Read Tall Tales and Wedding Veils for Free Online

the one who wanted her to toe the line, play by the rules, and in general lead a boring, repetitive, mundane life.

    Tonight she was listening to the lion.

    “All ten thousand,” Heather said. “Trust me. I feel it. We can’t lose.”

    She gave Tony a challenging stare, showing him she meant what she said. Then her gaze moved to his lips. Lordy, he had such nice,
nice
lips, particularly when he used them for something besides talking. She wanted to feel them again, anywhere he wanted to put them. If he’d kissed her on the cheek earlier for winning a few hundred bucks, what would he do if she won the whole twenty thousand?

    It made her dizzy just to think about the possibilities.

    Her gaze drifted back to his eyes, and for a moment she thought he was going to say no. Then a tiny smile played around his mouth, becoming a full-fledged, full-speed-ahead grin.

    “Okay, sweetheart. I can’t argue with success. Go for it.”

    Yes!

    She turned back to the table and shoved the whole pot onto the pass line, which made everyone at the table fall silent and stare at her as if she was the most courageous woman alive. And right at that moment, that was exactly how she felt. She gave Tony a confident smile. She shook the dice. Threw them. Heard them hit the table. A gasp went up from the crowd, signaling that something astonishing had happened.

    “Four,” the dealer said.

    Heather froze. No. It couldn’t be.

    Time seemed to grind to a sluggish crawl, with everything moving in slow motion. She couldn’t have heard him right. It was supposed to be a seven. Or an eleven. Anything but a four. People were supposed to be
cheering.

    But there it was. Four black dots staring up at her like tiny demonic eyeballs.

    Her head felt as if she were submerged in swamp water, where everything was murky and she couldn’t hear a thing and she couldn’t breathe. Tony just stood there, his jaw slack with surprise, his hands hovering in the air as if he’d expected to sweep an armload of chips toward him, only to watch the dealer sweep them away instead.

    No, no, no! This can’t be happening!

    People around the table started murmuring among themselves. She couldn’t hear most of their conversation. The words
moron
and
nutcase
came through loud and clear, though, and the truth struck Heather so hard, she was sure she heard the
thwack
. People hadn’t been staring at her before because she was courageous. They’d been staring at her with the same sense of lurid compulsion they generally saved for train wrecks and five-car pileups. They knew something disastrous was only seconds away from happening, and they hadn’t been able to look away.

    Heather took a few clunky steps backward, blinking with disbelief. How stupid could she possibly have been? It wasn’t like her to get carried away. It wasn’t like her to even
be
in Vegas, much less betting thousands of dollars. What was the
matter
with her?

    She glanced at Tony. His slack jaw had constricted, and he was clutching his beer bottle so tightly she was afraid it was going to shatter. Then he turned around and walked away.

    “Tony! Wait!”

    She caught up to him, striding along beside him as he headed for the elevator lobby. “I’m sorry. I’m so,
so
sorry. I never should have bet it all. Never.”

    “That’s right. You shouldn’t have.”

    “I don’t know what got into me.”

    “I think gin got into you.”

    “I thought I could do it,” she said. “I really thought—”

    “Hey, it wasn’t my money to start with. You could do anything with it you wanted to.”

    “I
wanted
to win the money for you!”

    “I don’t want to talk about it.”

    “But—”

    He stopped short and faced her. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I’m mad at both of us. I let you do it, so it was just as much my fault as it was yours.”

    But she could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t believe that for a moment. He blamed her now, and he would blame her