Playing The Odds

Nora Roberts

Contents

Chapter One. 4

Chapter Two. 9

Chapter Three. 15

Chapter Four 20

Chapter Five. 25

Chapter Six. 30

Chapter Seven. 35

Chapter Eight 40

Chapter Nine. 45

Chapter Ten. 50

Chapter Eleven. 54

Chapter Twelve. 60

Chapter One

There was always a great deal of confusion, more noise, and a touch of panic to flavour the arrival of embarking passengers. Some were already a bit travel weary from their flight into Miami, others were running on the adrenaline of anticipation. The huge white ocean liner, the Celebration, waited in port—their ticket to fun, relaxation, romance. When they crossed the gangway, they would no longer be accountants, assistant managers, or teachers, but pampered passengers assured of being fed, spoiled, and entertained for the next ten days. The brochures guaranteed it

From the rail of the Observation deck, Serena watched the flow of humanity. At that distance she could enjoy the colour and noise, which never lost its appeal for her, without being caught in the inevitable tangle of fifteen hundred people trying to get to the same place at the same time. The cooks, the bartenders, the cabin stewards, had already begun the orgy of work that would continue, virtually uninterrupted, for the next ten days. But she had time. Serena relished it

These were her idle moments—before the ship pulled out of port. She could remember her first experience with a cruise liner. She'd been eight, the youngest of the three children of financial wizard Daniel MacGregor and Dr. Anna Whitefield MacGregor. There had been first-class cabins, where the steward had served her hot buns and juice in bed. Serena had enjoyed it the same way she enjoyed her tiny cabin in the crew's quarters now. They were both an adventure.

Serena remembered, too, the day she had told her parents of her plans to apply for a job with the Celebration. Her father had huffed and puffed about her throwing away her education. The more he had huffed, the more pronounced his soft Scottish burr had become. A woman who had graduated from Smith at the tender age of twenty, who had then gone on to earn degrees in English, history, and sociology didn't swab decks. And even as Serena had assured him that wasn't her intention, her mother had laughed, telling Daniel to let the child be. Because at six foot three and two hundred and twenty pounds, Daniel MacGregor was helpless against what he called his females, he did just that.