The One-Night Wife. Sandra Marton

      Sean smiled back at her. He didn’t bother looking at his cards. He knew what he had and he was damned sure it beat what she was holding.

      “Too rich for my blood,” he said lazily, and dropped his cards on the green baize tabletop.

      The German smiled. “The fraulein wins again.”

      Savannah gathered in the chips. “Beginner’s luck,” she said demurely, and smiled at him again.

      It wasn’t luck, beginner’s or otherwise. The luck of the draw was a big part of winning but from what he’d observed, it had little to do with her success at this table.

      The lady was good.

      He watched as she picked up her cards, fanned them just enough to check the upper right-hand corners, then put them down again. It was a pro’s trick. When your old man owned one of the biggest hotels and casinos in Vegas, you learned their tricks early.

      Not that Sean had spent much time in the casino. State law prohibited minors from being in the gaming areas. More importantly, so did his mother.

      One gambler in the family was enough for Mary Elizabeth O’Connell. She’d never complained about her husband’s love of cards, dice, the wheel, whatever a man could lay a wager on, but she also made it clear she didn’t want to see her children develop any such interests.

      Still, Sean had been drawn to the life as surely as ocean waves are drawn to the shore.

      He began gambling when he was in his teens. By his senior year in high school, he bet on anything and everything. Basketball. Football. Baseball. A friend’s grades. His pals thought he was lucky. Sean knew better. It was more than luck. He had a feel for mathematics, especially for those parts of it that dealt in probability, combinations and permutations. Show him the grade spread for, say, Mrs. Keany’s classes in Trig over the past five years, he could predict how the current grades would play out with startling accuracy.

      It was fun.

      Then he went away to college, discovered poker and fell in love with it. He loved everything about the game. The cool, smooth feel of a new deck of cards. The numbers that danced in his head as he figured out who was holding what. The kick of playing a hand he knew he couldn’t lose or, conversely, playing a hand no sane man would hold on to and winning anyway because he was good and because, in the final analysis, even the risk of losing could give you an adrenaline rush.

      By the time he graduated from Harvard with a degree in business, he had a small fortune stashed in the bank.

      Sean handed his degree to Mary Elizabeth, kissed her on both cheeks and said he knew he was disappointing her but he wasn’t going to need that degree for a while.