Double Blind (6 page)

“I hope yours are pink, you little fucker.” He leered at Randy. “Really bright fucking pink.”

Randy lifted his head and gave the bartender a withering look. “Scully, you dipshit—
I’m gay.
Wearing pink doesn’t threaten my masculinity like it does yours.”

Scully laughed, sounding as if he’d been transplanted right out of
Beavis and Butthead.
“Pink shorts, real tight. With your fat ass hanging out.”

That
brought Randy up short. He leaned forward and pointed angrily at Scully. “My ass is
not fat.
You, however, could supply the kitchens at Bellagio with lard for a month.”

Scully continued to snicker, reveling in the myriad ways Randy would be embarrassed in short pink shorts, but Ethan’s attention drifted, drawn to a subtle study of Randy’s referenced anatomy. It was not, he decided, hiding his perusal behind the illusion that he was taking another drink, a fat ass at all. None of Randy was fat, not really, and if anything, he was a bit muscular. He had the look of someone who worked out infrequently, just enough to keep real trouble at bay. By no means, however, was he clean cut. His dark, curly hair was a mess, and he had stubble on his jaw. If he were in a movie, he’d be “artfully tousled,” and his stubble would have been alluring. In real life it looked like he could use a little more grooming.

In short, he wasn’t Ethan’s type at all.

But then Randy turned his head, caught Ethan looking, and also gave Ethan a full-on view of his eyes.
Those eyes.
Dark, huge, and so sharp they made Ethan shiver. It was a dramatic, foolish thought, but when Randy looked at Ethan like this, he would swear the man could steal inside his soul.

Worse, Ethan acknowledged, squirming as Randy’s smile darkened, the little devil seemed to know exactly what he was doing to Ethan.

“Drink up,” Randy encouraged, nodding at Ethan’s glass.

Ethan drained the last of the cocktail and set the glass back down, still watching Randy carefully.
He’s here because he made a bet about you, about what you were doing at the table, about why you’re here, and he was almost completely right. But that’s all he cares about, not you.
The speech was meant to be a warning to himself, but the problem was that Randy wasn’t advocating anything. In fact he sounded astonishingly honest, and that’s what was throwing Ethan off.

The gin gave Ethan the liquid courage to voice aloud the question that kept rattling around inside his head. “So,” he asked, closing his hand around the second glass, “what happens now?”

Randy shrugged and grimaced into his own drink, shaking the ice a bit before he took a very generous sip. “No idea. There’s always your upside down snake idea, I guess.”

Ethan choked on his gin, and Randy grinned. Ethan flattened his lips. “That was a metaphor, not a proposition.”

Randy leaned back, nodding. “There. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a proposition.”

“Are you drunk already?” Ethan asked.

“Hell no. Just stunned by my inglorious defeat. Now. About this proposition.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, then nodded. “Right. It’s eight-thirty now. I say it’ll happen by”—he blew his breath out in a heavy exhale, tossed his head from side to side as he stared at the phone, then glanced up at Ethan and regarded him critically—“midnight, I think.”

He
was
drunk, Ethan decided. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tried to sound dismissive, but his heart was hammering from the scrutiny of Randy’s gaze.

“I propose,” Randy said, “that by midnight tonight I will have wooed you.”

Ethan startled, then glared. “No.”

Randy looked pleased. “Excellent. We have a bet. Terms?”

“I’m not betting with you,” Ethan replied tartly. “Especially not about
wooing.
”

“I
propose
,” Randy said, ignoring him, “that we say that by midnight I will have…. Hmm. Now this will take some thinking.” He ran his fingers over his lips as he narrowed his eyes. Ethan moved his own gaze deliberately down and ended up staring at Randy’s fingers. The tips of two of them were tucked inside his lips, making them part. Ethan had noticed them before, and he noted it again—Randy’s fingers were stained, lined with… grease?

“Engines,” Randy said, and Ethan blinked and looked up.

“What?”

“Engines,” Randy said again, and waggled his fingers. “My fingers are stained because I work with diesel engines all day. Also motorcycles. My hands are clean, for the record. They’re just stained.”

“I don’t care,” Ethan said, then winced inwardly at how prim he’d sounded.

Randy’s mouth turned up at the corners, and his sharp eyes twinkled. “By midnight I’ll have kissed you, Ethan. That’s the bet.”

“You won’t have,” Ethan said, “because I won’t let you.”

Randy’s smile turned dangerous. “Scratch that. By midnight, Slick,
you
will kiss
me.
”

Ethan said nothing, deciding the way out of this was not to dignify Randy’s idiocy with a reply.

“And if you manage not to,” Randy went on, “you’ll get one thousand dollars.”

Ethan’s smile fell. “You’re insane.”

Now Randy laughed. “The hell I am. When I win, you remember that’s how badly you wanted to kiss me, enough to give up a thousand dollars.”

Ethan shook his head and turned to the bartender for help, but to his surprise, the bartender was looking intently at Randy.

“Side bet?” he asked. Randy shrugged. Scully held up the fifty dollar chip Randy had given him. “I’m bettin’ on you, Jansen.”

Randy lifted an eyebrow. “You expect me to bet against
myself
?”

“You think I
will
kiss him?” Ethan glared at Scully.

“Come on,” Scully pleaded. “This is a sure thing.” He looked to Ethan. “
You
bet me, then.”

“He doesn’t have any money,” Randy pointed out.

“You could put up my ring,” Ethan said, even as part of his brain told him to shut up.

Randy gave him a wicked look. “Have you forgotten? It’s
my
ring now.”

Ethan felt his cheeks color, but he kept his chin level. “It hardly matters. I’m not taking this bet.”

“How can you not?” Randy asked, his voice silky. “All you have to do to get one thousand dollars is resist me until midnight. Easiest money you’ll ever make.”

Scully fished in his pocket and brought out several other chips and thrust them at Randy. “An even hundred.
Please
.”

Ethan’s head was spinning from more than just gin. There was nothing encouraging about the way Scully was so sure he would lose, but at the same time, there was no way he was kissing this arrogant asshole.

You shouldn’t do this at all,
a scolding voice admonished him.
You should turn on your heel and walk away from him, right now.

But a deep, empty wave of cold swept in on the thought’s wake.
And if I do, where will I go? What will I do if I leave now?

The thought of how he had intended this evening to end, of the surreal space that had opened before him until Randy had come down and slapped his hand over Nick’s ring—the thought of that vacuum coming back….

Ethan shook off the cold and turned back to Randy. “So if I lose, do I owe you one thousand dollars?”

“No, Slick.” Randy put a hand over his heart. “The pleasure of your tender lips will be enough of a payment for me.”

Oh, he was an arrogant, arrogant bastard.
Ethan glared at him a moment, hating him, hating all of this.

But if it weren’t for him, where would you be right now?

Where will you go, if you refuse his bet and walk away? What will you do?

Ethan felt the darkness close around him, and he shut his eyes and nodded. “Fine.”

When he opened his eyes, Randy was watching him again, and his smile had faded. “Slick, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Ethan said, curtly this time. “And I will take your stupid bet.”

“Somebody
please take my bet!
” Scully begged, pulling all the chips out of his pocket.

Randy had been studying Ethan again, hard enough to make him squirm despite his best efforts, but then abruptly he turned away and studied Scully’s multicolored pile. “This looks like about a hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I’m good for more,” Scully pleaded.

Randy waved an impatient hand. “I’ll back him for the one-fifty, but he has to agree to the bet with you.”

“Wait a minute,” Ethan said. “You mean you’re going to either end up paying me one thousand, or him one-fifty? How do you win this?”

“If you lose, I’ll pay him for you. And you’ll pay me.” He nodded at Scully. “You’ll repeat the kiss you gave me in front of him, right here at the bar.”

“This is going to be
great
,” Scully said, rubbing his hands together.

“He hasn’t agreed yet,” Randy pointed out.

Ethan looked back and forth between the two men, at Scully looking eager for his easy money, at Randy lounging against the rail, concerned with nothing at all in the world. He looked confident as all hell too.

Ethan gave a brittle smile. “It’s a deal, Scully.”

Scully whooped.

Randy nodded at Ethan’s drink. “You can abandon that, if you want. I’d hate for you to feel like you lost because I got you drunk. I’m happy to feed you too—an empty stomach makes it worse.”

“I’ve already eaten.” Ethan picked up his drink defiantly. But as he pressed his lip to the glass, he remembered Tyler at the roulette table, insisting Ethan take the zeroes.

And I made sure that was the way it went down, baby.

Ethan spit the alcohol out and set it down. He held Randy’s gaze as he said, “Water please, Scully.”

Randy’s lips quirked, and he nodded his head once in acknowledgment. “That’s good. It’d feel cheap, if I could lead you so easily.”

“I assume,” Ethan said tartly, “that I’ll be obliged to be in the same room with you until midnight?”

“It’ll be too hard for you to kiss me otherwise,” Randy pointed out.