Page 21 of Betting on her Best Friend
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“Thank God. I’m starving.”
Dylan leaned back so their waitress, who looked like Katy Perry’s stunt double, could set their drinks and appetizer on the table. He and Alyssa had been walking the Strip and taking in the eclectic array of locals dressed as showgirls, fictional characters, and even cartoon characters they encountered along the way. But as soon as they passed the Sugar Factory in front of the Paris hotel, Dylan’s sweet tooth and grumbling stomach dragged Alyssa onto the patio for some lunch.
He squeezed the orange garnish into his tall glass of Blue Moon beer, then dropped it in and licked the sweet juice from his fingers. Looking up, he swore he’d caught Alyssa staring at him before she’d averted her eyes. Despite her sex-kitten persona in the bedroom, he noticed she reverted to straitlaced Aly as soon as they were out of it. He found it intriguing on a certain level. Was it because she wanted to keep their bedroom life separate from everyday life? If so, he could respect that. He could even understand it. But he didn’t like it. If he got the urge to kiss her senseless out in public, he wanted free rein to do so.
Which brought him to the other thing. The more she pretended nothing had changed, the more he wanted to prove to her they had. Her actions were like a red flag to his bull. A challenge he readily accepted.
She scoffed at him from across the small table. “You’re always starving. I swear your legs are hollow.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a healthy appetite.” He turned to their waitress as she tucked the tray under her arm. “Am I right, Cherry?”
Dylan only meant to gain a friendly ally for his defense, but the girl raked her gaze over him like he had the words Please objectify me tattooed on his forehead. Flashing her dimples and giving him a suggestive wink with fake eyelashes, she replied, “Not if that body is the result.”
Coming from Colorado in January to Vegas’s winter temps in the fifties and sixties, he’d chosen jeans and a blue, short-sleeve polo he hadn’t even bothered to tuck in. Not exactly something he’d expect to be ogled in. Now he needed to do damage control.
“There, you see? I’ll start worrying when I look down and can’t see my feet. Besides,” he said, pointing a finger at Alyssa, “you’re the one who cooks gourmet dinners for me every night, so that makes you my enabler, sweetheart.”
Whether it was the emphasized pet name or the insinuation that he and Alyssa lived together, Cherry dropped the flirtatious act as Dylan had hoped and resorted to proper server behavior, albeit with a look of disappointment. “I’ll be back with your meals as soon as they’re ready.”
Alyssa thanked her in way of dismissal, then watched as Cherry sashayed her way through the patio tables back to the main dining area. The darts Alyssa shot at their waitress’s back made a tiny grain of hope swell in his chest. Alyssa might actually be jealous of another woman’s attention.
If that was the case, then maybe she was starting to feel just as possessive of him as he was of her. Relief flowed through him. He wasn’t the only one experiencing strong emotions. A fact that would be to his benefit when he proposed that this last much longer than a single weekend.
“I still can’t believe you beat that Texan,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. “The way he talked, you’d think he invented Texas Hold’em, and yet you took him for everything he had in under an hour.”
“Correction: everything he had at the table.” She dragged a chip through the warm spinach-and-artichoke dip while trying to hold back her smile. “As a real estate mogul, I’m sure the fifteen-hundred-dollar loss didn’t put much of a dent in his coffers.”
“Still, the look on his face when you beat him was priceless. I’ve never seen anyone so tan go so completely white before.”
At last, the smile broke free. “He did look rather peckish when I pulled the stacks of chips to me, didn’t he?”
She popped the corn chip into her mouth and let out an appreciative moan for her favorite appetizer. It was perfectly innocent. It shouldn’t remind him of the sounds he’d brought out in her less than six hours before with his hands, his mouth, and his cock in the bathtub. Sounds that had made him totally crazy and hard as hell. Sounds that were starting to make his jeans damn uncomfortable as he sat in public to enjoy a meal with her but wanted nothing more than to make her his meal, public or not.
Giving himself a mental shake, he raised his beer and took several long draws. With any luck, the alcohol would take the edge off until he could get her back to their room. Then all bets would be off.
Speaking of bets…Dylan chuckled, remembering how they spent their morning. After breakfast at the hotel’s buffet, they’d walked around the casino for a while. When they found a room running Texas Hold’em games that started on the hour, he suggested they play. She balked at first, but he eventually convinced her. One-hundred-dollar ante each and they’d only play until they were out. No pressure, just fun.
Except a few hands in, Dylan realized that Alyssa was a fucking card shark. He’d never seen a woman with a poker face like hers. The way she acted, she could have been at a high-class dinner party or interview with the president. Nothing but polite civility, utterly lacking any hints of emotion. No one at the table—including him—could read her.
She, on the other hand, read everyone else like their skulls were transparent, allowing her to know their every thought and every move. She was so dead-on; it was almost creepy.
“So when’d you become such a ruthless opponent in poker anyway?” he asked. “Last I checked, you’d never played cards. You always just sat next to me and watched or did your own thing whenever I played at parties.”
“I don’t. That was my first time playing. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to play.”
“Yet another advantage of having a brilliant mind?”
She shrugged, took a sip of her iced tea, then kept her focus on the napkin she was tearing into strips. “Or having a professional gambler as a father.”
“What?” The chip in his fingers froze halfway to his mouth. “I thought your dad was a traveling salesman.”
“Admitting to people your dad makes his money as a criminal gambler isn’t the sort of thing you tell people.” She peered up at him, her eyes imploring him to understand. “Not even your best friend.”
Damn. Alyssa had always been sensitive about the topic of her parents and in her position, he probably would have kept everyone on a need-to-know basis, too. But it stung a little to realize she hadn’t viewed him as separate from “everyone.”
He dropped the chip onto the small plate, his appetite all but forgotten. “So, all those times he was gone for months?”
“Traveling with his partner to different casinos or underground tournaments. Sometimes hiding from people he owed money to until he could win enough to pay them off. Then he’d show up at our door whenever his luck ran out, and he’d stay just long enough to make promises he’d never keep and convince my mom to give him more money from her trust fund my grandma left her.” She swirled her straw around in her iced tea and stared at the ice cubes as they clinked against the glass.
“Whenever he came home, Mom and me almost fooled ourselves into believing we were a normal family. My parents were happy to see each other; my dad always brought Mom and I presents. He spent time with me, teaching me how to read people or count cards and stack the deck. We’d go to dinner, and I’d watch them laugh and smile and I’d think…maybe this time it’ll last. Maybe this time things will be different.”
But it never was. She didn’t say the words aloud, but they hovered over her like a dark cloud threatening to drench her in its bad memories.
“Hey,” he said, reaching across and taking her hand in his steady grip. “Let’s not take any trips down memory lane today, okay? Let’s stay focused on the here and now.” She took a deep breath and nodded with a wan smile. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
