Read Against The Odds (Anna Dawson #1) for Free Online

band. But he could be the kind of guy who doesn’t wear one. Or it could just be a girlfriend calling. It was well after midnight by now, so it was probably some kind of booty call situation.
    “Shit,” he murmured, putting the phone back in his pocket without answering it.
    I felt a pang of regret that surprised me.
    “Good luck,” I said and started walking away, toward my car, opposite from the direction he had appeared from.
    “Huh?”
    I nodded toward the building. “With your icebergs.” I walked backward a few steps, not wanting to take my eyes off of him. He seemed reluctant to leave too.
    “You too,” he said so softly I almost didn’t hear him. I turned and walked to the end of the block. When I turned, he was still there, not watching me, but instead turned to stare at the building which neither of us had entered.
    He stood under a street light and the pain that wafted over his face was brief, but I caught it, and it made me hold my breath. Then he turned and walked away, into the darkness of the night.

 
    Chapter Four
     
    I brought my hand up to my necklace, but instead of playing with it as I had intermittently for the last three hours, I quickly dropped it back to the table. I slid my chips to the middle of the table. “All in.”
    Come on, kid, bite. I saw his eyes flash to my necklace, then to the pot, thinking, wondering.  
    Yeah, that’s right, I’d been fiddling with my necklace when I had cards. So, what did it mean when I didn’t? I had garbage? Bluffing?
    He sat across the table from me, right in my line of vision, which meant I was in his. He eyed me for several moments, but my face gave nothing away, nor did he expect it to. He knew who I was. I’d seen him before, too. Even in cash games in a casino as big as the Bellagio you were bound to run into the same players once in a while if you played often enough. And I did.
    This kid had been here frequently since last fall, probably the day after he’d turned twenty-one.
    He looked down at his hands. He made the tiniest movement, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, and then quickly got it in check. But I’d seen it.
    He wanted to smile. He thought he’d read me, that I’d given him a tell by not touching my necklace.
    Ever since John Malkovich broke his Oreo in Rounders , a tell to Matt Damon who bet the farm and won the game, Vegas was full of kids thinking they could figure out someone’s tell and take them down.
    This kid was a good player, but he hadn’t learned to read a trap yet.
      I had him.
    “Call,” he said, as I knew he would, and pushed his stack in. I bit my lower lip, a show for the kid. It didn’t matter now, he was in, but I thought I’d let the drama play out a bit longer.
      The other players already had, or now dropped out, leaving me playing heads up with the kid whose chip stack was just about equal to mine. The two highest stacks at the table.  
    The other players didn’t know whether to be happy that one of the leaders was going to be gone, or pissed that one of us would have the majority of the chips at the table.
    The dealer counted out both our stacks, threw back one chip to me after making them even. So, at least if I lost I wasn’t going to be out of the game. Not that I could do anything with one chip. And this was a cash game, not a tournament, so in theory the kid could just pull out his wallet and buy more chips, as could I.
    Except I didn’t have any more money in my wallet. And I needed a big win tonight. There was a college basketball game tomorrow morning that I wanted to bet. Needed to bet.
    Had to bet.
    Lorelei’s intervention floated through my head, but quickly flew out when the dealer nodded for us to both flip over our hands.
    The poor kid almost shit a brick when he saw my pocket aces. He limply turned over a queen and a ten. He looked at me questioningly. I wasn’t going to gloat—not my style. But the kid could be a really good player if he learned some of the finer