Take a Chance Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Shelley Shepard Gray

  E-book published in 2018 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Alenka V. Linaschke

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5384-4086-5

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5384-4085-8

  Fiction / Romance / General

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  For Tom, for more reasons than I could ever name

  Letter to Readers

  Thank you for picking up Take a Chance. I hope you enjoy Kurt and Emily’s book!

  I came up with the idea for the Bridgeport Social Club series years ago, during a conversation with my husband one morning after his monthly poker game. To be honest, when Tom first started playing poker one Friday night a month, I couldn’t figure out what the attraction was. The games were held in a buddy’s garage, which was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. I knew they played cards, ate a lot of junk food, drank beer, and smoked cigars, sometimes until late in the night. It sounded crowded, noisy, and kind of smelly, too.

  Truthfully, I was kind of annoyed about the whole thing.

  Then, one Saturday morning, instead of complaining about his smelly poker clothes, I asked my husband who he had talked to the night before. That’s when Tom started telling me about the guys’ kids. And recent vacations. Who had a new job and who was still looking for one. Who was dating someone new and who was about to celebrate an anniversary.

  And that’s when it clicked.

  Those Friday-night poker games weren’t actually just about poker. They were a chance for a group of friends to get together.

  Now that, I could understand! I have the same connection with my writing buddies. Yes, we write and edit each other’s work, but we also value our friendship just as much. Our monthly meetings are always about so much more than the books we are working on.

  I decided right then and there to stop complaining (as much) about Friday-night poker.

  So, that’s the story of how Take a Chance and the whole Bridgeport Social Club came to be. I hope you enjoy the book. But more importantly, I hope that you, too, have found your own group of family or friends who you believe in and who also believe in you.

  That’s worth everything, I think.

  With my blessings and my thanks,

  Shelley Shepard Gray

  CHAPTER 1

  FROM LES LARKE’S

  TIPS FOR BEGINNING POKER PLAYERS:

  Avoid becoming too emotional. Bad bets will happen. Losing sessions will happen. Annoying opponents will happen. Live with it.

  Kurt Holland walked into Bridgeport High feeling a bit like he’d just entered a prison. Honestly, who would’ve ever guessed that visitors would need to have their pictures taken in order to enter a public high school? It was almost as disconcerting as getting a call that his brother—who he was now guardian of—had gotten into a fight and was in the principal’s office.

  When the call had come, he’d been knee-deep in a drainage ditch at the convention center. That meant that while he had on a fresh white T-shirt and washed his face and hands, he probably still looked and smelled like he’d just crawled out of the mud.

  It was not the way he’d hoped to make his first impression, but what could he do? It wasn’t like Sam getting in a fight was any better.

  “May I help you?” the matronly receptionist asked, making him realize that he’d been standing there for a good twenty seconds, lost in thought.

  “Yeah. I’m Kurt Holland. I’m here to speak with Mr. Hendrix about my brother, Sam.”

  “Oh. Yes. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Kurt caught the vague note of disapproval in her tone, but he shook it off. He wasn’t going to apologize for his brother, his appearance, or the fact that it took him an hour to get over here. Instead he signed his name where she directed. “Where do I go now?”

  “Go to the first door to the right. And clip this on your … ah, T-shirt.”

  Looking at the plastic name badge that proclaimed he was a visitor loud and proud, Kurt wondered if there had ever been a more fitting item to symbolize how he felt. Though they’d been in Bridgeport for almost two months, he and Sam weren’t any closer to feeling like they were a welcome addition to the sleepy town than the first day they’d driven up in his truck.

  Clipping the badge to the collar of his shirt, he nodded his thanks and walked to the door she’d indicated.

  He noticed his seventeen-year-old brother right away when he entered the cool, carpeted office. Sam was sitting on one of the brown-and-orange plastic chairs that lined one of the walls. Both of his elbows were resting on his knees and one of his hands was holding an ice pack on his eye.

  When Sam spied him, he sat up abruptly. The ice pack fell away, revealing a good-sized knot on his cheek and the beginnings of a black eye. His expression flitted from disdain to relief to apprehension in seconds.

  He scrambled to his feet. “Sorry you had to take off work.” His West Virginia accent was out in full force. The kid was nervous.

  This was why Kurt had decided to pull Sam out of Spartan. The kid needed a future. He also needed something more than what he’d been getting at home lately, which was a front-row view of their father’s descent into grief and bitterness.

  Sam was a good kid. Better than he’d ever been. Actually, Sam was everything that Kurt had never been. Friendly, clean-cut. Smart. Really smart. But more than any of that, he’d had their mother’s goodness. It shined through his heart and always had.

  Kurt shrugged off Sam’s apology. “You all right?” he asked. Seeing the kid’s face bruised did not make him happy. An old, familiar tension rose in his chest as he wondered what had happened and who he was going to have to talk to in order to make sure Sam was taken care of.

  Sam shrugged. Staring at a spot right behind him, he mumbled, “I don’t know.”

  Kurt was just about to ask what that meant when another door opened. In walked a woman about five years younger than his own thirty-one years. She was wearing a black slim skirt, three-inch black heels, and a pink sweater. As his gaze traveled upward, he noticed that she had pearls in her ears, her dark brown hair was confined to a ponytail, and she had dark brown, kind-looking eyes.

  And a pair of perfectly formed lips that curved upward slightly when they turned to him. “Mr. Holland? I’m Emily Springer. Sam’s English teacher.” Glancing toward Sam, her voice warmed. “And his advisor.”

  “Hi. I’m Kurt.” When he heard Sam cough, he tried again. “I mean, it’s nice to meet you, Miss Springer. Call me Kurt.”

  “And I’m Emily.”

  He held out his hand to shake hers, realized that he hadn’t gotten all the dirt out of his nails, and considered pulling it back. Instead, he clasped her hand gently, not wanting to inadvertently hurt her. “Sorry about my hands. I, uh, well, I’ve been working in the mud all day.”

  “Nothing to apologize for,” she replied as a door he hadn’t noticed in the back of the room opened and a slim man in a polo, khakis, and shiny loafers stepped out. A couple with a boy about Sam’s age stepped out of the office behind him. The couple looked at Sam then him warily. The boy’s face was flushed. He was also sporting a good-sized bruise on his face and his nose looked swollen, like it had been bleeding recentl
y.

  To Kurt’s surprise, the kid stopped in front of Sam. “Sorry about earlier.”

  “Yeah,” Sam mumbled as the other kid’s parents shuffled him out.

  When the door closed again, the principal strode forward. “Hi. I’m Terry Hendrix. I’m the principal of Bridgeport High.”

  “Kurt Holland, Sam’s brother.”

  “I believe you’re his guardian as well?”

  “Yeah. Our father is back in West Virginia. I’m legally in charge of Sam.”

  “Good to know. Let’s go talk in the conference room, shall we?”

  Kurt raised an eyebrow in Sam’s direction as they followed the principal and Emily, the pretty teacher who shouldn’t have such good legs.

  After asking them all to take a seat, Mr. Hendrix folded his hands on the top of the conference table. “So. We had a fight today. I don’t know what Sam has told you so far?”

  “He hasn’t told me anything. I just got here.”

  “Ah. Well, then, Emily, will you please fill Sam’s brother in?”

  Kurt didn’t care for that. Sam was too old to be forced to sit and listen to some teacher’s play-by-play when he could speak for himself. Kurt considered mentioning that but decided it probably wouldn’t help Sam’s predicament. Therefore, he held his tongue, but he didn’t attempt to hide his irritation.

  Obviously sensing his mood, Emily cleared her throat. “Sam, I’m going to let you share your thoughts too. But from what I understand, there was an issue in the hall by the lockers. Garrett freely admitted that he threw the first punch. Sam threw the second, then the girl they were fighting about stepped into the fray and managed to calm things down.”

  Of all the situations that could have brought on this fight, it hadn’t occurred to Kurt that a female would have been the reason. “You fought over a girl, Sam? Don’t you think you have a bit much at stake to be getting all hot and bothered?”

  Heat flew up Sam’s face. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “What was it like, then?”

  Sam glanced around the table. Stared at the principal, at his teacher, at him. Then finally spoke. “Garrett Condon was talking trash about Kayla.” After that statement, he pressed his lips together like that was the end of the story.

  It wasn’t. Not by a long shot. “You better start talking, Sam. Maybe even tell me who this Kayla is.”

  “She’s Kayla Everett. She’s a cheerleader.”

  “Uh huh?” He didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm in his voice. He might be over thirty now but he still remembered crushing on a certain high school cheerleader back in Spartan. But even though he remembered what a crush like that feels like, it didn’t excuse his brother fighting over her.

  Sam scowled. “She’s a nice girl, Kurt. A good girl.”

  “And?”

  “And someone took a picture in the locker room of her in her bra. Somehow Garrett got it on his phone and he forwarded it to everyone else. Now everyone’s seen it. She’s been really upset.”

  Kurt felt bad for the girl. He really did. But even he knew kids were sharing far worse things than that. Why was Sam acting like the girl’s defender? “I don’t understand how Kayla’s bra pics got you and Garrett so spun up.”

  When Sam’s expression turned mutinous, Emily spoke. “Maybe I should step in here. From what I have understood, Sam and Kayla have been talking quite a bit. And seeing each other some, too. When Sam heard Garrett talking about her with other boys, he um, let Garrett know he wasn’t happy about that. Garrett didn’t take kindly to being told what to do. This discussion escalated, and Garrett hit Sam.”

  Sam folded his arms over his chest. “Yeah, he hit me. And I wasn’t just gonna sit there and take it, so I hit him back.” Before anyone else at the table could comment, he rushed on. “And Kurt, don’t start telling me that you wouldn’t have done the same thing. Because you would have.”

  Heck, yeah, he would have hit Garrett back. Their father didn’t raise his boys to stand still and get beat on by idiots. If he wasn’t so stunned about the reason for the fight and the girl, Kurt knew he would have expressed himself a whole lot better.

  Now, all he wanted to do was get Sam out of there. He turned to the principal. “Is Sam in trouble or not?”

  “While I don’t exactly disagree with Sam’s viewpoint, we have zero tolerance for violence in the school. Because of that, he is going to be suspended for one day.”

  Suspended for a day. Because of a skirmish in the hall over a girl. Glancing at his brother, Kurt realized that Sam had shut down. He didn’t expect Kurt to fight for him. All he was doing was waiting to get out of there. Though Kurt knew that was all Sam had known from their father, it still hurt. Dad had been distant on his best days, uninterested on most.

  Which was one of the reasons he was sitting in this room with Sam instead of their dad.

  Leaning forward in his chair, Kurt said, “This punishment seems a bit much, don’t you think? Nobody was seriously hurt or anything. And what about whoever took the photos in the first place? I’m guessing it was some creepy girl in the locker room. Have y’all discovered who that was?”

  The principal folded his hands together on the table. “We’re still sorting that out.”

  “I hope you finish sorting it real soon, seeing as she’s taking secret photos and all.”

  “Kurt, stop,” Sam hissed under his breath.

  Thinking about his brother, the new kid in school, getting hit while standing up for a girl, then getting suspended for it, made him fume. So he talked right on through. Looking directly at Mr. Hendrix, he said, “At his old school, what just happened wouldn’t have drawn much more than a day’s worth of gossip.”

  The principal pursed his lips. “I don’t know what things were like back in West Virginia, but we handle things differently here. It’s for everyone’s safety.”

  “Is it? ’Cause right now it seems like the only people who are getting hurt are the ones who are trying to do the right thing.”

  Miss Springer turned to face him more directly. “Kurt, you see, if we let this go, it could set a bad precedent. We can’t let that happen.”

  Set a bad precedent. Educational talk for they weren’t going to budge. Kurt was just about to sign whatever he had to, take Sam, and get them out of the school. A day’s suspension wasn’t the end of the world. He’d get the whole story on Kayla when they didn’t have an audience.

  Plus, Sam looked like he was about to start edging toward the door with or without him. He should put the kid out of his misery.

  But then he remembered his dream for the kid. College.

  A college education could practically guarantee that Sam would never see the inside of a coal mine. Or do half the things Kurt had had to do to get his landscaping business off the ground. Those things meant he was going to have to swallow his pride and do whatever he had to do to ensure his brother’s future. He had to.

  “Sam is real smart,” he blurted.

  Sam squirmed. “Jeez, Kurt …”

  Emily smiled at Sam. “Yes, he is. His test scores were impressive. So far, he’s been doing very well in my class, too. He’s in my honors class. Other teachers have shared just as good reports about him.”

  Though he wasn’t Sam’s father, he felt a burst of paternal pride swell inside him. “So, he’s college bound.”

  “Of course he is.” Emily lifted a hand like she was about to squeeze Sam’s arm or pat him on the back or something. Then, as if she realized what she’d been about to do, she clasped her hands back together.

  Her actions were real sweet. Caring. When was the last time that boy had been on the receiving end of a woman’s comforting touch?

  Far too long.

  He turned back to Mr. Hendrix. “I’m not real sure how all this works. Is this suspension going to present a problem with college applications?”


  The principal looked taken aback. “That would be up to the admissions offices …”

  “Come on, you have to know. I mean, Sam can’t be the first kid who let his temper get the best of him.”

  “Kurt, stop,” Sam moaned.

  “The suspension shouldn’t come into play for all of them,” Emily interjected.

  Though Sam was sending him death glares, Kurt asked, “What does that mean?”

  Emily looked uncomfortable. “Well, um, Sam will receive automatic zeros for any assignments he misses during his suspension. And some universities do ask if applicants have ever been suspended. But there’s also places for the applicant to explain.” After a pause, she continued. “And then, well, there are scholarship applications. Some of those might be affected.”

  Kurt couldn’t imagine his brother writing paragraphs about how he’d been attempting to protect Kayla’s honor. “So, what you’re sayin’ is that being suspended could cause Sam some harm. It could interfere with getting into college, or even paying for it.”

  “Technically?” Emily’s doe eyes filled with remorse. “Yes, I’m afraid it could.”

  Kurt looked around the table. “That’s gonna be a problem, then.”

  Principal Hendrix stiffened.

  “It’s okay, Kurt,” Sam said quickly.

  “No, I don’t think it is.” Feeling for the first time in his life like he was on the right side, he added a new thread of determination in his voice. “After all, I wouldn’t be doing a very good job as a guardian if I didn’t point out that nothing can interfere with Sam getting into college.”

  Mr. Hendrix frowned. “I can see that you are concerned. However, Garrett received the same punishment. I can’t very well give one boy one punishment while Sam gets a different consequence.”

  Finally, Kurt felt like he was on even ground. He might not know much about college and scholarship applications, but he knew plenty about fighting and how life was hardly ever fair.

  “Sure you can,” he said easily. “Garrett threw the first punch. That matters, I know it does. Plus, he was the one sharing pictures and talking trash about Kayla, correct? That seems a lot more worrisome to me. Don’t you think so?”