5. Leo
LEO
“I’ll take number thirteen,” Leo said, setting down a couple of chips.
The croupier gave him a funny look, and Leo grinned.
He had lost a lot of money today — at least a few thousand dollars.
For him, it was a drop in the bucket, but he was still annoyed about the losing streak.
He’d come to Vegas to forget, not to give away his hard-earned money.
At least the drinks he’d downed had helped take the edge off the sting of losing. And they’d started him on his way to forgetting how difficult today had been.
“Thirteen?” the croupier asked.
“It’s my lucky number,” Leo joked.
The croupier spun the wheel, and the ball rolled well past thirteen and onto another number. Leo shook his head as another few hundred bucks slipped away.
“Bad luck tonight,” the gentleman sitting next to him said sympathetically.
“Maybe it’ll change,” Leo said. He took a sip of his whiskey and scanned the numbers again. He had no idea how long he’d been in the casino already — he only knew that he’d lost at several different games and had three whiskeys. “Let’s do twenty-seven.”
Again, the roulette ball rolled past, this time bouncing off twenty-seven and landing tantalizingly close on ten.
Leo shook his head as another chunk of change disappeared.
Usually, he was careful with his money and would never throw it away like this, but tonight was an exception.
He didn’t even know how much had slipped away.
“It’s almost time to call it, I think,” he said.
Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was only six in the evening.
If he left now, he still had plenty of time to have a nice surf-and-turf dinner and catch a show.
He’d heard good things about several of the shows in town, and he wanted to have a nice time on his one evening off.
Gambling might not be the solution after all, if he couldn’t break the losing streak.
Tomorrow, he’d be back to board meetings and missing Kyle.
“Give it one more shot,” the croupier said. Leo nodded affably. He could afford to lose a little more money. As his gaze swept the wheel, a flash of red caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw a woman passing.
She wore a red dress that ended just above her knees and hugged her curves.
Her long, curly black hair was loose around her shoulders, her eyes were green as emeralds, and her lips looked soft and red.
Her heels accentuated her long legs, and she was smiling to herself as though enjoying a good private joke.
There was something in those green eyes, though — a kind of purpose that was unusual in this environment.
Usually, Leo would have turned his attention back to the roulette wheel and not paid the beautiful woman a second thought. But usually, he wouldn’t have been gambling in a casino or enjoying drinks in the late afternoon, either — today was clearly an exception.
“Excuse me,” he called out. The beautiful woman paused and turned back to him, her green eyes widening slightly.
“Me?” she asked, as though she weren’t used to being the one people wanted to talk to.
“You. Do you have a moment?”
“Um…” The woman glanced towards the bar, bit her lip, then shrugged as she smiled. “Why not?” She crossed to him and stood beside him. The gentleman who’d been sympathetic about Leo’s losses moved over to make room.
“Thanks,” Leo said.
“How can I help?”
“Well, I seem to be on a losing streak,” Leo explained. “And I have one last chance to turn my luck around. Pick a number.”
“Oh, no.” The woman shook her head, her black curls swaying over her bare shoulders. “I’m not having the best luck either. I don’t want you to lose your money because of me.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Leo gestured to the wheel, “What’s your lucky number? If we win, maybe it’ll turn our luck around.”
“Fair enough. My birthday is June nineteenth,” she said. “So how about nineteen?”
“Perfect. Nineteen, please.” Leo swept the last of his chips into his hand. They were worth about five thousand dollars, but he placed them down as if they were no more valuable than pennies. The woman’s eyes widened again.
“Oh, no, this is a bad idea…”
But the wheel was already spinning.
“I can’t believe you did that!” She stared at him. “That must have been so much money!”
The wheel blurred before them, black and red blending together.
“Five thousand dollars,” Leo told her.
“I can’t watch.” The woman hid her eyes behind her slim hands. The wheel began to slow, and Leo reached for her hand and gently pulled it away from her face.
“Believe me, this is going to be okay,” he said. He held on to her hand, and she squeezed his hand back.
The wheel slowed, the ball rolling, bouncing, spinning… before falling into nineteen. The croupier called out the win as Leo and the woman began cheering. She jumped up and down, her eyes wide.
“I can’t believe you won!”
“It’s all thanks to you!” Leo replied as he held up his hand for a high five. She laughed as she slapped his hand.
“I only high-five my niece, usually. I feel like it isn’t a very grown-up gesture.”
“Today, everything is unusual,” Leo told her. “Now, tell me. Do you have somewhere to be?”
“I…” The woman shook her head. “I suppose not. What do you have in mind?”
“You turned my bad-luck streak around. That means you’re my lucky charm for the evening. What do you say?”
The woman hesitated, biting her red lip between her teeth. “I think I just got lucky once.”
“Nonsense. Come on.” Leo raised his eyebrows in challenge as he held out his arm.
The woman hesitated again, and for a long moment, Leo was sure that he’d been too forward and that she was going to walk away.
He didn’t know her at all, so it shouldn’t have been much of a loss, but some part of him felt it was important for this woman to stay a little longer.
The only question was, would she?