Page 6 of Royal Shark
“I’ve never been kissed before,” she whispers.
Neither have I, but I’m her hero and need to stay that way. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.” I’ve spied on my oldest brother Gabriel. The trick is you have to hold the girl’s face so you don’t miss her lips. “Close your eyes.” That’s the other important part.
She’s so close I can feel her breathy response warm over my lips. “Why?”
“That’s how it works.”
She gazes into my eyes, and the blood rushes through my veins. “I want to see you.”
I hold her face with both hands, surprised at how soft her skin is. Our eyes meet up close. I can’t blink, the green of her eyes mesmerizing me. And then, finally, I close the distance, pressing my lips to hers, shocked at the jolt that runs through me at contact.
I drop my hands and lean back. I want to know if she liked it as much as I did, but I can’t ask. Instead, I study her expression, which looks intensely thoughtful. Her cheeks are light pink. I’m not sure if she’s embarrassed or happy, like me.
And then she smiles, and I can breathe again.
She gathers up the dragon cards, minus my pair of fives, and tucks them into her backpack. Then she stands and hooks the backpack over her shoulder, her expression serious. “I’m definitely going to marry you, Adrian Rourke.”
She takes off.
I grin. I must be a fantastic kisser.
Wait. Where did she go? I step out of the cabana. Her backpack is on the sand, and she’s splashing in the shallows. I strip off my T-shirt and join her, glad she’s not afraid of the water anymore.
She splashes me, laughing, and I splash her back. She dives under a wave, and I join her, swimming out to calmer waters.
She’s my girlfriend, my first girlfriend, my first kiss. I’ll always remember this day, and I’ll honor our pact because that’s what heroes do.
Chapter Two
Present day
Adrian
Opening and running a successful casino takes three things—brains, money, customer relations. I’m working all three. I would like to be just the brains, dealing with the numbers, and leave the rest to someone else. That’s my strength. I have two silent partners who are also the money—my sister Emma and her husband, rock star Jackson Walker. I invested one-third of the start-up costs myself; they contributed the other two-thirds. They’re both musicians living in nearby France, who perform here regularly, but they’re not interested in the day-to-day running of the casino and leave all the decision-making to me. It sounds ideal, I know, but one month out from the opening of our new casino, Villroy Palace Casino, and I’m already wishing I had someone to take some of the heavy load off my shoulders. I’m not opposed to hard work. I’m opposed to round-the-clock work, especially when it comes to customer relations and staff management. Being the youngest of seven, I’m used to a crowd. I’m just not used to that crowd always needing something from me.
I step into the lobby of the casino at ten thirty in the morning, half an hour before opening, and smile to myself. I love the way the casino turned out. It was my idea to open a casino as a complement to our day spa, which opened a year ago. I’m a card shark. Monte Carlo was my second home for high-stakes poker, and now Villroy has its own version of Monte Carlo—a small but luxurious place meant to attract high rollers.
The front lobby is reminiscent of the Island Bliss Spa just across the way, with a matching decorative wall featuring a trickling waterfall, white tile floor, and white walls. The air is scented with lavender just like the spa. The idea was to make spa visitors continue their relaxed feel when they stepped over here. Where the reception desk would be at the spa, we have a fanciful glass sculpture of a dragon on top of a circular deep red rug with a tree branch pattern that’s a reference to Yggdrasil, the world tree in Norse, a nod to the Rourkes’ Viking heritage. I’ve always liked dragons, part of Viking mythology. There’s also decorative Viking shields, swords, and tapestries with ancient battle symbols as wall decorations. We’re descended from a renegade Viking tribe known as the Wild Ones. Vikings were risk takers, so I like the subtle nudge to our customers to take a risk too with their gambling. What fun is gambling without the heart-pounding excitement of the risk involved? I never played for the money. It was always for the adrenaline rush.
The gaming areas are visible just through twin archways on either side of the dragon sculpture. The casino itself is decorated in an elegant nineteenth-century style similar to Amalie Palace, where the royal family, including me, lives. I step through the archway into the main gambling hall with a ceiling painted to look like the sky, subtly backlit. The walls are done in sea green silk wallpaper with gold leaf, and the gaming tables are mahogany surrounded by red velvet chairs. There’s a back wall of windows offering a spectacular view of the sea. We don’t keep gamblers in the dark here. A slot machine room is tucked into a corner on the left, the money room in the middle, and my office is on the right. Upstairs are the high-roller private lounges, a small venue for performers that can double as a private gambling space, and an upscale seafood restaurant with a bar. In good weather, the roof terrace is used for performances and exclusive high-stakes games.
I take in the activity as I work my way toward my office. Dealers are setting up at the tables. Someone on the custodial staff is making one last sweep of the room. Security is gathered in a clump by the windows. So far, so good.
“Good morning, Denis,” I call to the middle-aged man setting up for blackjack closest to my office.
He snaps to attention and bows his head. “Good morning, Your Highness.”
That’s another issue. Most of the staff are deferential to my title—Prince Adrian Rourke at your service—and it makes it more difficult to get to the heart of problems. They don’t want to trouble me with the mundane. For example, the malfunctioning slot machine that kept eating tokens but stopped spinning. One dealer left his post to find a technician rather than call me. You cannot leave a gaming table full of chips in the middle of a game!
“Just Adrian will suffice,” I say with what I hope is a disarming smile. “How’s the blackjack table?”
“No trouble at all, sir.”
“Good. We’ll be rotating you to a poker table next week just to keep things fresh.”
“As you wish, sir.”
I continue to my office. I am CEO, CFO, the marketing guy, the HR guy, and the pit boss. My staff consists of dealers, money changers, technicians, janitors, waiters, bartenders, the chef and his assistant cooks, and security. A lot of security. What I need most at this point is a pit boss to oversee the staff, whom they’ll feel more comfortable going to for problems. A right-hand man or woman, someone sharp who knows gambling as well as I do, someone relatable. It’s not like I’m a snob, above it all. It’s having a prince as a boss that’s the problem. I may have been raised in the royal family but we’re a rather down-to-earth lot, if you ask me. Plus I always had my twin sister, Silvia, to keep me from getting a big head about anything. Nothing like a sister to cut you down to size.
