Best She Ever Had (9781617733963) (22 page)

“I want to sue the ass off of whoever wrote this stuff, but there's no name or contact info on the site. I can't figure out who the hell did this!” Stephanie yelled. “Do either of you know who it might be?”

Lauren nodded. “I think I do.”

“Who?”
her sisters asked in unison.

“Mayor Knightly . . . or one of his lackeys.”

“Why do you think it's him?” Dawn asked.

“Because everyone has been gossiping about this crap for years, and no one bothered to make a Web site about it before. Now that Cris is running for election, the site
just happens
to pop up. It's too much of a coincidence. Knightly did this to humiliate me”—she paused to suck her teeth—“and to embarrass Cris by association.”

“So how do we prove it?” Dawn asked.

“I doubt that we can,” Lauren replied.

“Well, damn,” Stephanie said.

Lauren wondered if Cris had seen the site already and shuddered at what the fallout would be.

“Y
ou won again,” Cynthia muttered with a dejected sigh. She then gathered up the cards to deal their next game of gin rummy.

Korey smiled before glancing up at the bank of elevators several feet away. One of the elevator doors opened. He leaned forward eagerly to see who would step out, then sat back when a group of guys in swim trunks with towels draped around their necks slowly strolled into the lobby.

“Do you know where the pools are?” one of them shouted to Korey.

Korey pointed over his shoulder. “Down the hall, then make two lefts.”

“Thanks,” one said with a smile and a wave.

Korey and Cynthia had been sitting in the lobby for the past three hours, hoping to spot the kids. It was their last option; they had exhausted all other alternatives. So far they were having no success finding Clarissa and Jared, but Korey seemed to be on a winning streak with the game of gin rummy they had been playing with the complimentary pack of cards from the hotel. They had been dealing out cards to each other for the last hour to pass the time while they waited for the kids.

“Are you kidding me?” Cynthia exclaimed ten minutes later when Korey won yet another game, then tossed down her cards on the couch pad between them. He laughed, making her look up at him.

“Ah-
hee-hee-hee
,” she mocked, then rolled her eyes.

“We can go back to playing spades again if you want. You were the one who said we had to play this old lady game.”

“You were winning when we were playing that too!” She squinted one eye at him. “You better not be cheating!”

He laughed even harder. “I'm not cheating!”

“You've won nine out of ten games, Korey. What are the chances? I know you aren't that damn good of a player,” she argued, pretending to be mad, though he could tell she wasn't. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

He leaned forward. “Maybe I've just had a change in luck,” he whispered against her lips, gazing into her hazel eyes, where flecks of gold now danced.

“Maybe,” she whispered back, meeting his gaze. “But maybe n—”

He kissed her before she could finish, letting the deck of cards tumble from his hands. She held his cheeks and eagerly kissed him back.

Korey's change in luck definitely had been for the better. Who would have thought when he and Cynthia boarded the plane back in Virginia two days ago that they would be so happy now? The incredible sex was a given. They had always been good at tearing up the sheets. But he never would have believed, after all these years, that Cynthia Gibbons would not only admit that she had been wrong for what she had done to him back then, but also admit that she was still in love with him. The cold, conniving money-hungry Cynthia he had thought she had become wasn't capable of that, but the charming and warm Cindy that he remembered had been capable of such vulnerability. He was glad to discover that the old Cindy was still in there.

Even though they couldn't rewrite the past, now they had a chance for a future together. As soon as they got back to Chesterton and settled things with the kids, he wanted to take her out on a proper date. He wanted to know more about her. What had gone on in her life in the past twenty years? What was her daughter Clarissa like? There were so many things that—

“You don't think you're jumping the gun?” a voice in his head asked. “It's not like she hasn't done this before. She's gotten your hopes up in the past only to disappoint you later.”

Korey furrowed his brows at that thought.

No, she's changed,
he insisted.
I can feel it! I know it!
And frankly, if this was going to work between them, he had to change too. He couldn't continue to keep up his guard around her. He couldn't keep anticipating the moment when she would let him down or when she would drop some bombshell on him. He had told her that he had forgiven her and that he loved her. He
had
to trust her.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” the voice in his head mocked.

All I've had lately is good luck,
he thought as he won yet another game of gin rummy.
Looks like the odds are in my favor.

“That's it,” Cynthia said, tossing down her cards yet again fifteen minutes later. “I'm not playing you anymore. You've got some weird hoodoo going on.”

He chuckled. “You're just a sore loser.”

“Eh, maybe.” She shrugged before looking up again when one of the elevators opened. He watched as her shoulders slumped as an old woman in a velveteen tracksuit stepped out of the elevator and shuffled into the lobby.

“Why don't we take a break?” he asked.

“A break?
Now?
But what if the kids—”

“We've been here for three and a half hours, and neither Jared nor Clarissa has shown up,” he said, gathering the cards into a deck. “If we disappear for a half an hour, I doubt that'll be the moment when they suddenly decide to do cartwheels and go screaming through the lobby.”

Cynthia leaned her head back against the stucco wall. She stared at the elevators again. Disappointment clouded her face.

“You don't think we're going to find them, do you?”

“Honestly?” He tucked the deck into his jean pocket and shook his head. “At this point, no, but I'm willing to sit here and wait if that's what you want to do. I know how much it means to you.”

“It's not just me! I thought it meant a lot to you too!”

“It does, but I've accepted that they're probably already married, Cindy. It's just something we'll handle when we all get back home. You should just accept it too.” He put a hand on her thigh and rubbed it soothingly. “You'll feel a lot a better.”

“No, I won't,” she whimpered, closing her eyes. “I'd rather throw myself off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge than see those two married, Korey!”

Korey frowned. That was a bit melodramatic, wasn't it? The idea of their kids getting married wasn't
that
bad.

He had always remembered Cynthia being stubborn, but she was being particularly stubborn about this, even though the likelihood of stopping the wedding after all this time was remote. He didn't know why she was digging in her heels about it. Maybe he could find a way to distract her, to keep her from obsessing.

“Come on.” He stood up from the sofa, grabbed her hand, and dragged her to her feet.

“What?” she asked as they walked toward the elevators. “Where are we going?”

“To one of the casinos,” he answered as they walked down a corridor.

“Why the casino?” Her eyes widened. “You think the kids are there?”

“No, but we're in Vegas, and we haven't been to a casino once. Plus, I'm finally going to use all this good luck to my advantage.”

“Seriously, Korey? You want to gamble?” she exclaimed in exasperation as he dragged her along.

“Don't look at me like that. If I win big, I'll buy you dinner . . . or a Maserati.” He winked.

 

Fifteen minutes later, they walked past the craps and poker tables. Korey scanned the vast casino, looking for the perfect game.

“I cannot believe you plan to bet that much money,” Cynthia said, shaking her head at the two thousand dollars' worth of chips in his hand. She folded her arms over her chest. “You couldn't start at one hundred or even two hundred? Huh? I'm really starting to worry that Las Vegas is making you lose your damn mind.”

He held up the stack of chips and shrugged. “It's really not that much.”

“Not that much compared to what? That's a month's worth of income for some people!”

“Not for me,” he said as they passed another set of tables.

At one table a crowd of people were gathered and screaming with delight. At another nearby blackjack table, a man in a suit that was so wrinkled and stained that he had to have been wearing it for several days loudly swore as the dealer called out the last card. He took off his cowboy hat and slapped it on the floor, startling the waitress who had just walked past him with a tray of drinks.

“What do you mean not for you? Why do you keep acting like you're rich?” she asked.

“Because I am rich,” he replied nonchalantly.

“Wait!” She grabbed his arm, halting him in his tracks. “What do you mean you're rich? You . . . you aren't rich—are you?”

He sighed. He hadn't wanted to talk about this. The fact that he had money wasn't something he liked to advertise and particularly wasn't something he wanted to discuss with Cynthia—a woman who was proudly a gold digger.

When some of the women Korey had dated figured out his secret, their eyes would light up as if they had just discovered Shangri-la. Those were usually the women whose phone numbers he lost. He had learned to be wary of being taken advantage of. Hell, even his ex-wife, Vivian, had no problem begging him for cash because she knew how much money he had! He could only imagine how Cynthia would react once he told her he was wealthy.

But she did say she loved me without knowing about my money,
he thought. And if they were going to start anew and going to be in a relationship, she would find out about his wealth soon enough. He couldn't continue to keep this secret from her.

“I'm no Bill Gates, but my net worth is a couple of million or so,” he confessed, then paused. “I haven't checked with my accountant lately, though. It could be up to three by now.”

She blinked in amazement. “
Maybe three million?
B-but you're a mechanic!”

“I also own two businesses, started investing in properties and renting them out ten years ago, and I own blue-chip stock. Did you really think I was poor?”

“Not poor, b-but . . . but definitely not . . . you know, rich. I saw your house and your car.” She glanced at his outfit, which was a plain, no-name brand T-shirt and jeans he could have purchased at any big-box store. “I mean, the way you usually dress . . . none of it exactly screams, ‘He's a baller or a big fish!' ”

“Maybe not, but”—he shrugged—“I am.” He then continued to walk down the aisle. “I'm just a baller who also happens to be frugal.”

“You mean cheap.”

“Well, I'm not going to be cheap today.”

When she continued to gape at him, he slapped her on the ass, making her jump in surprise. He suddenly spotted a roulette table and beelined for it.

The minimum bet was one-hundred dollars. Korey placed his chips on the table, trading them all in for roulette chips.

“Korey,” Cynthia cautioned a minute later as Korey took half of his new chips and bet on black, making a bet of one thousand dollars, “do you really think you should bet that much?”

“Don't worry,” he whispered to her as the dealer released the ball and the roulette wheel began to spin. “It's just money.”

She closed her eyes and grumbled.

Thankfully, his good luck held. The ball landed on black twenty-eight.

And with each bet after that, Korey upped the stakes. He went from making the safer outside bets to the riskier inside bets, and each time he won. Even he was shocked as the dealer called out each number.

A crowd started to gather around the table. It was small at first, then more and more people joined the throng. The waitress started to bring him free drinks. The dealer and floor manager started to watch him more carefully to make sure everything was on the up and up. A few of the other players started to follow Korey's bets, putting their chips on whatever bet he made. As the chips in front of him started to stack higher and higher, Korey felt higher than a kite, and it wasn't the whiskey the casino was plying him with. He was high on adrenaline.

He was rich, in love, and he seemed to have the golden touch. He felt invincible!

When the stack in front of him climbed up to almost twenty thousand dollars in chips, he turned to Cynthia, expecting to see the same expression of ecstasy and joy on her face. Instead, she looked ill. Her face was pale. Her mouth was tense.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

She took a deep breath and slowly shook her head. “I can't believe you're doing this.”

“
Doing what?
Having fun?” He kissed her and grinned. “Come on, Cindy, we're in Vegas. Lighten up!”

“Please, just quit while you're ahead.”

“Oh, hell, no! Don't quit!” a fat man on the other side of him urged. “Make another bet!” He slapped Korey's shoulder and turned to the woman beside him. “I made five hundred bucks off this guy! I'm hoping to make a thousand before it's all over!”

Korey scanned the table. His eyes closed in on red eighteen.

Eighteen . . .
the age that he fell in love for the first time.
Eighteen . . .
the age that he lost the woman he loved forever—or so he thought. But now they had a second chance, and life was full of chances to be taken, right?

He pushed all his chips onto red eighteen, drawing a few claps and gasps of awe from those crowded around him.

“Look at the size of the balls on this guy right here!” the fat man yelled. “They gotta be made outta brass!”

“Korey,” Cynthia whispered, “why did you do that?”

“No more bets!” the dealer shouted before tossing the ball onto the spinning roulette wheel.

Korey and the rest of the table leaned forward eagerly, while Cynthia closed her eyes and turned away, refusing to look. A hush fell over the table. They all watched as the ball bounced and the wheel spun around and around. Most of the people looked anxious as they watched, but a blissful calm fell over Korey. He had every confidence in this moment. He was as sure about this win as he was about his love for Cynthia and her love for him. The ball bounced, landed on red eighteen—then it bounced again.