Page 5 of Royal Shark
We go back to playing. It gets quiet as everyone takes off on a bike ride.
We play several hands until Sara wins the pot. She’s so happy she stops to count all her play money before hugging it to her, a huge beaming smile on her face.
I find myself smiling back even though I lost. I really like seeing her so happy.
Our eyes lock for a long moment before I return my attention to the cards. I’m pretty sure shelikesme. I gather the cards into a neat stack and clear my throat. “Here.” I offer them to her. “A gift for your last day here.”
She sets the play money down and stares at the cards and then at me. “That’s so nice, but I can’t take your cards. They’re special. You said you got them for Christmas.”
“That’s why I want you to have them. You know they’re special and will take good care of them.” I press them into her hand, and her fingers close around them.
“Thank you.” She takes a deep breath. “Youaremy hero, Adrian. When I cut my ankle, I could’ve been eaten by sharks, drowned in my own panic, or bled out on the beach, but yousavedme. You helped me through a major freak-out, so thank you times a gazillion.”
My chest puffs with pride. I love being a hero. Being the youngest in the family, there was never a chance to be one. “You’re welcome.”
She looks up at me under her lashes, and my heart kicks harder. “I want to marry you when I grow up.”
My eyes widen. Married? I thought maybe she’d be my girlfriend for a day before she left.Married?
She leans forward. “If we got married, we could play poker all night, every night.”
That seals it for me. All poker all the time? Deal me in. She’s the ideal opponent, as into the game as I am.
“Deal,” I say.
“Great! Let’s make a pact.”
“A pact.” That sounds more serious than a promise. “How should we seal the deal? A blood oath?”
She shudders. “No.” She sets the dragon cards down on the smoothed-out sand playing area between us and fans them out. “When we’re twenty-five, we’ll get married. That’ll give us time to go to college and get good jobs.”
That’s thirteen years away, double our lives now. “It sounds so far away. Are you sure you won’t forget me?” I’m teasing. We’ve known each other much too long to ever forget.
She nods once, taking me seriously. “That’s why we’ll each take a pair, twos and fives, to remind us of the proper age, hearts and diamonds of course. Then when we reunite, we’ll have a matched set of two and five—two hearts, two diamonds just like a wedding.”
“Guys don’t wear diamonds. I’ll get you a ring with two diamonds.”
“Okay,” she says softly.
She takes a two of hearts and a two of diamonds for herself and gives me a five of hearts and a five of diamonds. “You get the higher cards since you’re older.” My birthday is five months before hers. She holds up her cards. “Now we both have a pair, but together it unlocks the magic combination of twenty-five.”
She’s so smart. And her green eyes sparkle. And she has a sprinkle of freckles across her nose that exactly matches my lucky number.
“The two and five together make seven,” I tell her. “That’s my lucky number. Maybe you’re good luck too because you have seven freckles on your nose.”
She covers her nose with her hand. “I hate my freckles.”
“I don’t.” I pull her hand away from her face. She’s so pretty I find myself leaning closer and then I know what I really want. “I bet you’re too chicken to kiss me.”
Her lips part in surprise before she quickly recovers. “I betyou’retoo chicken to kissme.”
“I’m not.”
She licks her lips. “Then prove it.”
“You have to get closer.”
She shifts the cards out of the way and kneels on our playing area. I kneel too, the pair of cards slipping from my hand in my excitement. My heart races.
