Page 2 of One Night Gamble
“You’re a gambler,” she said. Gran said not everyone who placed a bet was like her dad, but she wasn’t going to take the chance.
“Wow. I’ve never heard so much loathing in one word before,” he said.
“Sorry…baggage.”
He was driving a Veyron and was no doubt flush most of the time. Not like her father, who hadn’t ever really had money unless he’d been to visit one of his loan sharks.
“I’m a responsible—”
“Let me stop you there,” she said. “I know that gambling only hurts those with no self-control.” She turned to look inside her car. “I think I’m good to go now. It’s been interesting meeting you.”
“You too, brown eyes,” he said before he drove away. She watched him leave for another minute before she got in her own car and drove away.
Her pre-interview session was due to start in fifteen minutes, so she had to hurry to the Jokers Wild Casino. She ran inside and checked in before asking for the ladies’ room. She changed her hose and then touched up her lipstick.
She needed this job.
Just like her dad had needed the dice to hit seven or eleven every time he threw them. Desperation. She had to shake it off.
She looked at herself in the mirror, meeting her own brown gaze.
“You got this.”
Jokers Wild was the key to her finally getting out of Vegas. And that was something she’d wanted for a long, long time.
…
Casey Waltham was a poker playing phenomenon and had won his first million days after his eighteenth birthday. In the last ten years, he’d made more money than even he knew what to do with. He had the best toys that money could buy, and had learned that real friends hung around when life got shitty. In his case, those friends were his blood brothers—Darien Mitchell and Nicholas Pine.
They’d purchased one of the older casinos on the strip that had been in desperate need of a revamp. They’d torn it down and then invested in the areas where they all excelled. Casey was in charge of the day-to-day operations and running of the casino. Currently, he was in the process of introducing a new high-stakes poker room, with a game that would be played at the end of the month. But for it to be as successful as he knew it could be, he needed to hire a new social media/community manager.
Darien had overseen the design and construction of the high-stakes stunt stadium. It was state of the art and would be used for Darien’s show during the winter months. He wasn’t ready to give up touring during the summer yet. So, instead, during the hotter months, Darien had booked a few monster truck shows and other motor-based sporting events.
Nicholas’s arena was taking slightly longer because of the intricacies of illusion and magic—stuff that Casey didn’t understand but knew was important to ensure that Nicholas could complete his showstopping illusions every night. Once it was finished in about six months, the Jokers Wild would be officially complete and open for business.
So far, they were getting good press but the publicity manager wanted someone who understood social media in a way that he didn’t. And since none of them knew how to delegate, they had the human resources department vetting applicants before they conducted the final interviews.
“Did you look at the list? I still don’t think I’m going to be able to add anything to the interviews,” Darien said as Casey walked into the executive office suite filled with floor to ceiling glass windows that offered an unobstructed view of the strip.
Darien wore his blond hair longish in a way that Casey’s new assistant said made him look like a rogue and had a tattoo sleeve on one arm that was part memorial to his deceased father and part tribute to the legend that Dare had become. Darien had followed in his father’s footsteps and was a badass motorcycle stuntman who took his show all over the world.
“We’ve already discussed this. Either we are all in or we hire a management company,” Nicholas said from the corner. Tall, with close cropped black hair, Nick tended to dress all in black because he said it made his eyes seem more mercurial since they were an icy gray color. Nick was a master illusionist who was world-renowned for both his street magic and his arena shows. Casey figured that appearing mercurial only added to his mystique.
“Calm down, Houdini, I’m not saying that,” Dare said. “You know I’m not really good with people.”
“What’s that got to do with the interviews?” Nick asked.
Dare rubbed the back of his neck. “Nothing. I just thought I’d throw it out there and see if you two would give me a pass.”
“Nice try. But we’re not going to let you just do the fun stuff,” Casey said. “The files are over here. I think we should review them and have some questions ready for each of the candidates tomorrow.”
They all settled around the large table in his office. It was a poker table, but for now, it was serving as a conference table until he decided what his office should look like. Casey tried to concentrate on the candidates, but he kept remembering the girl from the grocery store—the one buying condoms.
Why he was interested, he didn’t know. She’d pretty much made it clear she didn’t like gamblers, and he’d made his fortune playing poker. Vegas was like that—a mixed bag of those who believed in luck, and those who had been dragged along with them. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“We need to talk before the hiring manager comes in,” Casey said, pulling his thoughts back to the business at hand. It was time to forget about her smile and those long legs that had kept him in a state of fascination as she’d walked away from him.
“We need a list of things we want to communicate about each of our lines of business,” Casey said.
