Betting On Love

by Hodges, Cheris

  Dear Reader,

  Have you ever read a book where a character stuck with you?

  Well, imagine writing one and falling asleep dreaming about a character that you were allegedly done with.

  James Goings cost me many hours of sleep, because he wanted you to get to know him better. James was first introduced in pages of Let’s Get It On. He’s the brother of Super Bowl hero Maurice Goings, but he’s much more than that. He’s been Maurice’s cheerleader, business partner, and peacemaker.

  Now it’s time for James to take the ultimate gamble and fall in love. I hope you will enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  As always, thank you for supporting me and happy reading.

  Cheris Hodges

  P.S. I’m only a click away. E-mail me at cheris87@ bellsouth.net.

  Join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cherishodges.

  Or follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cherishodges.

  Also by Cheris Hodges

  JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH LET’S GET IT ON MORE THAN HE CAN HANDLE

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  BETTING ON LOVE

  CHERIS HODGES

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH LET’S GET IT ON MORE THAN HE CAN HANDLE

  Title Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are so many people that helped make my tenth novel possible. I’d like to say thank you to my parents, Doris and Freddie Hodges. Who knew that first typewriter would’ve led to this?

  To Damon, thank you for being an inspiration.

  I’d like to thank my agent, Sha-Shana Crichton for her tireless work.

  To my sister, Adrienne Hodges-Dease, thank you for listening after all these years.

  To the ladies of the Cheris F. Hodges Book Club, thank you for all of your support.

  To my editor, Selena James, thank you for your hard work.

  To all of the retailers who have welcomed me for signings in their stores, thank you.

  CHAPTER 1

  The only thing on James Goings’s mind was getting away from the antics of his brother’s overpaid football player friends and their constant need for high-stakes gambling and hounding every woman in a short skirt. For the last three hours, he’d been sitting in a private room in Harrah’s casino in Las Vegas, losing his money to half of the Carolina Panthers’ offensive line. And where had Maurice, his brother, been? In a corner, talking to his wife on the phone.

  That fool should’ve just brought Kenya with him. Crossing the casino floor and ignoring the dings and bells of the slot machines, James decided that he’d had enough of Sin City and that he was going to go back to his hotel room, pack, and head back to North Carolina, where he’d have some peace and more money in his pocket.

  When he passed the gold and glass baccarat room, a blur of black and silky hair slammed into him. The woman’s purse hit the floor and seemed to explode. He reached down to help her pick up the contents of the purse: lipstick, a few coins and ... Was that a condom?

  Glancing at her as she stuffed her things in the overly full silver purse, he noticed how beautiful she was with her shiny black hair, sparkling brown eyes, and butter-rum skin. “I think this is yours,” James said as he extended his hand to her.

  “Oh my God,” she said as she took the condom from him. A slight blush colored her cheeks as she attempted to close her hopelessly overstuffed purse.

  James hid his amusement, but he had to wonder why she was bold enough to carry her own protection but embarrassed that he’d handed it to her. She’s definitely not a Vegas call girl if taking a condom from my hand makes her blush like that.

  Jade Christian had journeyed to Vegas with her girlfriends to have a wild weekend, à la Britney Spears, before returning to the shambles of her own life in Atlanta, Georgia. The condom was a stupid joke perpetuated by her good friend Serena Jacobs, who used sex as a weapon in her own life. She’d told Jade that the best way to get back at her boyfriend for cheating was to have an affair of her own. And what better place to do it than in Sin City?

  Jade wasn’t an angel, but she didn’t subscribe to the notion that two wrongs made a right. At this moment, though, she could’ve stabbed Serena in the chest for slipping that condom in her purse. She could see how he was looking at her, and she didn’t like it one bit.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said.

  “I’m not thinking a thing.”

  Jade rose to her feet, adjusted her purse on her shoulder, and smiled. “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “I’d like to think that’s one of my most redeeming qualities,” he joked, then extended his hand to her again. “I’m James.”

  For a moment, Jade started to give him the pseudonym she’d been using all weekend when some lusty man approached her. But there was something about James. “Jade,” she replied, with a smile.

  “Beautiful name and it fits, because you’re a beautiful woman.”

  The blush was back again, and for the first time, she regretted listening to Kandace and wearing a tight black lace dress that barely covered her thighs. He probably thought she was a Vegas call girl. She’d planned on wearing a nice pantsuit to the casino that night. But her girls had told her that part of her problem was that she’d allowed Stephen’s rules of fashion to take over her life. What had that gotten her? The pleasure of seeing him with another woman, who had more plastic parts than a Barbie doll.

  Stephen Carter, the owner of one of Atlanta’s most upscale restaurants, had been her boyfriend, and she’d thought they would marry. They’d met when she applied for a job as his bookkeeper four years ago. She’d gotten the job and his heart, or so she’d thought.

  Once they’d begun their relationship, he’d tried his best to change her. He’d had her dress as if she were a conservative forty-year-old woman instead of a vibrant twenty-nine-year-old with a lot of fun left in her.

  He had hated her friends and had tried to introduce her to a set of women that he thought were more suitable for her to hang out with. Needless to say, she hadn’t agreed with his assessment of her friends, and she’d refused to let him ruin those relationships. Especially after she’d discovered that before they’d met, he’d tried to sleep with Alicia Michaels, her best friend and party planner to the elite. But Alicia had shot him down, and he’d never gotten over it. Part of Jade had wondered, after the breakup, of course, if he’d dated her hoping to get closer to her friend.

  Luckily, she had the kinds of friends that didn’t sneak behind your back and try to steal your man. Alicia didn’t want anything to do with Stephen, and she had been against Jade’s relationship with him from the
start. “I tried to warn you,” she’d told Jade as they flew to Vegas.

  “Are you enjoying yourself in Vegas?” James asked, breaking into her thoughts.

  “Honestly, no. It certainly isn’t what I expected.”

  “What did you expect?” His eyebrows rose, and a smirk spread across his lips.

  “Not that, despite the dress and the contents of my purse. I was just looking for a chance to unwind and have some fun.”

  “And how were you going to do that?”

  Jade was beginning to think that she’d been wrong about him as well, because she could’ve sworn that he was trying to proposition her. “Well, it certainly doesn’t include doing anything I’d regret in the morning with some stranger. So if you think that a woman who carries condoms ...”

  “Slow down, sweetheart. I was asking because I want to go somewhere else myself and get away from my brother’s cheating friends.”

  “Cheating men. What a surprise.”

  “They cheat at poker. The lone married man of the group is sitting on the phone, talking to his wife because he misses her so much.”

  Jade narrowed her eyes and then smiled. “Poker cheaters, huh? How much money did you lose?”

  “More than I care to talk about. I know I’m not that lousy of a card player. There was some cheating going on.”

  “Want to win it back?” Jade rubbed her hands together. “I’ve been itching to release some tension and play a game of poker or something. My friends are in the baccarat room, because they’re doing their thing.”

  James’s face asked, “What’s that?”

  Jade laughed. “They like to stroke egos and win money. Not that they don’t have plenty of their own, but when they come to Vegas, they like for someone else to take on the debt, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think I do. A bunch of beautiful women who charm old men into letting them play on their dime. No offense, but that sounds like a gang of gold diggers to me.”

  Jade rolled her eyes. “Typical. But what about these men who think all they need to do is flash some cash and a woman is all theirs? So my girls like to flip the script on them. There are worse things we could be doing.”

  “We?”

  “They are my friends, and we’re here together. And since it seems that you men lump us all together ...”

  “Whoa. Now, you’re obviously angry at someone, and I’m going to assume that since I just met you, it isn’t me,” James said. “But on behalf of the asshole who pissed you off, I’m sorry.”

  Jade laughed heartily, realizing that she was projecting her anger on James and that he didn’t deserve it. “No, let me apologize. About that money that you lost. Do you want it back?”

  “Listen, as much as I do, those guys are some real cardsharps, and taking you up there would be like leading a bleeding baby seal into a tank full of hungry great whites.”

  She placed her hand on James’s shoulder. “Never judge a book by its cover. Do you want your money back or not?”

  CHAPTER 2

  James didn’t know why he listened to Jade and headed back up to the game room he’d dubbed “the players’ suite.” But they rode the elevator up to the fifteenth floor and walked into the room.

  All the movement and talking stopped, and the men sitting at the different tables ogled Jade as she crossed the floor. Protectively, James wrapped his arm around her waist, and their stares became even more intense.

  “Well, well, somebody called an escort ser vice,” one of the fatter men said before folding his poker hand. “James done got a woman.”

  “Shut up, Homer,” James said. “Where’s Mo?”

  Homer, who really could use a low carb diet, rolled his eyes and said, “Where do you think? He’s on the phone with his wife. I swear, that dude used to be fun. Want to get dealt in and give me some more of those long dollars?”

  “I do,” Jade said, then quickly took a seat at the table, across from Homer.

  “Little girl, you’re out of your league,” Homer declared, and the other men laughed.

  “Fat man, you don’t know me. Let’s do this,” she said, then folded her hands underneath her chin. “How much?”

  All the men looked at Jade as if she were an alien sitting at the table, demanding to be taken to their leader.

  “Thousand,” Homer spat.

  Reaching into her purse, Jade pulled out a wad of cash. “Done.”

  James crossed over to her. Leaning over her shoulder, he asked, “Are you sure you can handle this?”

  “There’s not too much I can’t handle,” she said, brimming with confidence and bravado. Looking around the table, she imagined that every man sitting there was Stephen, and she was going to make sure that she stuck it to them.

  “Little lady,” Homer said, “would you like to deal?”

  Taking the deck from his hand, Jade smiled, then shuffled the cards with the skill of the dealers on the floor of the casino. They’d underestimated Jade, and now she was going to make them pay for it.

  “Five-card stud or Texas hold ’em?” she asked.

  The men’s mouths hung open like those of little hound dogs, and from the corner of the room where he was standing, James was enjoying the show. Jade looked as if she was about to beat the players at their own game.

  When she dealt the first hand, Homer won and seemed to regain his swagger. But the next five hands went to Jade, and James loved every minute of it. Especially when she’d lean across the table to rake in the pot and the hem of her dress would inch up, exposing the sexiest thigh he’d ever seen. Her skin looked so smooth that he wanted to reach out and touch it. But there was no way he could do that. He didn’t know a thing about her other than the fact that she was fine as hell.

  After the sixth hand Jade won, she decided that she’d done enough damage. “Gentlemen, it’s been real, but I think I’ve taken enough of your money.” Pushing away from the table, Jade turned to James, who had the biggest grin on his face.

  “Damn,” he said. “Y ’all got beat by a girl. Big, tough football players broken down by a beautiful lady.”

  “Shut up!” Homer snapped as he sulked.

  Turning to Jade, James asked, “Are you ready to leave, or do you want to take the rest of their money?”

  She looked at the angry faces of the men. “I think we’d better go.”

  James opened the door and held it for Jade to pass through. Once they made it to the elevator and got on, he turned to her and smiled again. “Fess up,” he said. “You were a dealer at one of these casinos in a past life?”

  “No,” she said through her grin. “I grew up on a riverboat out in Mississippi with my parents. My father was a dealer, and when my mother was performing, I’d sit underneath the table while he took drunk people’s money. The hand is truly quicker than the eye, and your friends made it real easy since they couldn’t take their eyes off my chest.”

  Clearing his throat, James looked away because he couldn’t take his eyes off her chest, legs, ass, or face. He didn’t want Jade to think that he was just like everybody else.

  “So, how much money did you lose? Because I think I won that back and some,” she said as she started counting the stack of bills she had in her hand.

  “If you let me take you to dinner, someplace off the Strip, we’ll be able to call it even,” he said. Where did that come from ? This woman has a lot going on with her, and you need to be going the other way.

  “I tell you what, I’ll buy dinner and you pick the place,” she said as she fanned the cash before stuffing it in her purse. “And hopefully, this will dispel your gold-digger notion.”

  “Something tells me that you’re a woman full of surprises,” he said as the doors to the elevator opened to the casino floor.

  Jade stepped off. “I’ve heard that a time or two.”

  Walking about a step behind her, James suddenly wanted to see what surprises lay underneath her silk and lace. It’s just one weekend. We’re adults, and she said she wan
ted to unwind. I know just how she can do that.

  Jade knew why James was behind her. Despite the fact that he had been a perfect gentleman so far, he was a man and he was staring. Turning around, she caught him with his eyes glued to her behind. Though part of her wanted to be irate at the fact that he was so blatant with his ogling, another part of her didn’t mind his silent admiration, because it was so unlike that of many other men in the casino, who’d said some of the nastiest things to her and her friends. Still, she couldn’t help but rib him a bit. “Maybe you should take a picture. It would last longer.”

  “Are you in the third grade?” he shot back. “Sorry, but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t look. And what did you expect when you put that dress on, anyway?”

  “Touché.” She slowed her pace so that he could catch up with her.

  James grabbed her hand and kissed it lightly. “Listen, there’s a steak house downtown where we can go and talk. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

  “No, not at all,” she said. “My grandmother was raised on meat. She’s about a hundred now.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist. “A woman who actually eats.”

  Jade didn’t move his hand away, even though his touch seemed a little too familiar. But there was something about him that she liked, and he made her feel comfortable. Maybe the little packet in her purse would prove to be useful, after all. They were adults, and it was just one weekend. I can’t believe I’m even thinking about sleeping with this man, she thought as they headed out the door.

  CHAPTER 3

  Don B’s Steakhouse was the perfect romantic setting for a couple: the lights were low, and candles illuminated the dining room. In the golden glow, James thought Jade looked like an angel with a hint of something naughty below the surface. As the hostess led them to a table in the rear of the restaurant, the naughtiness about Jade piqued his interest.