Plus, she deserved it. She’d played her ass off, and he was . . . proud?
Huh.
The man in black leaned back. There was a tense, pregnant pause, and then he nodded. “You’re right, lawyer.” He gestured to the woman behind the bar. “Pay them what they’re due, minus the debt. And then get out.”
“What a night.” Claudette came to her feet. “Now, if someone could call me a cab, I have to get back to my hotel.”
“State senates don’t run by themselves, eh?” Ryder shoved back from the table and smiled cheekily at her.
She cast him and Mira a meaningful glance. “Watch it.”
“They’ll keep quiet about this night.” Ryder gave her his arm.
“We will,” Mira said. She gave Naveen an odd glance when he also offered his arm to stand, though she took it.
“Emi. You will not be invited back. I expect you to be discreet anyway.” X’s gaze settled on Mira. “I hope we play again sometime, little girl.”
Mira zipped up her coat and avoided Naveen’s gaze. “Perhaps.”
Naveen let out a giant breath when the bartender paid them out. It was a hefty stack of bills. At the door, Mira looked up at Ralph, whose longing gaze was on Emi. “Our phone, please.”
He nodded and pulled their only lead out, handing it to her. The door shut behind them with finality. Naveen glanced around the empty hallway, then let loose with a quiet whoop and grabbed Mira by the shoulders. “Jesus, did you see that? That was so cool!” He spun her around, then pulled her in for a hug, the adrenaline surging through him finally able to have a release. “He was like, raise. And you were like, I raise you again, bitch. And then you won! With a fucking seven and a two.” He looked over at Emi, who was leaning against the wall, arms over her chest. “That’s hard to do, right?”
“Pretty hard,” Emi confirmed.
He squeezed Mira so tight she squeaked. Mira murmured something against his chest, but it was muffled. He was holding her off the floor. He put her down gently and released her. She stumbled back a step and readjusted her shirt. “No big deal.”
“No big deal? You didn’t just kick ass in there, you handed it to him. I knew you were smart, but that was cool.”
Mira lowered her lashes and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Oh. Um, thank you.”
“Thank you. God.” He put his hands on his hips. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“You had reason to.”
He did. Or rather, he thought he had. Now he didn’t know.
“Do you have a room here, Emi, or are we going back to your place?”
Emi straightened away from the wall, where she’d been watching them like a scientist studying her specimens. He clearly wasn’t the only one who liked puzzles. “Of course. Follow me.”
Naveen kept pace with Mira as they moved down the long hallway. His arms felt oddly empty. “Really, um, good work.”
“Thanks.” She reached out to him, and he wondered if she was going to hold his hand. Instead, her fist opened, revealing his watch. “And thank you for this.”
“Oh. Yeah. No big deal.” He took the watch and fastened it on his wrist.
“It is a big deal. I wish I could get your ring back, too.”
He shot a glance ahead of them, but Emi was a few steps away. She was probably listening, but that was okay. “It did its job.”
“You said something similar before. What does that mean?”
He paused for a second. The story wasn’t one he was particularly proud of, so he’d never shared it with Mira. “When I was about twenty, my friend and I got into a bar fight with some guys over a game of pool. My dad gave me the ring the next week. Told me to pay my debts with it in the future.” That was a highly sanitized version, but there was no need to go over his misspent twenties. Not quite wild, but not entirely sedate.
She squinted up at him. “You got into a bar fight?”
“Why is that a surprise?” Did she think he was boring, as well?
You want to be boring.
“Sounds messy,” Emi tossed over her shoulder. “That’s why.”
He didn’t miss Emi’s emphasis on the word messy. So he had his own messes, too, and he hadn’t revealed all of them to Mira. There was a scale of covering up messy, damn it.
“I never thought you’d be a fighter, is all.”
They got to the elevator. The doors opened, and they piled in. He caught Mira’s reflection in the door, and thought of how he’d briefly opened his eyes when they’d been in here on the way up.
He’d seen her face in the mirror, then, too. Her lips had been parted, slightly slick, like she was remembering the embraces they’d shared in his old elevator, too.
It was the memory that gave his next words a flirtatious gloss. “Should have had you with me back then, and it wouldn’t have gotten to the fight.”
She ducked her head. “I’m not good at pool.”
He fiddled with his watch clasp. “Emi said your dad had you playing games like this since you were a kid—”
Mira spoke in a rush, cutting him off. “Emi doesn’t always know what she’s talking about.” He was good at interpreting the looks women gave their friends, and the one Mira shot Emi had don’t say another word all over it.
Interesting.
Emi nodded. “That’s true. I’m a disaster.” The elevator dinged. “Come, friends. Let’s get into that phone.”
Chapter Nine
Mira didn’t cry often. In fact, she could remember most of the times she had: when Sejal had left home, when she finally got sick of her father using her, when her aunt had passed away.
Alone in your car, when you decided to end things with Naveen.
That was, actually, the only breakup in recent memory where she had cried.
Mira tilted her face up to the shower. Tears happened so rarely that it wasn’t a huge surprise that she didn’t cry in Emi’s bathroom, even though the pressure building behind her eyes was immense. There was no reason to cry. They were safe, they had emergency funds, Emi would crack the phone for them, and it would hopefully yield that diamond necklace map they were hunting for.
Emi said your dad had you playing games like this since you were a kid.
Bleh. Mira scrubbed at her arms until they turned pink. Emi! She’d known bringing Naveen into the orbit of her old friend was a bad idea, and this was exactly why.
It was one thing for Naveen to see her play poker. Quite another to expose the seedy underbelly of her childhood traumas completely.
I should never have doubted you.
That had been a silly thing to say. He should one hundred percent doubt her.
His trust had thrown her for a loop, though she’d known she could win his watch back. Poker had always come easily to her. Partially it was because it was a game of numbers, and numbers had always been her friends. Mostly because she had, as Ryder had noted, an uncanny ability to hide her emotions.
She didn’t hate the game. She’d hated the player, her father, for using her to make himself money. For making her feel like her only worth lay in what she could do, not who she was.
This was the first time she’d played poker and not been low-key terrified. Which made sense, because she had been a kid when she’d played last.