Card Sharks (16 page)

But somehow a bit of chemistry kicked in, at least on Marianne's side, and she didn't struggle for her release. The fake kiss turned into a real kiss, soft and serious at first, and then
more intense as she responded and he responded to her response and . . .

For a first kiss, it was a great kiss.

Peter righted her on her feet again and let go, stepping back.

“Sorry,” he said, a grin plastered on his face, utterly charming and handsomely rumpled in the best possible way. “I'm a guy,” he said by way of explanation.

“Is that a camera in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” Marianne joked, for some reason not at all flustered and not entirely sure what she thought about the whole thing.

He pulled his camera out of his pocket and snapped a close-up of Marianne's face, then reached over and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You know what? You know who you are, Marianne. And I really, really like that.” Then he turned away, hit the go button, and the elevator started up again.

What?
Marianne leaned back against the cool elevator wall, then looked back up at the security camera and winked. She folded her arms across her chest and studied Peter's face. “You kiss a good kiss, my dear fellow, but I don't know if you know what you're talking about.”

He slapped his chest as if mortally wounded. “You think this is just gamesmanship?”

She rolled her eyes, but they shared a look, and she wasn't so sure he was gaming her. The way Peter kissed, you could almost start to believe things, romantic-sounding things, when they came out of his mouth. But he'd hit a sore spot. What exactly did he think he'd figured out about her? Marianne really hated it when people claimed to have some sort of insight that she didn't even have herself.

I only think I know who I am . . . and how can you know what I know?
That was the thing about relationships. It was all about waiting for the truth to come out. It was all “And then after I got to know her . . . and, like, two weeks later she
suddenly started . . .” The fact of the matter was that there was really no such thing as “suddenly,” “after,” or “later.”

Everything that was going to be wrong, everything that would be picked apart and overanalyzed by the women and shrugged off into a box labeled “just don't bother calling again” by the men had been there from the very beginning. If you paid enough attention, you'd begin to realize that there were no surprises.

At this point in life, reasonable adults would be idiots to assume that what they thought they saw in one another at the get-go was actually what they were going to get in the long run. The best strategy was probably to run away as fast as possible from anything that looked really good in the first moments. Of course, using that strategy she should be running away from Peter and not kissing him in elevators for the benefit of bored casino security people. The door opened, and Marianne flounced out with a sassy glance over her shoulder and her hair falling in her eyes. “You can take me for an elevator ride anytime, sunshine.”

He answered with a jaunty salute, and the elevator doors closed on him, framing those golden looks just perfectly until the last moment.

But when she knew he couldn't see her face anymore, Marianne let the smile fade away. Slipping the key card in the door, she was reminded just how exhausting the day had been, and all she wanted to do was get into bed and sleep.

The bottom line, she figured, was that it was all about how much one chose to reveal, and how carefully the other person watched. Peter was a journalist. He was trained to analyze detail. Did he see the real Marianne, or did he just see what he hoped was true?

She opened the door and nearly fell over. Donny was lying on the bed, completely alone, watching television.

“Hi.” He immediately raised the remote and turned off the show.

“Hi . . . I wasn't sure you'd actually be coming back tonight.”

“I could say the same about you.”

They stared at each other, clearly surprised, and then Donny chuckled softly, shaking his head.

Marianne smiled to herself as she closed the door behind her and kicked off her shoes.

Donny got up and walked over to the minibar, took out a bottled water, which he uncapped and handed to her, and then plumped up a second pillow next to the one he'd been leaning against and flopped back down. Marianne lay down next to him and took a swig of water.

Picking a small stack of chips off the nightstand, he started goofing around with them. “You know any chip tricks?”

Marianne shook her head.

He stuck a poker chip on his hand between his index finger and thumb and proceeded to flip it from knuckle to knuckle until it landed at his pinkie finger. “All the pros do it,” he said with a wink. “Here.” He took Marianne's free hand and stuck a chip on it.

Marianne tried and the chip immediately fell to the comforter.

Donny showed her again. “The knuckle roll. Boyd, Esfandiari, all the guys do it.”

Marianne tried again and the chip plopped right down on the comforter. She just laughed. “Show me something else.”

Donny dramatically pushed up his sleeves. “Maybe we'll start with just a simple flip.” He fiddled around with the chips some more, doing a couple more tricks. “Here, give me your hand.”

Marianne stuck her hand out again and tried the trick, failing miserably once more. Donny put a chip back in her palm, but it slipped out. He just held her hand, then, and Marianne took another swig of water, then stuck the bottle on the nightstand and leaned her head on Donny's shoulder.

B
ijoux pushed through to the exit and stepped out into the hotel lobby. She went straight to the casino floor and walked up to the changing booth, swapping the money Donny had lent her for chips.

A handful of chips and she was good to go. Bijoux headed to the craps tables and looked around at her options. The tables were crowded and noisy, a blur of excitement and waving limbs and fistfuls of money and clanking of chips, but the elevator banks were silent; the tournament crowds had dispersed, and everyone who was going somewhere was already there.

She wanted a table that was hot, one that had strangers high-fiving each other and cheering boisterously. There was nothing worse than being at a lackluster craps table with the other tables gloating and cheering around you. Granted, the purpose this week wasn't really to win money, though Bijoux would be delighted with the by-product. The purpose was to
meet
money. Of course, while the success of the player wasn't as important as the player himself, it was much better to date a good gambler than a bad one.

Bijoux walked the entire circumference of the craps scene. Her outfit showcased her well, and she noticed the looks of admiration. A little surprised by how unenthusiastic she was feeling about her goal, Bijoux decided to settle in a bit and just play and see where things went from there. She found an open spot at a fairly energetic table and lined up two rollers down from where the dice were.

She tentatively put her money on the pass line, but after making a point apiece, the two men crapped out. The dealer collected the dice with his stick, and as he snaked them toward her, the entire table started hooting and hollering.

“Lady roller! Now we're talking! Let's see some action . . . lady luck, give us something we can work with!”

Bijoux smiled nervously and took the dice. Her heart beat furiously, and the surge in adrenaline made them practically lurch right out of her hand. She tossed them down the felt, rolling a five and a two.

“Seven, seven . . . that's a seven! A win for the pass line!”

The stickman pushed the dice back toward her, and the table cheered and clapped even louder than before. Bijoux picked up the dice and threw them once more, making a point for the table. The cheers grew louder, the compliments bolder, and Bijoux felt something inside of her relax.

With an enormous smile on her face, Bijoux began flirting with a tuxedo-clad, silver-haired businessman like there was no tomorrow.

She smiled across the table at some of her other admirers even as she encouraged yet another suitor on her opposite side. He was telling her a joke about the time he shot an armadillo in Texas after mistaking it for something else. The story was apparently wildly funny, and Bijoux dutifully laughed as she placed another bet and the dice came around.

“Give us something good, sweetheart!”

Armadillo Tuxedo bellowed as cheers went up around the table. Bijoux threw the dice and put another point on the board. A six.

She doubled up behind the bet on the pass line and asked for a bet on the eight, to boot. Chips and hands went flying as everyone placed their bets and the stick swooped in to deliver Bijoux's dice right back to her.

“Come on, baby. You look good in that dress, but you'll look even better if you throw another six,” her silver-haired admirer whispered in her ear.

She flashed him a smile that took a bit of effort to pull off, then glanced around the table at the men who were watching her. They were really watching her. She shook the dice, and calmly uttered, “Six,” landing another six like a batter guaranteeing a home run by pointing to heaven. The table went wild as her consecutive sixes paid off, and once more the chips and money scattered across the felt.

Bijoux was rolling red-hot. She rolled for fifteen minutes, building points and paying them off. The table was packed, every slot filled, the felt covered in chips.

A college-age guy with spiked hair he'd obviously spent a couple hours on came around from the opposite side of the table. He put his hands on her shoulders, and gave her a joke shoulder rub as if she were a boxer about to go back into the ring.

God, it felt good to be the center of attention.

She could feel the hot flush in her cheeks. She was delivering what they all wanted: cold, hard cash. And everybody loved her for it.

She left the table only after sevening out when the vast quantities of champagne forced her to take a break. She headed to the restroom, making a conscious effort not to weave her way across the noisy casino floor.

Bijoux finished her business, then reapplied her lipstick
and attended to the makeup smudges accumulated over the course of the evening. On her way back she was nearly run over by a group coming out of the VIP rooms.

The men wore tuxedos; the women had on full evening wear, colorful dresses made out of silk and chiffon and ruffles like all the characters on
Dynasty
and
Dallas
once wore. And they dripped with diamonds. One of the women stumbled and planted her high heel squarely on the toe of Bijoux's shoe, knocking her against the wall as they laughed and pushed themselves through the crowd like they owned the casino itself. One woman's diamond pendant swayed through the air, and Bijoux stared at the gemstone as if it were some sort of hypnosis device, self-consciously sweeping her hand up to her own neck and brushing against nothing but bare skin as the woman passed.

Eyes sparking with threatening tears, she leaned against the wall and lifted her foot out of her shoe to have a look. Bijoux Sterling, born a VIP, was losing her grip on the acronym as well as on the wall.

She lost her balance and nearly fell on the walkway, into the path of what appeared to be a set of linebackers for some Midwestern football team, only to be snatched away from certain death by Peter Graham.

Bijoux let him help her up, searching her addled brain for some explanation for his presence down here in the casino with her when he was supposed to be rolling about on a bed in some vaguely European romance-hero manner (as compared to Donny's supposed impassioned-caveman approach).

Marianne was probably playing hard to get; hell, Marianne
was
hard to get. And good for her for it. Bijoux had to respect that her friend would rather get a good night's sleep to be fresh for the poker game the next morning than thrash about with
Peter, but she couldn't really claim that she would have made the same choice.

“You have a knack for finding trouble,” Peter said, not unkindly.

“I wasn't in need of a rescue,” she said, knowing it was really a lie. “I'm heading back to the tables.”

“You're not ready to go back upstairs?” he asked, looking as though he thought she should be going upstairs.

“No. I'm rolling hot! Come with me.”

He laughed. “Sure.”

Bijoux took his arm, commandeering him toward the tables. With Peter holding her steady, she felt the most intense sense of relief rush through her. Of course, she told herself that she would have been relieved to see anyone. That she would have felt more comfortable if Marianne had come down and gambled with her. But once Marianne started wrapping boys around her little finger, Bijoux probably would have changed her mind about that. But it had been strange to be down in the action, drunk off her gourd, with no one to take care of her. There was always someone taking care of her. There was always someone to call and make things right. Marianne and Donny were at the top of the list, but now Peter was on the list, too.

Bijoux fixated on Peter's big, strong hands as he guided her in a mostly straight line back to the table, and she felt herself melt a little bit in the kindness of his care.

Oh, dear.

She was always developing crushes on the wrong people. It came with the territory. When the characteristics of a desirable mate limited your candidate list to a fraction of a percent at any given time, in any given place, having crushes on inappropriate people happened fairly often. You simply had to accept it for what it was and then move on to the next potential millionaire.

Bijoux knew what she needed to do. She simply made a mental note to refer to him as “Marianne's Peter” so that she never forgot what was what and who was whose.

Back at the table, Bijoux took over her original spot where the dealers had been watching out for her chips, leaving Peter to find an empty slot on the other side.

Someone at the table had purchased more champagne by way of thanks for her successful rolling and it was clear that the entire table was pleased to have her back just in time to start rolling again.

Bijoux downed half a glass of champagne in the time it took for the player next to her to crap out. And then she put down her bet, reached for the dice, and started rolling again, glancing up at Peter now and then to see if he was still watching.

Oh, hell . . . I want that boy.
“Marianne's Peter,” she murmured to herself, flushed from the champagne, the roar of the crowd around her. She didn't even look at the table this time, just stared right at Peter and swung her arm out and started rolling straight through for about fifteen minutes.

She finally crapped out with a seven slammed into the opposite end of the table. But she didn't care. She was too tired and drunk to stand much longer and she was sure she'd made enough to pay Peter back for Caesar's and Donny back for the loan. Judging by the massive quantity of chips in the little trough in front of her, she'd probably done a fair bit better than that, even.

In fact, nobody who'd been around for the original run seemed to care that Bijoux was clearly done for the evening. As she had her chips colored up, the men around the table started tossing more chips over to her as thanks.

Peter's face went blurry. She put her hand to her head, laughing and laughing as they added hundreds of dollars to her winnings.

When Peter came back into focus, he just looked worried.
He came around the table as Bijoux stuffed chips into her purse, spilling them onto the floor in an orgy of money and male attention.

He helped her pick up her stray chips, said something to the onlookers, and helped her toward the elevator banks. “You've been like that all evening?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Bijoux said, drawing the sound out in a drunken slur. “You should've come down earlier.”

“Apparently.”

“I've never felt so decadent,” she said, surprised at the slight slur in her speech. “A bit drunk.”

“Yeah. I'll get you back to your room. Don't worry.”

The elevator door closed behind them, leaving them alone. Peter looked up at the security camera, then looked away, his brow furrowing in a funny way.

Bijoux turned and grabbed him by the collar. He looked . . . like a guy who wasn't going to take advantage of the situation. How tiresome. He seemed to interpret her come-on as if she'd reached out to steady herself from falling.

When the elevator doors opened on their floor, he helped her down the hall to her room.

At the door she fumbled with her card key, dropped it, and then let Peter do it for her.

“You going to be okay now?” Peter asked, one hand still attentively at her elbow.

Bijoux nodded.
Kiss me, you idiot. Just kiss me.

He gave her shoulder a brotherly squeeze.

“Marianne's Peter,” Bijoux said sadly.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Take care of this,” he said, handing over her purse. “When you wake up tomorrow and count this, you're going to wonder who the hell you robbed.”

She looked in the purse and just saw a mess of chips, then pulled some out and pressed them into his hand. “For Caesar's. Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” he said, handing half of them back to her.

After a strange little pause, he kissed her hand in a teasing, gallant manner and backed away from the door.

And just like that, he was gone.

The room was just barely lit up by the lights coming from the Las Vegas Strip below. The drapes were still open; it was gorgeous.

In the dim light she saw Donny holding Marianne in his arms, the two of them asleep on top of the covers, both fully clothed.

Bijoux stared at the tableau for a moment, then shuffled to her bed and sat down, just barely managing to remove her high heels before being swamped by overwhelming exhaustion. Clutching her bulging purse and practically swimming in spilled poker chips, Bijoux finally let her guard down and relaxed.