I glared at him and he raised his brow. “What?”
I unzipped my suitcase and shook my head. Different strategies and the lack of time crowded my head. “This isn’t a vacation. You shouldn’t be here, Travis.”
In the next moment he was behind me, crossing his arms around my middle. “I go where you go.”
I leaned my head against his chest and sighed. “I have to get on the floor. You can stay here or check out the strip. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“I’m going with you.”
“I don’t want you there, Trav.” A hurt expression weighted his face and I touched his arm. “If I’m going to win fourteen-thousand dollars in one weekend, I have to concentrate. I don’t like who I’m going to be while I’m at those tables, and I don’t want you see it, okay?”
He brushed my hair from my eyes and kissed my cheek. “Okay, Pidge.”
Travis waved to America as he left the room, and she approached me in the same dress she wore to the date party. I changed into a short gold number and slipped on a pair of heels, grimacing at the mirror. America pulled back my hair and then handed me a black tube.
“You need about five more coats of mascara, and they’re going to toss your I.D. on-sight if you don’t slather on some more blush. Have you forgotten how this game is played?”
I snatched the mascara from her hand and spent another ten minutes on my makeup. Once I finished, my eyes began to gloss over. “Dammit, Abby, don’t cry,” I said, looking up and dabbing under my eyes with a tissue.
“You don’t have to do this, Abby. You don’t owe him
“He owes Benny money, Mare. If I don’t, they’ll kill him.”
Her expression was one of pity. I had seen her look at me that way many times before, but this time she was desperate. She’d seen him ruin my life more times than either of us could count. “What about the next time? And the next time? You
“He agreed to stay away. Mick Abernathy is a lot of things, but he’s no welcher.”
We walked down the hall and stepped into an empty elevator. “You have everything you need?” I asked, keeping the cameras in mind.
America clicked her fake driver’s license with her nails and smiled. “The name’s Candy. Candy Crawford,” she said in her flawless southern accent.
I held out my hand. “Jessica James. Nice to meet you, Candy.”
We both slipped on our sunglasses and stood stone-faced as the elevator opened, revealing the neon lights and bustling of the casino floor. People moved in all directions from all walks of life. Vegas was heavenly hell, the one place you could find dancers in ostentatious feathers and stage makeup, prostitutes with insufficient yet acceptable attire, businessmen in luxurious suits, and wholesome families in the same building. We strutted down an aisle lined with red ropes, and handed a man in a red jacket our I.D.’s. He eyed me for a moment and I pulled down my glasses.
“Anytime today would be great,” I said, bored.
He returned our I.D.’s and stood aside, letting us pass. We passed aisle after aisle of slot machines, the black jack tables, and then stopped at the roulette wheel. I scanned the room, watching the various poker tables, settling on the one with older gentlemen in the seats.
“That one,” I said, nodding across the way.
“Start off aggressive, Abby. They won’t know what hit ‘em.”
“No. They’re old Vegas. I have to play it smart this time.”
I walked over to the table, using my most charming smile. Locals could smell a hustler from a mile away, but I had two things in my favor that covered the scent of any con: Youth…and tits.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Mind if I join you?”
They didn’t look up. “Sure sweet cheeks. Grab a seat and look pretty. Just don’t talk.”
“I want in,” I said, handing America my sunglasses. “There’s not enough action at the black jack tables.”
One of the men chewed on his cigar. “This is a poker table, Princess. Five card draw. Try your luck on the slot machines.”
I sat in the only empty seat, making a show of crossing my legs. “I’ve always wanted to play poker in Vegas. And I have all these chips…,” I said, setting my rack of chips on the table, “and I’m really good online.”
All five men looked at my chips and then at me. “There’s a minimum ante, Sugar,” the Dealer said.
“How much?”
“Five hundred, Peach. Listen…I don’t want to make you cry. Do yourself a favor and pick out a shiny slot machine.”
I pushed forward my chips, shrugging my shoulders in the way a reckless and overly- confident girl might before realizing she’d just lost her college fund. The men looked at each other. The Dealer shrugged and tossed in his own.
“Jimmy,” he said, offering his hand. When I took it, he pointed at the other men. “Mel, Pauly, Joe and that’s Winks.” I looked over to the skinny man chewing on a toothpick, and as-predicted, he winked at me.
I nodded and waited with fake anticipation as Jimmy dealt the first hand. I purposely lost the first two, but by the fourth hand, I was up. It didn’t take as long for the Vegas veterans to figure me out as it did Thomas.
“You said you played online?” Pauly asked.
“And with my dad.”
“You from here?” Jimmy asked.
“Wichita,” I smiled.
“She’s no online player, I’ll tell you that,” Mel grumbled.
An hour later, I had taken twenty-seven hundred dollars from my opponents, and they were beginning to sweat.
“Fold,” Jimmy said, throwing down his cards with a frown.
“If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would have never believed,” I heard behind me.
America and I turned at the same time, and my lips stretched across my face in a wide smile. “Jesse,” I shook my head. “What are you doing here?”
“This is
I rolled my eyes and turned to my suspicious new friends. “You know I hate that, Jess.”
“Excuse us,” Jesse said, pulling me by the arm to my feet. America eyed me warily as I was ushered a few feet away.
Jesse’s father ran the casino, and it was more than just a surprise that he had joined the family business. We used to chase each other down the halls of the hotel upstairs, and I always beat him when we raced elevators. He had grown up since I’d seen him last. I remembered him as a gangly pre-pubescent teenager; the man before me was a sharply-dressed pit boss, not at all gangly and certainly all-man. He still had the silky brown skin and green eyes I remembered, but the rest of him was a pleasant surprise.
His emerald irises sparkled in the bright lights. “This is surreal. I thought it was you when I walked by, but I couldn’t convince myself that you would come back here. When I saw this Tinkerbell cleaning up at the vet’s table, I knew it was you.”
“It’s me,” I smiled.
“You look…different.”
“So do you. How’s your dad?”
“Retired,” he smiled. “How long are you here?”
“Just until Sunday. I have to get back to school.”
“Hey, Jess,” America said, taking my arm.
“America,” he chuckled. “I should have known. You are each other’s shadow.”
“If her parents ever knew that I brought her here, all that would have come to an end a long time ago.”
“It’s good to see you, Abby. Why don’t you let me buy you dinner?” he asked, scanning my dress.
“I’d love to catch up, but I’m not here for fun, Jess.”
