Free The Affair: Week 6 by Beth Kery Page B

Trust me, I’ve seen it before. And if you think I’m going to feel sorry for that idiot for propositioning you right in front of my face, you’re sorely mistaken. You
do
realize he was trying to buy you for the night—or an hour or two—with that chip?”
    “Yes,” Emma admitted.
    “And you’re still defending him?”
    She sighed. “No. I guess he got what he deserved. I just feel bad that I’m the one to benefit from his stupidity.”
    “Who else should? You were the one he insulted. I’ll be right back,” he told her, turning to the desk. A minute later, he returned and handed her a receipt.
    “I had them convert it into American dollars. They’ll be sending the check to your address at home,” he said, grabbing her hand. Completely undone by the strange turn of events, Emma just followed him out of the casino and hotel lobby. As the doorman opened the gilded doors for them, however, she glanced down at the receipt. Stunned, she stopped dead in her tracks at the top of the marble stairs. Vanni looked back at her when she broke his hold, his brow furrowed.
    “Vanni . . . this says that they’ll be sending a check for one hundred forty-one thousand seven hundred and fifty-one dollars to my apartment in Evanston,” Emma said, shock making her voice sound hollow.
    Vanni gave her a bland glance and took her hand again.
    “Mario has never been one to bet small. I’m sure he’s bet a king’s ransom in the casinos that he’ll win the Montand cup on Sunday, for instance. Maybe this will teach that stupid sod not to bet on what isn’t his.”

Look for THE AFFAIR Week Seven, on sale October 28, 2014.

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    No one in their right mind would want to visit him, so the sound of knocking at his front door took him by surprise.
    Maybe it was Sherona Legion? But he’d warned the only viable candidate for visitation for miles on end—curvy, kind Sherona—about visiting him on this godforsaken hilltop. Who knew what he’d do to her, the state he’d put himself in? Of course, Sherona’d taken Rill at his word for a year and a half, so he couldn’t imagine who was trying to barge in on his drunken, morose solitude now.
    He was so caught off guard by the phenomenon of someone visiting that he briefly reverted to his old self—his civilized self—hastening to answer the door.
    He was a big man, so when he tripped on the useless little rug in the entryway, he crashed to the wood floor with the impact of an ax-felled oak.
    He rolled over and sat up, curses blistering his tongue, the savage Rill Pierce once again fully in evidence.
    “My, my. How the mighty have fallen,” she said from above him.
    He glanced up in midprocess of ripping the frilly rug in half, his blurry-eyed gaze encountering long legs and curving hips. Nope, this was
definitely
not Sherona Legion. His eyes lingered in a lap he’d like to spend the next twenty-four hours in without pause.
    He grinned.
    There was good reason he’d warned away Sherona Legion. In his drunken state, his usual tight controls on his baser nature had evaporated. It was precisely why he’d made a vow long ago not to drink to excess around women.
    No real woman existed like the one in front of him in Vulture’s Canyon, Illinois. Rill was left with the intoxicated conclusion that a sex angel had been dropped on his doorstep, and God had packaged her in a tight tank top and even tighter jeans. If there was a deity looking out for him—something Rill seriously doubted, considering he was sin personified—then said omniscient being would know how he loved nothing more than a woman in jeans that hugged every tight curve.
    He unglued his eyes from the tempting juncture of shapely thighs and looked up. He grinned like the town idiot when he saw a glorious spill of brown and gold-streaked hair and thrusting breasts pressed snugly against white cotton.
    “Well, well, well . . . what have we