Her High-Stakes Affair

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“Rumor has it that you were once a big-time player.”

“The National Enquirer intimated you had sex with an alien on your yacht in the Mediterranean.”

“Then you were a big-time player,” he said.

She threw her head back and laughed. “Okay, you win. I’ll play roulette with you, but only one game. Whoever wins picks the activity.”

“I don’t lose,” he said, warning her.

“Neither do I.”

Raine rubbed her sweaty palms against her jeans and stood in front of the roulette table. She was intimately familiar with this game, having grown up a few blocks from the casinos in Atlantic City. She’d spent her childhood on the boardwalk, staring in at her father, who’d spend a few days playing roulette when he couldn’t scrape together enough money to stake himself to a poker game.

Just one small bet. That was all she had to do. She wasn’t going to become addicted to gambling by placing one bet. She’d bet Scott on this one game and then she’d take him to the Keno diner on the second floor, sit with him in a vinyl booth and bore him to death so he would move on.

Conning him didn’t seem like such an easy thing to do just now. She felt as if she was being torn in two, and the balance and serenity she’d worked so hard to find in her life were now gone.

Her heart was beating too fast, and every minute she spent in his presence made her like him more.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked, making her realize that she’d been staring at the rows of black and red spaces for too long.

She scrambled for an answer. She was used to thinking on her feet in the high-pressure world of television. “You have to have a strategy.”

“For roulette?” he asked. “Be careful, Raine. This is just chance. Odds or evens, black or red. That’s all you have to decide.”

“Well, we all aren’t you, Mr. Lucky. I need a strategy. Give me a minute.”

Turning away from him, she closed her eyes. Coming to Vegas had been a struggle. She wasn’t a gambler by profession, but her heart was always ready to bet on something.

Every day she walked past the odds board in the lobby and mentally bet on something, anything. Prize fights, European sporting events, even the outcome of certain reality shows. She was contractually forbidden from betting on their show, but in her mind she bet every time.

She’d watched her father and brother both spiral out of control and into addiction. Right now they were both living hand-to-mouth existences. And she couldn’t help them. When she sent money, they only gambled it away, and when she visited, they wanted her to run one more con. A big score so they’d be set for life.

She was being silly. One little roulette bet wasn’t going to turn her into an addict. She took a deep breath and looked up at Scott. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“What’s your lucky number?” he asked.

She didn’t have a lucky number, didn’t believe that luck came from numbers or rabbits’ feet.

“Don’t have one?” he asked, putting his arm around her waist and leaning closer.

They were in the main casino, where anyone could see them. She inched away from him. “No. Why should I?”

“No reason. Mine is thirteen. Want to use it this time?”

“No. I’ll take fourteen.”

“Okay,” he said, reaching around her to drop a few casino chips on the table.

“What are you doing?” she asked. What did it say about the man that he had a pocketful of casino chips?

“This is on me.”

She shrugged and placed her bet. She put her chip only on the number, not bettering her odds by playing the color.

“You’re going for the bigger payoff just like a real gambler would,” he said.

He had no idea. She’d watched her father at the roulette table for so long that she’d played the way he would. His words didn’t reassure her, and it took all of her courage to stand her ground and not turn and run from the casino. Her hand actually trembled as she saw the croupier begin the play.

Scott captured her hand and rubbed it against his T-shirt-clad chest. “Don’t sweat it, honey. This is just for fun.”

She looked up at him and felt the waves of reassurance in him. Despite his playboy image and the way he seemed to glide through life unaffected, she sensed a rock-solid part of this man.

“I know.”

“When I win, I’m going to take you for a ride on my Harley out into the desert with the warm wind blowing all around us. Then we’ll have dinner at my favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican place.”

That didn’t sound dangerous. It sounded fun, thrilling. She’d never been on a motorcycle and a part of her had always wanted to ride one. Especially if she was pressed up against Scott’s back. She’d have an excuse to touch him and not have to worry about the consequences for once in her life, not taking the same safe route she’d always chosen.

But he had dared her—and she couldn’t pass it up. “I don’t know what I’ll do when I win. Probably something safe and boring.”

He smiled at her then. His expression was so tender that the sounds of the casino faded away, and there was only the two of them. “Nothing with you could be boring.”

She turned away from the intensity in his eyes and focused on the table. The ball jumped and bounced and finally landed on fourteen. Raine couldn’t believe it.

“I won.”

“I saw,” he said. His arms came around her waist and he held her to him. “Maybe my luck is rubbing off on you.”

“I didn’t realize that luck felt like a muscled, masculine body.”

He dropped a fierce kiss on her lips. “Luck comes in all kinds of packages.”

She had the feeling he was talking about more than slot machines and Vegas winnings. “Bad luck sure does.”

“Hey, no talk of bad luck,” he said.

“I can’t believe this. You lost,” she said. And she won. After years of carefully avoiding taking any kind of risk, the first time she bet someone, she won.

“I know.”

She stepped away from him, fighting the urge to dance around. She won. For the first time she could understand the appeal of gambling. But she realized her euphoria had as much to do with the fact that she was with Scott as it did with winning.

“Does this ever happen to you?” she asked.