Page 5 of Ready to Score

The surprise on Coach Landry’s face when he came to the door was almost comical.

“Hi there,” Franny greeted him with a grin before he could speak.

His gaze immediately turned to Jeremy, expression accusatory.

“It’s not his fault,” she asserted. “I got him drunk and squeezed it out of him. He’s just a sweet boy. He had no chance of keeping me away.”

Jeremy, to his credit, made himself look significantly more pathetic. “Sorry, Coach, she reminds me of my big sister. I had flashbacks of being hit over the head with a Tonka truck if I disagreed.”

Franny tapped her toe against his heel. She wasn’t that much of a bully. She’d planned to return him safely and unharmed to his wife whether he’d coughed up the info or not.

Coach Landry sighed from the very depths of his soul before he pursed his lips and stepped aside. Then, after shutting the door behind them and with one last put-out look at Jeremy, Landry led them down to the basement.

It looked every bit like what Franny had pictured. Gray speckled carpet and off-beige walls. A pool table to one side, a giant sectional in the middle facing a huge, mounted television. And to the other side, a round table with four men seated at it, along with… Jade Dunn.

Her surprise at seeing the woman made her stop dead in her tracks, causing Jeremy to stumble into her from behind.

“Sorry,” he muttered, moving around her to take his seat at the table.

When she, Coach Landry, and Jeremy were finally seated, the number of players rounded out to eight. She hadn’t counted on the other woman being there. Franny sat across from Ms. Dunn, her brainwhirling as she was immediately forced to reevaluate and change her plans for the evening.

“Looks like we’ve got a lot of new blood in here tonight,” said Cody Ross, the head baseball coach with a baby face. He was a little younger than she was, but not by much.

To his left, the track-and-field head, an older Black man named Charles Byrd, laughed. “Don’t matter how much new blood is in here, Ross, I’m still coming for that scratch, just like always.”

Ross blushed, and even Jeremy laughed.

“I’m thinking not a single one of you is going to be left with so much as a penny by the time I walk out of here tonight,” Franny said matter-of-factly. She figured her best way in was to be bold. She wasn’t going to impress anybody by pretending she was timid. She was going to make them laugh their way into accepting her.

The men howled. Coach Landry even slapped his knee under the table. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

Across the table, she watched Ms. Dunn quietly seethe, not a single peep escaping from those full, glossy lips of hers.

There’d been a fifty-dollar buy-in for the game, and after Landry dispersed their individual chips, the rest were separated and placed on the right side of the table in neat little stacks.

“The game is Texas Hold’em. I’ll start with the first deal.” He laid a white chip on the table in front of him. “We’ll be doing a twenty-five-cent and fifty-cent no-limit game. Jeremy, you’ve got the small blind to start. Ross, you’ve got the big bet.”

After both men threw their respective chips in, Landry dealt cards for the entire table. Franny bent her cards up to take a peek. Eight of hearts and three of diamonds. An off suit. There was nothing she could do with this. But she looked over and watched Ms. Dunn scrutinize her own cards, trying to decipher the look on her face.

“I’ll call.” Byrd threw a fifty-cent chip onto the table, matching the big bet Ross had made.

Franny was next, which meant she needed to make a decision quickly. Her hand was pure trash, but that didn’t mean everyone else’s was good. Her options were limited. She could either follow Byrd’s lead and match the current bet, or she could put on a big show and raise the bet in an attempt to cover her bluff. Or she could fold. Throw her shitty cards into the pile and give in before the game even really started.

But she wasn’t going to start off by bowing out. If she was going to lose, she was going to do it in style.

“I’ll call too,” she said, making extra effort not to meet eyes with any of the other players.

Dunn was the second to last to go, right before it circled back around to Landry. The woman had a sweet voice that Franny had always felt was incongruous to her outward demeanor. It was soft and airy. Honestly, it sounded like something out of a Barbie cartoon. It didn’t seem to matter how much the woman tried to clear her throat to deepen it, it was never anything less than cute as hell.

“I’ll raise fifty cents.” She tossed a one-dollar chip into the pile, then sat back in her chair with her shoulders squared and an unreadable look on her face. To Franny, it didn’t immediately read as smug, but she didn’t know Ms. Dunn well enough to decipher what it actually was.

Maybe she needed to do some studying.

Ugh. No.

Franny rolled her shoulders, the nervousness in her stomach mixing with something else that made her feel hot around the collar of her T-shirt. She tugged at it briefly, steeling herself for the flop round after Landry also threw a one-dollar chip into the pot.

Landry dealt the three community cards, and everyone was given the chance to bet or fold. Again, no one folded. The game continuedin kind. Round after round, cards were dealt, bets were made. Little by little, everyone started to sweat.

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