Play Me Right (Play Me 5)

“Fuck delicate and fuck the high rollers. They need to keep their hands to themselves and your security guards need to make sure that this happens. No one should have to come to work and deal with that shit. No one.”

“You’re right,” she tells me, and she looks sincere. “But it’ll take time until the word gets out to not just the staff but the customers.”

“It’s not going to get out to the customers if my staff doesn’t start doing something about it.”

“You’re right. Absolutely. I’ll talk to him.”

“No, I’ll talk to him. And if he’s lucky, I won’t fire him.”

I don’t even bother waiting for the elevator. Instead, I storm down the three flights of stairs that separate the Eye from the casino floor. I’m hoping it’ll give me a chance to calm down, but I’m still furious when I finally get to the high roller section—and find Raoul standing exactly where he was when I was watching him a few minutes ago.

“You. Get over here,” I spit at him, refusing to cover the last of the distance between us. I don’t normally go in for these stupid-ass power games, but screw it. He doesn’t deserve the courtesy of me coming to him. One way or the other, he is going to figure out that I’m the one in charge and he will do as I direct. Or I’m going to cram his badge down his throat and kick his ass out of my casino once and for all.

I’m currently learning toward the second option.

He starts walking, but before he reaches me, Aria is there, her hand on my chest and her gorgeous dark eyes looking beseechingly up at me. “It’s not Raoul’s fault,” she tells me. “It’s mine. I told him the other day to only interfere if I ask him to.”

“Yeah, well, first of all, that’s not what I told him to do and I’m the one paying his salary. So he needs to listen to me. And, second of all, why the hell would you tell him something so stupid?”

“Don’t call me stupid.” Her eyes narrow dangerously.

Too bad I’m not in the mood to heed the warning. She’s put me through hell the last four days and now she’s doing something deliberately stupid, something that puts her at risk when she doesn’t have to be. I’m not having it. “That isn’t what I said and you know it.”

“Close enough. And I told him that because otherwise he’d spend the whole night walking from one customer to another, telling them to keep their hands to themselves.”

“I’m fine with that. It’s what I pay him to do.”

“No. You pay him to keep the money on the casino floor safe. And if he’s too busy looking out for me to watch the money, eventually there’s going to be a problem.”

“It’s not just you. I don’t want anyone who works for me to go through that kind of harassment. And if keeping you safe and watching the money is too much for Raoul, we’ll put another guard on each shift.”

“Another guard?” she asks, amused. “One to watch the money and one to watch me?”

It sounds stupid. I know it does, but I’m still riled up that that jackass had the nerve to put his hands on my woman and I don’t give a shit how stupid I sound. “If that’s what it takes. I want you safe.”

“And I’d like to make enough tips to live on, since the salary you pay me is shit. Having a security guard breathing down their necks all night, treating them like criminals, isn’t exactly conducive to squeezing tips out of anyone.”

“Again, I don’t care.”

“Of course you don’t! You’ve got enough money that you don’t have to worry about something as mundane as how much you make in tips—or if it’s going to be enough to pay your rent at the end of the month.”

“Just because I have money doesn’t mean I don’t know what it means not to have it,” I tell her. “I’ve spent my entire adult life working to better the lives of people who have nothing. To get children in developing nations clean water and food and medical care, so don’t point your finger at me and act like I live in an ivory tower because I believe no woman should have to be sexually harassed at work. I’m not the enemy here.”

“I never said you were. But knowing that people are suffering because they have a lot less than you is very different than actually trying to make ends meet when you have very little. Believe me, I know. Until I walked away from my family and tried to make it on my own, I had no idea what it was like to be poor. Had no idea what it meant to struggle every week just to have enough money to pay for gas and milk and a loaf of bread.

“So, yes, you might be a saint, you might work for fifty different charities, but that doesn’t mean you know anything about being poor. So why don’t you stop trying to decide what I can and cannot put up with, because the truth is, I can put up with a hell of a lot more than you can ever imagine.”

Her speech is still ringing in my ears when Aria goes to wrench her elbow from my grasp. I don’t let her go, though, not now that she’s finally talking to me. Sure, she’s angry, but I don’t give a shit. She’s kept so much locked up inside of herself for the entire time we’ve known each other that the fact that she’s finally cracking—finally letting me in, no matter how unwittingly—means everything to me and I’m not about to let her walk away in the middle of it.

“So why don’t you tell me?” I demand. “Better yet, why don’t you show me what you can put up with instead of constantly walking away from me?”

“You make me sound like a coward. I don’t constantly walk away.”

“Well, you sure as hell don’t stick around to talk things out, either, do you? From the first time we made love, you’ve been ducking out on me the second things get uncomfortable for you.”

“Yeah, well, the last time we made love things got a hell of a lot more than just uncomfortable, didn’t they?”

Shame burns in my gut but I refuse to back down to her, not right now. Not when everything is riding on me being able to convince her to move past what I did to her. Being able to convince both of us to move past it.