Page 33 of Dating the Rebel
“You think Grant is going to make me smile?” she asked.
“Taking his money will,” Blair pointed out.
And she wasn’t wrong. If that was all he was interested in, Miranda would love to take away his money. And his clothes...
And his will to do anything other than sexually please her...
Blair clapped her hands together and startled a gasp out of both Miranda and Teo. “And I have the perfect thing for you to wear.”
Miranda shook her head and reminded her long-time bestie, “You and I haven’t been able to borrow each other’s clothes since we were eight.” Blair had sprouted up and out way before she had.
In fact, Miranda was still waiting to sprout up.
“No, I had a friend of Teo’s design this outfit for you—”
“Tony said you designed it,” Teo interjected. “And that you’re brilliant and beautiful and that I’m one lucky son of a bitch.” He grinned as broadly as his lady love did over his compliment.
Miranda hadn’t had much of an example of real love, but she knew it when she saw it. And she was seeing it now. She grinned, too. “Man, when I’m right, I’m right...”
“Yes, you are,” Blair agreed. “I was going to save this present until your birthday. But you’ve done so much for us, you deserve it now.”
“And Grant deserves to get a little comeuppance,” Teo added as he pulled out his wallet.
Miranda chuckled. “I’m not going to argue with that.” They had no idea how much he deserved to lose.
“Is the draw that funny?” Grant asked, drawing her back to the present where she sat at the table with him and the other players.
She glanced at her cards, relieved she’d actually been dealt some good ones this time. The other hands she’d had to bluff. And she remembered why she didn’t often play. She hated that there was no control over the draw. Whatever you were dealt, you were dealt...
Miranda didn’t like relying on luck and hated feeling out of control. And, with members leaving Liaisons International left and right, she’d already felt like too much was out of her control.
But finally, with the pile of chips growing in front of her, she was proving that there was more to life than luck. There was strategy, and it also helped that Grant seemed quite distracted...
His gaze kept going to her cleavage.
Was it the outfit? She’d laughed when she’d opened her early birthday present from Blair. They’d spent entirely too much of their adolescence watchingGrease. And Miranda’s favorite part had been when Sandy had dressed up like the badass.
In this leather outfit, Miranda felt like a badass, too. And she wouldn’t have had the cleavage without the tight top.
She suspected, though, that it wasn’t just the outfit unsettling Grant. It was the way his friends, or whatever the other players were to him, reacted to her.
They flirted outrageously, even when she took their chips. The hostess kept flirting, too. If Grant was like most of the men Miranda knew, that was probably distracting him most...with fantasies of a threesome.
Every man’s not-so-secret, cliched fantasy.
She’d been invited to join couples, but she knew from her mother’s divorces—more so than her marriages—that inviting someone else into the bedroom rarely ended well.
Miranda, also, did not like to share. She’d had to do too much of that growing up with her younger sisters. She liked a man’s attention all to herself.
And she liked to focus only on him, like she was focused now on Grant. He was so damn good-looking. His short beard clung to his strong jaw. His golden hair was a little spiky and incredibly sexy...like the silk shirt he wore that molded to the sculpted muscles of his chest.
Heat rushed over her as she found herself getting distracted. And she couldn’t afford that now.
Not when Grant must have been dealt good cards, too. Because he kept raising the ante. Or maybe he was just that much better at bluffing than she was.
Either way, she didn’t want to lose.
But one of the other players called it...and when she and Grant turned over their cards, he had the better hand this time. Was he cheating?
