The Christmas Gamble Read online

  Bill nodded. “I’ve got a friend who’s got an apartment about ten minutes from the airport. Me and Kathy and Tommy will stay there until we can lift off.”

  “You pilots know people in all the right places,” I joked. “I’ve gotta scrounge up a hotel for the night.”

  I took out my phone and texted my assistant, Dave. He was technically on vacation until the new year but I knew he’d be keeping his phone close to him anyway. I need you to get me the best possible hotel room available in Omaha. Plane made an emergency landing due to weather conditions and we can’t leave until tomorrow eve at the earliest.

  I chatted with Bill for a few moments while I waited for Dave to take care of things for me, and Kathy came by with the kettle of hot water once again. I had her mix me up an instant coffee—it would be good to be alert heading out from the airport—and waited for a few more minutes while Bill and Tommy did all their post-landing checks and chores.

  I got three notifications all at once: an email confirming my reservation at the White Spring Hotel and Casino, a buzz from UberX notifying me that a driver was on the way to the airport for me, and a message from Dave. Got you the best room at the hotel and pretty much the last one available. Most of the places are booked solid for at least tonight. Lots of canceled flights out of Omaha.

  I texted him back to thank him and started gathering up my stuff.

  I’d packed light, since I had plenty of clothes and supplies at the house in Montauk, so apart from my phone and Kindle, I had a carry-on sized suitcase and my laptop bag and that was it. I pulled on my coat and wrapped a scarf around my neck, and wished Kathy, Bill, and Tommy luck in getting to the place they were staying for the night before I headed off of the plane and onto the tarmac, headed for the main area of the airport where I could meet up with my ride.

  The hotel Dave had booked for me was only a few miles away from the airport, and as I waiting on my driver to arrive I read up on it, as well as my reservation. The hotel-casino was owned by a tribe, on the edge of their reservation, and had a great reputation for their bar and restaurants, their poker tables, and the quality of their rooms. There was also a spa, a heated pool—all the amenities you’d expect from a high-end hotel and more.

  My Uber arrived, and I climbed into the backseat. “Heading to White Spring?”

  “Yeah,” I told the driver. “I got stranded here. The plane had some kind of mechanical issue with the weather, so I’ll be staying in style at least.”

  “It’s a nice place,” the man said. “Been there a couple of times for birthdays and such. Good drinks, great rooms.”

  “That’s what I hear,” I agreed. “Thanks for coming out to the airport for me.”

  “Always—a night like this is a good night for business,” the man said. “Lots of canceled flights, people want to get somewhere warm. I’ll be working until four in the morning, but I’ll make a good couple hundred.”

  We lapsed into silence, and I looked out the window. It was dark enough outside that I couldn’t really make out anything at all about Omaha. Not that there was that much to make out. I’d been in the city once or twice during the day, and my memory of it was that it was like so many other major midwestern cities: big enough to justify the name but still a messy sprawl, influenced by the wide-open spaces and plains that surrounded it.

  I’d hoped to be in Montauk in the next few hours but I figured if nothing else I could get a drink at the bar, maybe soak in the big tub the presidential suite Dave had reserved for me boasted. I’d get a fresh start the next morning. If nothing else, it would be one less day of the holiday week all on my own, which couldn’t help but be good, right?

  My driver pulled up to the hotel entrance, and I took out my wallet. I figured what Uber didn’t know about my tip to the guy wouldn’t hurt it, so I handed him a couple of twenties in a handshake, got my suitcase and laptop bag, and climbed out of the SUV. The hotel was actually kind of beautiful: all lights and glitter, like most casino-type places but more demure than anything in Vegas. It looked comfortable and most importantly, it looked warm, and as I walked quickly to the front door of the place, I was grateful to have somewhere to stay, somewhere I couldn’t be freezing my ass off.

  In spite of the fact that I’d snapped up one of, if not the last room available in the hotel, there was a line at the front desk, and I stepped up to wait my turn like a good customer, listening in as the poor man running the night shift had to inform one person after another that there was nothing for them at the hotel. There were one or two people in front of me who had pre-reserved, so they were able to get satisfaction but most of the people got turned away, with recommendations for other hotels down the road and offers to get them taxis or other rides to get there.

  “I’ve got a reservation under Pearson,” I said to the man when it was finally my turn. “ I watched him type into his computer and then saw the look of relief on his face as my reservation came up.

  “Thank you for staying with us this evening, Mr. Pearson,” the man said. “If you’ll just give me your ID and your card, I can go ahead and process everything for you.”

  I handed over what he asked for and looked around a bit. The lobby was still busy but only a couple of people had come in behind me to try and get a room or to check in. Most of the action was people headed in the direction of the bar or the casino.

  After a few moments, the man looked up again and handed me my card and my ID. “Can I just head straight up?”

  He shook his head, giving me a canned regretful look. “I’m afraid with the unusual demand we have tonight, not all of our rooms are completely ready. If you’ll give us a little bit of time, we’ll have the Presidential suite absolutely perfect for you. In fact, if you’d like to leave your luggage here with me, I can have one of the bell boys bring it up for you.”

  “How long of a wait are you anticipating for me?” It didn’t bother me that much—just then I didn’t really want to be alone in a hotel room—but I wanted an idea of how much time I had.

  “Give it about twenty minutes,” the man replied. “I’ll go ahead and give you the key card now, and if you’d like, you’re entitled to two free drinks at the bar this evening as part of the perks that come with your reservation. By the time you’re done, the room should be just right for you.”

  I took the key card and slipped it into my pocket and thanked the man, handing him a tenner for the bellboy who would eventually take my things up to my room. I decided to take him up on the offer and headed in the direction of the bar; it was as good a way to pass the time as any.

  Chapter Three

  Kayla

  By the time I found a cab and got in, I still didn’t have any real idea of where I wanted to go.

  “Do you want to just make some calls and see where we can take you?” The woman driving the car was probably about my mother’s age and looked like she was ready to be up all night.

  “Yeah, do you have any ideas? I’m not from around here,” I said.

  “Well, a lot of places are going to be full since everyone’s trying to find somewhere to stay that isn’t the airport,” the woman pointed out as she merged into traffic heading away from the airport.

  I pulled up the list on my phone again and started making calls; the first three I was able to get done in less than a minute, since their automated systems informed me they had no vacancies before I even got to the option to speak to a person.

  “White Spring Hotel, Nolan speaking. How can I help you this evening?” The hotel was listed as a super luxurious one—five stars, attached to a casino, with a spa and the whole nine.

  “Hey, Nolan. Can you tell me what your rates are for one to two nights starting this evening?” I didn’t have high hopes but I thought it was best to ask and get a bad answer rather than potentially miss out on a deal.

  “Our only rooms available tonight are unfortunately really high rates,” Nolan said. “The range is 500 to 800 a night for the few we still have available.” That w
asn’t as bad as a high-end room in Las Vegas but it was still far more than I could manage.

  “Thanks for letting me know,” I said. “I’m going to see about calling around to a few other places—I assume even at those rates the rooms are going fast?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Nolan confirmed. “I can try to put a room aside if you want but I can’t make any guarantees.”

  “I appreciate it but I don’t think I’m going to be able to justify even five hundred,” I said. “Don’t feel like you need to hold it on my account if you have people waiting in line.” I ended the call and went down the list.

  I was informed by two more people that they were filled up, and that I’d have better luck trying something further from the airport. I knew that, but I didn’t want to be very far, just in case the weather let up and the airline was able to bump up my departure. Besides, I didn’t want to have to take a cab or an Uber that would cost as much as a hotel stay.

  I managed to get the calls done in a matter of about ten minutes but the meter was ticking along. “Just take me to White Spring Hotel and Casino for now,” I said. I had no doubts whatsoever that they were probably already sold out, and even if they weren’t, I didn’t have a spare thousand dollars to spend on two nights but they would have a bar, and maybe I could hang out there in some measure of comfort while I figured out where to go for the night. Besides, it was reasonably close to the airport.

  The driver dropped me off, and I gave her a pretty heavy tip for her troubles and her helpfulness driving around until I figured out where I wanted to go before rushing through the cold to get into the hotel. I made a beeline for the bar, which I was shocked to see wasn’t all that busy. I had to assume that it was because people were in the casino proper, or maybe at one of the clubs in the complex. Or maybe they just wanted to hole up in their rooms for the night.

  I sat down at one of the high-top tables and a waitress came within about two minutes. “Hey, hon. What can I get you?” I thought about it for a moment, looking around at the lazily drinking handful of patrons: two middle-aged women who looked like they were already pretty drunk, a guy sitting by himself at the bar, and a group of three men who looked like wannabe high rollers with tumblers of scotch. I like a good whiskey as much as the next person but I wasn’t in the mood for brown liquor.

  “Can you get me a gin martini, please?” I reached into my purse and took out my wallet. I’d gotten some cash on my way to the airport earlier in the day, and it was going to come in handy. The bar looked like it was a bit better than anything I’d seen in the airport—certainly I could expect the drinks to be strong—and it was worth hanging out for a while.

  “Absolutely! Do you have a preference on the gin?” I frowned and thought for a moment.

  “Hendricks, if you’ve got it, otherwise Tanqueray,” I told her, settling into the low-backed stool set up at the table. The waitress nodded and headed over to the bar, and I looked around me again. I’d been in a dozen bars just like it in the past two years: modern and sleek, everything shiny, fake leather, and chrome. It was supposed to look clean, and I guessed in a way that it did, but there was something fake about it.

  “God, could this month get any worse?” I sighed and looked down at the tabletop. It had been a week since I’d broken up with Brandon, and I hadn’t even given my parents a good reason for why he wasn’t going to be with me at Christmas. I’d just said that he had to be out of town for the holidays, and hoped they’d leave me alone about it—even though I knew they wouldn’t. They’d want me to call him on Christmas day or something romantic like that, and I’d have to explain to them that we’d broken up.

  The waitress came back with my martini, and I gave her a twenty, taking my first sip of the cold, clean, sharp-tasting liquor. It was as if someone had distilled ice from some distant mountain and somehow produced alcohol from it, all without letting it melt: a miracle in a glass, and probably stronger than I needed a drink to be but so satisfying to sip that I couldn’t even make myself want to reconsider. In fact, I was already fairly certain that I’d have another one before I left the bar. Whoever was in charge knew what they were doing.

  I drank about a third of my martini and then took out my phone and started looking for a hotel again. I wasn’t even going to consider asking the front desk if they had a room at the hotel I was already in. Maybe there was a Hotel 6 or something not too far from the airport. The thought of finding a budget hotel—as much as I absolutely needed to find somewhere to stay—only made me feel more depressed. I pictured myself in a cheap, faintly dirty suite, smelling of five-year-old cigarettes and cheap air freshener, eating Pizza Hut or something like that as a replacement for Christmas dinner, all by myself.

  There were almost certainly worse ways to spend Christmas. I reminded myself that there were homeless people who would be envious just of the possibility of having a room with heating and a bathtub and a fast-food feast, even if they were alone. But after all the shit with Brandon, I didn’t want to spend the holiday alone. As much as I’d been sure that my parents would annoy the hell out of me, I’d preferred their company to none at all, or I wouldn’t have even bothered hauling myself across the country to see them.

  I looked up from my phone and saw a man walking into the bar from the hotel side. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, maybe his early forties on the outside, tall and lean with short, black hair parted on the side, falling just above his left eyebrow. He was clean-shaven, and I estimated that his clothes had to have cost him at least as much as one of the rooms in the hotel: the coat was high-quality wool, dark as coal, and his jeans fit him perfectly. He glanced around the bar and looked almost disappointed that it wasn’t busier, and I wondered what a good-looking guy like him was doing alone, a couple of days before Christmas. Probably stranded just like me... but unlike me, he has a thou to lay down on a nice hotel room for the night. It was hard not to resent him for that.

  I drank down another third of my martini and tried to focus on my phone once more but I couldn’t help glancing at the new man in the bar a couple times more, even as I pretended like I hadn’t noticed him at all. In my head, I was making up different reasons for him to be at the hotel, other than being a fellow stranded traveler like me: maybe he just didn’t celebrate Christmas at all. Maybe he was on a business trip, meeting with associates. Maybe he’d left his wife and was meeting up with his mistress. He looked like someone who didn’t want to be flashy with his money but I’d been around more than a few wealthy men in my life, so I could spot high-end casual clothes a mile away.

  He seemed to wander around a bit, and my waitress came up to him, asking if she could help him find a seat. “Kind of dead in here, isn’t it? I was hoping there’d at least be some chatter or maybe someone playing music,” he said brusquely. I raised an eyebrow at that to myself.

  “With it being so close to Christmas, we don’t really have as much staff on hand,” the waitress explained. “And the guy we usually have playing here at night is celebrating early so he can be here to entertain on Christmas.”

  The mystery man nodded. “Makes sense,” he said, looking around the room.

  I suddenly decided that my phone was incredibly interesting and started scrolling through hotels in the area, trying to figure out a way to get a place to stay. I was pretty sure the hotel wouldn’t be all that into the idea of me just holding down the bar for two days, drinking a few cocktails but not enough to get sick-drunk. I would need to figure something out and soon.

  Chapter Four

  Dean

  I’d been counting on sitting at the bar but when I walked into the room I spotted her, at a high top, looking at her phone: she had red hair pulled back into a messy bun, and while I couldn’t see her whole body, her sweater was definitely more than filled by her breasts. She’d thrown her leather jacket over the other seat at her table, and I caught sight of a pair of fitted jeans on long legs.

  I never go up to women at bars. I’d given up on that in college, righ
t around the time I started to notice that they seemed to get tired of one man after another giving them the same old lines. But there was something about the woman sipping her martini, looking through her phone as if she was trying to find a life jacket on a sinking ship. Maybe it was just that she looked so incredibly lonely—the only person in the bar who looked that way.

  I stepped up to her table. “You look like you just lost a million dollars,” I told her.

  She looked up at me with big, sea-green eyes, and I saw a little flicker of annoyance in them. I didn’t think she was wearing any makeup—or if she was, it wasn’t much. She was probably in her mid-twenties and made that look like the perfect age to be.

  “I’m stranded here—well, in Omaha—thanks to the airlines deciding to cancel all their flights,” the woman told me. “So, instead of going home and spending Christmas with my family, I’m probably going to miss all of it.”

  I nodded. “I’d guess you either want to be left alone, or you’ve been wanting someone to sit and chat with for at least an hour.”

  The woman considered that for a moment and then shrugged. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here but you can sit down.” Her eyes moved in a quick up-and-down glance over my body. “I’m trying to find somewhere to stay for tonight and tomorrow.” She took her jacket off of the other seat and tucked it behind her.

  “You’re probably not having much luck.” It was a totally obvious thing to point out, and not particularly helpful, but I needed to keep the conversation going.

  “Yeah. Since everyone at the airport needed to find somewhere to stay, just about everything seems to be booked up—at least, everything close to the airport,” she explained.

  The waitress came over to us and I thought she was probably wondering if I was creeping out the woman I’d sat down with. “Can I get you something to drink? Do you want a refill on that martini, hon?”