Fidelity Files

by Jessica Brody

  Two more hearts came on the flop, along with the king of diamonds. I now had four cards to a flush. I needed one more heart to complete the hand.

  Parker bet, and I assumed he must have had at least a pair of kings, if not three of them. He had been betting aggressively since before the flop, meaning he probably had something good in his hand.

  The seven of hearts came on the river, and I now had the flush. I withdrew from my flirting game for a moment to recall my poker lessons. I studied the cards on the table, and it only took me a few seconds to confirm that I had the highest possible hand – which, Ethan had informed me, is also known as "the nuts." And it wasn't until this very moment that I fully understood the meaning behind the nickname, as it seemed to be exactly where I had a hold of Parker.

  He bet twenty dollars.

  Everyone after him folded and the action was on me. It was just the two of us now.

  I felt his eyes watching me with every move I made. He wanted to see if I was as good at poker as I was at tossing seductive glances to relative strangers. It would say a lot about how well I would "perform" later on in the evening, should it come to that.

  And by now I was growing fairly confident that it would.

  I can usually tell within ten minutes of interacting with a subject whether or not he will fail. It's all part of that men-reading superpower, I guess. Parker was as good as done. And he hadn't even been drinking yet. It was looking like Mr. Ireland's fatherly intuition was dead-on.

  Even though I knew I held the highest hand in the game, I pretended to contemplate my decision to call his bet. I pressed my lips together tightly, took another peek at my cards, and fidgeted with my chips.

  He watched me intently. Half hoping I would fold so he could feel some sense of conquest over me and half hoping I would call so he could continue to feel the exhilaration of playing these two simultaneous games at once. Although we both knew they had practically merged into one.

  I carefully measured out a perfect doubling of his bet and pushed it toward the center of the table.

  "I raise," I said, looking up and locking eyes with him. My stare had two meanings: (1) I'm not afraid of you, and (2) I'm not afraid of you.

  "Raise, make it forty," the dealer confirmed.

  Parker arched his eyebrows, studying me, taking me in, using this unique moment to stare me up and down as if he were only contemplating my bold poker move.

  We both knew he was not.

  He took his eyes off me long enough to check his two cards and then briefly scan the five cards laid out on the table. Then it was back to studying me.

  "Either you made a flush on the river or you've been holding out on me," he said.

  I ran my fingers along the side of my chip stack. "I've definitely been holding out," I confirmed with a raw honesty in my tone. "But I'm tired of waiting."

  The seven other players observed us. Eyes darting back and forth from Parker to me, then back to Parker. They could sense the sexual tension in the air, feeding off of a mutual love of the game and a mutual thrill of the hunt.

  Tonight I was the perfect match for Parker Colman.

  He looked down at his chips. "Well, you're not the only one," he said, pushing another twenty dollars out in front of him. "I re-raise."

  "Re-raise, make it sixty," the dealer announced.

  It was like having our own personal referee of the game, the dealer's only purpose being to make sure we each knew the rules, we each knew the stakes, and neither one of us got hurt in the process...well, at least not physically.

  Little did the dealer know he was chaperoning the exchange of much higher stakes than just sixty dollars.

  Parker's move was exactly what I had anticipated. He read my earlier hesitation and interpreted it as fear. Fear that my hand might not be good enough. This was, of course, exactly how I wanted him to interpret it.

  Now, without any hesitation, I immediately pushed all my chips into the center of the table. "All in," I declared.

  "Re-raise. Make it three hundred," the dealer broadcasted after counting my chips.

  Re-raise, make it your fiancé, I thought.

  Parker scrutinized me. As did the rest of the table. Who was this girl? She sits down looking relatively clueless in her tight jeans and revealing top, and in only twenty minutes she's managed to get a pot up to nearly six hundred dollars.

  I kept a straight face, only revealing a very small, select portion of my intentions. Just enough to keep things interesting.

  By this time two of Parker's buddies had appeared from a nearby table and were standing behind him, observing the action.

  I was sure he had the three kings. If not, he would have folded. Especially with the flush possibility on the board. Which means he'd had me beat until the last card fell.

  Three kings is a very difficult hand to fold, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't. And I was certain that by the end of the night he would wish he had.

  Parker called my raise and pushed a large stack of chips into the middle. The dealer instructed us to flip over our cards. The look on his face was one of pure horror. The only hand that could have beaten him was staring back from my side of the table. I couldn't help but silently observe the interesting foreshadowing of the situation.

  "She pulled the heart on the fucking river!" he groaned to one of his friends.

  I smiled as the dealer pushed me the large pile of chips. "Sorry, that's just the nature of the game," I replied, half sympathetically, half gloating. It was exactly the combination he would respond to.

  He sucked up his manly pride, and in a sincere voice and a very sportsmanlike manner, offered up a courteous, "Good hand."

  "Thanks," I replied, as I attempted to stack up all my newly earned chips.

  I pretended not to notice as Parker and his friends made a joint decision to call it a night at the poker tables and move on to a club. I strained my ears to hear where they were planning to go, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch a location.

  "Well, it's been nice playing with you," he said in the general direction of the table, but more specifically to me.

  There were a few murmurs from the other players, reciprocating the sentiment, and I looked up and said, "Yes, a definite pleasure."

  Before leaving, he turned back around, as if he were going to say something else, but all that came out was, "Maybe I'll see you around."

  I smiled. "Maybe you will."

  And he would.

  AS SOON as the boys were out of sight, I scrambled to throw my

  chips into a rack, grab my stuff, and make my way to the cashier.

  I cashed out with exactly $650 more than I had started with.

  As I stuffed the bills into my bag and headed toward the front entrance of the casino, I made a mental note to start taking on more assignments where I got to make an extra 650 bucks on the side. Not a bad arrangement at all.

  I hid myself from view as I watched Parker and his ten or so friends hop into a consecutive series of taxis in front of the hotel. I would have to find out their destination before I went upstairs and changed into my "clubbing" uniform.

  After the last cab pulled away from the curb, I walked outside and approached the taxi attendant. "Can you tell me where those guys went?" I asked, slipping a hundred out of my bag and into his hand.

  He looked down at it, his reaction implying that this kind of request was not uncommon around here. "The Palms," he replied calmly and resourcefully, as if I had only asked him where the nearest ATM was.

  "And what's the name of the club there?"

  He looked down at my bag, the very direction from which his hundred-dollar bill had just emerged.

  I groaned. "I don't think so," I said, turning on my heels and heading back toward the front door. I was quite certain the concierge would be happy to tell me the name of the club inside the Palms Hotel... for free.

  "The nightclub Rain is there," he called after me.

  I turned back around. "Thank you for your h
elp."

  "I get off at midnight. Can I look for you there later?" he asked with a flirtatious raise of his eyebrows.

  "I don't think so," I said again, before returning to the casino.

  An hour later I reemerged into the cool desert-night air in a slinky turquoise dress, a pair of "intention to fuck" heels, and an eye makeup job worthy of a Vogue photo shoot. (Mostly because I copied it from one.)

  "Palms Casino?" the taxi attendant asked me with a smart-ass inflection and a sly smirk.

  "Yes, thank you," I said flippantly, as if our previous encounter had never taken place.

  He put me into the next cab and I was off, ready to accidentally bump into Parker Colman for the second time this evening.

  TONIGHT, AS Ashlyn, I was supposedly partying with some friends at Club Rain in the Palms Casino. The rest of my party had already decided to hit the dance floor, but I was much more in the mood for a drink.

  So I proceeded to squeeze by a group of thirty-something guys on my quest to reach the bar. Among them was a tall brown-haired man, masculine, good looking, obviously there to celebrate his bachelor party because he was wearing several Mardi Gras beads around his neck and a giant leopard-skin pimp hat on his head.

  As I pushed myself past the group, a sense of recognition flashed over the man's face.

  "Hey, I know you," he said.

  He had obviously been drinking. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. For some reason, this seemed to make me smile.

  The recognition transferred across the small space between us and onto my face as well.

  "Yes, you do. What a coincidence. Twice in one night. Lucky me."

  "No, lucky me," he insisted. He turned to his buddies. "Look, it's the girl who took all my money."

  A few of his friends recognized me immediately and whispered something inaudible into the bachelor's ear.

  "I'm Parker." He extended his hand.

  I shook it firmly, then allowed my palm to slide seductively away from his as I retracted it. "Ashlyn."

  "Pretty name. Can I buy you a drink?" he offered.

  "I don't know. Can you, after I took all your money?"

  He laughed. "Well, technically you should be buying me a drink. But that would be so un-chivalrous of me. So I guess I'm going to have to manage."

  "Jack and Coke," I replied with a smile, clearly intrigued by his good looks and gentlemanly manners. And I made no effort to hide it.

  "Hey, that's what I'm drinking!" he said, holding up his half-empty glass. It certainly hadn't been his first.

  "You have good taste," I remarked.

  "Evidently, so do you."

  He was good at this. I was impressed.

  The bartender poured me a drink and I held my glass up next to his. "To Vegas?" I suggested.

  "To things happening in Vegas..." he insisted.

  ". . . and staying there."

  We toasted and I took a long gulp from my glass. The bachelor looked on, once again impressed by this mysterious and very attractive woman standing in front of him, practically oozing sex. But then again, this was Vegas. Everything oozes sex in Vegas.

  "Do you want to dance?" he asked me.

  There was the invite. That obligatory, necessary, all-powerful invitation.

  He had initiated. And now I could follow.

  Without saying a word, I slid my stylishly polished finger through one of his Mardi Gras beads and began to pull him toward the dance floor.

  As the groom-to-be followed closely behind me, he could feel his pulse escalating. His hand wanted to slide down my back and caress the shape of my hips. His mouth wanted to fall helplessly along the length of my neck, push my hair aside, and feel my skin under his lips. He could hear the voices of his friends growing distant, cheering him on as if he were leaving to go into battle. He could feel himself getting hard with anticipation...

  And then his body jerked upright. Something snapped his attention back to the room, the music, the lights. The memory of something waiting for him back at home. Someone counting on him to keep his word.

  He bargained with his inner voice.

  It's just a dance, he told himself. And this is my bachelor party.

  IF A subject has been drinking, it makes my job easier. Not only in the obvious way, in which alcohol makes people less inhibited, more sexual, more willing to stray, but also in the unobvious way, in which I can be less cautious. Men under the influence of alcohol are less suspicious by nature. They don't notice coincidences. They don't hear slipups. They simply enjoy their state of inhibition.

  Although Ashlyn's personality tonight was still very well defined and premeditated, I felt myself relax on the dance floor. I knew I had little to worry about. There was no doubt that this night would end up in Parker Colman's hotel room. The inspection was as good as failed.

  The music was loud and sensual. The pressure of his hands on my body intensified as the song continued. His touch started off soft, a faint exploration of my exterior silhouette, and then little by little, it pressed into me. Harder, more forceful, like he was massaging sexual tension right into my muscles. His fingers wrapped around my waist and pulled me toward him. His body thrust against mine and I could feel his chest muscles. His pecs were strong and defined. As if separate from my body, I watched my hands reach up and grab them. Knead them.

  The music began to pulse through my veins. Louder and louder, until I felt like it had become a part of me. Controlling my movements, steering my every step.

  His powerful hands spun me around and landed just above my stomach. He pressed my back into him. His fingers ran up and down the sides of my waist, just barely escaping the curves of my breasts and lingering just long enough on my hipbones to know that the underwear I was wearing didn't cover much.

  As he brushed my hair away and began to tenderly kiss the back of my neck I felt something I hadn't felt in a very long time... something I never felt on an assignment. A tingling between my legs.

  I closed my eyes, letting the touch of his lips send shivers up and down my back and through my entire body.

  He aggressively turned me around again to face him and his lips went straight for mine.

  I didn't fight it. Not that I ever did. But this time something was different. I didn't want to fight it. That natural reaction to push him away that I have to fight with every single assignment was nowhere to be felt.

  His kiss was strong, masculine, tasting of whiskey and Coke. It made my knees want to buckle.

  What the hell is wrong with me? I thought. Could it be the alcohol?

  That was ridiculous. On past assignments I had drunk three times as much as I had tonight and could have passed a roadside sobriety test with flying colors. No. There was something else happening here. Something inexplicable. And definitely terrifying.

  There's certainly no rulebook for this job. At least not a published one. But if there were this would be on page one as the biggest misdemeanor of them all. The Golden Rule of fidelity inspections. As far as he's concerned you can't get enough of him and all the scandalous things he's doing to you. As far as you're concerned...you might as well be numb from the forehead down. You don't feel, you don't get involved, and you certainly don't enjoy.

  But there was something about Parker's hands and his mouth. They were intoxicating. My tolerance level was supposed to be off the charts, for alcohol and this kind of thing. But tonight I felt like an absolute lightweight. Getting drunk off of one dance. One touch. One amazing kiss.

  "Let's get out of here," he whispered in my ear.

  I nodded. I didn't even have to say anything. And I was afraid that if I did, it would be something I would regret. And possibly something that might get me fired and my reputation as an honest professional destroyed.

  Don't lead, just follow, I reminded myself. But one question kept repeating in my mind: If I enjoy it, does it still count?

  He pulled me in front of him and walked close behind me, his arms wrapped around my body, his legs walki
ng in unison with mine, his lips still continuing to send shivers down my back and into my toes.

  I tried desperately to stay in character. Ashlyn is a pro at this. Ashlyn is not a stranger to leaving bars with random men. Ashlyn would giggle at his advances.

  So I did.

  "You smell incredible," he said, stopping his lips long enough to inhale my neck.

  "What about your friends?" I asked, glancing in the direction of the bar where we had begun this runaway evening.

  "They'll be fine," he assured me. "It's my bachelor party."

  And it was those words that finally sobered me up. Instantly. Not because I was reminded that he was engaged to someone else and I was definitely crossing the line for being even remotely turned on by his touch, but because of what the words implied. "It's my bachelor party." My friends expect this of me. I would have cheated with anyone. You just happened to be there . . . twice.

  "Are you okay with that?" he asked, most likely feeling my shoulders suddenly stiffen.

  I immediately relaxed my body and slipped right back into character. I could slowly feel Ashlyn once again slide into the driver's seat. I ran one finger over his cheek and down the underside of his chin. "Of course. You're not married yet, are you?"

  The numbness returned to my legs, then my hips, followed by my stomach, my arms, and my breasts. As we exited the front of the Palms Hotel, he turned me toward him and kissed my lips. Yep, those were numb again, too.

  Everything was back to normal. Or so I hoped.

  PARKER PLAYFULLY tossed me down onto the bed and practically fell on top of me. I moaned with pleasure as his hands massaged my thighs from the outside of my dress.

  I braced myself for what was coming next. More kissing, more touching, more fake moans coming from my lips. But it didn't come. None of it. Without warning, his hands suddenly fell limp alongside my legs, and then eventually withdrew.

  I wasn't sure what had happened. I searched his face for a clue. He was quiet, pensive, contemplative. He looked me in the eye, preparing to say something. Something important.