A Date to Play Fore - Heidi McLaughlin Page 0,15
of drinks, and then a couple more, and a few more after that.
“Want to try another game?” I ask her, although it might be stupid for her to leave, she’s more than tripled her money.
“Yeah, sure.” Leah stands and wobbles right into me. “Oops,” she says with a hiccup and laugh.
“Leah Nelson, are you drunk?”
She nods. “I think so. Holy shit. How many did I have?”
“Six, but they’re not that strong. They water them down because they’re free.”
“Apparently not enough.”
“Are you okay or do you want to go back to the room?”
Leah rights herself, squares her shoulders and looks me dead in the eyes. “I’m good to go.”
“Perfect.”
She takes her winnings and moves to another table, this time poker, which I have no idea how to play. When I come to Vegas, I do so to unwind and hide from people. It’s rare anyone would recognize me in the crowds and when I have a baseball cap on, people never look twice. When I’m here, I’m at the slots because they’re easy.
Leah though, I’m starting to think is a card shark. She’s bowing out when she doesn’t have a good hand and betting high when she does. I left her once to go to the bathroom and when I came back, she had zero expression on her face. She’s unreadable, which I hear makes for a deadly poker player.
I stand behind her chair, with my hands on the back rest. She may not be mine . . . yet, but I’ll be damned if someone is going to try and win her over. In between hands, she leans back, and I use this opportunity to get closer. I ask her what she wants, needs and I take the roll as her errand boy to make sure she’s happy. She’s kicking ass in Vegas and I want her to enjoy herself.
When she finally quits, she’s turned the two hundred into a couple thousand and change. I show her where to cash out and she tries to give me all her earnings. My hand folds over the top of hers and I shake my head.
“You won this. It’s yours.”
“It’s like I almost beat you at a round of golf.” Leah tucks her winnings into her purse.
She’s right. Good thing I won when it really mattered.
I take her hand and lead her out of the hotel. We walk down the long pathway until we’re on the strip and heading toward the Venetian to take a gondola ride.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been here before,” she says, gazing up at the different hotels.
“It’s fun but can be draining. There’s the always on mentality so it’s hard to unwind sometimes.”
“One of my friends from college got married here.”
“It’s common,” I tell her. “There are chapels everywhere. You just walk in and boom.”
“That’s crazy.”
When we get to the Venetian, we find out the gondolas are closed for maintenance. Really? How in the hell am I supposed to impress this woman if I can’t do romantic shit? Leah must sense my frustration because she weaves her fingers through mine.
“I saw a frozen cocktail stand. Let’s go get drinks and walk around.” As angry as I am, I follow her, all the while trying to come up with another plan. Dinner will be romantic, but I wanted her entire day to be something to remember.
Leah knows exactly where the drink stand is. She orders one of those really long bottled drinks, ends up buying a fuzzy hat off a street vendor, poses for a picture with every character we come across, drops money into every street performer’s buckets and drags me into every single store that has something in the window she wants. By the end of the day, she’s bought nothing, eaten very little and seems to be on a sugar high.
“I want a cheeseburger,” she blurts out as we exit the New Yorker hotel. She was insistent we go on the roller coaster. I was concerned that she might throw up, but she’s a tough one.
“Good thing we have dinner reservations. Come on, let’s head back.” I hail a cab to get back to the hotel faster. When we get inside the hotel, I hold onto her firmly, to keep her from heading to the casino.
“Don’t trust me, huh?”
“No, I really want to see you in that dress and take you to dinner.”
“Me too,” she says right before we enter the elevator.
Along with us, there’s a crowd and we’re forced—because it’s such a hardship—to stand next