Stepbrother Dearest

Chapter 15

The lights started flashing on my machine, and it was dinging like crazy. A bunch of number sevens were lined up in a nice neat row. The number of credits displayed kept going and going.

I looked around to find all eyes in the nearby vicinity were on me.

People started clapping.

My heart was racing.

Holy crap. I won.

I won!

What did I win?

I still didn't know. I couldn't figure the machine out. It gave the number of credits but no dollar amount. When everything finally stopped, I ejected my ticket and took it to the cashier's booth. "I think I won, but I couldn't figure out how much?"

"Do you want to cash out?"

"Uh...yeah."

The person seemed less than enthused to assist me.

"How much did I win?"

"One-thousand."

"One-thousand pennies?"

"No, one-thousand dollars."

I covered my mouth and spoke into my palm. "Oh my God!"

"Do you want it in fifties or hundreds?"

"Um...hundreds."

She handed me a wad of cash, and I smelled it before running off to find Elec.

As I made my way through the bright lights and chaos with the money burning a hole in my purse, I finally located him at one of the poker tables. He was deep in thought, scratching his chin and didn't know I was watching him. His shirt was loosened even further, and his sleeves were rolled up. His hair looked like he'd been running his hands through it in frustration. His tongue slid back and forth across the lip ring as he concentrated. There was something so painfully sexy about the contrast between his new bespectacled look and the tattoos all over his arms.

Finally, he smacked his cards down and mouthed, "Fuck." He checked his phone and got up from the table. He walked toward me and finally noticed me smiling at him from the corner.

"I lost my shirt—200 dollars. I was up for a while then that last game fucked me over. How did you make out?"

I stuck my hand in my bag and lifted out the cash. "Oh—you know—the lame penny machine."

"Are you kidding me?"

"A thousand dollars!" I said, waving it in his face and jumping up and down.

"Shit, Greta! Congratulations!"

When he pulled me into a quick but firm hug, I quickly closed my eyes because it felt so good to be in his arms again. Every nerve in my body came alive in that brief moment.

I kept hearing Evelyn's voice in my head.

You have twenty-four hours.

It was less than that now. A funny visual of Evelyn with a gun to my head entered my mind.

I put the money back in my purse. "Let's go out to dinner to celebrate."

As we walked the corridors looking for a restaurant, his phone rang. We stopped in our tracks.

"Hey, baby." He quickly glanced over at me when he'd said it, and I instinctively turned away.

With my heart in my mouth, I walked a few feet away, still listening to every word.