Read The Player's Club: Lincoln for Free Online Page B

gaped.
    “Good grief,” she muttered, as her eyes adjusted to the low lights. “What is this, the jungle room?”
    Other people laughed, and she glanced around. They didn’t look like players, was her first thought. Nobody dressed particularly glamorously; hell, they weren’t even dressed in black robes, like any other self-respecting secret society. She didn’t know if she was expecting ninjas or what, but these people looked nondescript, even ordinary.
    That wasn’t going to make for very exciting television, she thought, frowning.
    She rebounded quickly. Hell, the people on Survivor weren’t all that much to look at most of the time, anyway, right? It was the stuff they did that made them interesting. So there was probably more here than met the eye.
    The room certainly lived up to the billing. It was dark, almost cavernous. She could hear water from a pool lapping up somewhere, and the place had plants everywhere. There was a conversation pit, and there were soft amber lights glowing from globes hung from the ceiling. It looked like Hugh Hefner’s grotto at the Playboy mansion, she thought absently—though it had been years since she’d been there.
    “All right, let’s get this going,” Finn yelled, and the twenty or so people assembled took seats around the room. Lincoln nudged her toward one of two black folding chairs. The other was already taken, by a kid who had to be in his twenties. He was tall and gangly, blinking owlishly in a pair of worn-out khakis with a frayed hem and a navy T-shirt that said There Are Only 10 Kinds of People in the World: Those Who Understand Binary, and Those Who Don’t.
    Nerd humor. She shook her head. If this Player’s Club thing was a competition, she might be a shoo-in.
    “Here’s the latest pledges,” Finn said, and there were hoots and cheers from the assembled players. Finn, she noticed, was dressed as scruffily as the nerd next to her.
    When would the guy ever grow up? she wondered fondly.
    “You two are being let in on a secret,” Finn said. “It’s a club that we started, where you’ll get the chance to do stuff you never dreamed you’d do. Beyond that, we’re like family. Screw with one of us, you screw with all of us.”
    Her eyes glazed a little as he recited the rules of the Player’s Club…life as baseball, yadda yadda, she thought, checking on her manicure. She needed a new one, desperately, but as so frickin’ many things in her life, the money just wasn’t there. She was glaring at her cuticles when Lincoln nudged her. She looked up, refocusing.
    “Pledge Terrence,” Finn said, referring to the other guy on the folding chair, “could you tell us a little about yourself, and why you’d like to join?”
    She didn’t roll her eyes, though she wanted to. Apparently, there was a boring interview portion of the program. She was sort of hoping they’d have to do something, like walk across hot coals. Hell, even a game of strip gin rummy would be more exciting, more “Player’s Club” than this!
    Terrence cleared his throat. “I…uh, like video games and computers. And, you know, dangerous stuff,” he said. There was a low chuckle in the audience. “I mean, I’d like to do more, um, crazy stuff. I mean adventurous. I want to, um, have a bigger life.”
    They clapped politely, then turned their eyes to her. Fortunately, Lincoln had already grilled her on this, on her couch.
    And I’d love to have him grill me again, anytime he wants.
    She swallowed hard, trying to shake the huskiness that resulted from thinking of Lincoln and her and their brief but intense escapade in her living room. “I’ve done plenty in my life—hang gliding, BASE jumping, skydiving, swimming with sharks,” she said, trying to keep her voice as nonchalant as possible. “I’d like to move to the next level, and I think the Player’s Club is the perfect place to do that.”
    She thought she’d given a winning answer—Lord knows, it was more exciting than