Double Blind (61 page)

“What would you do with this casino, Mr. Ellison,” Crabtree asked, “if you could afford to buy it?”

“I’d run it,” Ethan replied easily, and more importantly, honestly. “I’d be the manager-owner for as long as it worked best for the place, but my goal would always be to make it work. I’d like to continue with the theme of harking back to the glory days of Vegas, but I’d only continue doing that if it continued working. I would do a lot of research too. That’s how I always operate with investments. I’m thorough. I’m meticulous. And I’m careful, as I’m sure you already know. When the occasion calls for it, I will splash around with capital like I have for this event. But normally I wouldn’t. If I were to err, it would be on the side of caution—unless, like this, the whole of the casino was on the line.”

“And why would you do that?” Crabtree said, still leaning back, still casual. Except both he and Ethan knew there was nothing at all casual about this inquiry.

“Because I like the casino,” Ethan said. “Because I have come to love it, not as a business but as a place. Because Herod’s gave me back my heart, and possibly even my soul. Because being here, playing here, and working here has taught me more about life and the risks we take—that we
need
to take—than anything else I’ve encountered yet. If I could make this casino my own, I would, and I would take the risks I needed to take to keep it. And it would be mine. I wouldn’t be anyone’s man. I wouldn’t be anyone’s front. I would abide by the law, and I would treat it as a business. I would pay my taxes and, if I were doing well, I would invest in the community. Because I would make Las Vegas my home. That’s what I would do, sir, if I could afford to buy this casino.”

“And if you won,” Crabtree added dryly.

“Yes,” Ethan agreed.

And he waited.

Crabtree tapped his finger on the felt for a few more seconds. “What about the name?” he asked. “Would you change the name?”

Ethan looked appalled. “Absolutely not! For heaven’s sake, half the value of a place is in the branding, and I’ve just killed myself for a month stamping ‘Herod’s’ across the psyche of everyone I could reach!”

Crabtree smiled, a bright, beaming smile, and Ethan felt like a veil had been lifted. The gangster, the trickster, the gruff old bastard and every one of his veneers fell away, and Ethan just saw a man, a man like himself to whom life had not always been fair. He saw a man who had tried to adjust the odds of life and lost a little more than he’d won even so. He saw a man who had bet on black and lost, and he saw a man who had retreated from the pain of it. He saw a man who had tried to hide from that pain, had tried to mask it, but like Randy and like Ethan, had never quite been able to hide completely. For one moment, Ethan looked at Crabtree and saw the man who lived behind the false fronts. He knew in that moment that Randy was wrong. Completely wrong.

Crabtree was not a ten. He was not a jack, not a five, not a queen, not a king, not a face card, not a number. Crabtree was an ace too. He was an ace who’d been low so long he never thought he’d ever get up again.

He was an ace, waiting for someone to give him a reason to rise.

Then it was gone. But it had been there, and Ethan had seen it. And he knew he would never forget that Evelyn Crabtree Carter, not ever. And he knew that now he was playing not just for himself, not just for Randy, but for Crabtree too.

Maybe he was playing for all the aces in the world, for every man and woman whom life had hit too hard, who just needed one moment of wonder to believe again.

“Enough of this chatter.” Crabtree peeked at his cards. Then he tossed in his ante. “Let’s play.”

Ethan skimmed the ante off his stack as well and threw the chips gently into the center of the table. Crabtree had acted out of turn, but with the two of them, it hardly mattered for the blinds. The real game began now, and Ethan was the first to act. He could call, he could raise, or he could fold. Except really, there was only one thing to do. So he did it.

Without looking at his cards, without blinking, and above all, without hesitating, Ethan reached for his million plus dollars in chips, all of them at once, and pushed the whole lot of them into the center of the table. Then he sat back and waited.

He would never beat Crabtree in regular play, not one-on-one. He might get lucky for a while, but he would never get enough of an advantage to truly come out ahead. And Crabtree wasn’t going to give it to him, because he was too worried that Ethan wasn’t confident. He wanted to test him, to beat him up, and he wanted, Ethan knew, to win the pot himself and then put conditions on it so that he could maintain control—because he was going to give the casino to Ethan anyway. He couldn’t own it, because that would expose the Evelyn Carter beneath the Crabtree. But if Crabtree was the one who gave the casino to Ethan, he would always be in charge. And Crabtree would want to control the casino, even in this small way. He would work hard, in fact, to keep this advantage. In short, Ethan did not, not in any way shape or form, have the best of it by playing a regular game.

But this move changed everything.

With Ethan all-in, Crabtree had two choices: he could fold, or he could call. And if he called, he would have to go all-in, too, because Ethan had more chips than he did. Crabtree would win if he had the better hand. But Ethan would win, if he didn’t. What mattered now, though, was that Crabtree did not have the best of it anymore. He couldn’t read Ethan, because Ethan hadn’t looked at his cards. He had no idea what he had, so he couldn’t give anything away. And there were endless variables yet, with the flop not down and with no one else in play. The only certainty was Crabtree’s own hand. It had better be good, and he had better be lucky, if he called. Because if not, he was going to lose it all. If he folded, Ethan would only gain the ante. Not much would change.

Of course, Crabtree knew, because Ethan wasn’t hiding anything on his face, that if Crabtree folded this time, he’d just do the same thing over again. And again. And again. And again. One way or another, this game was going to be left up to fate. And really, it was the best approach for Ethan: if he played straight, he had too good odds of being under Crabtree anyway. If he lost, he’d just get there faster. Forcing it like this was the only way Ethan could win, so he’d taken it.

Besides, he didn’t care what Randy said: Fate owed him
big.

His face carefully blank, Crabtree pushed all his chips into the center, reached for the deck, and dealt the board, the flop, the turn, and all the way to the river.

2
q
10
q
4
w
9
q
6
q
. Possible straight, possible flush. Several possible pairs, but no full houses, no three or four of a kind.

Ethan looked up at Crabtree and waited.

The gangster, without smiling, turned over his cards: K
w
Q
w
. Crabtree had high card.

Ethan was nervous for the first time, but he pushed it back because there was nothing he could do, nothing he could change. Crabtree couldn’t have manipulated this, either, because he hadn’t seen Ethan’s cards. There was no going back. No bluff, no nothing but the cards themselves, simple and honest and final.

Ethan flipped over his cards: 2 and a 3, offsuit.

He blinked at the cards, taking them in. No 3s on the board, but there was a 2. He had a pair. Of 2s, but it was still a pair. And a pair beat high card.

He had won.

He’d won. He’d won the game. And he had the money to buy the shares from Billy. Which meant he’d won not just nearly two million dollars, but the casino too.

He’d won.

Ethan blinked again, his heart pounding now for a very different reason, and then looked out at the huge, huge pile of chips, and then at the board and then at his cards again, and he exhaled a sharp, tight breath.

Then he laughed. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Randy
enjoyed watching Billy and Ethan tussle over the sale of the casino.

The scene took place in Billy’s office, which Randy enjoyed knowing would shortly be Ethan’s office. Fucking hell, but he never thought when he was picking Slick up at the River that inside of a month he’d own the damn place. While Ethan spoke heatedly of deficits and improvements necessary and Billy essentially rolled over slowly under the intensity of Slick Full Steam, Randy sunk into the sofa, dug the toes of his boots into the plush rug and began to catalog all the places and positions in which he was going to fuck the new owner. And of course, be fucked in return.

It was going to be fucking
great.
Fuck, it already was.

Mitch showed up, too, just as Billy and Ethan finished up negotiations. He was holding a large box, and once Sam got done mobbing him with hugs, kisses, endearments, and enthusiastic reports of how fabulous Kylie was, Mitch showed them what was inside his box: chips. Heavy, fucking beautiful casino chips of pristine color and satisfying weight, each one stamped, quite simply, with the word “Herod’s.”

“I’ve been sitting on these bastards for a week,” Mitch grumbled, casting an irritated look at Crabtree. “The trailer is full of them, and new dice and cards too. I could have been home a long time ago, but he wouldn’t let me come back—or let me admit that this was why I couldn’t come back—until tonight.”

Sam turned to Crabtree, shocked, and clearly hurt. And pissed. “Why would he make you do that?”

“Because he said you needed some time without me to ‘spread your wings’,” Mitch said, answering for the gangster. Then he sighed. “And he was right. Sunshine, I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but keep it up, and tell me if I get in the way of it again.”

Sam’s eyes twinkled, and his lips curved up in a wicked smile. “I want my own bike. And by bike I mean motorcycle, not a ten-speed. And I’m buying it with my own money, with my first paycheck. Something small and practical. But I want one.”

Mitch drew Sam into his lap and kissed him. “Whatever you want, baby. Whatever you want.”

Ethan, joining them at last, picked up a rack of chips, withdrew a hundred dollar token, and turned it idly in his fingers. “What’s this?”

“My gift to the new owner of Herod’s Poker Room and Casino,” Crabtree said. He was lounging in the chair across from Randy, his pose very casual, which Randy knew was deliberate. Because he was nervous. It was hard, after all, to give your baby away, even when you knew the man taking her from you was perfect.

Randy braced for the worst, hoping Ethan wouldn’t get into a pissing contest with Crabtree, hoping that he wouldn’t point out it was damned presumptuous of the gangster to order those in advance and then to present them to him like this. Worse, he worried Ethan would refuse them outright. Because he could. When Crabtree pushed all those chips in, he was giving in completely. Ethan had won. When Crabtree said that Ethan was the owner now, he meant it. He wasn’t going to interfere unless invited.

Bastard as the old man was, Randy hoped, out of kindness, that Ethan would at least occasionally ask for advice.

Ethan turned the chip over a few more times, then nodded. “That was very thoughtful, sir. Thank you.” He tucked the chip into his pocket and glanced at his watch. “I think the concert is about to start, Sam. I’d hate for you to miss any of it.”

They all went to watch together, sitting right in the front row, and Randy hardly saw anything on stage because he was too busy watching Sam. There was nothing more fun than watching a fan watch a performance, he decided, and he soaked it in, because he loved watching the people he loved be happy. He watched, too, the way Mitch held his husband close, glad to be with him, and Randy enjoyed how right it was to see the two of them together, partnered, whole, and happy.

When the performance stopped and Ethan took the stage, Randy knew what was coming, and he accepted his role in the lost bet with grace, or as much grace as he could manage in a pink feather boa, sequined underwear that he pulled up over his jeans, a fuzzy yellow vest that made no sense at all, and the biggest-ass fucking hat he’d ever seen, a hat the costume mistress had practically drilled to his skull to get it to stay on. Actually, all things considered, it was a fucking lot of fun. He danced like a fool on stage next to a pop princess who really was as kind and gracious and absolutely beautiful as Sam had billed her to be.

And then he was done, and he settled back to watch the rest of the show with Ethan.

But halfway through the show Ethan took his hand and led him out of the theater and back onto the casino floor, which was still quite busy but not as much as it had been before. Holding his hand, Ethan led him to, of all things, a craps table.

“I want you to play with me,” Ethan said, handing him a tray of chips. “I want you to play against the house, against fate, and I want you to have a good time while you do it.”

Randy took the tray and grimaced down at the table. “That’s a tall order.”

He tried, though, for Slick, and he had to admit, it wasn’t all bad. He did have to work not to tense up every time he rolled, bracing himself for the seven. It was hard to bet the Field or Hardways, and he refused point-blank to make a proposition bet. Still, it bit like hell when he rolled a seven at last. But he got over it, and yeah, it had been a little fun.

He’d even come out a little ahead, overall. That wasn’t so bad.

“Your turn, Slick,” he said, and stepped aside.

Ethan took his place at the end of the table, but it was weird, because he looked a little nervous. Probably residual nerves from the game and everything else. Randy thought it was sweet, and he ran a finger down his lover’s arm, a quiet, soothing gesture. It didn’t do much good, though.

And then fuck if Mitch and Sam didn’t show up on the other side of the table, Sam eager, Mitch with a wicked grin.

Something was up.

“You’re missing your show, Peaches,” Randy said carefully, watching Sam’s face.

Sam just beamed. “I need to be at this show just now.” He nudged Ethan. “Go on! What are you waiting for?”

“I slowed down,” Ethan said. He was almost green now. Then he shook his head and smiled ruefully through his panic. “I have to stop doing that,” he said, and then he threw the dice.

Except what fell down onto the felt wasn’t dice, and Randy stared, his head reeling, his whole world going round and round like a wheel as he looked down at the pair of shining golden rings. Finally, when the world slowed down enough for him to move, he turned, still half-stunned, to Ethan.

Ethan looked like he was about to hurl, but he was also putting on a bluff that probably fooled everybody else. “I wanted you to know,” he said to Randy, his voice almost even, “that I didn’t buy these with Crabtree’s money, or anything from the casino. I did some investment work for Sam, and he gave me the money for them in trade. So these come from me, not from this.” He gestured with a shaking hand to the casino in general, and then he looked at Randy again, full of terror, and love, and hope. “Would—would you marry me?”

Randy’s heart was soaring, and he was grinning like an idiot, but he couldn’t help from being a little bit of a bastard. He was still Randy, after all. “You do know they call it Domestic Partnership for us gay boys, here in Nevada.”

“I’m calling it a marriage,” Ethan said, but he was smiling now, too, and getting some of his confidence back. Then he nudged Randy’s boot with his sleek black loafer. “Come on, Ace. Stop dicking around and tell me yes or no.”

“I am
never
,” Randy said, “going to stop dicking around. Especially with you.” The crowd that had gathered around them broke into snickers and giggles. Randy stepped forward and looped his arms around Ethan’s neck, adding, “but yeah, Slick. I’d like to have a marriage with you. And a partnership, and whatever fucking else you want. I want you, Ethan Ellison.”

“Well, you’ve got me, Randy Jansen,” Ethan said.

“Good,” Randy replied, and smiled, a smile that went all the way down to his toes, a smile that cracked his heart wide, wide open as the crowd cheered and whistled. He pressed his mouth to Ethan’s and kissed him, and opened himself up all the way without so much as a second thought. He let the man he loved into his heart—all the way in, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, and all of that shit.

Forever.