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Becky bellowed into the microphone, the feedback screeching through the room. “Trivia starts in five minutes, folks! Put your food orders in and get your cobwebs cleaned outta those skulls! Tonight’s prize is a $25 gift card to Kevin’s Guns and a free appetizer!”
Dario snorted and I shot him a glare.
“Come on. Think of something.”
“What about The Gamblers?” he suggested.
I made a face and he laughed.
“What? We are risk-takers. Everything about us has been a risk so far.”
A risk we, and others, have paid for. I shook my head. “It’s too obvious.”
“The Risk-Takers?”
I curled up my nose. “Sounds like an eighties band.”
I scratched the back of my hand. “What about a poker term? Or—”
“Double Down,” he suggested.
It wasn’t terrible, though it did sound a little dude ranchy. Still, the origins behind the title raised my interests and I met his gaze. “Why Double Down?”
He leaned forward. “It fits us. You could have given up when Gwen died. Or kept the stakes the same. But you didn’t. I didn’t. We risked more. Raised the stakes. Emotionally, went in deeper. At least, I did.”
“Me too.” I looked down at the page. Doubling down was a blackjack term. It’s when you had a risky hand that had the potential to be strong, or the potential to be disastrous. Instead of riding the hand out, you double your bet. And in doing so, you wager everything on the next card. That card determines your outcome—and is statistically more likely to tank your hand than win it.
It did fit us. On paper, we were a losing hand. Yet we’d both stayed in and, as he said, risked more.
I wrote Double Down on the line, then looked back up on him. “That’s good.”
“You like it?”
I nodded, and when he tugged on my hand, pulling me in for a kiss, I didn’t fight it.
DARIO
She was intoxicating. When she laughed, it pulled at something inside of him, each instance unraveling one more loose thread that held onto his pain. When she looked at him, the way she was right now, her gaze drifting over his lips, her eyes heavy with need, it lit a fire in him in a way no one had ever done. He reached over and picked up her hand. Turned the delicate wrist over and pressed a kiss against it. She curled her fingers around his jaw and all he wanted was a lifetime with her. Mornings in bed. Calls from her in the middle of his day. Her body curled against his at night. Her, in an evening gown, in Paris. Sandy and sunburnt in Exuma. Pregnant and glowing in a doctor’s office.
It was endearing, how competitive she was. It had been a surprising trait to encounter. Tiny fangs and claws had sprung out, her focus intense on winning a useless gift card and free appetizer they would never use. And they weren’t going to win. Whoever wrote these questions was a sadist, evidenced in point by the current query.
“You’re useless.” She tapped the tip of the pencil on the page, trying to think of an answer for the question Becky had just asked. “Come on. THINK.”
He shook his head. “I told you. I don’t know anything about Madonna.”
“Shit.”
She put her head in her hands and stared down at the page. “Her first husband. I know this. It’s not Guy Ritchie. There’s no way she didn’t get married until then.”
She peered at him as if he was deliberately withholding the information. “Come on. Think of anyone she dated in the eighties.”
He laughed. “I’m thirty-seven, Bell. I barely knew what marriage was in the eighties. And I definitely wasn’t paying attention to Madonna.”
And shit, in Louisiana? His dad had played Hank Williams, Jr and creole music. If someone had put Madonna on the juke box, they would have gotten thrown out of the bar.
She slumped in the seat and picked up her soda. “We’re going to lose.”
Her gaze connected with his, and he smiled. Her dejection mellowed, her lips turning up at the ends, and that look, the one that made his dick stand on end, came back to her eyes.
“Oh… yoo hoo!” The man with the gold eyeshadow tapped the microphone. “Put those pencils down, because it’s time for the next question and this one is a show-stopper.”
Dario nodded for the exit. “Let’s get out of here.”
She lifted one adorable shoulder in a shrug. “It’s probably best. We don’t want to embarrass these guys with our awesome score.”
“Such a giver.”
She laughed. “You got cash?”
Dario nodded, sitting forward and pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. Thumbing through the bills, he grabbed a few and tossed them on the table. He stood and her hand found his, tugging slightly as she led the way out of the restaurant.
She curled against the seat, facing him, her dark hair twisted up into a messy ponytail. From the radio, Andrea Bocelli softly crooned, the rich notes floating over the car’s interior and out into the night.
