Page 23 of One Night Gamble
It was getting dangerous.
She had goals.
Sure, they were short-term, but she’d never been able to really plan for the future. Every time she had, her agenda had blown up her in face. Now she was one step away from freedom and another charmer had walked into her life. And instead of running away, she was thinking about him.
Dreaming of him.
Telling herself he was different.
Was she lying to herself? Was she willing to believe anything if it meant she could bask in his charismatic presence for a bit longer? Was she doomed to always fall for a gambler?
Still, she couldn’t leave this job. It was her only way to make her mark quickly so she could take care of that last mortgage payment on Gran’s house and then move on to something bigger.
It didn’t involve sleeping with her boss.
Or dinner.
The address he’d sent her was in Henderson. Was it his house? She thought he lived at the casino. Then again, he probably had more than one property. After all, he was incredibly wealthy.
She swallowed hard.
He was a gambler.
Please remember that, she thought. She wanted to think she was smarter than this, that she’d learned from the way her father had swept in and out of her life—sometimes on a high but more often on a low—and left nothing but destruction in his wake. So she had to be smart enough to have dinner with him and not sleep with him.
Only she wasn’t sure if she was.
She’d never met a guy like him. He was different, and yet somehow familiar. She knew gamblers. She had a complicated history with Vegas, but she’d been lost from the moment she’d looked up from the box of condoms in the store and seen him smiling at her. She pulled into the employee parking lot for the Jokers Wild Casino.
Was she going to go out with him again?
She texted him.
Talia: I prefer to be asked, not ordered.
She saw those dancing dots that meant he was writing something back and waited.
Casey: Apologies, love. Would you do me the privilege of joining me for dinner tonight?
She smiled in spite of herself.
Hell.
This was the problem. She liked him. If it was just hot sex, then she could push him off because sex didn’t last. She’d had enough relationships that had started out red hot—well okay just one—but it hadn’t lasted. When reality had intruded and she’d had to rush to Gran’s side to take her in for her dialysis, that guy had disappeared.
But something about Casey felt different.
Not different enough that she’d let him meet Gran, though. No. She wasn’t going to let any more charming rogues near that sweet lady.
Talia: What time?
Casey: Will six thirty work for you?
Talia: See you then.
She tossed her phone on the seat next to her, then put her head on the steering wheel. What was she doing?
She wasn’t sure.
