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“I do, and I don’t care. You’re way too uptight.”
“I don’t think you’re uptight, Bram.” A lethal-looking redhead with a cigarette voice tried to drape herself around him, but he shrugged her off and announced he was playing, too.
When it was Georgie’s turn to roll, Bram placed his chips on the Don’t Pass Line. She threw the dice. A cheer went up as she rolled a winning six and five. Only Bram had bet against her.
“Too bad,” she whispered. “I know money’s tight for you, but I’ve heard male prostitutes can make a fortune if they find the right clients.”
“Always looking out for me.”
“That’s what friends do.”
The redhead kept trying to get Bram’s attention, and he kept ignoring her. She finally disappeared, only to return with two fresh martinis. She pressed one in Bram’s hand, but as she lifted the other to her lips, he took it away from her and handed it to Georgie. “Maybe this will loosen you up.”
The redhead looked so undone by his rejection that Georgie would have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been so pushy. Bram rolled the dice and came up with a seven. So far, he’d broken even, while Georgie was down a few thousand. She didn’t care. This was fun. She sipped her martini and cheered Kerry on when it was his turn.
Time slid by, and the world began to whirl into a kaleidoscope of color. The dice bounced against the table’s edge. The stick swept across the green felt. The chips clicked. Suddenly, everything was beautiful, even Bram Shepard. They’d once created small-screen magic. Surely that counted for something. She rested her cheek against him. “I don’t hate you anymore.”
He draped his arm around her shoulder, sounding as happy as she felt. “I don’t hate you, either.”
Another beautiful minute ticked by, and then, for no reason at all, he pulled back. She wanted to protest as he walked away, but she felt too good.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him approach the redhead. He looked angry. How could he be mad on such a beautiful night?
The dice clicked and clicked again. Bram reappeared at her side. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
That was the last thing she remembered until the next afternoon, when she made the mistake of waking up.
Chapter 4
Georgie groaned. Her head throbbed, her mouth tasted like battery acid, and she had a septic tank where her stomach should be. As she curled her knees to her belly, her bottom brushed against Lance’s side. His skin was warm and—
Nooooooo!
She popped open the eye that wasn’t buried in her pillow.
A cruel blade of afternoon sunlight seeped through the draperies and picked out her lacy white bra lying on the bedroom carpet of her suite at the Bellagio. One of last night’s heels peeped out from beneath a pair of men’s jeans.
Please, oh, please, let those jeans belong to that sweet basketball player.
She buried her face in the pillow. What if they didn’t? What if they belonged to—
They couldn’t. She and the basketball player…Kerry—his name was Kerry…They’d flirted up a storm over the craps table. It had felt so good to flirt. So what if he was a younger man?
Okay, she was naked, and this was awkward. But now Lance was no longer the last man she’d slept with, and that was a sign of progress, right? Her stomach rumbled unpleasantly. She peeled her eye open again. She’d suffered through a few hangovers, but nothing like this. Nothing that had ever wiped out her memory.
The thigh rubbed against her bottom. It felt exceptionally muscular, definitely an athlete’s thigh. But no matter how hard she concentrated, the last thing she remembered was Bram dragging her away from the party.
Kerry must have come after her. Yes, she was sure she remembered him stealing her from Bram. They’d come back here where they’d talked till dawn. He’d made her laugh and told her she had more fortitude than any woman he knew. He’d said she was intelligent, talented, and a lot prettier than most people realized. He’d said that Lance had made himself look like an idiot walking out on a woman like her. They’d started talking about having children together—beautiful biracial babies, unlike Lance’s future pasty-faced kid. They’d agreed to sell the photos of their beautiful baby to the highest bidder and donate the money to charity, which would be especially touching after the Drudge Report dug up news that Jade Gentry had used all the charity money she’d raised to buy herself a yacht. Then Georgie would win an Oscar, and Kerry would win the Super Bowl.
Okay, wrong sport, but her head was hammering, her stomach churning, and a hard knee was trying to wedge deeper into her bottom.
She had to put herself out of her misery, but that would involve turning over and dealing with the consequences of what she saw. She needed water. And Tylenol. An entire bottle.
It began to dawn on her that liquor didn’t give a person total amnesia. This was no ordinary hangover. She’d been drugged. And she knew only one person corrupt enough to drug a woman.
She drove her elbow into his chest with as much force as she could muster.
He gave an oof of pain and rolled over, taking the sheet with him.
