I walk out of my room with my head held high and head for the lift, ready to negotiate the map of the massive Black Diamond Hotel. This place really does have everything under one roof, I’d much rather stay here than head home to Blackpool for a family wedding.
I trace the map with my finger, following the route I’ll need to take to get to the restaurant. Luckily it doesn’t seem too complicated. Despite the size of this place, I’m not going to be needing a compass.
I’ve got the lift to myself, so I adjust my outfit in the mirrored doors. Walking seems to have driven my dress up a little too high.
As I make the short trip from the lift to the restaurant, I take my time, careful not to stumble over in my high heels or pop out of my dress, or anything else that might embarrass me. Between flashing the porter and Jack thinking I was a prostitute who was going to jump off the roof, I think I’ve felt as mortified as I can possibly feel today.
Tottering through the bar in my heels, the muscular figure of a man propping up the bar catches my eye.
‘Jack?’
The man turns around.
‘Georgie, hey. Buy you a drink?’ he asks.
‘What’s that you’re drinking?’ I ask. I didn’t expect to see him ever again – let alone so soon.
‘Bourbon,’ he replies, raising his glass. ‘Want one?’
I scrunch my nose as I take a seat on the stool next to him. It doesn’t seem like this is his first drink, and – I know I don’t know the man – but he doesn’t seem himself.
‘Not really a fan,’ I tell him. ‘I’d love a Sea Breeze, though, please,’ I tell the barman.
Jack takes a generous sip of his drink.
‘They let you drink on the job?’ I ask curiously.
‘Nope.’
‘No more work tonight?’ I persist. That cheeky charm I witnessed earlier seems to be in short supply.
‘No more work ever,’ he corrects me casually. ‘I was fired.’
‘What? But it’s less than an hour since I saw you. What’s changed since…’
My voice trails off into silence.
‘It doesn’t have anything to do with me, does it?’
Jack knocks back the remaining contents of his glass before turning to face me, taking my hand in his reassuringly.
‘This is not your fault,’ he insists. ‘I left my post unattended, something happened, I missed it. That’s that. There are no second chances in this town. The house has to win.’
‘Jack, I’m so sorry. Please, let me speak to your boss, explain what happened.’
I give his hand a squeeze back to show him I’m serious and, for a split second, we just look into each other’s eyes. I can see something in there. Just a glimmer of the guy I met earlier, who turned my bad day around.
‘It’s fine,’ he tells me. ‘Or at least it will be after a few more of these.’
He says this loud enough for the benefit of the barman, who pours another shot into his glass.
‘A wise man once told me that whatever life throws at us, we can fix it,’ I tell him. Jack can’t help but smile at his own words being repeated back to him.
‘All right, all right,’ he laughs. ‘But come on, I’ve earned a bit of a pity party.’
I think for a second.
‘How would you like to upgrade your pity party to a pity meal with champagne?’ I ask. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
‘You don’t owe me anything,’ he insists.
‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ I tell him. ‘Come on, don’t make me have dinner on my own.’
‘All right, fine,’ he jokily concedes. ‘But I need to drown my sorrows.’
‘Well, so do I,’ I tell him. ‘Plus, someone told me this restaurant has excellent crème brûlée.’
Jack steps off his stool, collects our drinks in his hands and nods towards the hostess.
‘Come on,’ he insists. ‘I still know people that work here. We won’t need to wait for a table.’
If you’d told me this time last week I’d be single and having dinner with a gorgeous man who wasn’t my fiancé, I wouldn’t have believed you. And yet here I am, in Las Vegas of all places, sitting opposite Jack.
I’ve been asking him loads of questions about his job. I had no idea there were so many ways to cheat in casinos – well, try to at least.
As Jack explains each technique to me, he demonstrates them with an old, battered playing card from inside his wallet.
I’ve learned about card marking, which is basically what it sounds like: making a mark on cards so you know what they are before they’re turned over. He’s also shown me a multitude of ways to hide cards on your person, or quickly swap them with ones in your pocket, or trade cards with the person next to you.
‘I shouldn’t be telling you this stuff,’ he laughs. ‘You might just go back into the casino and clean up.
‘I won’t, I promise,’ I giggle. ‘I just find this fascinating.’
‘More?’ he offers.
I nod my head eagerly. Jack obligingly takes a poker chip from his wallet.
‘So, if you win, you can cap your bet, which means you sneak more chips onto the table, which means you win more for less risk. You can also try and sneak chips off if you lose a hand – all of this is illegal,’ he reminds me.
When Jack performs these manoeuvres they look effortless. He makes cheating seem easy, but I know this stuff isn’t as simple as it seems.
Once he’s done explaining, Jack rolls the poker chip across his knuckles before making it disappear and then seemingly pulling it out from inside his mouth.
I laugh.
‘Are you a frustrated magician?’ I ask.
‘I’m not really anything,’ he explains. ‘Born and raised right here in Vegas. My dad was a magician, quite a well-known one, too. This playing card is actually signed by him – that’s why I carry it around. I know what you’re thinking, that it’s weird to have my dad’s autograph. But this is a card from one of the last tricks he did before he died.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
Jack bats his hand.
‘It’s OK. It was a while ago now. My dad taught me a lot about sleight of hand and the art of deception. I knew I could use these skills for good or bad, and here we are. Or here we were,’ he corrects himself. ‘So, what do you do?’
I push my few remaining fries around on my plate anxiously.
‘Erm, I’m sort of between jobs at the moment,’ I admit. ‘Moved here from England to study acting at UCLA, graduated. I work a few part-time gigs but my fiancé doesn’t like me taking on too much. He travels a lot for work and said it would be easier for us to spend time together if I worked less.’
Jack’s face falls.
‘You’re engaged,’ he suddenly realises.
‘Not anymore,’ I point out quickly. ‘You were right, on the roof, when you guessed a boy was the reason I was crying. I caught him cheating on me