Double Down: The most precious pot (Hot Kings and Curvy Queens of Las Vegas Book 1)
Page 1
Double Down
Alice May Ball
T Z Z Publisher
Copyright © 2020 by Alice May Ball
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
She’s stacked and he’s ready to roll,
but a surprise turn sweeps them into the surge of a river of love.
Adam Doyle takes a suite in Vegas’ new PleasureDome Resort and Casino, and he’s ready to win big. He has no idea that the deal is about to start for the hand of his life, and it won’t play out in any of the poker rooms.
His first glimpse, and one heavenly scent of Grace, and Adam’s eyes are full of hot, pounding hearts. Casino rules forbid their relationship, but he’s ready to go all in from the start.
She has too much to lose, but Grace’s heart is the one pot that Adam needs to win.
Doubling down is the biggest risk that either of them can take…
“Poker is not a game in which the meek inherit the Earth.”
David Hayano
“Serious poker is no more about gambling than rock climbing is about taking risks.”
Al Alvarez
“People would be surprised to know how much I learned about prayer from playing poker.”
Mary Austin
Also by Alice May Ball
Bad Russians
Insta-love. Older men who know what they want.
Obsessed – Alexandr: Bad Russian Book 1
Possessive – Arkady: Bad Russian Book 2
Protector – Yevgeni: Bad Russian Book 3
Demands – Nikita: Bad Russian Book 4
Dominant – Mischa: Bad Russian Book 5
Powerful – Nicolai: Bad Russian Book 6
Driven – Dimitri: Bad Russian Book 7
Unstoppable – Leonid: Bad Russian Book 8
Urgent – Konstantin: Bad Russian Book 9
Jealous – Valentin: Bad Russian Book 10
Ruthless – Anatoly: Bad Russian Book 11
Brutal – Christof: Bad Russian Book 12
Perfect
Crime, action and adventure, with scorching hot romance.
Novel length romantic action and suspense.
Perfectly Bad – Pierce: Perfect Book 1
Perfect Damage – Luka: Perfect Book 2
Perfect Revenge – Hunter: Perfect Book 3
Perfect Burn – Jack: Perfect Book 4
Perfect Pain – Vassily: Perfect Book 5
Perfect Hurt – Maxim: Perfect Book 6
Hitmen
Courtney is a curvy girl who needs a lot of love
2 Hitmen
3 Hitmen
4 Hitmen
Hard and Hot and Fast
Fast-paced insta-love stories with curves, twists, and toe-curling thumps
Hard As Iron
Buck Moon Beach Party
His Royal Hugeness
Contents
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Check out…
Prologue
Adam
My brogues clip on the tiled floor, echoing the easy beat of my swagger. I strut toward the table with high stools by the rail. A barrel-chested guy in a blue drape coat with white piping decides to head for the same seat.
A grin spreads across his face, making his pink cheeks puff. This is the kind of a contest he’s used to winning. His size probably helps.
I break the rhythm of my step and my eyes narrow to focus briefly on a spot under the table. My nose twitches. Like I just saw something unpleasant under the seat. I tighten my shoulders and tilt them toward a lower, regular table in the center of the coffee bar. The big guy sees he can reach it before me. His glow of cozy smugness swells as he veers for the lower table. He makes a satisfied nod to me as he’s occupying it.
I tip him a wink as I slide the tray with my croissant and double espresso onto the table, and settle on my intended perch by the rail.
He lowers himself into the seat slowly, like he’s settling into mud. The back of his neck reddens. It’s even sweeter that he knows he’s been beaten and he can’t fake it. If I see him in a poker room, I’ll take his showy coat and the silver buckles off his shoes.
I love Vegas.
Poker tables are my hunting ground. I don’t come to play or gamble, I’m here to take money. A lot of money. If you’re at a table where I’m going to operate, you’d better be loaded and be ready to lose. There’s no hurry, just know that I’m going to take it all. You’re a gazelle. I’m a leopard.
I have to win. It’s who I am. My father didn’t win. He was weak. He gambled like a fool and he lost. He didn’t keep his family safe. Ever since, I’ve been driven like there’s a fire behind me.
That’s why I made poker my profession, and it’s why I’m practically unbeatable. If you sit at a table in a gaming room on the Strip, and you put your car on the line, or your house, I’ll take it from you. Although, the tables where I play, it’s more likely to be your helicopter or your yacht.
When you walk in the room and take a seat in the game, I’ll study you in a heartbeat. Before you’ve settled in your chair, you will tell me how to beat you. You’ll tell me when your legs tense up or relax under the table, or by squeezing your pinkie finger or tensing your toes.
You probably won’t even notice the order that you look at the other players. But I’ll notice. I’ll see who you’re comfortable looking at. Who you think you can stare down. Who your eyes slip away from. You’ll rub your fingernails, or suck your teeth. The light in your eyes will flash or cloud.
I’ll watch your face make tiny movements you won’t even be aware of, and I’ll read what you tell me with a little clench or an involuntary twitch. I’ll notice every scrape and shuffle of your feet, each tiny change in your eyes. Every time your lips slightly tighten, I’ll know what it means.
I’m here for one purpose and one purpose only. If you join a table where I’m at work, I’ll take everything you’ve got.
I mean to win big at the PleasureDome resort on my first night. Research and homework found me an unexpected crowd of rich players who are all due to fly in for this weekend. I want a fat stack to charge up my bankroll for the start. I’m kicking in with a big stake, but it’s an investment. My five hundred thousand should turn me around six and a half mil, minimum. Heavy hitters are due in tomorrow, I’m planning for a campaign that could take all weekend, but if I can do it faster, I won’t miss a shot.
Most of my stake money is from backers, and they’re looking for a five to one return, so that’s nearly two-and-a-half mil I will need to hand out off the top. The rest of what I can make, that’s all mine.
That’s why I’ll fatten up my stack for the start.
Chapter 1
Adam
I can calculate odds from the sports book, at t
he same time as I read the WSJ. This is how I get in shape for work. I need my mental math to run at a high enough pitch at the poker table so it can work the numbers without me having to think consciously. Probabilities and odds flash up automatically. That leaves me free to focus on the real game.
The game of poker has almost nothing to do with cards.
I know of one whale, a Russian money-launderer, Oleg Bresinsky, who’s coming to town this weekend for certain. I’ve studied him so hard I can almost taste his money. Some mega high-rollers and a couple of other whales will be around to pit their hands and their bankrolls against him.
So. For the whole of this weekend, ladies and gentlemen, I am resident at the PleasureDome resort, here for the sport of whale fishing.
A beautiful mess of hair and a swinging pair of hips rolls up to the coffee counter. My eyes don’t move. My face stays still. I’m giving nothing away. But it’s never been harder to keep my poker game face on. Adrenaline pulses into my veins and endorphins fire off like it’s New Year’s. One part of me moves. I can’t stop that.
Through the corner of my eye, all of my concentration swings onto the curvy beauty in a dealer’s uniform. I have to know who she is.
The girl barista knows her. They exchange greetings as she fills a go-cup for her. I don’t catch a name, but the barista is wishing her luck. A new job, or a promotion, maybe?
Now she’s leaving, turning to go. But…
oh, my God… !
Chapter 2
Grace
The first time in forever, when I looked in the mirror this morning, I thought, ‘Yup, you do look ready, girl.’
Today is such a milestone for me. I worked so hard for this. My first shift dealing in a poker room. I want to deal in the VIP rooms and, ultimately, the private games, but it’s taken me long enough to get to where I’m starting today.
My scuffed and matted little Honda looks like it’s parked in the wrong lot, huddled in the underground shadows between the low, neon acid green Lamborghini Diabolo and the bright sapphire Bentley convertible. Or at least she bumped into the wrong line.
Hustling her here, under the purple and gold desert sunset, into the echoing underground parking level of the PleasureDome Resort and Casino, she jumped and jerked like a mutt, yapping among the poised and polished sheen of the showy purebreds in the Las Vegas traffic.
Everybody on the Strip is ready for their close-up. Everything in Tinsel Town is swagger and strut, muscular symbols of loud, gleaming, air-punching wealth like a live, thumping, over the top rap video. Everybody except for us, the hard-working hushed croupiers and dealers. Every inch except for all of my inches.
Well, today, my shabby little Honda still looks like she should belong in front of a Target or a strip-mall, but I am looking my shiny, buffed and brushed beautiful best. Half an hour under the lights, pampered and lustered, turned and trimmed to at least a degree of perfection in the chair at Studio Carlos this morning was enough to make me look and feel ready. That’s more than twice as much time and money as I would usually think of spending.
My white shirt is crisp is immaculate. Open from the collar exactly the regulation amount, giving glimpses of my girls to their best advantage.
Today, at last, I get to deal in the poker rooms.
Stepping out of the elevator, I make brisk strides across the thick carpet and adjust to the lights and sounds and the windowless permadusk. Cocktail waitresses and busboys I know nod as they breeze by with trays and buckets held high, smiling as they weave in their perfectly inconspicuous drifts.
Stella at the espresso bar fills my go cup with my regular double latte. Her eyes widen in a way that I take as complimentary and she gives me a warm and encouraging smile.
“Looking good, Grace,” she tells me cheerily over her shoulder. I’d love to stop and sit with my coffee before the shift. Take a moment, savor the taste and the aroma. Drink in the view of the floor from the vantage of Stella’s coffee bar.
I love to synch myself gently into the soft bustle of the rhythms. Ease into the flow of the chimes and buzz, the burbling beeps of electronic melodies, the flashing slots and video poker. Watch the shushed deals on the low-stakes blackjack tables. But that involves being earlier.
Today, I’ve no time. I haven’t punched in yet and one of my old habits has shoved its cold nose into my new life already.
I make a tip on top of the price of the coffee and give Stella a breezy wave.
Then I see him. Steely eyes and strong hands. I stop with a thump mid step. The sight of him makes my stomach drop like a lake plunging into a canyon.
He looks like a movie-star playing a diamond smuggler. On the far side of the café, perched high at a table overlooking the sports book, his thumb presses the side of his cleft chin and his lip flexes as he spreads open a copy of the Wall Street Journal. Amused and skeptical detachment lifts his eyebrows. His heavy eyelids droop lazily.
He wears a charcoal silk suit like it’s a tee-shirt. The high collar of his perfect white shirt looks indecent, the way that it’s open and loose.
I would love to spend the rest of the afternoon studying his immaculate stubble, the slopes of his cheekbones and the watery blue pools of his eyes, but I’ve no time for that, either. He snaps the paper. Out of nowhere, I’m thinking, Ready, Player One? and a thrill trickles down my spine.
With an involuntary sigh, I step and turn, straight into Darrel, the busboy. His brightly colored plastic bucket jumps and spins high in the air, then turns over to slowly release a cascading shower of ice. The freezing water and glassy cubes spill like a waterfall, soaking and chilling me from the top of my head to the open toes of my red sandals.
I’m annoyed at myself when my first thought is that the Wall Street Journal guy will have seen me make an idiot of myself.
I’m double drenched. The worst of it is, he’s up, he’s out of his seat and he’s strutting this way. He barely even breaks stride as he collects cloths from Stella.
I can’t stand him seeing me like this. Not even from a distance. But now, of course, he’s bounding over. He’s here. Up close, I get the full effect of that amused glint in his eye. He’s helpful, blotting with the cloths on my clothes, I wish that the thick blue carpets would just open up and swallow me into the floor.
And I’m not even thinking about how this messes up my first day in the poker rooms. All that’s in my mind is how I’m making a complete idiot of myself in front of this total stranger.
Chapter 3
Adam
She wears a croupier’s uniform. That means she’s either a poker dealer or a roulette croupier. I hope it’s roulette. I wouldn’t want to have her dealing in any serious game I was playing. Distraction is almost never an issue for me, but it could be with her around.
“Let me buy you a drink,” I want to keep looking at her. Then I want to undress her.
“I’m just starting my shift,”
I cut across her with a smile, “Be late.”
“No. I can’t. Anyway. We don’t. You know. Fraternize.”
“Who’s ‘we’? More to the point, who are you?” She’s not wearing a name-tag. Infuriatingly.
“‘We,’ employees of the PleasureDome resort and casino. And I’m…” she’s about to tell me. I can almost hear the name forming up. But she knows. She understands the power she would give up.
“I’m late for my shift. It was really nice meeting you.” She means that. Even though she’s soaked and probably freezing.
“Likewise,” but she’s already turned and gone.
“Damn,” I only say it, murmur it under my breath.
Still, I’m shocked at myself, making the involuntary expression.
Chapter 4
Grace
When finally I get into the staff area to punch in for my shift, I’m at least relieved to see that I’m still four minutes early. Immediately I see Saul Dorfmann, pit boss of the section I’m going to be dealing today. He’s seen me, drenched and disheveled, a
nd he’s headed straight for me.
Saul has the reputation as the toughest pit boss in the house. When he tells me, “Grace, you’re drenched,” I think I’m going to die. “You need to collect a clean uniform. Go to the store cupboard and find the best fit you can. I’ll bring you some towels to the locker room.” Then, as he’s turning, “Move, Ms. Moretti.”
I always flinch at my surname. It wasn’t my father’s name or even my mom’s. Only the name of her husband at the time I was born. I like the look and the sound of the name, but not the associations. It never feels like it’s mine.
It’s probably the reason I always fix my name tag so it’s hard to read.
Saul hustles me along. “I don’t want you catching cold in this chilly conditioned air.”
Saul is at the locker room before I even get there.
“I asked Angie to stay on an extra half-hour in case you need the time to change. But here,” he’s handing me towels, “Get out of those wet things. Quick.”
The casino keeps clean spare uniforms for emergencies. If you need one for something that’s clearly the fault of a guest, no problem. If not, they dock the cleaning bill from your wages. And that’s not even the worst of it. They keep enough uniform pieces to make up a few full sets, but the pieces are all different sizes.