Chapter Sixteen

Talia did her best to move on with her life without Casey. She knew that she couldn’t just walk away from her job—while the owners knew about her relationship with Casey, her staff had been in the dark, and she had too many projects in the works to just walk away.

She called in sick that first horrible day but came in for the next one. And the first thing she did was assign Mark, one of the new guys on her staff, to work with Casey on the world poker championship event. In the meantime, she continued working with Rio and Nicholas on building their social media platforms.

She sent out her resume and had a few nibbles from competing casinos in Vegas but that felt wrong to her. When there was an opening at a casino in Louisiana, she thought about it.

But did she really want to work in another casino? And Gran’s upcoming girls’ trip to the Canadian Rockies sealed the deal. Talia knew that Gran wouldn’t want to leave her house empty, and Talia really didn’t want to move to Louisiana.

So, instead, she just existed. She pretended that she had never loved Casey and that broken hearts healed overnight. She also ignored the fact that she’d spent a lot of time standing under his poster on the front of the casino, studying it. Trying to see what she’d missed when she’d first seen it, some clue that would have told her that he’d be the man who’d break her heart.

She was sitting at her desk, typing up a report to send to the entire board about the projects she had in progress, when there was a knock on her door. She looked up to see Darien Mitchell standing there.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes,” he said.

“Um…I’m sort of busy right now.”

“Right,” he said. “Listen, I know I’m the last person you want to chat with but I’m going to have to insist.”

She shook her head. “I’ve heard all I need to hear from you. And honestly, I can’t really deal with this right now. Could you just let Rio know whatever it is you have to say? Please.”

He stepped into her cubicle, his body filling the entire doorway. “I can’t. My brother doesn’t know I was a complete asshole to you.”

Oh.

“Um…maybe we shouldn’t talk here,” she said, very aware that her staff could hear everything that Darien was saying.

“Good idea. Let’s go for a walk. I want to show you the new course anyway,” Darien said.

She followed him out of the social media area and instead of going to the elevator, Darien walked over to the stairs. She slipped her heels off and followed him down. He noticed she was carrying her shoes when they got to the bottom.

“Sorry about that. I didn’t even think about your shoes.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not great on the stairs to begin with, so I just usually ditch them.”

She glanced around—they were in the employee hallway. Darien gave her his hand while she put her shoes back on and he led her down to the door that exited onto the motocross course and locker room area.

She noticed that the course was empty and that someone had set up a table and chairs near the course.

“Are you thirsty?” Darien asked.

“No, I’m fine,” she said.

Darien rubbed the back of his neck and then scrubbed his hand down his chest and looked over her shoulder and then back at her. “I can be an ass sometimes and I definitely was to you. I owe you an apology. I know the words I’m sorry aren’t enough to make up for everything. But I am sorry.”

She nodded. “It’s okay.”

She didn’t know how else to accept his apology. He’d ruined something for her but a part of her believed that maybe he’d just sped up the inevitable. The truth was she was never going to be content to live with a man who could gamble so carelessly.

“It’s not okay,” Darien said. “I have no excuses, but I ruined something between you and Casey and I shouldn’t have mixed in.”

“I don’t think it was all you. I mean, I could have done without your comments when I was with Rio and of course, to Casey, but I have to believe you were doing it with the best intentions,” she said. She’d had a lot of time to think about how much Darien must care for Casey to try so hard to protect his friend.

“I thought I was,” Darien said. “Anyway, I’m sorry for my part. I wanted you to know that I goaded Casey into the way he behaved that morning.”

She shook her head. “He’s responsible for his own actions. You apologized. That’s enough.”

He rubbed the back of his neck again. “I want to fix this.”

“It’s not your problem to fix,” she said.

“She’s right, Dare, it’s mine,” Casey said.

His voice felt like a warm blanket on a cold morning and she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed hearing it until he spoke. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him there, standing a few feet away, looking better than she remembered. Her heart beat a little bit faster and she got frustrated.

Was it too much to ask that her body wouldn’t betray her? Not now, when she had almost figured out how move on without him.

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” Darien said, walking away.

She didn’t want to do this. Not today. She still wasn’t over him. The logical part of her wanted to follow Darien and leave this place, but her heart wasn’t moving until she’d heard what he had to say.

…

Casey had spent the last two weeks drinking and playing poker. Doing anything to dull the memories of Talia and to prove to himself that he didn’t need her in his life.

But every night when he tried to sleep, he had been plagued with memories of how she’d felt in his arms. And that look on her face when he’d held the door open and she walked out of his life.

There wasn’t enough Jack in the world to dull the memory of her. She’d proven herself to be made of tougher stuff than even he’d guessed when she’d kept working at the Jokers Wild, reassigning the poker stuff to another person on her staff and acting with grace and dignity. He shouldn’t have been surprised and actually he wasn’t.

He’d learned enough about her to know that she wasn’t a quitter and she also was never leaving Las Vegas.

That had been the first thing he’d realized about her. He should have known that hurting her wouldn’t be enough to make her go. She’d spent her entire life being let down by men who should have protected her, and it had hurt and humbled him to realize he was just the latest.

Once he’d sobered up, he had heard through the grapevine that other local casinos were trying to poach Talia from their staff but Nicholas told him she’d turned them down. It had made him take stock. She was tough. Even when she’d been humiliated and hurt, she’d stayed.

And he knew that he couldn’t just let her go. When Darien had mentioned he was going to apologize after Rio had lit into him about being a jerk where women were concerned, Casey knew he needed to apologize. Even more, he needed to show Talia exactly what she meant to him.

So he’d arranged with his friend to get her down here where he’d be alone with her.

“You look good,” he said, feeling out the room and seeing if she was amiable to an easy solution to this problem he’d created.

“Don’t,” she replied. “Just say what you have to say and let me get back to work.”

He didn’t blame her for her response.

“You’re right to shut me down. I have had a lot of time to think about what you said.” He started walking toward her. He hadn’t been lying, she did look good. She’d lost weight though and she looked as if she’d been having trouble sleeping. But she would always take his breath away.

“It’s always easy to bet on something when you have nothing to lose,” he admitted. “And that morning when Darien was in my face, I wasn’t thinking about losing you—I was trying to get rid of him. I wanted to ask you to stay with me, to start making a life together, and so I fell back on old habits. I knew the quickest way to get rid of him was to force him out, and I can’t beat Darien at anything but cards. Winning at cards is the only thing that has never let me down. I can trust it.” He shook his head. “It’s not an excuse, I know. I shouldn’t have done it but maybe you can understand why,” he said.

“You don’t have to explain. Sooner or later, I needed to face the fact that you are a gambler. I mean I knew it here,” she said, pointing to her head. “But my heart was hoping for something different. Something unrealistic. I know that now.”

He stopped her. “It’s not unrealistic. You and I both aren’t what the other expected and I will have to play in charity games from time to time but for the most part, my poker playing days are over.”

She shook her head. “It’s not poker or cards. It’s that thing you have where you bet on everything. It wasn’t the cards that bothered me—it was the fact that you gambled us away.”

“I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I knew I couldn’t lose,” he said.

“Unless you were cheating, how could you know that?” she asked, wrapping her arms around her waist and arching one eyebrow at him.

“I wasn’t cheating,” he said. “I’ve always been luckier at cards than at anything else. And with you on the line, I knew my luck wouldn’t run out.”

“Casey, that’s crazy.”

“No, it’s not. If I’d drawn a lower card, I would have cheated. There isn’t a power on earth that could make me give you up. But my own pride cost me. I should have been honest with you from the moment we met. I should have told you the second I realized that what we had was more than sex. I love you. The only excuse I have is that I wasn’t sure what love was or if I was just feeling something for you because you were the sweetest, sexiest woman I’d ever met.”

He laid it all out there for her. She just stared at him and he went to her, gently put his hands on either side of her face, and leaned down to kiss her. He told himself to keep it gentle but he couldn’t. He missed her. He needed her. He loved her more than he had ever thought he could.

“I love you,” he said again, when he lifted his head. “And I know I’m a risk for you and that you won’t be able to trust me until we’ve been together for fifty years but I’m not going anywhere. And unless you tell me you never want to see me again, I’m going to keep telling you I love you for the rest of our lives.”

…

Talia looked into his ice-blue eyes and for the first time, realized that he’d said the things she’d always wanted to hear. He was correct when he’d said that a part of her was always going to be on edge when he made a bet, but the truth was, Casey was much more in control of himself that her father had ever been.

And she loved Casey. She’d proved to herself that she could walk away if she had to and it was something she never wanted to do again.

“I love you, too, Casey,” she said.

He lifted her off her feet and spun her around. “I don’t deserve you. I’m going to tell you that right now, but I’m not letting you go. All my life I’ve been a loner and I thought that was good enough but when I met you…the rest of the day all I could remember was your smile. That cute way you had of tilting your head to the side. Chances were I’d never see you again and then you—”

“Spilled more drinks on you,” she said with a laugh. “I guess I wanted to make an impression.”

“Well, you did. And I can’t imagine my life without you by my side,” he said. “I want to marry you, but I also want you to feel safe enough with me that you can say yes without hesitating.”

“I want that, too, eventually,” she admitted. But she needed time.

“I can work with that. I can wait forever as long as you are by my side,” he said.

“Me too,” she said.

“I have something to show you,” he said, his hands going to the buttons of his shirt.

“Uh, I’ve seen your chest,” she said wryly.

“Not this,” he said, pushing the sides of the shirt open. Over his heart he’d had her name written in a scripty text.

“You own my heart, Talia. The winning hand was part of what gave me the path out off the streets and to this life, but you are the one who has made me realize what life is really all about.”

She put her hand on the tattoo. “What if I didn’t love you?”

“I still would love you,” he said.

“I realized that, too. I was mad and hurt but I couldn’t stop thinking about you and missing you. Love is cruel that way, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved and as long as we are together, I think I’m okay with it,” he said.

She had to smile at the way he said that. “Me too.”

“Good.”

He lifted her in his arms and carried her away from the motocross area up to the penthouse where he made love to her. When Gran got home from her trip, they drove out to Gran’s house. She was happy for them and Talia realized she had everything she’d ever wanted. She had always thought that the only way she’d find happiness was without a gambler in her life and outside of Las Vegas but she had found her heart with Casey.