Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain #3)(26)

Ella, birthing Honey and still living with her even though thirty years had passed since the blessed event, understood. She’d also been beside herself with glee. She had a key to my place and she was what I told Ty. All over it.

Then I’d called Margot at work. I’d given her the same story with the same omissions. She knew about Shift. She knew my dilemma. We’d often had conversations about how I could get out, move on, start a new life. She’d been worried about me for more than the four years I didn’t have Ronnie as a buffer, stretching that out to the eight I’d known her, in other words, when she started at Lowenstein’s. She wasn’t a big fan of Ronnie though she was a good enough friend not to mention it (too much) or give me her disapproving look (that often) or, when I’d bitch about him, she did not say “I told you so” with anything but her eyes and, last, she did not lose her mind and point out how stupid I was when I gave him another shot. Like me, she’d worked her way up from clerk and she wasn’t the head honcho of HR at Lowenstein’s but she was the assistant head honcho. She promised she was going to smooth the way.

And, incidentally, she was beside herself with glee too.

The truth was, all of this seemed pretty easy. So much so, I was feeling like a major idiot that I hadn’t tried it before.

Then again, I didn’t have a condo to move into, a huge, scary man to have my back and a nest egg of fifty K to fall back on before.

“Ella Ronnie’s Mom?” Ty asked and my attention focused on him again.

I nodded. “She’s already been to my place, started sorting and has called three moving companies to get quotes.”

He nodded once. Then he went to his suit jacket that was lying on the bed.

I walked across the room to my shoes while talking. “Work seems kosher too. My friend Margot, who works there, is going to explain things to the HR Director.” I sat down and slid my foot into a strappy, stiletto-heeled, silver sandal. Then, again, right out of my mouth popped more honest sharing. “Actually, this is all so easy, I’m kinda feeling like a moron that I didn’t do it before.”

“Shift hadn’t f**ked you this bad, you didn’t have anyone that scared his black ass shitless and you didn’t have fifty large to fall back on before.”

I tilted my head back and grinned at him. “Those are all the reasons I talked myself out of feeling like a total moron and into only feeling kinda like one.”

He stared at me for long moments. Then, without comment, he went to two money rolls he’d obviously at some point pulled out of the safe. One was a fifty roll. The other was a twenty.

My attention went back to my shoes. I was done around the time I heard the door open on the closet. I watched him drop the now less fat rolls back in the safe; he closed the door to it and the closet and turned to me.

“Ready?”

I stood and put my hands to my hips.

“I don’t know, am I?”

I meant I didn’t know what we were doing, where we were going and why I needed an outfit that would get attention and, not knowing any of that, I couldn’t know if I was ready.

But at my question his eyes travelled down the length of me to my toes and back again. They did this slow, taking their time, missing nothing and I felt their path like a touch on my skin. As they moved, I saw my dress in my head. Navy, clingy, silk jersey, pleated down the side seem creating diagonal gathers across the dress, one shoulder was bare, the other arm sleeveless. It hit me four inches above my knee, showed no cle**age but still tons of skin and it was so form-fitting it left very little to the imagination.

When his eyes locked on mine, he spoke and his voice was a very deep, low rumble, “Yeah. You are definitely ready.”

And as he spoke, I noticed his eyes were different. Not void, not shuttered. The first emotion he’d shown me in two and half days.

And that emotion was carnal.

I felt my body go electric.

I fought against the surge and whispered, “Thank you, Ty. But I meant I don’t know what I’m all gussied up to do tonight so I can’t know if I’m ready.”

He answered immediately. “High stakes poker.”

I stared at him not getting a good feeling about this. I’d never gambled before, not in my life. I didn’t do this because I didn’t work hard for my money to throw it away. Ronnie gambled. He bet on basketball games all the time. Convinced, since he had played them, he had the inside track. He didn’t lose all the time but he also didn’t win all the time. It seemed ridiculous to me and scary because Lady Luck didn’t swing Ronnie a break very often and I was always waiting for her to pull the rug out from under him and stop with the balancing act as pertained to his gambling. Luckily (heartbreaking pun intended), he died before she could do that.

“High stakes poker,” I repeated.

“One hundred K buy in.”

I blinked. Then I asked hesitantly, “Um… are you good at poker?”

“Very.”

“Really?”

“Woman, you’re wearin’ over thirty thousand dollars proves that true.”

I blinked again. Then I breathed, “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I mean, really, I’m wearing over thirty thousand dollars?”

“And the answer is still yeah. Your engagement ring alone is nearly half that.”