Reckless Gamble
City Sinners
Book 4 - Scott
KENNA SHAW REED
ALSO BY KENNA SHAW REED
Loving the Band (Reverse Harem)
Seducing the Band in Lockdown
Playing with the Band in Lockdown
Enjoying the Band in Lockdown
Reuniting the Band in Lockdown
City Sinners (Billionaire Suspense)
Broken Trust (Erebus)
Random Fantasies (Darius)
Hard Bargain (Ibby)
Reckless Gamble (Scott)
Aussie Military Romance:
Avenge Her (Darby)
Protect Her (Mack)
Save Her (Doug)
Defend Her (Ed)
Choose Your Own Romance: A Complicated Marriage
The Politician’s Wife
The Unfaithful Wife
The Unforgiving Wife
The Perfect Wife
Choose Your Own Rockstar
The Rockstar’s Wife
Choose Your Own Romance:
The Uni Student
The Intern
The Bad Kitty
Romance with Passion (Angsty Romance)
Trusting his Heart
A Billion Reasons Why
Never Second Best
Shattered Hearts
Christmas Kisses
Her Christmas Romance Surprise (Pia)
Her Surprise Christmas Noel (JoJo)
Unwrapping Her Christmas Gift (Abbie)
Her Surprise Christmas Kiss (Zara)
Standalone romance:
HEAT
Who is Alex
All books can be read standalone or in any order. As you would expect, Reverse Harem and the Choose Your Own Romance series have cheating (although you can pick a path in the choose your own that doesn’t).
If you love Reckless Gamble, then please leave a review. Reviews are like hugs for authors and I can never get enough!
For Mr Shaw Reed.
Because you make sinning fun.
Copyright © 2020 by Kenna Shaw-Reed
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover: Kenna Shaw-Reed and Chanel Campisi
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously.
Reckless Gamble
GG
I’ve been a gambler all my life.
New game, new city, new name.
I’m ready, I think.
For one last reckless gamble but this time it’s not my heart on the line. It’s my life.
Scott
Dressed to kill or be killed, GG sashayed into my game, joined my poker table and claimed my stack. I know this woman is trouble. She shouldn’t trust me with her secret. She shouldn’t trust her life to the way I play the cards.
She shouldn’t, but she does. For her sake, I cannot lose.
In the world of dubious deals and dirty money comes a sexy heroine determined to beat men at their own game, and a billionaire hero willing to catch her if she falls - whether she wants him to, or not.
With deception and desire, this contemporary romance will take you to new heights of suspense and steam.
Prologue
GG
If anyone recognizes me, I’m dead.
If I lose my borrowed stake on the first night, I’m dead.
The rest of my life starts today, but only if I’m smarter than I was before.
Never trust a man.
Never fall in love.
I refuse to give into the nerves.
I might have everything to lose, but still end up with nothing if I win.
Life. I’ll get my life.
This is the last chance at a fresh start.
Mask in place, I’m ready.
Aces high
Scott Alexander
I could probably count my functioning brain cells on one hand. Thanks to exhaustion or booze, take your pick. Sitting at the green felt table, my numb ass reminded me we’d been playing for hours but I couldn’t be fucked watching the time.
Carlos has to be bluffing. Taking what he assumed was the power position directly across from me. Still sporting the arrogant smirk, he didn’t try hiding when he used the same, predictable move to wipe out two players an hour ago.
Poker can be a mean bitch and I used to be her master.
When Carlos made a move on Jamie and Todd, I used a counter ploy to collect piles of plastic chips off the other players’ misfortunes. They were watching Carlos when they should have been watching me. Until now, I’d avoided the risk of making the call.
Safe.
Smart.
Sober.
Or, at least, relatively sober.
“All in,” Carlos repeated. Fake confidence hidden behind a slightly higher pitch, his tell. “Yep, I’m all in,” the douche bag repeated, as if the table hadn’t heard him the first half a dozen times.
He wanted me to play him. Wanted me to lose my shit to him, again. Was desperate to impress our new guest.
Three hours and forty-seven minutes. Succumbing to a subtle glance at my stainless-steel Tag Heuer Carrera watch and I felt more than a little impressed. Despite myself and with minimal encouragement to do otherwise, I’d lasted longer tonight than anyone expected.
Survived without caving to the same self-destructive pattern which claimed my pride and ended countless nights over the last months.
I fingered the slight scar across my left jawline. Noticeable to the touch but probably unseen through my uncharacteristic and definitely uncomfortable four- or was it five-day stubble. Luckily, my scar and the expanding hole in my wallet were the only evidence of my embarrassing fall from life.
My self-imposed exile on living that started the night I went all in with a woman, only to find out she was already all in with someone else.
Mr. Sensible, who played by the rules, never show your cards and always protect your heart, had disregarded good sense. What a fool I’d been.
Like a fucking idiot, I’d lost my heart to a woman who didn’t ask for it, never turned me away, and somehow forgot to tell me there were other players. Damn, she was good. She’d been the only player to consistently beat me at the table. Her tells well hidden behind deceitful lies. I couldn’t read her in poker, or in bed.
Bitch.
Wench.
Heart breaker.
Since then, I’d turned up at Jarryd Bennet’s table, starting each night with a full stack and pretending to care about life and consequences. But as the hours passed and with alcohol invading my system, the futility of life and money would come full circle. From conqueror to easy pickings for whoever had survived the early carnage.
“Mr. Alexander, it’s your call.” My friend and organizer of the best high-end private games in Sydney offered a gentle reminder his dealer could give me another time warning.
I wanted to call.
A loss would leave me with the short stack and vulnerable to Carlos and GG. But, I reasoned, it’d be good to see the newcomer, GG take down Carlos. Well worth the price of admission. Based on how she’d played tonight, I figured she’d only need two hands. One to set Carlos up and the second to bring him down.
“Mr. Alexander?”
I ignored the dealer, my focus on the sexy enigma, GG. Wha
t sort of name was GG and where had she come from?
She’d made one hell of a first impression and not just on me.
Sauntering into the penthouse hotel room Jarryd had booked for the night of poker, sexually charged in her little black leather dress barely covering her thigh-high, black latex boots. Large round sunglasses couldn’t hide her heavy make-up or distract from the glossy long black hair. A woman to be devoured on sight by a starving man, before he—or I—could come back and savor her like an expensive shiraz.
We’d started the night as a table of ten. Early on, when I still cared, Cleese, Col Mueller and Tim Avant fell to my game. Carlos and GG shared the others.
“Mr. Alexander. Are you calling or folding?”
Fuck the dealer. I’d been torn between the same two choices each morning when I awoke—to take back my dignity and life, or cash in and walk away.
I’m too old for this shit. I stretched until my neck clicked before flexing my fists. A decade older than the younger players and with fifteen years as Sydney’s most courted chief financial officer, I couldn’t explain my love of the cards even to myself.
Only fools gamble. No, I quickly corrected myself. It’s not gambling when I gave a shit and was in control. Or when I had the sobriety to calculate success to a mathematical probability.
The room fell silent and I knew my friends wanted me back in the game. To be the fierce opponent they respected and feared.
The egotistical Carlos stopped looking at me, instead studying his hand as if the cards could change through osmosis. GG adjusted her seat so she could see both of us without twisting her head. Smart girl. Smart woman. Sexy kitten with long black claws, a contrast to her full red lips.
Focus. Stop being a fuckwit and think about what you know.
I stopped looking at the bead of sweat threatening to find a path between GG’s breasts to consider the facts. Carlos played through his predictable patterns tonight, but to be honest, I’d been even more predictable over the past months. Arrogant prick thought he had me, but he’d never be worthy of the win.
Three hours and fifty-two minutes.
“Put on another pot of coffee, I fold.”
I didn’t react when Carlos tabled his cards—yeah, I’d made the right call—but Carlos made a mistake showing his conceit as well as his cards.
Four hands later, I took pleasure in trapping Carlos with his own trick.
“And then there were two,” GG purred from across the table.
I refrained from explaining the best games in life were when there were no third parties. Carlos left the room in a sulk and I saw the dealer swallow a flicker of a smile before setting up for the next hand. All the lessons from life and love could be learned at the poker table. Perhaps it was about time I manned up at the table and remembered them.
Could GG be woman enough to teach me?
Four hours and twenty-seven minutes.
GG
If I’d known Scott would take out Carlos, I’d have asked for a break earlier. My back started to cramp up from sitting still all night, my jaw almost locked into place with my fuck you gaze giving nothing away and, quite frankly, I needed to pee.
The seven hands before Carlos went all in, Scott had played like an old and tired amateur. I knew I could take down Carlos in two, maybe three hands by challenging his ego. Now, the five hands had turned the game from boring to interesting. All because of the last man standing.
Scott Alexander.
Damn it. My tongue had stuck to the top of my mouth, but one sip of water risked an accident the cleaners wouldn’t thank me for.
“Dealer, can I have five minutes?” My first request of the night couldn’t be denied. Even though the eliminated players just wanted the game to finish so they could go home, by asking for a break I showed it wouldn’t be an easy fight.
“Certainly. But if you’re not back in five—”
“I know.” Resisting the urge to adjust my sweaty boots, I held my face serene strutting past empty bottles and platters to the bathroom.
So far, so good.
Walking into a new game always demanded a level of fuck you to the world. I’d mastered it by twenty to the point most players—at least male players—assumed it was my natural and resting bitch face. Still, I knew walking into a room filled with professional and semi-professional players could easily destroy the fainthearted.
Fuck them. Fuck them all, one by one and leave them bleeding in the gutter. Figuratively speaking, of course. I breathed my mantra.
I had no literal fucks left to give. Leaving my old life and heart in Melbourne, I’d come to Sydney with one objective—to walk away with the cash, and fast.
“Miss?”
Only four and a half hours ago, the scantily dressed waitress had greeted me at the door to the penthouse suite without warmth. Eventually, she’d find out I tip better than most men without the side expectations. But when I first arrived, I was just another new player to be parted from my stack. She was just another woman who’d invested in implants instead of brains. I knew her type; looking for a whale gambler who saw her as his prize and dumb enough to put a ring on it.
“Mr. Bennett is expecting me.” I’d replied with a cocky swagger familiar to any man, but unusual in a woman. Necessary to separate myself at the outset. Don’t call me honey or expect me to make the coffee. I’m a player, not staff.
“Come this way, I’ll see if Mr. Bennett—”
We’d barely made it through the foyer before oxygen was replaced by the only person here who’d know my name.
“GG?”
Jarryd’s online profile hadn’t done him justice but still—what a DILF! Oh, my! My body reacted the moment I saw his dark brown straight hair and smoky eyes. Hell, I didn’t even need to look lower to his cut body, and my self-composure relied on not sneaking a glance.
No playing with your food, my inner voice warned, and I needed to listen. Jarryd promised to be far more valuable as a source of future cash flow to risk ruining my future for a night or two calling his name between the sheets.
“Mr. Bennett?”
“Please, call me Jarryd and let me welcome you to Sydney.”
“Thank you.” Sydney hadn’t been my first choice or even second, but since my ex-husband got Melbourne in our divorce, my family suggested either Queensland’s Gold Coast or Sydney. By reputation, the Gold Coast would have been the better option if I wanted to be a professional gambler, but Sydney had better options for consulting. Every girl needed a superpower and mine had been helping firms understand the psychological needs of their customers and increase profits by driving behavioral change.
A black art either misunderstood or avoided. Which only meant my billable hours were obscene and easily justified.
As Australia’s largest city, Sydney beckoned and hooking up with men like Jarryd were going to have to wait until I’d rebuilt my reputation, life and bank balance.
“You come with impeccable references.”
Jarryd’s warm breath hovered before kissing my hand and then both cheeks. He didn’t look European, but I suspected his charm wasn’t faked. “I’m not used to getting a personal phone call suggesting my table would benefit from such an esteemed guest.”
“Thank you.” I suspected Jarryd only wanted to probe my connection to Norman Hastings, but he was seriously wasting his time. I’d survived too many painful and expensive lessons in recent months. The result? Keep my friends close and divorce my enemies. Jarryd hadn’t proven to be a friend, yet.
“Our mutual friend asked me to make sure you are well looked after.”
“He is very kind,” I replied innocently and ignored Jarryd’s snort. Understandable. Few people within the industry would describe Norman as kind—the man owned more bars and restaurants across Australian cities than most women owned shoes.
Jarryd probably thought I was either innocent or a fool. I was neither.
With eyes wide open, I knew the press label Norman a racing personality. I
knew the casinos called him a whale. Most people would cross streets or oceans to avoid getting in his crosshairs.
To me, Norman Hastings had been a lifelong family friend. I’d reached out for help, but while Norman agreed to unlock the doors, I still had to force them open.
As the new girl in town, and as a woman in a male’s world, I needed to play each game as if it would be my last—just to prove I deserved my place in the room.
The hostess adjusted her expression from distain to respect while I reclaimed my hand from Jarryd’s grasp.
“Is there anything I can get for you? Wine? Food? Coffee?” Jarryd didn’t wait for his hostess to offer.
“Thank you, but water will be fine.”
“Certainly, sparkling or still?”
Let the games begin, I thought, asking, “Sparkling with three thin slices of lime, if possible.”
“Certainly, and ice?”
“Three cubes, please,” I sighed as if my demand came as natural as breathing. It had become part of my playing persona to let other players wonder about the significance of three—a meaningless tidbit I intended to have fun with later.
“It’s my pleasure to welcome a player of your reputation.” Jarryd hadn’t waited for his staff, personally preparing my drink but not releasing my glass. Was he waiting for more information about Norman or me? Except I always assumed anything and everything I said would be fed as intel back to the other players. Trust as a commodity, yeah, right. Years ago, I came to realize that relying on trust could only disappoint.
“And which reputation are you referring to?” I could have made a different kind of living pulling off my little girl innocent voice while dressed for kink. Working a room before a game set me up to distract and then destroy. “At cards or with men?”
Jarryd had the decency to blush before relinquishing my drink, “Mr. Hastings talks very highly of your ability to separate men from their wallets at the table.”
“As I said before, Mr. Hastings is very kind.”
Reckless Gamble: a billionaire high stakes suspense romance (City Sinners Book 4) Page 1
