Page 42 of Three's a Crowd
‘I can’t take this much from you! What if I lose it all?’ she gasped.
‘Don’t worry about it, I’ve got more money than sh-ense.’ He raised an eyebrow at her, cementing the James Bond joke.
‘No, seriously Zach, I can’t gamble with your money.’
He let out a huff of irritation. ‘Daisy, look, I want to enjoy the money I’ve earnt and I can’t think of a better way than watching you lose it at roulette,’ he teased. ‘Anyway, you used to give me some of your money when we played the slot machines on holiday, when we were kids. I wouldn’t have been able to join in otherwise. This is me paying you back for that kindness.’
‘That was only the odd pound, here and there,’ she argued.
‘Well, I’m paying it back – with interest. Please let me?’
Clearly, he wasn’t going to give up on persuading her to take it. He seemed to be needing to correct some perceived imbalance he felt.
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ she said, hesitantly.
‘Come on,’ he said, already walking away, ‘there’s some space at that table over there.’
He led her over to the roulette table and started to place chips on the board.
It had been a long time since Daisy had played roulette; even then, it had only been a pretend casino at one of her student balls at university, so she was cautious at first and just put one chip down at a time. After winning a bit and losing a bit, she gained some confidence and started putting more and more chips downeach time. Zach was liberally covering the board with his own chips now and seemed to be losing rather a lot more than he was winning.
When she pointed this out, he just shrugged and said, ‘I guess it’s not my lucky day.’
Daisy wasn’t sure how to feel about this; she worked damn hard for her money and valued every penny, but it was up to him, she reminded herself. He was a grown up and could make his own choices.
After a happy hour of playing, Zach drew her to one side.
‘So, how much are you up?’ he asked, motioning towards the chips in her hand.
‘Oh, about 800 euros,’ she said, checking the stack of chips and feeling a warm buzz about actually winning.
‘Okay, well, I could do with a drink. Let’s put all our chips on one number, just for the hell of it. You choose it, since you seem to be doing so well,’ he suggested.
‘What? Really?’ she asked. ‘Are you sure?’ She felt feverish at the thought of it.
‘Totally sure,’ he said, passing his chips to her.
There were only three left in his stack, but one of them she noticed was worth a thousand euros.
‘Zach, I think you’ve made a mistake. You can’t possibly want me to put this on too,’ she said, trying to hand the thousand-euro chip back to him.
‘Yes, I do. Go on, be brave,’ he said, breaking out his devastating smile.
She couldn’t refuse him, not when he looked at her like that.
Going back to the table, she put all the chips on number seventeen, with a shaky hand.
They watched with bated breath as the roulette wheel was spun and the small ball bounced its way round the numbers.
Daisy’s heart thumped like crazy in her chest and she could barely look, but as the wheel slowed down, she stared in incredulity at where it finally rested.
At number seventeen.
She gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in shock and turned to find Zach staring at her, a look of absolute amazement on his face.
‘Wahoo!’ they both shouted together for the second time that evening, laughing uproariously and slapping their hands together in a high five. Zach grabbed hold of her round the waist and lifted her up against his body, hugging her to him. He twirled her around until she felt dizzy, finally stopping and pulling his head back to look her directly in the eyes, which were still on his level.
She was suddenly conscious of his heart beating against her chest, mirroring the rapid pounding of blood through her body. Her nerve endings felt like they were on fire and her breath was shallow and heavy in her chest.
