by Vi Keeland
I crack a Bud and clink the bottle with Ben’s before taking a sip. Budweiser tastes like crap. I’d much rather be drinking the Heineken that Ben’s drinking—or a Stella from my fridge at home—but I’11never admit it to him. Some things are just part of tradition. “Where’s Grip?”
“Couldn’t make it tonight, wife’s sister had cataract surgery, so he took her up to Seattle to see her or some shit.”
“Ted filling in?”
“Nope.” Frank grins.
“Who’s playing the fourth?”
“Her.” Frank motions to the other side of the room, where a woman is carrying a case of beer. A case of damn Stellas.
“Hey, Frank.” The woman smiles and I almost drop my beer. And it’s not just because she’s drop-dead gorgeous. I can’t believe Frank’s letting a woman play.
“Really?” I say incredulously.
Frank smiles knowingly. “Really.”
“Never thought I’d see the day.” I shake my head.
“What?” The beautiful woman directs her question at me.
“You’re a woman.” I smile, shrugging my shoulders.
“I am?” Eyes wide, feigning surprise, she looks down and playfully pats her body. “Oh my god. I am.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“So a girl can play?” She’s petite, maybe only 5’4, the top of her head barely reaching my chest, but she squares her shoulders and dares me to respond. Oddly, I feel a little twitch in my pants when she challenges me.
“I don’t know, can you?” I decide to stop backpedaling and go on the offense, wanting to see her push back more.
“I can. Can you?” She arches one brow. Damn, it’s sexy. Another twitch.
“Guess you’ll find out,” I tease.
“All right, you two,” Frank breaks in. “Kate, this is Cooper and Ben.” She shakes my hand; her skin is so smooth and soft. Long, blonde, wavy hair loosely frames her pretty face. Unlike most women around this place, it’s almost makeup-free. A hint of pink color and gloss on her lips picks up the lights above. The way it reflects and shimmers has me staring at her full lips a bit too long. It’s an effort to drag my eyes away.
“Do you work at the studio? I haven’t seen you around,” I say curiously.
Frank speaks up before Kate. “Ben, smack this kid in the head, he’s forgetting the rules already.”
I actually did completely forget. No mention of work at all. It was my father’s favorite rule. After the studio started to take off, this hangar was the only place he could really relax and forget who he was for a while. Normally I’d love the rule too, but I find myself eager for a little background on the sexy woman tugging my errant cock from its self-imposed hibernation.
Kate smiles and shrugs.
Half an hour into the card game, she tosses a straight flush down on the table, just as I’m about to reach over my three aces and sweep the pot.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Again?” I lean back and slump in my chair, defeated.
She smiles and pulls the heaping pile to her side of the table.
“Where’d you learn to play like that?” Ben asks her.
“My dad.”
“Dad’s a poker player, huh?”
“Ever hear of Freddy Monroe?” she asks casually while stacking her chips.
“Five-card Freddy? Sure. He always wore those diamond four-leaf clover cufflinks. He took the Texas Hold ’Em World Championship three times.”
“Four,” Kate corrects. Then adds sheepishly, “He’s my father. I’m a St. Patrick’s Day baby. He had the cufflinks made when I was born.”
Ben laughs and throws his hand in the air, looking at Frank. “You invited a shark to play with us?”
“I was playing solitaire one night when she was in the studio late. We played a few hands of rummy. She beat me twenty-two hands in a row. Figured I’d see if it was beginner’s luck.”
“It ain’t beginner’s luck,” Ben guffaws.
Two more hands and Ben and Frank fold again, leaving just Kate and me. My cards are shit, but I like the way she pushes back every time I raise the ante, so I just keep throwing good money after bad.
After my last raise, Kate brushes her thumb over the worn chip she’s kept at her side all night, looks down at her pot, then back to me, studying my face. I return the challenging stare. Her blue-green eyes squint ever so slightly as she tries to read what I’ve got sitting face-down on the table. For a second, she drops her gaze and lingers on my mouth before returning to my eyes. I have no idea what she sees, but something makes her smile. It’s slow and confident and she arches one eyebrow before she pushes her chips in. “Call.”
I don’t take my eyes off her as I turn over my pair of twos. She smirks, then turns over a pair of threes. Ben and Frank laugh their asses off and decide we need a short break, one long enough for me to “pull my head out of my ass.”
The two men disappear to the men’s room, leaving just Kate and me sitting at the table. Leaning back in my chair, I ask. “How did you know?”
She shrugs and smiles. “It’s all about reading people.”
“So you can see what I’m thinking?” I lift my beer to my lips and take a slow draw without breaking eye contact.
“Sometimes.”
“What am I thinking about now?” I try in vain to keep a stoic face, but the corner of my mouth tilts up to a dirty grin.
She shakes her head and walks to the restroom smiling, leaving me watching the sway of her ass.
***
A few hours later, Frank calls for the last hand. I pull a money clip out of my pocket and lay it on the table. Ben takes out a business-card holder engraved with his initials and Frank tosses a pair of my father’s cufflinks to the middle.
“What’s going on?” Kate questions, a look of confusion on her face.
Apparently Frank failed to tell her about the tradition of last hand of the night, so he begins explaining. “Last hand isn’t for cash. It’s something that means something to you, that all of us might want.”
Kate lifts her purse and spends a minute looking through it. Finally, she takes out a pen and paper, writes something down, and folds it up.
“We don’t take IOUs,” I tease.
She looks me in the eye. “It’s my phone number. Didn’t think any of you would want my lipstick or a tampon.” She arches one eyebrow, daring me to question her choice. Another damn twitch. I might have to sit at the table for a while if this is another quick hand.
I laugh, but damn she anted up something I want. Badly. Unfortunately, true to the rest of the night, Kate is the one pulling in the pot at the end of the game.
“You better give me a chance to get my friend’s cufflinks back tomorrow, little lady.” Frank wags his finger at Kate. So she works here. Good to know.
Frank tells us to go, he has a few things to do before he can lock up. Ben takes off quickly, answering yet another call from his third wife. I walk Kate to her car.
“Lucky chip?” I ask, referring to the solid black worn chip she took from her purse and slid her thumb over on more than one occasion while playing.
“It brought my dad a lot of luck over the years.”
I nod. “I’m glad I came tonight. I had a great time. It’s been a while since I played with those guys.”
“Seems like you guys go pretty far back.”
“Pretty sure they were all playing cards in the hospital lobby when I was born,” I joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. I’ll have to ask one day.
“This is me,” Kate says as we arrive at an old Jeep in the parking lot. It’s a beautiful night and the top is already off. She clicks her keys to unlock the door. I open it for her to get in, but hang on to the top, not letting it close.
“Listen, I’d love to take you to dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“You left me a couple of bucks, figured I’d like spending them on you as much as I liked losing them to you.”
“You l
iked losing to me?”
I contemplate the question for a moment. “Oddly, yes. Which is strange because I hate to lose.”
“I’m guessing it doesn’t happen often.”
“What? Losing?”
She nods.
“No, actually. It doesn’t. I tend to go after what I want until I win.” Our eyes lock on each other, something passing between the two of us, a thick tension swirls in the air. “So…dinner?”
Kate smiles, but the uptick at the corners of her mouth quickly turns down. “I can’t.” She looks hesitant, but offers no further explanation. “I had fun tonight.” She reaches into her purse, pulls something out, and extends her hand to me. “I don’t really want to keep your money clip. I noticed it wasn’t your first initial engraved on it. Maybe it means something to you?” She tilts her head, observing me.
“It does. But that’s okay. You keep it. It’ll give me a reason to see you again.” I reach down, close her fingers back around the money clip, and lift her hand to my mouth. My lips brush the top lightly, my tongue sneaking out to fleetingly touch her skin. The brief contact stirs an ache inside me. This woman tugs at something—more than arousal—something that makes me want to slow down time just to spend a few more minutes standing here.
“Did you just …” she stammers a bit.
“Did I just what?”
She squints at me. “You know.”
“Do I?”
“I felt your tongue on my hand. You … you licked me.”
I’d been dying to run my tongue along her neck all evening, although I hadn’t really meant to be so crude about it. It just sort of … happened. “I wouldn’t say licked, maybe just a little taste.”
“So you tasted me?”
My entire body suddenly has interest in this conversation. “I suppose I did. But it wasn’t nearly enough. That brings us back to my invitation for dinner. Tomorrow night?”
“I can’t.”
“The day after then?”
She laughs and shakes her head. The sound makes me smile.
“Good night, Cooper.” She pulls the driver’s side door shut and leaves me standing there … for a full five minutes after she’s gone.
CHAPTER TWO
Kate
Distracted as I drive home, my mind replaying the evening over and over, I miss my damn exit as a picture of Cooper standing beside my jeep pops into my head for the twentieth time. Dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal sexy strong forearms, he exuded power, yet something about him was playful … down to earth. Not like the typical guys I’ve been meeting the last few years.
His square, deeply defined jaw had just a hint of a five o’clock shadow on his perfectly tanned skin. Bright, startlingly green eyes stood out, the shade somewhere between jade and moss. Beautiful, but the color wasn’t the part that mesmerized me. It was the gold ring around his pupil that captured my attention, surrounding the rich dark brown. It reminded me of a sunflower, painted in a field of green grass. And every time he tried to bluff, the sunflower grew bigger, making it that much more difficult to focus on my hand. It didn’t help that the soft green and glittering gold were set off by the thickest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a man. Why do men get the good eyelashes?
I hold my breath and make a wish as I enter the tunnel. I’ve been making the same wish as I drive through the burrowed rocky canyon for years. It’s always about my brother. Selfishly, today my wish is for me.
After a twenty-minute detour, I’m surprised to find my roommate, Sadie, still awake when I walk into my apartment.
Collapsing onto the couch dramatically, I slouch down, stretching my long legs across the coffee table.
“Bad day, Angelina?” she says. Every day since I started filming the reality show, she has a new actress name for me. Yesterday I was Reese.
“Long day of sitting around doing nothing. But, actually, it was a good night.”
“Did you get to see Flynn?” She sits up on the couch, hoping to hear some good gossip. Gossip I’m not supposed to share by the terms of my contract, one that I violate pretty much daily. Even if I weren’t anxious to tell my best friend about a guy I was seeing, she’d get it out of me. Sadie Warner could pull gossip out of a priest.
“No, he wasn’t on set today.”
Deflated she won’t be getting the juicy inside scoop about Bachelor Flynn today, she continues anyway. “What did you do tonight that was fun then?”
“I played cards.”
“Cards? Booooring.” She drags out the word in that singsongy way.
“Not when one of the players is hot.”
“Why didn’t you say that sooner?” She tucks her feet underneath her, giving me her full attention.
“You lost interest the minute I told you Flynn wasn’t there, and only regained interest once I mentioned a hot guy.”
“So?” Clearly she can’t fathom what is wrong with my statement. I roll my eyes.
“What if I had a nice night catching up with an old family friend? A female old family friend who is important to me. Would you have wanted to hear about my night then?”
“Absolutely not.”
I laugh. “I shouldn’t tell you about the hot guy then, if you don’t want to hear about our old friend Edna.”
“Who’s Edna?” She looks confused.
“The old family friend I just made up that you had no interest in?”
“And you felt the need to give her a name?”
“Maybe I love dear old Edna a whole lot and she’s special to me.”
“Then call your mother and tell her about Edna.”
“Maybe I’ll call my mother and tell her about Cooper too then.”
“Cooper, huh?” Her eyes widen in an ooh. “How tall was he?”
I can’t help but smile. “I didn’t measure him … but tall … maybe six foot one or two.”
“Nice.” Sadie wiggles her eyebrows. “Tall is good. What else you got?”
“Square jaw, chiseled nose, inky dark hair and matching thick lashes that set off incredible light eyes. Green with sunflowers in them.”
“Mouth?”
“Ridiculously sexy kissable lips. Oh … and he licked me.”
“He licked you?”
“He did it discretely, kissed the top of my hand, but I felt his tongue. Made my skin heat. Like throwing water into a heated frying pan.”
“Mmmmm … the kind of sexy that makes your temperature rise. I need more. How’s his ass?” Sadie closes her eyes as if she’s imagining the man I’m describing.
“Like you could bounce a quarter off of it.”
“Arms?”
“He was wearing a dress shirt, so I only got to see his forearms.”
Her eyes are still closed. “Okay … tell me about those.”
“Strong, incredibly sexy.”
“Chest?” Her voice is lower.
“Broad. Thick wide shoulders. Narrow waist.”
Sadie’s eyes fly open.
“What?” I say, wondering what part of my description could possibly have derailed her fantasy.
“Why are you home, if he’s out there?”
I laugh, but then I remember the reason. Leaning back with a sigh, I admit, “He asked me out too.”
“And … ?”
“I said no.”
“Why?”
“You know why! The contract.”
“Screw the contract.”
“Screw the contract? You’re the one that made me sign it!”
“I made you sign it. I didn’t tell you that you have to follow it to a tee!”
“But that’s the way it works. I promise them something and they promise me something. Isn’t that how you explained it to me?”
“Pffftt … No one ever pays attention to those things,” my best friend, who also happens to be my attorney, says.
“I need to focus on the show. I don’t need a distraction right now.”
“You haven’t gotten distracted
in a long time. How long has it been?”
Too long. “I’ve been busy.”
“I know. You’ve been running yourself ragged since the accident.”
“Someone has to take care of things.”
“Yes. And you will. But there’s no reason you can’t take care of other things too. Have you checked for cobwebs down there?” She teases, then her face turns serious. “Look, I know you have a lot on your plate. But sometimes I worry it’s less about you being busy, and more about you denying yourself happiness from misplaced guilt.”
“I’m fine. Stop worrying about me. Plus, who knows, I could win a lot of money on this show and get my cobwebs dusted.”
***
I’m up early, nervous as hell about going back to the Throb set. Today is the first day of bachelor’s choice, meaning Flynn gets to pick which girl he wants to spend twenty-four hours alone with on a deserted island. Sure, the island is only a few miles off the coast of California, and the deserted couples get delivered a gourmet food basket—Survivor, it’s not. But still, who knows what can happen when two people who are attracted to each other are alone for twenty-four hours in that setting?
I hastily park my car and jog to the door of the studio a few minutes late. The other contestants are sitting around waiting still, so I stop by Frank’s office and say good morning.
“You know, missy, normally I’d have to be married to let a woman take that much money from me.” Frank smiles warmly as he jokes.
“And normally I wouldn’t let a man off so easily the first time I play with him,” I say joking—but there’s truth in my words. One of the cardinal rules my dad taught me: you only get the element of surprise once, so win big the first time.
Frank chuckles. “What’s Mr. Montgomery got planned for today?”
“We’re all going over to the beach house in Malibu. We spend a few hours with Flynn and then he gets to pick his choice for his next date.”
Frank sighs. “Whatever happened to meeting women the old-fashioned way … picking them up in a bar? I don’t get the whole reality TV thing. Why would a beautiful girl like you have to go on national TV to maybe get a date?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time I signed up.” I shrug, trying to come off casual. The terms of our contract are confidential, so I can’t share with him the real reason I decided to go on the show … the $250,000 grand prize.
