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She looked at Mr. He
She laid the paper down and entered all the information into the computer…and wondered if he’d be here long enough for her to find out.
Chapter 2
Brett He
And think.
He was tired. Tired of ru
Easy to say now that he should have spent a little more time on the a
It was true, he had a knack for cards. He’d grown up in Vegas casinos, literally, so of course he knew how to play poker. And yeah, when the Texas Hold’em craze had swept the nation, he’d swiftly become an attention getter, whether he’d wanted to be or not. He’d been a little-okay, a lot-younger than most back then, but he could hardly help that. It had been fun, in the begi
It hadn’t been until later on that he’d started to think of it as a way to earn money. Even then he hadn’t pictured it as a career. At best, it was a way to pay for college a little faster than just banging nails and hauling lumber on the renovation jobs he worked on for his best friend’s dad. He definitely hadn’t counted on wi
He’d been around the game his whole life, so he knew better than most that when it came to cards, the odds would always balance things out. Often. And usually not in your favor. The trick was respecting that, not getting greedy, and being willing to walk away with a little and never banking on wi
Or wouldn’t have, had it been necessary to heed it. Because when Brett He
The day he’d hit twenty-one he’d been hot bait for every cable show producer and online gambling site on the planet. It had been a lot after a long time of not much. He’d had a hard time-an impossible time as it turned out-saying no to being given a chance. Any chance. But no matter how much he tried to keep things sane, he didn’t seem to have much say on where the white hot glare of the celebrity spotlight shined. And, for quite some time now, it had been shining on him.
He’d played his way through college, then grad school, and then figured that would be it. He’d call it even and walk away, having provided whatever the hell draw it was that he’d become in exchange for the chance to earn enough to better himself, better his life, give himself a chance to get up and finally out, once and for all. Win-win for both sides.
But it hadn’t exactly turned out like that. College was long in the past, his degrees were gathering dust, while what had originally been a way to pay off school loans had, nine years later, somehow become a way of life. A life he’d long since grown weary of, but had continued to participate in because it never seemed the right time to walk away. He was always left feeling like he was leaving someone in the lurch. Someone who had helped him out when he’d needed it. But he’d finally burned out, wised up…and walked away.
Which was when things had gotten really interesting.
That good luck charm that had been his constant companion for the past decade had abandoned him, and rather swiftly at that. He hadn’t really thought much about it at the time, not initially anyway, beyond being pissed off at the string of little incidences that had been more a nuisance than anything. He’d replaced the missing supplies on his current job site. Over the years, he’d never stopped banging nails, although his contributions to the renovation company his buddy, Dan, now owned, having taken it over from his father several years ago, hadn’t always been consistent during the craziest of times. But Dan had convinced him to take over one of his easier contracts while trying to sort out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and Brett had been happy for the distraction.
The missing materials had been irritating, but he’d resolved that, only to have his work truck broken into. It was a pain in the ass to fix the jammed door lock, and he’d wondered what the hell anyone thought they were going to steal out of the old rust bucket, but it had never occurred to him to tie those minor a
The bad luck streak had continued, though, with the stakes escalating each time. Dan’s brand-new work truck had been stolen and found in a drainage ditch, half bashed in, tires gone, one door missing, and another job site had flooded due to a water pipe break that hadn’t been anywhere near where Brett’s crew had been working at the time. Brett had begun to wonder what in the hell was going on, but the cops hadn’t turned up any evidence on who might have been responsible for the stolen truck much less tied it to the job site problem he’d been sure was vandalism, so he’d done a little digging on his own, but got no answers. Then another one of his job sites half burned down, his landlady started having a string of trouble at the boarding house she owned and he lived in…and the demands for his return to the tables had taken on a decidedly…concerned tone.
And he’d finally put two and two together.
So he did the only thing he could do. He got out of Vegas, putting as much distance between the folks he cared about and himself as possible. He’d let it be known that he was leaving town, leaving Dan’s employ, his leased rooms at Vanetta’s place…all of it, behind him. If somebody wanted him that badly, they were going to have to come after him, and no one else.