What the Gambler Risks Read online

  What the Gambler Risks

  Kristina Knight

  Avon, Massachusetts

  Copyright © 2016 by Kristina Knight.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  Published by

  Crimson Romance™

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

  www.crimsonromance.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-9579-8

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9579-0

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-9580-1

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9580-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © kisslily/123RF, © Siarhei Piatrosau/123RF.

  Thank you for purchasing a Crimson Romance novel. Please sign up for our weekly newsletter for information on new releases, contests, discounts and more.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  More from This Author

  Also Available

  Las Vegas is a very special place. A place where dreams can be won or lost, and where possibility is always just around the corner. Thank you, Las Vegas, for the fun and the games.

  To Nikki Lynn, Sharon, and Christine, thank you for being the very first readers of this series...and for loving it as much as I did. xo ~ Kristina

  Chapter One

  Sabrina Smith hated casinos. She hated the smoke, and the noise. Hated that the seats were bolted into the floor so that the height-impaired had to sit awkwardly to play table and slot games. Hated that the dealers seemed to know something she didn’t know.

  She didn’t like being at a disadvantage; she’d had enough of that as a child.

  Mostly, though, it was the crowds. All those people bumping into one another, smiling at one another, talking to one another. It made her wish for the Nevada desert in the heat of summer, just her and a bottle of water and open space where she could be alone.

  She should have made it part of her contract with the PR firm handling her latest book that she wouldn’t visit casinos as part of the release. But she had never imagined, even with the title Gamble on Yourself, that they would incorporate a few appearances at casinos in the United States for readings and meet-and-greets.

  She should have known, especially since she’d grown up in Las Vegas casinos, but her intent with the book was so far from table and slot games that she had convinced herself the tie-in wasn’t logical.

  Trust a great PR firm to take that angle and run with it.

  She couldn’t blame them, though. They’d probably thought of the fun of Las Vegas—the lights, the crowds, and the games—rather than the life she had known as a child. The reality of her mother using the metal locker-lined break room as a babysitter while she finished her shift as a cocktail waitress or, when work was really good, as a blackjack dealer on the casino floor. They didn’t know how often Melinda never returned from her shift, leaving Sabrina to make her way through the crowded casino floor alone.

  Sabrina sighed as she looked through the curtain to the filled double conference room at the Theia, one of the newest—and nicest—casinos in Atlantic City, and a shiver raced up her spine. All those people listening to her. Watching her. Wanting to talk to her. Her toes curled against the leather sole of her shoe, and Sabrina cringed. She liked meeting her readers. She liked reading from her books, liked that women were empowered to get out of bad relationships and working environments because of things she wrote about. She just liked doing all of those things on a one-on-one basis.

  Right now, she would rather be anywhere else on the planet than this casino conference room.

  Get a grip, Sabby, you aren’t ten years old any longer. This crowd isn’t here to trample you. They’re all here to support you.

  The emcee finished the introduction, and Sabrina pasted a happy smile on her face as she took the stage.

  “Thank you all for coming,” she said, focusing her gaze on a red bit of wallpaper on the far wall of the conference room, imagining it was just her and the wall in the big room. “I thought we would start this evening with something from chapter two of the new book, and then we’ll have plenty of time for questions.” She adjusted the podium microphone to the perfect level.

  Two hours later, the last woman in line to have her book signed walked out of the conference room and Sabrina breathed a sigh of relief. Just a few more minutes and she would be alone again.

  Just the way she liked it.

  “So we have a seven a.m. interview with the morning show in New York—the crew will be in your room for set up by six thirty—then the nine o’clock with the local radio station, and your flight back to Las Vegas at one. After that, you’re cleared of promotional activities for the next two weeks before the second leg of the tour starts up.” Molly, her representative with the PR firm, checked things off the list on her green plaid clipboard as she spoke. She wore a navy suit with a pink cami underneath and practical pumps on her feet. Her hair was pulled back into a sleek twist that Sabrina thought was probably meant to make the recent college graduate look more like her thirty-something coworkers.

  She liked Molly, but if there was a chance she could change the second half of this tour not to include casinos, she was going to take it. Adding the extra noise and crush of casinos to the usual book crowds was too much. She would curl up into a ball and die before the last leg of the tour was over.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the second half—I know we’re in Reno for a night, and we wrap in Vegas. I was wondering, could we skip the casino portion and keep the talks and meet-and-greets to actual bookstores or libraries?”

  Molly blinked. “But the casino tie-in is perfect, not just for this book, but for your life. You’ve found a way to succeed on your own terms while living in a place that, by nature, is made to make people lose. You’re the new Las Vegas.”

  “Being part of this conference was great, and I’ve read amazing things about the conference going on in Reno. Using ‘gamble’ in the title for this book probably does make casinos the perfect tie-in.” She swallowed. How to explain that her phobia about crowds was specific to the crush of people in casinos without bringing up her entire tragic past? So far she’d kept the worst of her childhood out of the press. All people knew was that she was the daughter of a Las Vegas waitress, not that her mother had regularly left her alone in casinos while she chased after one gambler or another. Or that one night when she was trying to make her way home alone, the crowd leaving a big boxing match at the casino where her mother worked converged with crowds leaving a poker tournament and a concert at another. She’d been trapped in a narrow alley between the two casinos while thousands of people pushed past her and against her for what seemed like hours. She wiped her palms on her skirt. “I know being afraid of crowds is silly, especially when the readers at the events so far have been so amazing.” In truth, it wasn’t until the
first casino stop was added to the book tour that the slight unease of the crowd morphed into her feeling as if she couldn’t take a breath until she was in her hotel room, alone. “I know the message is about empowering ourselves as women, in making our own rules—”

  “Right, gambling on ourselves. It’s a brilliant book.”

  Sabrina took a deep, steady breath. “Thank you. But … but I would be much more comfortable in smaller venues, to be honest.”

  Molly seemed to weigh Sabrina’s words for a long moment. She scribbled something on her ever-present clipboard and nibbled her bottom lip. “I’m sorry you aren’t happy with the tour.”

  “It isn’t that.” Sabrina hurried to correct the younger woman. The tour had been excellent, better than she had hoped for her first book that stepped outside the relationship-advice niche she’d built for herself since graduating from UNLV five years before. “The readers have been great, the questions on point, and every venue has been filled. I rate that as a success. But I’m not great with crowds and adding the casino crowd to the book crowd is … ” She couldn’t hold back the shiver. “I just really hate crowds. They … I,” she corrected, “haven’t fared well with them in my life so far.”

  “Oh. Well.” Molly reached a hand toward Sabrina and then drew it back quickly, as if unsure if Sabrina might break. Or bite. She didn’t like the implications of either. Molly had been great so far on the tour, but this was the third casino talk in the last five nights, and Sabrina was at her limit. It wasn’t even Molly’s fault. Yes, the casino tie-in was Molly’s idea, but Sabrina could have shot it down in the initial meetings despite her publisher’s enthusiasm about it. She’d thought one of the other tour designers would, however, so she’d kept quiet. This was her fault more than it was Molly’s.

  “I don’t mean to make your job harder.”

  “No, it’s just … I’m not sure we can switch the Reno location at this point, but I will definitely check on that. The Vegas event is already set for a new spa that’s opened just outside the city. It’s getting good press and has an outdoor area we thought would be perfect for the wrap party.”

  “Thank you.” Sabrina gathered her things from the area just off the stage.

  “Of course.” Molly continued making notations on her clipboard.

  “I’ll see you at six thirty, then?”

  Molly nodded. There was no win in this particular situation, and it was her own fault. Sabrina turned on her heel and left the conference room. She kept the fake smile on her face until the elevator doors closed behind her, just in case someone from the talk was still waiting in the casino. Once those mirrored silver doors closed, though, and she was alone, she leaned against one wall and closed her eyes.

  Another half day in Atlantic City, and then she could hibernate for a couple of weeks in her pretty little condo in Henderson. Work up her energy to be on for her readers. This part of the book business was the hardest. Putting words together in cogent, entertaining sentences was so much simpler than putting her severely introverted self on display to the media and her readers.

  The bell dinged, and she exited into the vestibule of her penthouse hotel room.

  Sabrina dropped her leather-bound folder on the entry table, kicked off her five-inch heels, and draped the jacket of her suit over the desk chair. She flipped on the television for noise, grabbed a bottle of water from the mini fridge, and settled into the suede couch to decompress.

  Blessedly alone.

  Less than twenty-four hours and she would be home.

  Two hours later she was still blessedly alone, but still not relaxed. The conversation with Molly kept revolving in her mind. She shouldn’t have said anything. She’d seen the schedule. Other than the event in Reno, there was only one other in a casino, and it was in a small city in Northern California. She could withstand two more nights in a casino; God knew she’d handled worse in her life.

  She grabbed her phone, and opened her messaging app.

  Never mind my minor meltdown about casinos and crowds earlier. I can handle the other two events. Have a good evening.

  She turned off the phone volume and plugged it into the cord on the side table. Then she got up, grabbed her favorite oversized UNLV T-shirt from the dresser, and changed into it. She shut off the TV and crawled into bed. Neon lights glimmered outside her window, so she hit the button to close the blinds.

  Sabrina completed the breathing exercise she’d perfected in college. The one that led to immediate sleep and relaxation.

  And opened her eyes.

  She sighed, waiting for the wave of exhaustion that always followed public events to hit. Usually, it happened as soon as she opened her door. Tonight, that exhaustion was just out of her reach, and it was annoying. She had to be up in—she grabbed the bedside clock—just over six hours so that she could be presentable for the TV crew.

  Frustrated, she swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  What the hell was wrong with her? She began to pace, going over the evening.

  She’d apologized for her behavior earlier. She’d done her breathing exercise, and watched a couple of mindless hours of television.

  Maybe she could work off whatever was bothering her in the gym. Her gaze landed on a copy of her book, open to the table of contents. She’d titled the last chapter “Facing Your Demons,” and the words seemed to taunt her. Bits of neon seeped through the closed blinds, and even though she was at least twenty floors above the casino, it was as if she could hear the tinny music and the sound of electronic coins landing in the winner’s total column.

  Had she really faced her demons? Was avoiding casinos at all costs—especially when she lived in a casino heaven like Las Vegas—dealing with what it had felt like to wait in those locker rooms while her mother finished her shift dealing blackjack—or simply didn’t come back because she’d met some gambler and gone to his hotel room with him, thinking he would be the man to take her away from her terrible life? Was avoiding casinos dealing with how it had felt to be trapped in that alley while thousands of adults passed her by, oblivious to her slight form pressed against the hard brick of the building?

  Sabrina grabbed a pair of jeans and a fitted T-shirt from the dresser, slipped her feet into flip-flops, and grabbed her wallet.

  She didn’t know what good it would do, but maybe if she actually set her feet on the casino floor, she would finally be able to sleep.

  • • •

  Jase Reeves fucking loved casinos. He loved the crowds and the noise, the drinks and the pretty women serving them. He especially liked knowing he was in control. He approached gambling as he did pretty much everything else in his life: with caution. He played until he started to feel out of control, and then he quit. Folded his hand, picked up whatever chips he had on the table, and left.

  Mostly he liked that casinos were predictable. Someone would win and someone would lose, and the fun was in seeing which someone would wear which hat at the end of the night.

  The beautiful woman sitting across the table from him, weighing her options, made him like casinos more than he usually did. From the second she sat across from him, he’d sat a little straighter in his chair, felt a little more awake than he had since he arrived in Atlantic City a couple of weeks before.

  He studied her for at least the tenth time since she’d arrived in the poker room. Long blond hair fell in waves past her shoulders. He thought her eyes were blue, but it was impossible to tell in the dim lighting. He did know she had all the right curves in all the right places under those tight jeans and the fitted, aqua T-shirt she wore. She twisted her mouth to the side.

  “I’ll take two,” she said and slid two cards across the table to the dealer.

  Jase took a look at his own hand, noting the two threes and two tens in his hand. The woman across the table grimaced. Whatever she’d been hoping for, she hadn’t gotten. Good news for him.

  “One,” he said and tossed the lone jack in his hand onto the table. The dealer slid a c
ard across. It was a three. Not the best news, but still a full house. Based on the increased nibbling the woman was doing to her lower lip, he was in good shape. “Are you in?”

  She tossed a chip onto the small pile in the middle of the table. “I’ll bet ten,” she said.

  Nice bluff, but Jase wasn’t buying. Her sexy voice might say she was in the game, but her body language screamed she was out of it. He considered raising, just to see what she would do. The possibility that she would fold and leave was too great, so he tossed a chip in the same denomination she’d used onto the table.

  “Call.”

  The woman took another look at the cards in her hands and then laid them flat on the table, her long fingers caressing them and causing the blood to rush from Jase’s mind to below his belt. His brain short-circuited for a moment, imagining those thin fingers with the white-tipped nails running over his belly, scratching their way down his back.

  Not a smart thing to think about in the middle of a card game. Technically the end of a card game, but still.

  The cards she put down included an ace, king, and jack, but no queen and nothing else to go with it. Jase laid his full house on the table and reached into the middle.

  “One more round?” she asked.

  Good, she wasn’t ready to give up just yet. This was a good sign.

  She signaled the waitress, who brought a fresh bottle of water for her. It was just past one a.m., and the two of them had been playing alone at the table for just over an hour. So far, she’d won twice, and he had won twice.

  “I think they’re spiking my water with caffeine. I’m never going to get to sleep at this point,” she said, sipping from the bottle. Her full, pink lips at the mouth of the bottle sent even more blood to his dick, and Jase shifted uncomfortably.

  “Yeah, I’ll go one more. We have to see who is the best poker player.”

  There was no doubt in his mind that he was the better player. He’d been distracted by her during that last game, catching himself studying her curves rather than watching the cards in his hands. One more game, a game he was determined to win, would give him a little more time with her. Time he could use to flirt a little. He’d been in Atlantic City for just over a month, since the big tournament in Monte Carlo just after the holidays. He’d wandered every casino, played and won more hands than he could count, and yet he’d felt no need to return to Las Vegas.