The Christmas Gamble

by Sienna Ciles

  “Maybe I’ll go into playing poker professionally,” Dean said.

  I glanced at him sharply even as the dealer put our cards out. “Why is that?”

  Dean shrugged. “My business affairs don’t really amount to full-time work, and I have plenty of money to bankroll myself. I keep the hours I want anyway, and I like to travel, so it might be fun to travel to actually do something specific.”

  “Must be nice,” I said enviously. “What kind of businessman doesn’t work full-time?” I hit on my cards and came out at nineteen. Dean stayed, and the dealer flipped to reveal that Dean had won, with twenty. He was ahead of me by one, once more.

  “I’m one of those guys who mostly just attends the odd board meeting,” Dean said with a shrug. “I’m an investor more than anything else. I’ve got about eight billion at my disposal, and I like to play with it—numbers fascinate me—but I don’t really like the time demands of a full-time company ownership, or anything like that.”

  I’d figured out that Dean was a really wealthy guy but the fact that he was a billionaire was a bit staggering still. Was I out of my mind? Was there something wrong with the games I was playing with him? I took a deep breath. The dealer was putting down our next hand, and I needed to make my bet.

  Chapter Ten

  Dean

  I probably should have figured that Kayla was more experienced than the average blackjack player in our first round of games but finding out that she was professional at it was still interesting to me. The crowd that had gathered around us was getting more into the game as it wore on, and most of them had managed to find out what the stakes were.

  Game twelve went to Kayla, and we were even once more. There was no way for us to come out completely even at the end of fifteen hands of blackjack but I wanted to make sure that I won.

  “So, why did you say you were traveling again? I know you mentioned it before but is it for business?” I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the reason was that Kayla had been stranded at the airport, just that she had been, and trapped in Omaha like the rest of us trying to travel across the country for the holidays.

  “No, I was going to see my family,” Kayla said absently, as she tossed her chips into the pot.

  “That’s a shame, that you’re going to miss out on that,” I told her, adding my own chips in. I caught a fleeting little look on her face and then she was focused completely on the cards the dealer gave each of us.

  “There are worse things,” Kayla said, taking a sip of her cosmo and then a sip of her water.

  “I mean, I guess when you put it like that,” I agreed. Again, there was that stern little look flitting across her face, and I wondered what I’d said. She lost the hand, and I couldn’t help making the comment that jumped into my mind at the situation. “Thirteen is apparently my lucky number—too bad it isn’t yours.”

  “Ha-ha, thirteen, right,” Kayla said, sounding a little sour. I still wanted to know what I had said to put her in such a bad mood. Part of me was glad, since it would make it more likely for me to win the right to share the room with her for the next night or two. Another part of me felt like shit for poking at what was obviously a sore spot in her life.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” I said.

  The dealer collected the cards, noted our points on his pad, and got ready to deal them again.

  “Well, laugh while you can,” Kayla said, lightening up a bit, and I was relieved. “I’m going to win this next hand, and then the one after it.”

  I chuckled at that. “And what if you don’t?”

  Kayla shrugged off my question and the dealer put the cards down in front of us. I had a hard fourteen, and I saw that Kayla had a king facing up. That meant that she had at least ten. I thought about it and tried to do a quick-and-dirty calculation of the odds in my mind. Fourteen was tricky. The people gathered around us didn’t make it easier, and I wondered how it was that Kayla wasn’t getting unnerved by them. She had been shaken by my offhand comment but the crowd wasn’t a big deal to her.

  I decided to hit, and the dealer pulled a ten. Bust. So, once again we were dead even, and there was only one hand left; one of us was going to win. At least on her end, if she loses, it’s not like she’s stranded with nowhere to go.

  “If I don’t, then I guess we’re sharing that room for a couple of nights,” Kayla said, smiling at me slightly. There was something in her eyes, and something in the way that she responded to me, that made it feel like the most important thing in the world was for me to win the final hand. I needed to spend more time with her.

  The dealer shuffled the deck a couple of times through the machine, and I could tell he was working the crowd, building the suspense. I wasn’t sure how much the casino was willing to let us occupy one of their tables but at least we were keeping some folks captivated, which if nothing else, had probably translated to some liquor sales for the casino and bar. Kayla was doing her best not to give me anything I could put my finger on as definitely being interest but I couldn’t help but feel the spark nonetheless. There was something there, I knew there was. I needed to see where that might lead.

  Finally. the dealer was ready for the last hand, and Kayla and I tossed our bets in. I glanced from her to the dealer, from the dealer to the little crowd gathered around us, and then down at the table as the cards came out. Kayla had a six showing, and I had a soft thirteen: an ace and a two. It was an easy call: I had to hit. I gestured to the dealer and got an eight. Exactly twenty-one. Meanwhile, Kayla had hit as well, and got the jack of hearts.

  “Son of a bitch,” Kayla muttered. She flipped her hidden card over. It was an eight. I’d won the hand—she’d busted.

  “That settles it then,” I said, looking from Kayla to the dealer.

  The dealer nodded.

  “Yeah, you won.” Kayla reached into her pocket and took out the key card to the room. “I guess you should have this back.”

  “Well, we’ll just need two,” I countered. “After all, my win was supposed to be for you and me to share the room.”

  “It’s still your key card, ultimately,” Kayla said firmly. “And you won it back fair and square.”

  I stood up and gathered up my pot of chips and put the key card in my pocket. If nothing else had solidified my desire to spend more time with Kayla, it was the fact that she’d given up the bet without a single argument. She’d accepted her defeat gracefully.

  “Let’s go get you your own key card,” I suggested, giving her a quick smile. “Neither of us should just be trapped in that room while we’re stuck in the city.” Kayla gave me an odd little look but stood up. I settled up with the dealer and led her away from the table as people started to filter away from it, going on in their excitement to other tables or to take on the one we’d just left, to do some gambling of their own.

  We went to the front desk and I stepped up to the person in charge of it. The guy who had checked me in wasn’t there anymore but the woman seated at the desk wasn’t under siege. Everyone who had wanted to try and stay in the hotel for the night had come and gone. “Hey, I was just wondering if I could get an extra key card for my room,” I told her, taking the one I already had out of my pocket and laying it down on the top of the desk. “I think the dealer in the casino may have explained the situation with the odd check-in.”

  The woman, whose name tag said Wendy, scanned my card into the computer system and looked at her screen for a moment. “So, I take it there will now be two people in the room, instead of just one?”

  “I’m assuming there’s no issue with that, provided you’ve got the details for both of us,” I said.

  “No issue at all,” Wendy told me. “We’re happy to accommodate you, Mr. Pearson.”

  I glanced at Kayla and she took a wallet out, slipping her ID out of one of the pockets to hand it over if needed.

  It wasn’t too much trouble at all for Wendy to add Kayla to my room for the night, and since it was a two-bed suite, it wasn’t even mu
ch of an exception to make. In a matter of moments, we both had key cards to access the room, and I thought Kayla looked a little more at ease than she had in the casino.

  We stepped onto the elevator and I swiped my card to verify we were entitled to the level my suite was on. I hadn’t even had a chance to look at it yet but Kayla had. “So, since you’ve already seen it, how’s our room for the night?”

  “It’s got a lot of space,” Kayla said. “It’s bigger than my apartment. I think the main bedroom is bigger than my living room.”

  I chuckled, almost to myself. The fact that the suite had two separated bedrooms opened up an important question. “How are we going to decide who gets which bedroom?”

  Kayla looked at me through her pretty, long eyelashes and I couldn’t help but compare her with the last woman I’d been involved with—the one I’d almost ended up marrying, before I’d realized how miserable my life would be with her. Kayla was definitely prettier, in a striking, lovely way, and I had seen enough of her character in the past couple of hours to think that I wouldn’t even have to worry about her badgering me to buy her things. She was someone who wanted to earn the money she had, even if she earned it via gambling.

  “I think we can agree that it was your room first, so you should have the master bedroom,” Kayla said.

  I shook my head. “It’s swapped hands twice now. Besides, the wager was to share the room—it wasn’t that I’d have it and you’d get a bed.” I thought about it for a moment. I was still buzzing from the stimulation of the hands we’d played in the casino. “We could play for it,” I pointed out.

  “Play for it?” Kayla raised an eyebrow.

  “Something other than blackjack,” I suggested. “That way we’re on an equal playing field.”

  “Do you really want to go back down to the casino right now?” Kayla seemed almost surprised at that possibility.

  “No, I was thinking we could have room service send us up a deck. Does the suite have a table?”

  Kayla considered that question for a moment. “There’s a coffee table in the main area that might work. But I don’t want any more alcohol. In case you were going to suggest that.”

  I grinned. “I wasn’t but thanks for eliminating that possibility. Maybe we could order some regular food up to the room, some snacks and maybe something hot to drink.” It sounded cozy to me, and I gave myself a little mental warning against getting too invested in this woman too soon. She may seem different from Amber but that didn’t mean she didn’t have other traits that I would dislike just as much. Don’t let a pretty face, a feisty attitude, and curves that won’t quit knock you out of your senses, Dean.

  “That sounds nice,” Kayla said mildly. She looked at me for a long moment. “You know, I should have figured you’d be a billionaire or something like that, the way you were throwing money around downstairs.”

  I laughed. “You didn’t realize it until I’d told you?”

  Kayla shrugged. “I mean, I figured you were well off, just not quite that well off.”

  “Does that change anything?” I hated how important that question was in my mind.

  Kayla tilted her head from one side to the other briefly, and the elevator chimed to announce our arrival on our floor. “It means I don’t feel as guilty about winning the room off of you the first round.”

  I snorted. “You shouldn’t have felt guilty in the first place. You won it fair and square.”

  “And I’ll win the master bedroom fair and square, too,” Kayla said, even as we stepped out of the elevator and into the hall leading to our shared room. I let her go ahead of me, thinking to myself that the night was becoming more interesting by the moment.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kayla

  The enormous suite wasn’t as much of a shock the second time around but the fact that Dean was in the room with me gave me a weird, tingly feeling from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes, something I hadn’t felt in a long time, even with Brandon. It wasn’t just the prospect of another competition against him that made me feel that way but something else; a kind of excitement and thrill that made me feel like I might actually glow in the dark.

  “So, are we going to play, or what?” he asked.

  I kicked off my shoes next to the entryway and followed Dean into the living room.

  “I guess so,” I said. “But we should figure out what game we’re going to play.”

  Dean picked up the phone and, as I moved past the enormous couch, he handed me a room service menu. “Figure out what sounds good and I’ll join you in it.”

  The room service menu was almost a small book, a good fifty pages including massage services, concierge, personal styling services, and a dozen things I couldn’t even imagine ever needing.

  “Why don’t we play Texas Hold’em, instead of blackjack?” I finally found the menu for food and drinks, which took up fifteen of the fifty pages, and started looking it over. “That way I don’t have any kind of edge.”

  Dean shrugged, and I could see the twinkle in his bright eyes. “If it makes you feel better, then Hold’em it is,” he said. “What should we have to eat?”

  “They’ve got some good platters,” I told him, pointing them out on the menu. We ended up ordering a platter of different chips and dips—crab and artichoke, onion dip, and smoked fish dip—along with a platter of medium-hot wings, and a grilled vegetable platter. After a moment’s discussion. we both agreed to get a pot of coffee and a pot of tea as well, and of course, the deck of playing cards.

  “So, how are we going to score this competition? I mean, I’m assuming it’s not just going to be one hand that wins it,” Dean said after finishing up placing the order.

  “Good point,” I agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

  “We still have our chips from downstairs,” Dean pointed out. “We could use those.”

  “But you’ve got a head start of three hundred dollars, that way,” I countered.

  “Why don’t we start with chips and then make it interesting?” Dean looked me up and down quickly, and I felt that little jolt again.

  “Are you suggesting that we play strip poker to decide who gets the master bedroom?” I felt a little rush of heat straight through my body, from my breasts to my hips, and my cheeks warmed up. too.

  “I was just going to say make it interesting somehow, maybe gamble about intimate details or something,” Dean said, a little half-smile curving his lips. “But if you want to make it that interesting, I’m game.”

  The cards and food arrived, and we let the hotel clerk set things up around the coffee table for us. I almost regretted taking off my shoes—they’d be a valuable bolster between me and nudity later on—but Dean took off his own shoes and his jacket, which made us roughly equal.

  “Okay, so we’ll set the blinds at five dollars and fifteen, the buy-in is twenty-five,” I said, pouring myself a glass of water and a cup of coffee as Dean fixed himself a plate.

  “And we’re taking turns dealing, right? Don’t want either of us to have the chance to cheat,” Dean said.

  “First of all: I wouldn’t cheat,” I said. “Second of all, both of us dealing just means that we both get equal chances to cheat.”

  Dean laughed, and I fixed myself a plate of different foods from the platters.

  The game started out tame enough, both of us feeling each other out for a couple of rounds. We’d both played Hold’em before, so it wasn’t like either of us needed to learn the rules but it wasn’t my specialty.

  “Have you ever thought about spreading out your tournaments? You seem to be pretty decent at this game, too,” Dean commented as he shuffled the deck between games and I took the opportunity to eat some grilled asparagus and a chicken wing.

  “I’ve thought about it but there’s a lot of competition on the Hold’em circuit,” I said. “Blackjack isn’t as tough.”

  Dean raised an eyebrow at that. “Huh, I never would have guessed. Of course, I didn’t really know the
re was a way to compete at blackjack professionally.”

  He dealt the cards, and I wiped my fingers clean. I was starting to sober up from the drinks I’d had in the casino but the little thrill of excitement wasn’t leaving me.

  The game went back and forth, with me winning enough of Dean’s chips for him to propose starting to undress, one item at a time, and then him winning chips back until I was down to my last hundred. Since we kept raising the blinds, it wasn’t going to work unless I also started stripping down. I took off my socks, and then my jeans, since my sweater was long enough to cover my butt.

  While we played, my opinion of Dean kept shifting. He was obviously competitive like I was but he also seemed to be genuinely interested in me, asking questions about my work and my life. I avoided mentioning anything about Brandon—I told myself that I’d be damned if he would screw up my fun anymore than he already had—and stuck with the facts about my office job, about the places I’d gone to for tournaments.

  “You know, it occurs to me that I don’t think you told me where you were headed,” I said as I shuffled up the cards for our tenth hand.

  “Montauk,” Dean replied. “I’ve got a house out there, and I’d been planning on spending the holidays with a few friends but they all bailed on me.”

  “It seems kind of lonely to spend the holiday on your own,” I said, reflecting that that would be the only thing more depressing than spending the holiday with my parents asking me if I couldn’t work anything out with Brandon, or if I had any other prospects for finding a long-term relationship.

  “I’ve spent most of my holidays on my own, since my parents died a few years ago,” Dean said with a shrug.

  We tossed in our buy-in bids, and I dealt the first cards.

  “A billionaire like you doesn’t have some kind of trophy wife to stay with for the holidays?” I raised an eyebrow. Real subtle, Kayla. I realized that I hadn’t wanted him to have a wife, or even a girlfriend.