The Park's Empire: Handsome Strangers...: The Prince's Bride

“That’s good enough for me.” She looked at the table with interest and carefully placed chips on seven, twenty-two, and twenty-nine. Then she paused, studying the table, half-turning to murmur. “Why are some of the chips sitting directly on top of the numbers, and some placed at the corners?”

“The ones on the corners are ‘corner bets’—the bet covers the four numbers that join at the corner where the chip sits.” He nodded at the black and red squares numbered from one to thirty-six and her blue chip resting squarely in the center of number twenty-two. “Your bet on number twenty-two is called a ‘straight bet’—the ball has to stop on the wheel at twenty-two in order for you to win.”

“Hmmm,” Emily tapped the tip of her forefinger against her chin and considered the table. “Which bet has the best odds?”

“The straight bet—the odds are thirty-five to one.”

“Then I’ll stay with that.” She smiled at him, the elusive dimple at the corner of her mouth appearing and disappearing in a flash. “If I win, I win big.”

“True.” Amused at the risk-taker attitude in Emily when he’d mostly seen her exhibit cool, calm control up until now, Lazhar nodded at Esteban.

The dealer acknowledged him with a barely perceptible nod in return. “Bets down, ladies and gentlemen.” The other players around the table nodded and Esteban spun the wheel in one direction and the small silver ball in the other. The ball left the track, rolling onto the spinning wheel. “No more bets!”

The ball bounced and moved, coming to rest in a black compartment of the wheel.

“Black twenty-nine.” Esteban called out.

Emily clapped her hands with glee. “I won!” She looked up at Lazhar. “I did win, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you definitely won,” he said dryly, exchanging an amused glance with Esteban as the dealer stacked a large pile of chips in front of her.

Emily’s eyes rounded. “I won all that?”

“The odds were thirty-five to one.” He grinned at her. “You wanted to win big, remember?”

“I remember.” She flashed him a wide smile. “This is fun.” She watched the other gamblers at the table as Esteban either deftly swept away their lost chips, or paid out their wins. Each of them instantly returned chips to the table.

“Should I pick the same numbers, or different ones?”

“Your choice. What do you want to do?”

“I think I’ll use the same numbers.” Emily put chips on the numbers she’d chosen for the first round. Then she took three chips from her winnings, stacked them neatly on top of the original pile that Esteban had given her, and moved them aside.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m playing with the money I won and leaving the original chips alone. That way,” Emily explained, “when I lose the chips I’ve won, I’ll know it’s time to stop playing. If I mix the two piles together, I’m afraid I won’t remember what the original investment was.”

Surprised, Lazhar searched her earnest expression.

“What?” A tiny frown pleated her forehead between her brows and he smoothed it away with his fingertip. Faint pink color bloomed on her cheeks and throat.

“I’m impressed,” he said softly, his gaze holding hers as Esteban set the wheel and ball in motion and announced no more bets.

“Why?”

“Because very few people are wise enough to play with the house’s money and not theirs. Especially not when they’re new to gambling—they usually get swept up in the excitement and lose track of the amount of money they’re investing.”

Emily glanced at the stack of blue chips. “How much money am I investing?” she asked, curious.

“Red seven,” Esteban announced.

“This is a hundred-dollar table,” Lazhar said casually.

“A hundred dollars?” Her gaze flicked from him to the table, where Esteban was once again collecting from the losers and paying the winners. He deposited a stack of chips in front of Emily and she looked at Lazhar. “Are you telling me that each of the chips I’m playing with is worth a hundred dollars?”

“Yes.”

“That means I’ve won—” she quickly calculated “—seven thousand dollars?”

“That sounds right.” He chuckled at her stunned expression.

“But what if I’d lost?”

He shrugged. “You wouldn’t have seven thousand dollars.”

“But I would have lost six hundred dollars.”

“True, but since you’re my guest, and this is by way of a business meeting…”

She shot him a look of complete disbelief.

“…and since you’re really ‘working’ tonight, soaking up the atmosphere of Daniz, the house would have forgiven your debt.”

Emily was skeptical. “Why would they do that?”

“Because my family owns the controlling interest in the casino.”

“Ah.” Understanding smoothed the slight frown from her brow. “I see.”

They stayed at the roulette table for several more spins of the wheel before leaving it to try a game of blackjack. For the next hour and a half, Emily sampled the games beneath the gilt dome. Lazhar strolled beside her, answering her questions about the games, showing her how to roll the dice at the craps table, and keeping her champagne flute filled. When she’d had enough of playing, they toured the other rooms on the casino’s lower level. The central gambling space was huge and wings to the right and left of the domed area housed two fivestar restaurants connected by a wide marbled passageway lined with exclusive designer shops. They browsed, window-shopping but not entering any of the exotic shops before they returned to the central room and climbed the sweeping staircase to look into several of the private gambling rooms on the second level.

Her curiosity satisfied, Emily paused on the wide balcony that circled the casino floor. With Lazhar leaning casually beside her, she rested her hands on the polished mahogany railing, her gaze sweeping the crowded floor below.

“It’s a fascinating place,” Emily commented. “The air nearly vibrates with anticipation and I can almost taste the excitement.”

Below them and to their right, a young woman dressed in a white evening gown, diamonds glittering at her ears, wrists, and around her throat, shrieked with delight and jumped up and down, hugging her silver-haired companion.

“I think she won,” Lazhar said dryly.

Emily laughed, her bright green eyes sparkling with amusement. “I’m sure you’re right.” She glanced at the scene below before she asked. “You said that your family owns the casino?”

“A controlling interest,” he corrected her.

“Ah.” She turned her back to the balcony and fixed her gaze on him, clearly curious. “Did you spend much time here when you were growing up?”

“A fair amount,” he admitted. “My grandfather loved to gamble and he’d tell my mother that he was taking me out for ice cream, then we’d come here. He taught me to play roulette before I was six and poker before I was eight.”

“Did your parents object that he was teaching you to gamble instead of buying you ice cream?”