It took a couple rounds, but I caught it. The dealer seemed to lose a bit of his light-fingered grace when he gathered the cards back up, stacking them back into a deck to be reshuffled. That was intentional, I realized; it hid the fact that sometimes, not all the cards made it back to his hands! The two winning players were palming a card, giving them more options to make the best hand.
Clever. But I could beat them at their own game. Now that I knew what I was watching for, I realized that the two players weren't actually that skilled at palming their cards. If I could catch them, they hopefully wouldn't be able to do the same to me.
On my next hand, I folded – but not before palming a jack. I slipped the card halfway up my sleeve, far enough to escape notice but not so far that I couldn't retrieve it with a slight flick of my wrist. "Looks like I'm going to have to start playing more aggressively," I commented as I waited for the next round.
The dealer, to whom I'd mentally bestowed the nickname Ferret, snickered a little. The hustler on his left, a big guy with a shaved, shiny head that I silently referred to as Cueball, also laughed.
"No shit," he said in a deep voice. "Better do it soon."
On my next hand, I picked up the cards to see a pair of jacks and a pair of threes. Perfect. I swapped the jack in my sleeve for the last card – an ace, how convenient, worth holding onto that – and put on a grin of slightly flaky fake confidence.
"All in," I announced, pushing my chips towards the center.
Of course, the others all suspected a bluff, and both the hustlers called me. I ended up with the top hand – full house beats out two pair – and tripled up my stack.
Behind me, I heard Marcus let out a little cheer. I turned and glared back at him, trying to silently order him to keep his mouth shut. Miraculously, I think he got the message.
No, wait. Scratch that. I looked up over Ferret's shoulder, and I realized that Marcus wasn't keeping quiet because he didn't want to give away how much he cared about this game. Instead, his eyes – and, a second later, the eyes of just about every other red-blooded male in the room – had locked onto the two newest arrivals in the back room area.
Two girls – no, women, I quickly corrected myself. These were definitely women. One of them was decently tall, with olive colored skin and dusky brown eyes, but she barely registered on my internal scale.
Instead, I found myself fixated on the one in front, a short little firecracker with strawberry blonde hair. Curves in all the right places – really, a great body, I found myself thinking admiringly. And that skin-tight little mini-dress that she'd managed to fit herself into did a fabulous job of showing off every single asset that she owned. If she bent over to pick up a pencil, half the men in here would probably spontaneously ruin their pants.
My eyes moved up to her face. Also cute, very innocent. Rounded cheeks gave her a softness that looked feminine and delicate. A cute little upturned pug nose kept her from perhaps winning any beauty contents, but there was something enchanting about her wide lips and her big, blue eyes. It was a combination of features that, on their own, wouldn't look especially pretty. But together, on her face, they made her dazzling.
Maybe it had just been a while for me, too long since I'd last really gone after a woman, but she looked perfect in all the right ways. If I didn't need to focus on winning my idiot best friend's money back, I'd be up and next to her, trying to buy her a drink while doing my best not to stick a foot in my own mouth.
But then her eyes panned over to me, and I froze.
I'd thought that the alert inside my head couldn't grow any louder – but when I saw into her eyes, it screamed almost loud enough to pierce my damn skull. Every single nerve in my body lit up, my fingers trembling slightly as my confused heart pumped adrenaline through my veins.
This girl was pure trouble, concentrated and distilled down into a concoction as dangerous as dynamite. Innocent face, young appearance, sexy body – it was all flash and mirrors, distractions from the hungry hustler lurking beneath the surface.
As the other guys in the room gaped at the two new arrivals, their balls still keeping their brains away from the controls, the blonde looked around the room. Her eyes swept over the other players, pausing briefly on Cueball and the other hustler, a dark and nondescript man who hadn't done or said anything to earn himself a nickname yet.
And then those eyes fell on me.
And she smiled.
I felt a bit like a mouse, staring up into the face of a cobra. I'm so dead. I know it. My body just hasn't quite stopped twitching yet.
Chapter Six
RUBY
*
As soon as I walked into that back room, I spotted my next target.
Just as I'd suspected, the back room had a poker game, a half a dozen guys lounging around a scratched-up poker table, piles of chips in front of them! And from the looks of some of the fellows, these weren't the kind of guys who really cared about making sure that they followed all of the rules.
My kind of people. The sort of people who, if they got hustled, wouldn't go crying to the police. They might try to break my legs or something, but I knew how to make a good exit when necessary.
I tracked my gaze around the table, looking at the men. It looked like there were definitely a couple of guys getting hustled here. I moved in, sizing up the targets.
The dealer was a skinny little guy, a bit like a half-drowned rat. He just blinked back at me, and I got the impression that he wouldn't even know what to do with a woman if she landed, willing (or, more likely, drunk off her ass) in his bed. The guy next to the dealer, a big man with a bald head, was more promising – but my eyes returned back to the first man I'd seen, the one sitting across from the dealer and staring at me as if I was the first woman he'd ever seen in his life.
I sized him up, and had to admit to myself, he wasn't bad looking, although definitely not my type. He had graceful, aristocratic features, the kind of guy who always just looked a bit like he deserved a punch in the face for acting so smug. He looked more like he belonged in an oil painting in some art museum, rather than sitting in this back room playing poker. Light brown hair that fell slightly untidily across a face with a strong, chiseled jaw, sporting some stubble. He looked like the kind of guy who had a great smile, the kind of smile that charmed women right out of their sundresses and into his bed.
Right now, however, he wasn't smiling. Made sense, I thought to myself when I looked down at the meager pile of chips in front of him. He wasn't doing too well at this game. I noticed that an African-American guy hovered behind him, barely glancing at me at all but instead watching his buddy's little stack of chips, as if it was on the verge of vanishing into thin air at any second.
The guys were still all staring at us. "Don't mind us," I called out, giving them a little wave and smile. "Keep playing – we just want to watch and cheer for our favorites!"
That seemed to break the spell for most of the men – except for Mister Aristocratic, whose eyes never left mine. Only when the dealer grunted and tossed his cards at him did he finally seem to snap out of his little trance and return his attention back down to the cards.
I moved around the board, watching the men play. The waitress, a rather haggard looking woman whose caked-on makeup couldn't hide the fine lines of wrinkles around her eyes, came over and took my order for a vodka cranberry, another for Kelsey.
"What are we doing here?" my best friend murmured to me as we watched the cards slide across the table, the men eyeballing each other over their hands.
"Meeting some new guys," I replied, equally quietly. "Come on, don't you want to get to know a guy who definitely has some money in his pocket to spend?"
Kelsey sighed, but I watched the game playing out with interest. I'd assumed that, because Mister Aristocratic was playing with the small stack, he'd be losing. But he kept his movements light and easy, not giving away any of the stress that he had to be feeling on the inside. And in just a few more rounds, he managed t
o practically double up his stack of chips! The other big winners at the table, Baldy and the drowned rat dealer in particular, didn't seem very happy about this.
As Mister Aristocratic reached forward to pull his newly won chips in towards him, I noticed the bulging of his arms. He had some muscle hiding in there, I observed. His frame might be slender, but he wasn't a weakling.
And after a few more rounds, I'd made up my mind. I wanted him.
"Wow," I purred, stepping forward and resting on my elbows beside Mister Aristocratic, tilting my head to look at him – and also giving him a nice view of my girls, bulging almost all the way out of my tight little dress. "You're good at this, aren't you?"
He glanced back at me, admirably managing to keep his eyes from dipping below my chin. "I'm alright," he let on, caution evident in his voice. "You play?"
I shrugged, fluttered my eyelashes at him as I put on an innocent little smile. "Only with my sorority sisters," I lied. I heard Kelsey make a little snorting noise into her drink, but decided that Mister Aristocratic probably hadn't heard it. "And that was just strip poker. I never seemed to do so well at it."
Somehow, this didn't provoke any real reaction in Mister Aristocratic besides a raised eyebrow. Really? Was he made of stone? Most men would be reduced down to drooling lumps by this point, picturing me in nothing but my underwear, throwing down a losing hand and shrugging as I reached for my bra straps!
"Ante up," the dealer interjected, and Mister Aristocratic turned his eyes away from me to glance at his cards. He only gave them a quick riffle with his fingers before switching his hand over to his chips, tossing a stack into the middle. Baldy growled, but matched the bet, as did the rather dull looking fellow on the dealer's other side.
I watched as Mister Aristocratic won this hand as well. He did have a bit of skill at this, I had to admit; I admired how he bluffed the other two big stacks into matching his bets, a little at a time to bleed them, before pushing a big raise that forced them to both fold and admit that they had nothing. He allowed himself a small smile, and then pulled in the chips.
Time to make a move, I thought to myself.
"This looks fun!" I announced brightly, naively. One of the guys who had been sitting next to Mister Aristocratic sighed and gave up, standing up with his few remaining chips and stomping off. I quickly dropped my butt down into the newly vacated seat, batting my eyes up at Mister Aristocratic. "Hey, what's your name?"
He looked back at me, still not rising to the bait of my flirting. "Dane," he answered shortly.
"Hi Dane, I'm Ruby," I greeted him, holding out my hand. He didn't shake it, so I lowered it after a moment. "Can I play with you guys?"
Again, Dane just frowned at me. "It's a game that you have to buy in for," he said, looking at me like he might regard a small child. "Do you have money to buy some chips?"
I tried leaning in towards him again. "Could you spot me a few chips?"
I saw him close his eyes for a moment, taking in a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, however, they were chips of ice, cold and without any sign of warmth in them. "Afraid not," he answered. "I'm still working on winning back my idiot friend's money, so I can't spare any of it."
I glanced back at the black guy standing behind Dane, who closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. That had to be the idiot friend. I saw Kelsey give the guy a curious look, moving a little closer. So, Dane hadn't been the one to lose all the money; he was in the process of winning it back. Interesting.
"Fine," I pouted. "I guess I'll just have to pay for myself, then."
And I pulled out the remaining wad of cash that I'd taken off of Austin Blair's wallet earlier that afternoon and dropped it on the table.
All of the men stared at the wad of money for a moment, a couple guys muttering under their breath. The dealer, however, just shrugged and took the money, sliding me a stack of chips. "If the girl wants to lose her daddy's money, she's free to do so," he said, and once again began shuffling the cards.
I happily collected my chips – and then proceeded to sit out for the next few hands, trying to get a feel for the table.
Quickly, I realized that the nondescript man on the dealer's left side, and Baldy on his right side, were somehow in cahoots. They seemed to trade off playing the aggressor, one of them backing off if the other started betting. If the two of them ended up being the last ones with cards, they didn't seem to care much about taking each other's money, but checked the rest of the round to move on.
Dane, sitting next to me, seemed to understand this. He bet against them both, not trying to play them against each other. And to my surprise, he seemed to keep on winning, steadily eating away from their stacks until he soon had more than both of them put together!
And now, I decided, it was time for me to act.
I started betting, first waiting only for times when I had a good hand. I didn't win every round against Dane, but I managed to build up my stack to a semi-respectable level, definitely bigger than I'd started.
"There we go!" I exclaimed happily, bouncing up and down in my seat as I won another hand. I glanced sidelong at the man to see if my bouncing was having its desired effect, but he kept his eyes stubbornly forward. He must be made of stone, if he could resist this! "This game isn't so hard, after all!"
Across the table, Baldy growled at me. Dane, however, just looked over at my stack, and then back at his own. I kept waiting for him to make some offer, raise the stakes, but he said nothing.
So I spoke up, instead.
"So, how about we raise the stakes? Make this game a bit more interesting?" I batted my eyelashes at Dane.
"I'm not taking off my clothes," he said, eliciting a laugh from a couple of the other men.
"That's too bad. That's what I had in mind." I pouted, sticking out my bottom lip – and also taking a deep breath to show off some other assets, as well. Every other man besides Dane went cross-eyed around the table as their imaginations roared into life. "But how about we find a compromise?"
Finally, his eyes focused on me. Strangely, Dane's expression didn't exactly look thrilled. Instead, he gave off the impression that he was about to knowingly put his foot into a bear trap, but didn't see any other way out of the situation. "What did you have in mind?" he asked.
In the back of my head, a little voice was starting to raise second thoughts, possible objections to this plan of action. Even though I'd won some money, it wasn't playing out quite like how I imagined in my head. Maybe it would be best for me to drop my plan, cut my losses and get out with the money already in front of me.
I ignored that voice. This was what I did – living on the edge, taking every risk that I could imagine! And, I added as my eyes returned to the pile of money sitting in front of Dane, if I could walk out of here with that much cash...
"How about this?" I asked him. "You and me, just against each other. If I win, I get to walk away with that stack of money in front of you."
From behind him, Dane's buddy started to speak up, leaning forward and protesting, but Dane held up his hand. His friend's mouth snapped shut, and although he glowered at me, he didn't say anything.
"And if I win?" Dane asked, looking intently at me. Yet still, I saw only the most muted flicker of lust in his eyes! Had this guy lost his dick in some sort of industrial accident or something?
"If you win, you get me." The words didn't sound quite as sexy as I intended, perhaps because he wasn't really showing much interest in me – although I didn't understand why. "To do whatever you want with." Still, I did my best, giving him another long look at my cleavage, running my tongue over my lips. Kelsey was probably practically melting behind me. "What do you say?"
He considered the offer for a moment, and finally, his eyes did run over my body. They tracked lazily from my toes up to my head, leaving me almost shivering, like he'd just dumped a bucket of ice water on me.
"Deal," he finally said, holding out his hand for me to shake.
I accepted it,
grinning wildly to myself. I had this sucker on the line. Now, I just needed to reel him in.
Chapter Seven
RUBY
*
I frowned across the table at Dane, ignoring the slight dizziness that had set in after my second vodka cranberry.
I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there was something not going right about my plan. Somewhere, somehow along the way, it had gone sideways.
I blinked, looked down at the stack of chips in front of me. How had it gotten so small, so quickly? At first, I'd been winning – I distinctly remembered raking in several pots of chips, grinning at Dane while shrugging. "No hard feelings," I'd said.
But he'd just looked back at me with that implacable face, making my hand itch to reach out and smack his stupid aristocratic features. "Game's not over," was all he said, and gestured at the little rat-like dealer to pass out the cards.
And somewhere along the way, without ever bothering to inform me, my luck turned against me.
That had to be it. Slowly but surely, I lost hand after hand, winning a few – but never enough to get back the chips that I kept on giving up. I watched as my decently sized stack of chips slowly dwindled away, until my little remaining pile looked absolutely pitiful compared to Dane's big, teetering towers of chips.
In fact, I thought bleakly to myself, it might be time for me to consider alternative methods of winning.
Unfortunately, my options there were rather bleak, as well. I'd already tried to distract Dane several times with my feminine wiles, leaning forward to give him a great view down my dress, talking about some of the "wild, crazy" adventures that I had back in my sorority days in college. Instead of bothering Dane, however, it just made Kelsey choke a bit more on her drink as she listened to the bare-faced lies. Dane, meanwhile, just seemed to grow even more wooden. When I finished my last story, I saw a muscle twitching in the bottom of his jaw, but he didn't give any other reaction of even having heard me.
Fool Me Once: A Bad Girl Romance Page 4