Sneak Peek Sunday

Good morning, and welcome to Sneak Peek Sunday!  Lots of great indie authors (like me!) share six paragraphs from a new or forthcoming book.  So here’s a preview of my new book, out May 22, FEVER DREAM:

The dealer pulls the next card out of the shoe, and before he even starts to turn it over, I know what it’s going to be.  He flips it over, and I groan right along with everyone else at the table when I see the five of diamonds.

It’s unbelievable.  I’ve been losing steadily for the last half hour, and now here’s $2,000 more gone, just like that.  I did everything right!  The dealer had a three showing, and I had – could you ask for anything better? – two aces.  So I split them.  And I doubled down on both.  I got an eight on one, and a nine for the other.  Nineteen and twenty.  With the dealer showing a three.

The dealer turned over his second card.  Another three.  Then came a four, a two and another four.  Sixteen.  And then the five.  Twenty-one.  Everyone loses, including me.  I had $8,000 just a little while ago, and I’m down to $1,000 or so now.

I feel a hand on my back, and I turn to see my husband standing behind me.  “I leave you alone for five minutes,” he says, shaking his head.  The sight of him in his tuxedo, martini in hand, almost manages to distract me from my losses, but not quite.

“This whole thing was your idea, remember?”  When I mentioned to him, back in September, that I wanted to have an annual fundraiser for the hospital, he immediately suggested a casino night.

“I hope you’d be more careful if it was real money,” he answers, laughing.  He’s right, of course.  I just got so caught up in the game that I forgot the stakes aren’t real – and they’re less real for me than anyone else here.  Whoever winds up with the most chips at the end of the night wins a prize, but as the hostess of the evening, I’m obviously not eligible to win.  I still hate losing, though.  Especially in such a ridiculous way.

 

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