Chapter Seven
Casey knew better than to sit down at the poker table in the mood he was in. He’d always known his limits and tonight was no different. He waved off Yoshi and went to the penthouse apartment he kept at the top of the Jokers Wild Casino, but he was restless. He stared down at the strip, at the bright lights that promised whatever thrill he wanted but he saw through it.
He always had. That was the reason he’d gone on the road. Now he’d come home supposedly wiser, but with Talia he felt like an untried boy, someone who didn’t know his limits and was gambling out of his league.
Darien walked into the living area of his apartment, looking tired and as aggravated as Casey felt.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing I can’t handle. I need… Want to go for a ride?” Darien asked.
A ride with Darien more than likely meant something hair-raising and dangerous. It was exactly what he needed tonight.
“Yes. Bike or car?”
“Given the mood I’m in tonight, I might kill us both in a car,” his friend said.
Casey couldn’t let that pass. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Want to hit the clubs instead?” Casey asked. “If you’re having women troubles, there’s nothing like mindless sex to take your mind off them.”
Darien walked to the wet bar and poured both of them two fingers’ worth of Jack on ice.
“That didn’t work for you last time, did it?”
“What?”
“Nick told me we hired your hookup.”
“Fuck Nick. That’s not why we hired Talia.”
“Talia? Rio thinks she hung the moon,” Darien said, walking over and handing him the glass.
Casey downed it in one long swallow. “She’s good at her job.”
“So why are you so restless?”
“Same as you,” Casey said, venturing a guess. Besides, no man wanted to think he was the only one who kept making the same mistakes.
“Mine is a woman from my past. One who I thought was different…but that’s because I’m a fucking moron. You’ve always been smarter.”
Ha.
“I’m not,” Casey admitted.
“You hide it better than me, then,” Darien said, going back for the bottle and collapsing on the couch as he poured more liquor into his glass. He set the bottle on the end table and Casey walked over to pour himself a bit more.
“I’ve told you for years that you needed to work on your poker face,” Casey said. “You are good at it when it comes to fear but everything else you wear out there for the world to see.”
Darien nodded. “I’m pissed, Case. I’m really not sure that doing the show here is going to work for me.”
That was worrying. He and Nick needed Darien. The stunt driver was unique and part of what was going to ensure that their casino stood out from the other offerings in Vegas.
“Why not?”
“I need to hire riders and train them, which means staying still. But I screw up when I’m not moving,” Darien said. “I don’t want that to affect you or Nick. Or Rio. He wants this to stay in one place.”
Casey walked over to one of the leather armchairs and sat down on it. He had always half craved the stability of staying in one place. His childhood hadn’t been exactly solid. The halfway house where he’d met Darien and Nick had been the only home he’d ever really claimed for himself. But that was a distant memory and he knew it as well as Darien did.
“You can’t keep running,” Casey said. Darien had told him he believed it was being on the road that had led to his father’s mistakes and ultimately his old man’s death. Everyone in the world thought that his dad had been the bravest man but Darien had said he was weak. He’d let fear drive him to take dumb risks.
Tonight, Casey felt like he understood that. When Talia had exploded at him, telling him that he didn’t get what had made her hate gamblers, he had realized that he’d made a dumb risk. He liked risk. He had made a living from it, but tonight, he realized that rolling the dice or cutting the deck was infinitely different than wagering on a person. He had looked at Talia and saw something that he thought he could control, never realizing that she might end up influencing him.
He’d never let another person have that kind of power over him…not since his mom had dropped him off at the halfway house and driven away. He had heard through the rumor mill that she’d died, but he’d been in Tokyo for a high-stakes game at the time and hadn’t been able to get back for the service that some of her friends had held for her. She was gone before he could resolve what had happened between them.
He’d never met her as an adult.
“Hell. Let’s get out of here,” Casey said. “I need to get out of my head.”
“Me too.”
They left the casino, Darien at the wheel of his classic ’69 Corvette Stingray. They had the T-top off and women smiled at them as they roared out of the city. Darien drove out to the big house on the outskirts of town where Nicholas lived when he wasn’t on tour.
Nick heard them and came out to meet them.
“What’s up?”
“We are blowing off steam, you in?”
“Hell. This has bad idea written all over it.”
But their friend climbed into the backseat and they headed toward the old dirt track that had been Darien’s dad’s practice track, back before he’d become famous. Then the three of them spent the night drinking and riding the motocross circuit. But when the night was over, Casey knew that nothing had been resolved. His issue with Talia was still there, but at least he wasn’t as alone as he’d felt earlier.
He might be a gambler who’d always gotten by on his wits, but tonight he’d been reminded that his friends were always by his side. He would never have gone after having his own casino if it wasn’t for Dare and Nick. Without them, he was just one more player, one more high-stakes gambler who drifted from table to table, following his luck.
…
Two days later, Talia was on her way to work when she got a text from Casey. It just said dinner and gave an address. She had been avoiding him for days, but she knew that had to stop.
On one hand, she was busy with work. Setting and developing a community was something that required a lot of hours and more time on Twitter than she’d have put in if she wasn’t being paid to be there. But on the other hand, she knew she was hiding from him.
It had been easy to pretend that one night with him was enough, that it was in the past. But she knew that was a lie. When she’d found herself standing underneath the poster of Casey, the gambler, she knew that she had a problem.
If only she didn’t have that same innate love for rogues and gamblers that her mother had had. She’d watched her father spiral further and further into his addiction and no matter how many tears she’d cried, or how many times she’d had to go and visit Paulie, the loan shark, to beg for more time, she’d never stopped loving him.
She and Gran had both loved her dad more than they acknowledged was healthy. But there was something so charming about him when he was on a winning streak, and he could talk her into anything. Just like Casey. It had almost made up for the darkness when he was losing.
Almost.
A part of her wanted to believe that what she felt for Casey was just an extension of that—she couldn’t resist a charmer. Except she knew it was more. Casey wasn’t on a winning streak that threatened to collapse at any moment. In fact, if she was being totally honest with herself, she’d have to admit that he seemed like the kind of man she’d always dreamed of finding.
He worked hard.
He had enough money to buy nice things, but didn’t waste it on being showy.
And he knew how to touch her in a way that made her very glad she was a woman.
That last bit…that was the part that was throwing her for a loop. She wasn’t normally a sexually obsessed person.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about Casey. At odd times, she’d remember the feel of his lips on hers, or she’d get distracted, remembering how he’d looked when he’d walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but dress slacks, his torso bare.
It was getting dangerous.
She had goals.
Sure, they were short-term, but she’d never been able to really plan for the future. Every time she had, her agenda had blown up her in face. Now she was one step away from freedom and another charmer had walked into her life. And instead of running away, she was thinking about him.
Dreaming of him.
Telling herself he was different.
Was she lying to herself? Was she willing to believe anything if it meant she could bask in his charismatic presence for a bit longer? Was she doomed to always fall for a gambler?
Still, she couldn’t leave this job. It was her only way to make her mark quickly so she could take care of that last mortgage payment on Gran’s house and then move on to something bigger.
It didn’t involve sleeping with her boss.
Or dinner.
The address he’d sent her was in Henderson. Was it his house? She thought he lived at the casino. Then again, he probably had more than one property. After all, he was incredibly wealthy.
She swallowed hard.
He was a gambler.
Please remember that, she thought. She wanted to think she was smarter than this, that she’d learned from the way her father had swept in and out of her life—sometimes on a high but more often on a low—and left nothing but destruction in his wake. So she had to be smart enough to have dinner with him and not sleep with him.
Only she wasn’t sure if she was.
She’d never met a guy like him. He was different, and yet somehow familiar. She knew gamblers. She had a complicated history with Vegas, but she’d been lost from the moment she’d looked up from the box of condoms in the store and seen him smiling at her. She pulled into the employee parking lot for the Jokers Wild Casino.
Was she going to go out with him again?
She texted him.
She saw those dancing dots that meant he was writing something back and waited.
She smiled in spite of herself.
Hell.
This was the problem. She liked him. If it was just hot sex, then she could push him off because sex didn’t last. She’d had enough relationships that had started out red hot—well okay just one—but it hadn’t lasted. When reality had intruded and she’d had to rush to Gran’s side to take her in for her dialysis, that guy had disappeared.
But something about Casey felt different.
Not different enough that she’d let him meet Gran, though. No. She wasn’t going to let any more charming rogues near that sweet lady.
She tossed her phone on the seat next to her, then put her head on the steering wheel. What was she doing?
She wasn’t sure.
For the first time since she’d turned nineteen and her dad had died, she didn’t know what to do next. Of course she’d still take care of Gran, but she was suddenly confused about what she wanted, for her and her life.
She was twenty-six and she’d spent the last seven years fixing the problems of her childhood. But now she was almost free. And instead of starting over someplace else, with a clean slate, she was fooling around with Casey Waltham. He wasn’t a sure a thing. In fact, he was the kind of risk that could break her.
But while she thought she wanted security, she couldn’t help craving something more. She liked the danger and excitement. That feeling in the pit of her stomach when she thought about seeing him again.
Was she really no better than her dad?
Was she chasing a win that shimmered just out of her reach?
She had no answers. She hoped she was different, but that feeling in her stomach made her doubt her resolve.
She should have said no to dinner. She should be keeping this professional. She should have known better than to get involved with a gambler, but she didn’t.
Maybe she didn’t know herself as well as she’d always thought she had.
Maybe she was exactly what her mom had accused her of being when she’d dropped her off at her grandmother’s house—just like her father.