Free Betting on Hope by Kay Keppler Page B

said. “One of his regulars ate a peanut. Guy’s allergic to peanuts. They hadda call an ambulance. Darla’s at the Desert Dunes waiting for you. We hid a camera in Big Julie’s bathroom. You go in pretending to take a leak. You take out the camera and hide it someplace in the room where they’re playing. It’s tiny. You won’t have no problem. Darla will show you how it works.”
    “How am I getting into the game?” he asked. “I can’t just show up at the door and ask if Big Julie wants to play.”
    “No,” Frelly agreed. “The floor manager will call Big Julie and ask him, since his seventh player is in the ICU, if he wants to play with you, because you are in the house and you’re not bad but not that good, either—”
    “Hey!” Tanner said. “I’m very good.”
    “Yeah, well, the point to remember here is that you won’t be playing that good with Big Julie, because we need him to win.”
    Tanner thought. It sounded thin, but the point was to get him in Big Julie’s game. If this half-baked subterfuge got him there, fine.
    “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go down there. You’re staking me, of course.”
    “Much as I hate to do it,” Frelly said.
    Tanner rolled his eyes. “Then it’s showtime.”
     
    But when Tanner got to the casino and went to the manager’s office, Darla told him the gig was off.
    “Big Julie is too despondent to play because his regular has gone into anaphylactic shock with the peanut,” Darla reported. “Tonight’s game is cancelled. Sorry about that.”
    Tanner thought about the chores he might have done that evening instead and felt philosophical.
    “Will Big Julie still be feeling despondent next week, too?” he asked.
    “I think he’ll be feeling better,” Darla said.
    “I’d like to know how you guys do it,” Tanner said, as he opened the door that lead out to the floor. “That peanut. That was no accident.”
    “Hey,” Darla said, grabbing her purse, preparing to follow. “Peanuts are everywhere. A person’s got to be careful.”
     
    Tanner cut through the casino, thinking that if the action looked good he might as well play a few hands, when he saw Hope McNaughton, sitting alone at the bar, still wearing that ridiculous navy suit, clutching a glass and looking like she was going to throw up.
    It was a man’s duty, not to mention his pleasure, to rescue a damsel in distress, so Tanner changed course and headed her way. Not that Hope, who must be five eight at least, was his idea of a damsel, exactly. In that suit, with that bright pink top underneath, she looked more like a really hot accountant, who, when she wanted to balance her ledgers with you, just took off her glasses and let down her hair before she really, really cooked your books.
    Tanner shook his head, trying to get a grip, and then he slid onto the stool next to her, signaling the bartender for a beer before he nudged her elbow gently with his own.
    “Tanner Wingate, remember me? We met today? Friend of Marty’s?”
    Hope turned and looked at him blankly.
    “I guess I didn’t make that good an impression.”
    Hope blinked and seemed to come back into focus. “I’m sorry. What?”
    “Tanner Wingate,” Tanner said again. “We met earlier.”
    “Oh, right.” She sat up a little straighter. “The card player.”
    “That’s me. So, what’s up?”
    “Not much.” Hope took a pull out of her drink and set the glass back on the bar, smacking it against the edge as she did so. Some of the drink slopped onto the polished surface, and the bartended wiped it up as he set down Tanner’s beer.
    She was just unbelievably beautiful. She looked like a tipsy Botticelli angel as she sat there, all lush hips and thighs and breasts and wavy blonde hair. But Botticelli angels rose naked from the sea and plucked spring fruit under the threat of cupid’s bow. They didn’t wear navy suits and camp out on bar stools, and now that he thought about it, Botticelli angels didn’t seem so cranky,