The Christmas Gamble

by Sienna Ciles

  Chapter Six

  Dean

  I was happy to get down to it with Kayla; it was more entertaining than hanging out on my own, and it was actually a bright spot in my trip back east to get home for the holidays. I was almost glad the jet had had to make an emergency landing. I sipped my drink and the dealer shuffled up the cards in the little machine he had, collecting them and looking at each of us.

  “All right, first bets, on the table,” he said, setting the deck down to get started.

  “Ladies first,” I said.

  Kayla gave me a sharp glance and restacked her chips, considering for a moment. “Let’s start pretty slow,” she said. “Five.”

  I tossed a five-dollar chip into the pot as well and the dealer laid down the cards: one face up to each of us, and then one face down. I had a ten facing up, and Kayla had a six. We both checked our face-down cards, and I had a three. Thirteen. Not lucky, and it could go either way, from what I knew about blackjack strategy. I’d played a few charity tournaments, and I’d always been good with numbers.

  “All right,” the dealer said. “Hit, stand, and any antes.”

  “You first,” I told her. “I want to give you as many chances as possible to win.”

  Kayla rolled her eyes. “I’ll stand.”

  “I’ll hit,” I told the dealer.

  “Any antes?” I shrugged.

  “I’ll throw in another five,” I said.

  Kayla glanced at her face-down card again. “I’ll take that action,” she said, sounding confident.

  We both tossed in another five-dollar chip each, and the dealer gave me another card: the seven of clubs. I was at twenty.

  “Hit or stand?” I waved that I would stand. “Okay, cards up,” the dealer said.

  I flipped my face-down card, and Kayla did hers: she was at seventeen, and I was at twenty, so I won the round. I collected the chips in the pool, and took a glance at Kayla. “Not a promising start to you winning the room,” I said jokingly.

  Kayla’s green eyes seemed almost like they darkened, and I saw the color rise up in her cheeks, almost matching her hair for a moment. “It’s the first hand, and it was only ten dollars,” she said tightly. It was actually kind of cute, seeing her get flustered like that.

  “We can make it more interesting,” I pointed out. “Start at twenty?”

  Kayla shrugged. “Twenty is good.”

  The dealer called for our opening bets, and we both threw in twenty dollars in chips. He shuffled the cards in the machine, dealt one face-up to each of us: a five for me and a queen for her. My face-down card came next, and it was the jack of hearts. Fifteen. I stood, Kayla hit, and she busted, for me to win again.

  “You must have played this before,” I said. “No beginner’s luck for you.”

  Kayla rolled her eyes but in spite of the irritation I could see in the bright green and the pink in her cheeks, she was smiling. “Beginner’s luck is a myth. Anyone can get a couple of bad hands,” she pointed out.

  “True, but if you lose much more, I’m going to start feeling bad for taking your money,” I told her.

  She managed to win the next hand, at the same twenty-dollar bids, and that was enough to keep me going. She sipped her water, and I finished up my drink, and the waitress came back to the table at our fourth hand, asking if we wanted anything. I ordered another martini for Kayla before she could argue, and another seven-and-seven for myself.

  “Getting me drunk isn’t going to make you more likely to keep winning,” Kayla told me tartly.

  “Well, being sober wasn’t helping you that much, either,” I countered.

  I won the fourth hand, and then the fifth, but Kayla started to get this look on her face that I’d seen on more than one woman before: the look that she was going to prove that she could do what she’d set out to do.

  We went back and forth: I’d win a hand or two, get cocky, and then Kayla would win big. Our respective bankrolls moved back and forth but I never lost more than about fifty dollars at a time, plenty left over in my stack to keep going.

  “We can switch to a different game if you want,” I said after I’d won another round.

  “No, this is fine,” Kayla said in the fake-sweet tone that women tend to use when they’re angry but don’t want to show it.

  I won again, and then a third time in a row, and Kayla was down to her last hundred dollars.

  “Let’s make this interesting,” I said.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  I had six hundred in chips in front of me, and I knew it was a bigger risk but it would be a big reward, too, if it played out the way I wanted it to. I took out a hundred dollars in chips from my stack.

  “One hundred, opening ante,” I told her.

  “Oh, getting tired of playing?” She gave me a little smile.

  “I wanted to put you out of your misery,” I replied. “Of course, if you win this hand, you’re back up to two hundred, so you’ll be at least right where you started. You could walk away easily.”

  Kayla pressed her lips together and sipped her martini. “Fine.” She tossed in all of her chips. “Let’s do this.”

  The dealer put down our face-up cards. I got a ten, and Kayla got an ace. The dealer gave us each our face-down cards and mine was a six. No need to hit on that.

  “Blackjack,” Kayla said, smiling at me broadly. She flipped her card over: it was a king. She was back up to two hundred, and I couldn’t help but be pleased. I’d wanted to keep playing for as long as possible, at least as long as I could before it got boring to one or the other of us.

  Kayla won two more hands, and we kept the ante high—fifty or seventy-five dollars, until we were almost at equal pots. The first hour had gone by, and I gave the dealer another fifty dollars for the table and ten dollars for his pocket so we could keep going. I also ordered us another round, though Kayla switched to a cosmopolitan instead of a martini.

  We kept going, and the dealer switched to hand-shuffling instead of using the machine, which made it so that Kayla and I could actually talk between hands a little bit. I had to admit that she seemed interesting, more interesting than most of the women I’d met in the past year, and more interesting than the last woman I’d been involved with.

  “I think this is starting to get a bit routine, don’t you?” I looked over my winnings. I was up to six hundred again, and Kayla was down to one hundred.

  “Are you going to try and get me to go all-in again?” Kayla sipped her cosmo, and I shook my head.

  “I was thinking it’s about time to make it really interesting,” I replied. “We talked about gambling my room to start off with. Why don’t we make that the next wager?”

  “You’re going to seriously bet your room on a turn of the cards?”

  I shrugged. “I was always planning on it. But I just had an idea that would make it even more interesting, and be a win-win for you.”

  “What’s that?” Kayla looked at me doubtfully.

  “If you win the next hand, you get my room—no strings attached. Our friend here can witness the bet for us, can’t you, my man?” I looked at the dealer.

  “It’s unusual but there have been weirder wagers on the casino floor,” he admitted.

  “And if you win?” Kayla held my gaze for a long moment and I smiled slowly.

  “If I win, then you still get to use the room, but you stay in it with me. For tonight and through Christmas, or whenever you can fly out,” I replied.

  It was probably a little pathetic of me but it would be better than being along for the holiday. Kayla’s cheeks went bright red, and her eyes widened in surprise and anger at my offer.

  “Before you say anything about what kind of woman I think you are, the room has more than one bed,” I told her.

  Kayla’s eyes narrowed again and some of the color left her cheeks, and I saw the wheels turning behind her eyes again. “Okay, if I win, I get the room to myself and if you win, I’ll stay in your room—no other expectati
ons than company. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I said.

  We turned back to the man in charge of our respective fates. He shuffled the cards, and I realized my heart was actually beating a little faster in my chest. I’d wanted to figure out a way to make sure that Kayla had somewhere comfortable to stay, and with the wager I’d just made, I was pretty sure I’d done it. If she won, I would happily hand over the card to her and figure out what to do with myself afterward. But I was definitely hoping I would win.

  It was the most nerve-wracking hand of the entire set, of course. We both somehow managed to be in a position to split—me with two jacks, Kayla with two eights. And then, of course, we both had to hit more than once. I could tell that Kayla had been rattled with the losses she’d had before, so I was counting on her to bust out. As she hit and I hit, and we both started tossing money in the pot, it felt like the hand went on forever.

  Finally, it was time to show our face-down cards. I’d come out at twenty and eighteen respectively, so I’d felt pretty confident. But Kayla had come out with exactly twenty-one: an eight, a two, a five, and a six. I stared at her winning hand in shock.

  “That is some long-damned odds,” I said, staring at it. I half-turned to the dealer and scowled at him, almost thinking that he would have had to somehow cheat on her behalf.

  “Just some good mental math,” Kayla said with a shrug and a grin. “I got the eight and the two, and then the six.”

  “That could have ended up with a bust,” I pointed out.

  Kayla shrugged again. “I had an eight and a five and a three on the other hand—so I was pretty safe not to bust on both.” She looked at me for a long moment. “You’re not going to go back on your deal, are you?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “But we could double-or-nothing.”

  Kayla snorted. “How on earth would we double-or nothing what we just wagered? It was either the room by myself or the room with you.”

  “I could bet my room and the five hundred in chips, and you could put up your two hundred—still keep the room but spend the time with me, too, and give me your two hundred with it.”

  Kayla shook her head. “No, I think I’ll take my winnings and go with it.”

  I couldn’t help but smile, in spite of realizing that I didn’t actually have an effective backup plan. I handed over the room key to her and turned to the dealer.

  “Can you let the front desk know what I did?” The dealer nodded. “Let me have a piece of paper if you’ve got one, and I’ll write out a note confirming the changeover.”

  Chapter Seven

  Kayla

  I’d known when we both ended up with splits for the last hand that it was something I could win. Even if Dean seemed to be getting lucky with his cards, I had been playing blackjack for most of my life, and I had reached a point years ago where I could get the odds going my way.

  I’d been struggling through most of the rounds of the game, less because I really thought that Dean had intended to put the hotel room up for real and more because the comments he’d made about boyfriends and loneliness distracted me. I had hoped to forget about Brandon at least until my parents brought him up, and I’d been thinking that a few hands of blackjack would get my mind off of how terrible my holiday was shaping up to be.

  But instead, even as we’d been bantering back and forth, my mind had gone off my game, and I kept losing. Somehow, I managed to rally each time but once we got to the point where Dean made the big wager—either I would win his room by myself, or he’d win, and I’d share the room with him—I was ready to just be over and done with it.

  The split had been the perfect situation, and when I’d gotten exactly to twenty-one, I’d felt a flood of relief. In spite of the way he tried to get me to go double-or-nothing, I could tell, somehow, that he was actually okay with the way things had shaken out.

  “You won, fair and square,” he said, handing the key card over to me. I felt a little twinge of guilt; I knew for a fact that there were no hotels in the area, and I had to think that if Dean had an apartment or a house to go to, he would have gone there first. Not to a hotel, even one as nice as the White Spring.

  “I did, didn’t I?” I took the key card from him and rose from the table. He might not have given up the room as a wager if he knew how good you were beforehand.

  Dean grinned. “Honestly, I was going to find a way to give you the room anyway.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes but I could see he was actually being serious, and I thought about how he’d made the last wager: no matter which one of us had won, I would have had a place to stay for the night. He’d even reassured me that he wasn’t just trying to get me into bed.

  “Well, unfortunately for you, I’m a very poor winner,” I said, raking up my chips and giving him a little smile in return. I wasn’t but I couldn’t wait to get to the room, as soon as I was sure I wouldn’t just get thrown out of it.

  The dealer called the front desk and I gave him my name to give to them, and I looked at Dean one last time before I left the table. I knew that look on his face: he was trying to figure out what he was going to do next. I had been there, and I was sympathetic but at the same time, I just wanted to get the long day over with.

  The hotel section was pretty amazing, as I walked to the elevator with my belongings: brass and gilt and marble, just what you would expect from a place with a casino attached to it. I had to admit that it wasn’t as bad as some places in Vegas in terms of decoration. I found the right elevator, and when the voice came on inside, asking me to insert my room key to verify I was allowed to use it, I did as I was told.

  The Presidential Suite was apparently on a floor all by itself, which didn’t surprise me as much as I would have expected. I got off the elevator and stepped onto carpeting that was easily five inches deep, soft as lamb’s wool under my feet. It probably cost a mint just to maintain the hallway itself. There was exactly one door, and for a second, as I inserted my card to unlock it, I was paranoid that Dean might have gone back on his word and told the front desk not to let me in. That would be just in keeping with the terrible week I was having.

  But the door light flashed green, and I heard the thunk of the locks turning over, and opened the door just fine. For a second, all I could do was stand in the doorway and stare. The room was enormous, and even though I’d been prepared for it to be the best, biggest room in the hotel, I hadn’t really had an idea in my mind of what that would mean.

  It took up the space of an entire floor, and as I stepped into the main area, I could see that there were two bedrooms and two bathrooms, to judge by the open, inviting doors. The two bedrooms were both palatial. The main bedroom was almost as big as my apartment itself, with an enormous bed that could probably comfortably fit at least three people. The other bedroom was only a little smaller, maybe as big as my living room back home, with a deliriously comfortable-looking king-sized bed. The main area had a bar, a fireplace, a leather sectional as big as a bed itself, and a couple of wingback chairs that were just perfect for hanging around in. There was a kitchenette with a stocked fridge and freezer—nothing too special but there was definitely something to be said for being able to make a basic meal for yourself, if you wanted to.

  The bathrooms were absolutely amazing: the master bathroom had a tub big enough for two people, along with a shower. Everything was Carrera marble and antique porcelain and fine brass. A little menu of room service options included a one-hour massage, facials, hair treatments, and in-room makeup and styling consultations. The second bathroom had a little steam room cubicle in it, big enough for three people to fit inside, along with a bath-shower combination that was still pretty generous.

  I went back into the main area of the enormous suite and threw myself down onto the sectional, staring at the fireplace that someone had already lit. The room was gorgeous, warm, and full of light, and it was better than anything I could have expected if I’d managed to get home to my parents’ house. It was definitely the be
st possible way to spend an unexpected layover, and I had to shake my head at the fact that Dean had been willing to give it up. He’d seemed so cocky, and some of his jokes had put me on edge, but I had to admit that underneath that he’d actually seemed to be one of the kinder people I’d met in the past year, even accounting for how much money he had to throw around. He’d tipped everyone generously, and he’d gone out of his way to help me.

  The little bit of guilt I’d felt as I’d been leaving the table came back to me. This incredibly nice guy had just given up his room, and I’d taken it. I hadn’t even taken the compromise position of having us both stay there. Of course, I hadn’t known that there were separate bedrooms but how much of a sacrifice would it really have been to let him win the last hand and shared a room with him? Even if he was a stranger, he’d at least been interesting, and funny in his own brusque way, and clearly kind.

  The room was too big for me to want to be in it by myself the whole time I was waiting to fly to my parents’ house. But I’d been traveling by myself. I thought about Brandon again. If I hadn’t caught him the way I had, if I hadn’t dumped him a week ago, if I hadn’t found out what a piece of shit he was, then we’d have ended up stranded together, at least. But I had no doubts at all that we wouldn’t be sharing this amazing room. If I’d been with Brandon, we might not have even come to the hotel, and certainly I didn’t think Dean would have approached us if we did.

  But that didn’t make me feel any less lonely. Even if I was going to be in the hotel equivalent of a palace for the next couple of nights, it was kind of useless without someone to enjoy it with. Besides, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was wrong for me to take advantage of Dean the way I had. He hadn’t known that I was as good as I was, and I hadn’t warned him. It wasn’t fair. And I’d known even when I was taking the room key from him that it wouldn’t be easy for him to find somewhere else to stay for the night until he could move on to Montauk or wherever it was he was headed for his own holidays.