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to know that somehow he’d bested Randy, which no one, including Randy, had anticipated. And whatever Randy had bet was, from the sound of it, quite embarrassing.
     
    Good, Ethan thought. He reached for his drink.
     
    He was still working on the first one, but there was a second gin and tonic sweating on a coaster, the drink that Randy had bought him when he’d lost the bet. It didn’t make any sense to Ethan, but he didn’t ask questions. He just watched, his head getting slightly fuzzy from the alcohol as he watched the bartender joyfully needle Randy, who still had his forehead resting on the rail.
     
    “I hope yours are pink, you little fucker.” He leered at Randy. “Really bright fucking pink.”
     
    Randy lifted his head and gave the bartender a withering look. “Scully, you dipshit— I’m gay. Wearing pink doesn’t threaten my masculinity like it does yours.”
     
    Scully laughed, sounding as if he’d been transplanted right out of Beavis and Butthead. “Pink shorts, real tight. With your fat ass hanging out.”
     
    That brought Randy up short. He leaned forward and pointed angrily at Scully. “My ass is not fat. You, however, could supply the kitchens at Bellagio with lard for a month.”
     
    Scully continued to snicker, reveling in the myriad ways Randy would be embarrassed in short pink shorts, but Ethan’s attention drifted, drawn to a subtle study of Randy’s referenced anatomy. It was not, he decided, hiding his perusal behind the illusion that he was taking another drink, a fat ass at all. None of Randy was fat, not really, and if anything, he was a bit muscular. He had the look of someone who worked out infrequently, just enough to keep real trouble at bay. By no means, however, was he clean cut. His dark, curly hair was a mess, and he had stubble on his jaw. If he were in a movie, he’d be “artfully tousled,” and his stubble would have been alluring. In real life it looked like he could use a little more grooming.
     
    In short, he wasn’t Ethan’s type at all.
     
    But then Randy turned his head, caught Ethan looking, and also gave Ethan a full-on view of his eyes. Those eyes. Dark, huge, and so sharp they made Ethan shiver. It was a dramatic, foolish thought, but when Randy looked at Ethan like this, he would swear the man could steal inside his soul.
     
    Worse, Ethan acknowledged, squirming as Randy’s smile darkened, the little devil seemed to know exactly what he was doing to Ethan.
     
    “Drink up,” Randy encouraged, nodding at Ethan’s glass.
     
    Ethan drained the last of the cocktail and set the glass back down, still watching Randy carefully. He’s here because he made a bet about you, about what you were doing at the table, about why you’re here, and he was almost completely right. But that’s all he cares about, not you. The speech was meant to be a warning to himself, but the problem was that Randy wasn’t advocating anything. In fact he sounded astonishingly honest, and that’s what was throwing Ethan off.
     
    The gin gave Ethan the liquid courage to voice aloud the question that kept rattling around inside his head. “So,” he asked, closing his hand around the second glass, “what happens now?”
     
    Randy shrugged and grimaced into his own drink, shaking the ice a bit before he took a very generous sip. “No idea. There’s always your upside down snake idea, I guess.”
     
    Ethan choked on his gin, and Randy grinned. Ethan flattened his lips. “That was a metaphor, not a proposition.”
     
    Randy leaned back, nodding. “There. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a proposition.”
     
    “Are you drunk already?” Ethan asked.
     
    “Hell no. Just stunned by my inglorious defeat. Now. About this proposition.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, then nodded. “Right. It’s eight-thirty now. I say it’ll happen by”—he blew his breath out in a heavy exhale, tossed his head from side to side