Double Blind Read online

  Randy rolled his eyes. “Please. The list of places you aren’t from is longer.” He ticked them off on his fingers as he spoke. “You’re too uptight for Hawaii, and you don’t smile enough for California.”

  Ethan flattened his lips. “Smiling?”

  “It’s a light in the face, California. An aggressive sort of friendliness, something about the corners of the mouth. It’s different north to south too, but none of it’s you. You aren’t laid-back enough for the Pacific Northwest. You don’t have the accent or manners for the South. I know damn well you aren’t from Michigan.”

  “But how?”

  “Because I’m from Michigan, and you always know your own.” He took a moment to enjoy Ethan’s stunned expression before resuming his explanation. “You’ve got the wrong accent for the East Coast, and wrong demeanor. So now we’re down to West and Midwest. Most people wouldn’t be able to spot the difference, but again, you know your own, and you have the nice, but it’s the wrong kind. Western nice is a little more distant. For all they say about cowboy chivalry, there’s more of a ‘oh, let me lay down my coat for you, I don’t mind the mud, honestly’ about the center of the country.”

  Ethan looked at Randy as if trying to find the two-by-four smacking him in the head. “Are you making this up as you go along?”

  “Sort of. You want to know how I got Utah. I knew you weren’t Nevada. You felt too out of town to be local. Odds are too good you’d at least have been to Reno before, if you were native, and you act like Vegas is about to eat you whole. You don’t feel like Arizona or New Mexico. So now we’re down to Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho. I ruled out the last two for distance, because you’ve clearly run away from something, and traveling too far would give you enough time to come to your senses.”

  Wide eyes again. “How…?”

  Randy waved him away impatiently. “Now we’re down to three, which means I’m looking at better than a thirty percent chance. But I want better odds. So I’m making a call on Wyoming because it doesn’t feel right, and really, it’s also too far. Now I’m fifty-fifty, western Colorado or pretty much anywhere in Utah. Though now I know that one’s right, I’m willing to get cocky and say Salt Lake City. Or Provo.”

  Ethan looked seriously spooked now. “I’m from American Fork, and I lived in Provo after college. But how—?”

  “Frankly? You have this vaguely Mormon feel, but you also don’t. So, you grew up steeped in it but weren’t overpowered. So you’re from somewhere big enough to be diverse.”

  Ethan stared a few seconds longer, then took a deep drink of his G&T.

  Randy drank too, but just a sip. “I’ve been told when I read people like this, it’s scary. I take it you concur?”

  “I think if you lived in the Middle Ages, you’d be burned at the stake.”

  Randy snorted. “No. I’d never let my talent be so obvious. Unless, of course, I wanted to get someone into bed.” Ethan stiffened and cast him a warning glance. Randy shrugged. “You’re sitting now. I’m flirting out of relief.”

  Ethan took another drink. “I believe you could flirt if you were stripped naked, tied up, and dangling over a pit of snakes.”

  Randy’s laugh became a purr of its own free will. “If you were the snake charmer, baby, I’d surely try at the very least.”

  Ethan put his drink down. “Don’t call me baby.”

  Randy hadn’t realized he had. “Is there an endearment you prefer?”

  “My name is Ethan.”

  “Endearment.” Randy rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “You certainly aren’t Sunshine, and anyway, the name’s taken. Black is too dismal. Baby suits you in the abstract, but it’s too blasé for a nickname.” He ran his gaze over Ethan in a critical scan. “Slim would fit, but it’s too neutered.”

  “Just call me Ethan.” He slid his thumb along the side of his glass as he stared into the ice. “So why did you come up to me, really? Why did you make the bet against my ring?”

  “That one’s complicated.” Randy glanced at Scully. “I bet against your ring because Tyler is an ass. I don’t care for the shitty odds in roulette, but I comforted myself with the knowledge he’d see your win as my win too, so I still had the best of it, in a way.”

  “But he was the one who suggested I take the zeroes,” Ethan said, and Randy grinned.

  “And I made sure it went down that way, baby.” Randy caught himself this time and winced. “Sorry. I’m honestly not doing it on purpose.” He scratched his cheek. “I came up to you at all because of a different bet, if you must know.”

  Randy hadn’t exactly meant to come so clean, and he ran his finger around the edge of his glass, buying time as he tried to figure out how to save this.

  He extended an index finger to the silvered dome in the ceiling above the bar. “See that? It’s camera number seventy-two. There are three hundred of them in the casino, which actually isn’t quite enough, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  Ethan seemed impressed. “This is your casino?”

  “No. But I work here sometimes.”

  Scully snorted.

  “You’re a security person?” Ethan’s voice spiked in panic.

  “I’m not security. I’m a prop. But I wasn’t working earlier, just hanging out in Billy’s office. He likes to watch some of the tables himself, and I saw you playing. Fantastically badly, I might add.”

  “I don’t understand. Who’s Billy? What’s a prop?” Ethan frowned. “What was wrong with the way I played? I was waiting for black.”

  “You were waiting for fucking Godot, baby.” Randy drank. “Billy is Billy Herod. It’s his casino. A prop is harder to explain, but for now let’s say I play poker.” Randy drank again and then set the empty glass down. “The bet is what’s important here, sweetness. I watched you play, and I read you. I declared to Billy I knew three things about you. Billy thinks I’m cocky, so he roped me into a bet, and to win I have to find out if I was right or wrong. And I have to be right on all three counts, for the record. Igor here”—he jerked his head at Scully—“is the witness.”

  Randy waited while Ethan sputtered, indignant. In a few seconds he’d make some outraged cry, demanding to know if that was all this had been, if everything about their encounter was about a bet.

  “Do you mean,” Ethan said, his consonants sharp and angry, “this whole thing, everything at the table, getting this drink, the flirting and calling me baby has all been about a bet?”

  Randy sighed. Sometimes he wished people would surprise him.

  “I saw your sad face in the camera, and I fell in love. I came down to propose to you. Of course it’s a fucking bet. The fact that you like being flirted with and you look good when you’re pissed off is just a plus.”

  Ethan’s nostrils flared. “I do not enjoy being flirted with. Not by you.”

  Randy started to get bored. “Fine. Take my quick survey, lover, and then you can go. I say you came to Vegas—from Utah—because someone dumped you and broke your heart. They did this in part by taking a significant amount of money from you. You came here with what was left, and you pissed away your last dollar, determined if you sat there long enough, black had to come around because it owed you.” He threaded his fingers behind his head and smirked. “Isn’t that right?”

  He saw the truth of it in Ethan Ellison’s wide, pale eyes—the shock, the fear of exposure, and most of all, the pain. It hooked the edge of Randy’s heart, which was a surprise, and he softened his expression. Ethan had been through enough. He didn’t need mocking too.

  Then there was a shift, a hardening of Ethan’s mouth, and Randy stilled as he read something else, something troubling in Ethan’s eyes.

  Triumph.

  “No,” Ethan said.

  Scully, who’d faced the TV but glanced at Ethan for his answer, now turned toward them full on.

  Randy sat up. “Excuse me?” His heart beat faster. No. He could not be wrong. He’d seen it, both upstairs and here, now. He was right, he knew
it.

  Ethan leaned forward. “I said no. You’re wrong. Yes, you were right about some of it, but not all. He took money, and yes, that was my last dollar.” His chin went up, and his eyes glittered as he added, “But it was me who dumped him.”

  No. No, that was not what he had seen. But then he looked again, deeper, using the full force of what Billy liked to call his “freakish gift for reading people”, using the parts of it he couldn’t explain out loud even if his life depended on it. Randy read the shades he’d glossed over before, what he could never have seen from the camera and what he’d been too confident and too lazy to acknowledge in real time.

  Ethan Ellison was not lying.

  Randy sank into his chair, staring open-mouthed.

  Then the rest of it hit him. He turned to Ethan, then to Scully, then to the camera again. “Fuck.”

  Scully laughed, the mirth of one who’d waited a long time for this moment. “You better start doin’ some sit-ups, Jansen. Otherwise your beer gut’s gonna hang out over them little neon shorts Billy’s gonna make you and the other twinkies wear.”

  “Jesus fuck.” Randy collapsed onto the bar, resting his head against the rail as he tried to compose himself.

  “What’s going on?” Ethan still sounded confused, but he was clearly enjoying Randy’s discomfort as much as everyone else.

  “What’s going on is Randy Jansen, who is never, ever wrong about a poker face, just read yours and lost. Buddy, your drinks for the month are on the house. Another G&T?”

  “What about me?” Randy lifted his head. “I’m the poor bastard who has to wear the shorts.”

  “You still owe me for the first round.”

  Randy glared at Scully as he sat up and dug into his pocket. “Here,” he said, slamming a twenty-five-dollar chip onto the counter. “Happy?”

  Scully scooped up the heavy toke. “Oh, very.”

  Smarting from the misread and unsettled by his own sloppiness, Randy didn’t know how to finish this. Ethan wasn’t gloating, wasn’t reveling over how he’d just done what a healthy portion of Vegas had wanted done for years. He only regarded Randy uneasily, remaining patiently nice as he watched to see what would happen now.

  Goddamn it, but it turned Randy on.

  The only way out was to raise the stakes, but it was a bitch to pull off when there was only one player in the game. He slammed down another chip—a fifty this time. “You can damn well wait to buy Slick here a drink because I’m getting this one too. Another Dirty Whiskey and another G&T. Small T, and a big, big fucking G.”

  “Slick?” Ethan repeated.

  Randy curled his lip in a snarl. “You want to go back to baby?”

  Ethan’s smile reverberated in Randy’s toes as his body posture eased, and he braced one long arm against the bar. “Slick’s fine.”

  Randy took in the tempting, tender, and smooth flesh of Ethan’s exposed wrist, and his arousal heightened as he imagined the way his skin would taste. The thumb crooked once, then twice, as if calling to him, but when Randy looked up at Ethan’s face, the man was too distracted watching Scully make the drinks to have done it on purpose.

  Unless, of course, Randy had misread him again.

  “Fuck.” He slumped onto the bar.

  ETHAN WASN’T ENTIRELY sure what had happened, but he understood enough to know somehow he’d bested Randy.

  Good.

  Ethan still worked on the first drink, but there was a second G&T sweating on a coaster. As he drank, the bartender joyfully needled Randy, who remained with his forehead on the rail.

  “I hope yours are pink, you little fucker.” He leered at Randy. “Really bright fucking pink.”

  Randy lifted his head and gave the bartender a withering glare. “Wearing pink doesn’t threaten my masculinity like it does yours.”

  “Pink shorts, real tight. With your fat ass hanging out.”

  The comment brought Randy up short. “My ass is not fat. You, however, could supply the kitchens at Bellagio with lard for a month.”

  Scully continued to snicker, but Ethan’s attention drifted, drawn to a subtle study of Randy’s referenced anatomy, hiding his perusal behind the illusion of taking another drink. It wasn’t a fat ass at all. None of Randy was fat, not really, and if anything, he was a bit muscular. He had the look of someone who worked out infrequently, just enough to keep real trouble at bay. By no means was he clean-cut. His dark, curly hair was a mess, and he had stubble on his jaw. In Hollywood he’d be artfully tousled. In real life he could use a bit more grooming.

  In short, he wasn’t Ethan’s type at all.

  Randy turned his head, catching Ethan staring, giving Ethan a full-on view of his eyes—dark, huge, and so sharp they made Randy shiver. It was a dramatic, foolish thought, but when Randy looked at Ethan like this, he would swear the man could steal inside his soul.

  Worse, Ethan acknowledged as Randy’s smile darkened, the little devil seemed to know exactly what he did to Ethan.

  Ethan drained the last of the cocktail and set the glass down, still watching Randy carefully.

  He’s here because he made a bet about you, about what you were doing at the table, about why you’re here, and he was almost completely right. But that’s all he cares about, not you. The speech was meant to be a warning to himself, but the problem was Randy wasn’t actively coming on to him, and it threw Ethan off.

  The gin gave Ethan the liquid courage to voice aloud the question rattling inside his head. “So what happens now?”

  Randy shrugged. “No idea. There’s always your upside-down snake idea, I guess.”

  Ethan choked on his gin. “That was a metaphor, not a proposition.”

  Randy grinned. “There. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a proposition.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “It’s eight thirty now. I say it’ll happen by…” he blew his breath out in a heavy exhale, then tossed his head from side to side as he considered, “…midnight, I think.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ethan tried to sound dismissive, but Randy’s gaze made him squirm.

  Randy leaned forward. “By midnight tonight I will have wooed you.”

  “No.”

  “Excellent. We have a bet. Terms?”

  “I’m not betting with you. Especially not about wooing.”

  “You’re right, it needs to be more specific. Hmm.” He ran his fingers over his lips as he narrowed his eyes. Ethan moved his own gaze deliberately down and ended up staring at Randy’s fingers. The tips of two of them were tucked inside his lips, making them part. Ethan had noticed them before, and he noted it again—Randy’s fingers were stained, lined with…grease?

  “Engines.”

  Ethan blinked. “What?”

  “Engines.” Randy waggled his fingers. “My fingers are stained because I work with diesel engines all day. Also motorcycles. My hands are clean, for the record. They’re just stained.”

  “I don’t care.” Ethan winced at how prim he sounded.

  Randy’s mouth turned up at the corners, and his sharp eyes twinkled. “By midnight I’ll have kissed you, Ethan. That’s the bet.”

  Ethan’s pulse raced in alarm. “You won’t have, because I won’t let you.”

  Randy’s smile became dangerous. “Scratch that. By midnight, Slick, you will kiss me.”

  Ethan said nothing, deciding the way out of this was not to dignify Randy’s idiocy with a reply.

  This didn’t slow Randy down. “If you manage not to, you’ll get one thousand dollars.”

  Ethan held up his hands. “You’re insane.”

  “The hell I am. When I win, you remember that’s how badly you wanted to kiss me, enough to give up a thousand dollars.”

  Ethan turned to the bartender for help, but Scully held up the fifty-dollar chip Randy had given him. “I’m bettin’ on you, Jansen.”

  Randy lifted an eyebrow. “You expect me to bet against myself?”

  Ethan glared at Scul
ly. “You think I will kiss him?”

  “Come on, Jansen. This is a sure thing.” He looked to Ethan. “You bet me, then.”

  “He doesn’t have any money,” Randy pointed out.

  “You could put up my ring,” Ethan said, even as part of his brain told him to shut up.

  Randy leered. “Have you forgotten? It’s my ring now.”

  Ethan felt his cheeks color, but he kept his chin level. “It hardly matters. I’m not taking this bet.”

  Randy held out his hands. “How can you not? All you have to do to get one thousand dollars is resist me until midnight. Easiest money you’ll ever make.”

  Scully fished in his pocket and brought out several other chips and thrust them at Randy. “An even hundred. Please.”

  Ethan’s head spun from more than just gin. There was nothing encouraging about the way Scully was so sure he would lose, but at the same time, there was no way he was kissing this arrogant asshole.

  You shouldn’t do this at all. You should turn on your heel and walk away from him right now.

  A deep, empty wave of cold swept in on the thought’s wake. And if I do, where will I go?

  Ethan shook off the cold. “So if I lose, do I owe you one thousand dollars?”

  “No, Slick.” Randy put a hand over his heart. “The pleasure of your tender lips will be enough of a payment for me.”

  Oh, he was an arrogant, arrogant bastard. Ethan glared at him a moment, hating him, hating all of this.

  But if it weren’t for him, where would you be right now?

  Darkness threatening again, Ethan shut his eyes and nodded. “Fine.”

  When he opened his eyes, Randy’s smile had faded. “Slick, you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Ethan sat up straight. “And I’ll take your stupid bet.”

  Scully pulled all the chips out of his pocket. “Somebody please take my bet.”

  Randy studied Scully’s multicolored pile. “This looks like about a hundred and fifty dollars.”

  Scully shoved them forward. “I’m good for more.”

  Randy waved an impatient hand. “I’ll back him for the one-fifty, but he has to agree to the bet with you.”

  Ethan couldn’t believe this. “You mean you’re going to either end up paying me one thousand, or him one-fifty? How do you win this?”