Read Online The Smart One and the Pretty One by Claire LaZebnik - Free Book Online Page B

ago.”
    “You have any siblings?”
    “One younger brother. He moved to Costa Rica two years ago. If he calls my mother once a month, it’s a miracle.”
    “Do you work?”
    “I have a job back in New York.”
    “So what’s going on with that?”
    “I took a leave of absence.”
    “That was good of you.”
    The guy—what was his name, anyway? His mother had said it, but Lauren had already forgotten what it was—looked annoyed. “Good of me?” he repeated. “She’s my mother, for God’s sake. What choice did I have?”
    “Everyone has a choice. Your brother didn’t come running.”
    “My brother,” he said with a disgusted roll of his eyes. “I
had
to be here. End of story. My life will wait for me.”
    Lauren wasn’t bothered by his abruptness. It seemed more honest than rude to her. Well, maybe a little of both. But she didn’t mind other people’s rudeness: she never took it personally. “What do you do back in New York?”
    “I’m an investor.”
    “And you can just take a leave of absence from that?”
    “From the office, yeah. I’m still working—most of what I do I can do on the computer from here. And the time difference helps. I get a lot of work done early and then I’m available the rest of the day to help my mother.” He made three piles out of the cards and then stacked them up again, each one on top of the next.
    “You fly back and forth a lot?”
    “When I need to,” he said. “Stuff comes up. But I don’t like to leave her alone, so it’s usually just a twenty-four-hour thing. I spend more time on the plane than I do in New York.”
    “And did you always know you wanted to play with money?” Lauren asked.
    “Well, not
always
,” he said. “I mean, when I was five, I didn’t walk around saying I wanted to work for Morgan Stanley. But I’ve been on a pretty steady track since college.”
    “What
did
you walk around saying you wanted to be? I mean, when you were five?”
    He grinned with a sudden and surprising charm. “A professional poker player.”
    Lauren pushed her chair back. “That does it. I’m not playing with you
now
. You’ll beat the pants off me.”
    “I like the image,” he said. Their eyes met briefly. Then, almost as if in direct response to that shared look, he shifted away and looked across the hallway at his mother. You could see his eyes tracing the length of his mother’s arm and the tubing up to her IV.
    “It’s got to be pretty scary,” Lauren said. “What you’re going through.”
    He looked at her with a sudden savage embarrassment, then settled back in his seat and rapped the cards loudly on the stool. “Are we playing or not?” he said.
    “We’ll need something to bet with.”
    “They have M&Ms in the vending machine. Go get some.” He started to deal the cards. “You need change?”
    “I’m good.” Lauren stood up. “Hey, hold off on that dealing until I get back. I don’t trust anyone who deals when my back is turned.”
    “Nor should you,” he said, gathering the cards he had dealt back up. “I was planning on cheating.”
    “Really?”
    “Nah, I’m just joking,” he said in a tone that made her wonder.
    He was a much better poker player than Lauren, and the discrepancy between their abilities seemed to bother him.
    “Why the hell did you keep betting?” he said after winning a particularly huge pot. “You knew I wasn’t going to fold and you had a crappy hand.”
    “They’re just M&Ms,” Lauren said. “Why not take a risk or two?”
    “You’ve got to think like they’re twenty-dollar chips.”
    “Why?”
    “Because otherwise there’s no point to playing at all.”
    “I thought we were playing to pass the time.”
    “We are,” he said. “But it’s more fun and more interesting if you take it seriously.”
    “It’s more fun if you have fun.” Lauren stretched her arms, arching her back a little and surreptitiously watching his reaction. The move—a classic, and usually effective—was