Page 18 of Ready to Score

“Oh my God.” Lim looked at her with wide eyes. “I got one! What do I do? Am I supposed to go up there or…”

“Normally, people yell it out, I think.”

“Really?”

Jade shrugged, then held her breath as she watched Lim draw air into her own lungs.

“Bingo!” she yelled. “I have a bingo.”

Her words rang out through the room loud and sudden, immediately hushing all the extra noise. One of the normal staff walkedcalmly to where Vonte was standing at the front and took the microphone from him.

“Our first win of the night, y’all,” the older woman said as she smiled kindly. “Come on up here, then. Let us check you.”

Lim paused before she stood, looking over at Jade. The excitement was written on every bare inch of her face. The expression was so open and genuinely happy that Jade almost reached out to grab Lim and stop her from going up to the front. There was no stopping this, though. Jade’s eyes were on the prize, and if Francesca Lim decided she was going to try to obstruct her path forward, she had to be dealt with. There could be no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

So Jade let her go, watching as Lim’s long legs carried her across the room until the bingo hall employee was bent over her sheet with a grin.

“Let’s see here.” The older woman had a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on her thin nose as her eyes scanned the card. “O-49—we got that. There’s your free space right there. G-52—uh-huh. Hold on here for a second.” The woman paused and turned to the small table behind her to look at her notebook. When she raised her eyes back to Lim, she did not speak into the microphone. “We didn’t call I-19 or B-12, honey.”

Even without the mic broadcasting the woman’s words to the room, they were easy to hear.

“Wait, what?” Lim looked down at her paper. “I—”

“It’s okay, sweetie.” The older woman patted Lim’s arm. “This happens more often than you think.”

Lim spared a look at the crowd. Every eye in the place was on her, and the longer the moment went on, the more the room seemed to itch for the sweet release of being able to react.

“I’m so sorry,” Lim said. “I don’t know how I misheard like that. Twice.”

Jade sank down a little in her seat, averting her eyes from the pair trying to meet hers from the front of the room.

“Well, this is why we double-check.” The older woman raised the mic to her mouth again. “But this should serve as a good reminder to y’all to make sure you’ve got your listening ears on. The only interruptions we want are the good kind from now on, okay?”

Kindness was peppered over each of her words, but their impact was still strong enough to cause a chorus of light laughter around the room. Jade spared a glance to where Landry was sitting next to his wife and found herself delighted to see him hiding his own laughter behind his hands.

To Lim’s credit—and Jade’s disappointment—the woman took the hit gracefully.

“Sorry about that again,” she said behind a sheepish smile. “You won’t get any more trouble out of me tonight, I promise.”

Jade sat back until her legs were splayed out under the table and her arms crossed. Her chair was pushed rudely into the aisle so that when Lim tried to return to her seat, she had to squeeze past Jade to get there. The crowd seemed to get over the small interruption easily enough as the microphone was returned to Vonte, and he pulled another ball from the spinning basket.

“You’re a child, do you know that?” Lim’s voice was low, but she spoke her words through gritted teeth and twisted lips.

“What?”

“Don’t make that goofy-ass face like you don’t know what you did. You made me look like a fucking fool up there, Dunn.”

Jade snorted. “First, I haven’t done a single thing. Second, you made yourself look like a fool.”

The look on Lim’s face was pure shock. Jade suddenly realized that she’d never seen the woman look genuinely mad until thismoment. Lim’s dark eyes held enough fire to set the room alight. Jade made sure to keep herself frosty, though.

“Me? You’re going to sit there right now and pretend you didn’t tell me lies?”

“I’m not a liar,” Jade said. “I’m just telling the truth. It’s not my fault you went up there all gung-ho and ready to declare yourself the victor without checking your work first.”

The snarl across Lim’s pink lips got even nastier in response, but Jade wasn’t finished.

“You wanted to play this game with me, Lim. From that very first moment, you were trying to provoke me. All I did was decide to play along. Don’t blame me because you got cocky and forgot to keep your head on a swivel.”

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