words. “I don’t want anything from you. I’m merely expressing gratitude and willingness to reciprocate.”
Oliver moved aside so he could pass. “Fuck. I’m sorry. It’s just this tournament putting me on edge….”
“What about it is putting you on edge?”
“There’s a vibe…. Something’s wonky about it. Wonkier than the giant entry fee, no announced prize, and ultraprivate location.”
Fascinating. Oliver felt it too, did he? Collin shrugged. “This definitely is a strange tournament. If nothing else, we’ll know by the end of it who’s the best of the best.”
“That’s the thing. I think there’s more to it than that.”
Collin tilted his head considering Oliver closely. “Why?”
“Call it a hunch.”
“A hunch? You’re a mathematician. You rely on observable facts, not guesses or gut feels.”
“I’ve got layers, dude. I’m an onion.”
Collin snorted in humor. “Right. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Isn’t this the part where you offer to peel me?”
Collin drew himself up to his full six-foot height. “I am classier and far more subtle than that when I make advances toward someone, I’ll have you know.”
“I dunno. You invited yourself up to my room. That’s pretty damned forward where I come from.”
Lord, he liked Oliver’s quick wit. Even the rough edges were starting to grow on him. He had to get out of here fast, or else he was going to do something he really regretted. As he opened the door, he tossed out lightly, “The way I hear it, everyone is forward in California, Oliver.”
“True dat, brah. True dat.”