The Player (The Game Maker #3)(31)

“A car. The deliveryman took a picture of it. Would you like to see?”

A freaking car?? I sighed, “I s’pose.”

A photo popped up in my text-message queue—a cherry-red Porsche convertible parked in front of my dusty apartment building, standing out like a diamond in coal.

I texted the pic to the conference line Benji had set up for our consultations and confabs.

Phones all around vibrated. Silent checking of screens; soaring eyebrows. Karin wrote a dollar sign with a question mark and flashed her note to Al. He held up five fingers.

The car was worth five hundred thousand dollars? Then my face fell. “Dmitri, what made you decide to lease a car for me?”

“No lease. The title is in the glove compartment. It is yours regardless of whether you ever see me again.”

I mouthed, Holy shit!

“Though I do hope you will have dinner with me.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m not looking for an affair. And you obviously are.”

Another bout of silence from his end of the line, which anyone on earth would be tempted to fill with babble. I used the move often. I patiently cut and flipped cards. I can sit here all day, Russki.

He finally asked, “Am I, then?”

“I’m not having sex with anyone outside of a committed relationship.”

Karin scribbled: Too soon!

“Understood. I still want to see you.”

“I’ll have to check my plans. And I might be called in to work.”

“Then I will tell Peter not to call you in.”

Sevastyan was assisting in his own grift! “If not an affair, what do you want from me?”

“More, Vika. I will always want more from you.”

Jaws dropped. Gram fanned herself. I saw Mom squeeze Dad’s hand, as if she was too scared to hope.

Dmitri was either the best player we’d ever heard or he was really, actually taken with me.

“Okay. Pick me up at seven.”

“Where would you like to go?”

The prospect of free food awakened any grifter’s appetite. “I like Italian.”

“Then we should go to Italy.”

Mom and Karin shared an awww look, until I said, “I want to stay local—in case I need to bail.”

At that, Gram swayed like she might fall off her chair. Mom glanced heavenward.

“Then I will be on my best behavior, moy ángel. Until then. . . .” He ended the call.

I exhaled a long breath.

Pete ran his hand over his face. “So that just happened.” Then he turned to Benji. “You owe me ten large, partner.”

Al leaned back in his chair, his hands over his belly. “Russian man ees smeeten to our girl. Called you my angel.”

Reminded of something else Dmitri had said, I asked, “What does prosto rai mean?” He’d repeatedly rasped that when we’d gotten off together.

Al chuckled. “Prosto rai means . . . sheer heaven.”





CHAPTER 13

“Should I stay or should I go now?!” Karin and I belted out the song along with the stereo. Top down in our new convertible. The Clash playing. Hair blowing. Sun shining. Singing at the top of our lungs.

“So you gotta let me know . . . SHOULD I COOL IT OR SHOULD I BLOW?!”

I was happy, truly happy, for the first time in forever. We’d just cruised the Red Rock Canyon loop, the Porsche dazzling against the sandstone and red washes.

When Karin and I had driven it by the folks’, everyone had looked at me with new respect. The car wasn’t a seven-figure score, but I had another date with a billionaire, another iron in the fire.

When the song wound down, Karin turned off the stereo. “Now that we’re alone, you want to tell me what he did in the club? Must’ve been pretty bad for him to send you this ride as an olive branch.”

I’d known this question was coming. “It’s one for the sister vault, okay? He . . . he got me off. In front of other people.”

She blinked at me. “And then?”

“And then? That’s not enough? I wasn’t prepared for it!”

Karin looked confused. “Was it good with him?”

“That was part of what freaked me out so bad. I got off harder than I ever have. Harder than I knew was possible.” So help me, if a crazy Russian was my key . . .

Karin waved that away. “So you have a fetish. It’s perfectly normal.”

I did a double take. “I don’t have a fetish. Are you high?”

“You’re an exhibitionist. You always have been, you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you were little, I’d dress you up really cute to use as my shill, and the second I turned around, you’d be stripping. I was lucky if I could keep you in a diaper.” She chuckled. “You’ve never noticed all of your baby pics are of you running around parties naked?”

“Yeah, but by all accounts I was a hard-partying, rule-breaking kid. And what does that have to do with me as an adult?”

“Not the same thing, of course, but you’ve always been a little nudie.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Vice, for God’s sake, I do badger games. Talk about exhibitionism. Benji watches me do stripteases and dance around in lingerie. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get us worked up.”