Page 49 of Marrying the Gardener
Plucking a five hundred, Kaleb slides it graciously to me. “Here. A loan.”
“I’m not taking that. That’s not how you play the game.”
“If you don’t take it, I win.”
“Blessedly, I think that means I get to go to bed.”
“I’m not ready for this night to end.”
I’m not ready to play another seventeen thousand rounds of Monopoly. I hate being a sore loser. It’s achildren’sgame of chance. There are evenchance cards, for crying out loud. And, yet, my entire self worth rests so fragilely upon my shoulders that even this luck-based loss of a game that centers on some cheap idea of “business” stings.
Maturely, I swat Kaleb’s orange money away. “I’m not interested in handouts. Take everything I own. I’ll live in a cardboard box on Mediterranean Avenue until I die.”
“We both know you’ll plot the overthrow of the entire board from that box.”
“I shall not.”
“Go on. Do it.”
“I am not a toddler.”
Kaleb’s eyes sparkle. “You’ll feel better. Quit being such a lady. Get stab happy with me, Crimson.”
Screwing my lips together, I glance at the board, at all his little hotels and houses scattered about the properties. I glance at the neat rows of his cash and assets. He let me be the bank. That was very nice of him.
I hook a finger beneath my side of the board.
His smile widens.
I bite my lip. Then I overthrow game.
Money flutters, cards scatter, the hat goes rolling toward my dresser in a manner that suggests my lost puppy piece is under someone else’s furniture.
Kaleb’s laughter surrounds me, warm, and as the game pieces settle, he’s shifted his seated position into a knightly kneel. Head bowed, he says, “Democracy is dead. Long live thequeen.”
“You aresucha…”Sweetheart.Filling my lungs, I remove that thought from my brain and groan. “Now we have to clean this mess up.”
“As my liege orders.” Dutifully, Kaleb gathers up the board and folds it into the box. “You’re right,” he says after a moment of sorting the money scattered all over the floor. “It really is a luck game.”
“Don’t appease me.”
“I wonder if we could change the rules and make it more strategy, more RPG. Add life elements, new chance cards that are fixed as events you can come out of either better off or worse off depending on other moves you make.”
“For the depth required in a game like that, I think you’d have to move from board to computer. Business life sim.”
“Probably. I think Kyran knows a coder. Some guy from a Minecraft server? I don’t know.”
I laugh. “We are not exploring an investment in the creation of a game just because I’m pissy that I lost at Monopoly.”
“But wecould.” He eyes me, the hazel in his irises enigmatic.
I send myself to look for the top hat under my dresser. “But wewon’t.”
“What if we went behind your family’s back and pitched a business plan to the Bachelors?”
“What?” I see the silver piece, lean down, and stretch my arm for it.
“It’s not a handout if they make an educated investment in your business.”
