Page 75 of The Final Beat

Amber sighed. “I’m not sure I’ll get anyone who’ll want to babysit twins.” She ran her hands over her belly and groaned. “If they ever get here.”

“Well, you’ve got two months left so get comfortable.” Belle giggled and nudged Amber. “And sleep now, while you can because once they’re here you won’t get any.”

I started to laugh. Relieved that I could talk about babies nowadays without wanting to sob with despair at my loss.

“What are you girls laughing at?” Elliot asked, moving up to Belle’s side and wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

“The joys of parenthood,” Belle said. “I was panicking about Lily.”

“Yeah, he was, too.”

I looked up at the sound of Joey’s voice and instantly my heart picked up an extra beat. He was wearing a suit but had discarded the jacket since our run in with Wes. Now his shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing his tattoos and the leather bracelets on his wrist. He had thick veins in his forearms, and Ishuddered because I knew personally how powerful those arms were.

“Where’s Beau and Ethan?” Simone asked, looking around Joey.

“Yeah and Ronnie?” Amber frowned. “He’s never usually more than two feet away from me.”

“Ali and Ingrid have challenged them to a game of poker,” Elliot replied.

“Poker,” Simone exclaimed. “Since when has Ethan known how to play poker?”

I watched as Elliot and Joey squirmed and flashed a glance between each other. Belle saw it too.

“What did you do?” she asked.

Joey winced. “We might have taught him that week you came on tour with us.”

“How did I miss that?” Simone asked.

“No idea,” Joey replied with a wink. “But he’s pretty good. I’m pretty sure he’s going to take them for every penny.”

“I think I need to see this.” Simone shook her head but was grinning as she stood up.

“Yep, me too.” Amber groaned and held her hand out to Joey. “Can you pull me up, please?”

“Come on,” Belle added. “Let’s go and see Ethan rob his dad of hundreds.”

“It’s a maximum of twenty quid,” Elliot offered.

“Where the hell has he got twenty pounds from?” Simone asked, astonished.

“That week you were on tour with us.” Joey grinned and sat in the seat next to me. “He won at least forty quid from me over the week and then we were only playing for a maximum of two quid.”

Simone’s eyes widened. “I really need to see this.”

Within seconds everyone had disappeared except for Joey.

“You don’t want to go and watch the poker prodigy then?” I asked, swallowing back the nerves at suddenly being alone with him.

“Nah. I’ve seen him play before. I’ve lost to him.” He looked at my bottle. “You want another?”

I thought about it but there was only so much alcohol-free beer you could drink. “I’m fine, thanks. I might get going soon.”

Joey made a grunting noise. “Going? Why are you going? It’s still early.”

“It’s not that early. It’s almost ten and I have stuff to do.”

My heart skipped a couple of beats as he licked his lips and shifted his chair closer to mine.

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