“Don’t you have a cheating fiancé and a backstabbing best friend to deal with?”
Huh?
Mr. Lumberjack lifted a thick brow. “That was your sob story last time,Angela.”
Shit. Right.
I wiggled my tray of chips. “I have a honeymoon fund to burn through.”
The bouncer mentally counted my chips and grimaced. “Where was he taking you? An abandoned Burger Palace off the turnpike?”
I stepped left to try to get around him, but he blocked my path.
I stepped right and groaned when he did the same thing.
“Does your manager know you’re bad for business? Aren’t casinos supposed towantpeople to come in and gamble?”
The bouncer opened his mouth to retort, but another voice cut in. “If you keep harassing the poor girl, she might start to think you have a crush on her, Jude.”
I cringed at the old theory that boys harassed girls because they had a “crush.” I had spent more than a few office hours coaching my students out of that ideology. Peddling the old saying only set women up to tolerate abusive behavior.
But the banter between us didn’t feel like unwanted teasing and taunting.
It felt like flirting.
I offered the bouncer—Jude—a cheeky smile. “Nice to officially meet you, Jude.”
He closed his eyes, pinched his nose, and let out a slow breath, like he was trying to stave off a migraine.
Little did he know, I wasn’t a migraine. I was an aneurysm. Especially if he kept me from protecting my brother.
If protective mothers were mama bears, then eldest daughters were honey badgers.
Jude muttered something under his breath and sulked off, leaving me with the old man who played with me the first night.
“I’m glad to see you’re back, doll,” he said with a grin. “Why don’t you come play at my table tonight?”
7
JUDAH
Tuesday, May 20 | 9:30 p.m.
“You got blood on my boot,” I said in offense as I stared down at my beloved leather motorcycle boots. After years of blisters, they were broken in and soft as hell. I could run a damn marathon in them if someone had a gun to my head.
The pulp of a man in front of me peered through a swollen eye. “You punched me,” he wheezed.
“Just part of my job,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “Which you knew when you tried to skip out on your payments to Mr. Valentine.”
“I—I just—” He coughed, spattering more blood across the asphalt. “It’s too much. I’ll pay what I can. I just?—”
I gave him a swift kick to the abdomen. “No. You’ll pay in full. Consider this the last and final warning from Mr. Valentine.” With that, I turned and headed for the back entrance to the casino, leaving him in a heap on the blacktop.
I paused and used the heel of my boot to snuff out a still-burning cigarette someone had dropped beside the bucket full of sand that was meant for butts.
But they just couldn’t be bothered to drop it there.
That shit drove me crazy.
