Free Going All Out by Jeanie London Page B

your alley.”
    Lucas nodded. “I’ll help.”
    “Great,” John said. “I can finally show off my program to someone who’ll appreciate it. It’s the first one I’ve ever written for a parade float.”
    “And speaking of sails,” Bree said, “they won’t unfurl unless I get busy. I don’t have all day.”
    “What shift are you working tonight?” Tally asked.
    “Five to three.”
    Tally slipped her arm around her sister and gave an affectionate squeeze, apparently the krewe designator in his sister’s absence. “Then get busy.”
    “So you’re the talent behind the rigging?” Lucas asked Bree.
    “Talent is relative, of course.” She shot him a dry look. “Everyone else around here has ten thumbs.”
    Tally rolled her eyes and John gave a hiss of feigned indignance. But Lucas just laughed as Bree tossed her hair over her shoulder and said, “Have fun, boys.”
    She headed across the den toward a brightly lit area where pristine white sails hung like blankets over a clothesline on wash day. Tally followed and Lucas watched them go. There was no doubt it was Bree’s long-legged strides and swaying backside that started up the sizzle of heat inside.
    “They’re sure something, aren’t they?” John asked. “That Christien Castille is one lucky bastard.”
    Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out John must be referring to Tally’s new fiancé.
    “They sure are,” Lucas agreed. “Seriously something.”
    That kiss had been seriously something, too, and it just so happened he was feeling like a lucky bastard himself right now.

5
    B REE HEADED OUT OF the Cane River Poker Room, where she left a client holding with a ten of spades on the table and a queen of hearts in his hand. As soon as the dealer turned the next card, she knew her client would be one happy camper.
    Exactly the way she tried to leave all her guests.
    With her smile screwed on tight, she made her way past Louie’s Lounge, an open-floor bar where guests could step away from the tables and the various gaming rooms yet still watch the action. Silver-Tongue Sammie, nicknamed not for the way he spoke but for the way his tongue worked magic on the saxophone, was wailing away on his third set of the night.
    She winked while walking by, always amazed at how the talented musician smiled around his mouthpiece without missing a beat.
    New Orleans was an adult playground of gaming establishments, but Harrah’s and Toujacques were the most renowned. Harrah’s reminded Bree of Vegas, all flash and show, a New Orleans theme park for gamers. Toujacques, on the other hand, was pure New Orleans.
    Steeped in local culture and history, Toujacques had broken ground on the fringes of the French Quarter during a bygone era. Two Jacques—father and son—had built theplace as a hub for gamblers sailing down the Mississippi from Natchez.
    They’d been two French Acadians with a dream, and Toujacques’ smoke-filled gaming rooms had weathered all sorts of history since. The Civil War. Prohibition. Desegregation.
    The original location had evolved through the years, too, transforming from a gambling hall into a saloon, a landmark restaurant and finally, with the advent of new gaming laws, back into the gambling hall it had begun life as. While ownership had changed hands through the decades, management always kept alive what made Toujacques special—tradition.
    Silver-Tongue Sammie’s doleful jazz tune faded beneath the electronic buzzing and beeping of the slots as Bree passed through the rows of machines. She smiled at a perfectly coifed matron who glanced up from a video poker machine.
    The woman—eighty if she was a day—most likely hailed from one of the gorgeous old mansions along St. Charles Avenue, yet she looked at home in front of the computerized gaming machine, the display lights flashing off her diamonds.
    Sure, tourists came from all over the world to game here, but like this wealthy matron, the clientele understood the differences