His Frozen Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

Tony’s warning with
Libby, and I didn’t share with Tony that we didn’t have the money
to cover the loss. Libby racked again, and Teddy did it a second
time. Two shut out games in a row. I started to get worried,
because in all our games, since we were juniors in high school,
we’d never run across another team like ourselves. Libby and I now
owed him a hundred dollars. Shit, this was so not how tonight was
supposed to go down.
    Libby walked over to Teddy and
flirtatiously put her hand on his chest, “Double or nothing again.
You at least have to let me shoot.”
    “ I can do this all night,
Sweetheart. You sure you want to go for two hundred? You got that
much on you?”
    “ I’ve got it.” No she
didn’t, but I kept my mouth shut, as she racked for a fifth
game.
    After the third shutout I began
sweating. Not like little beads of sweat, but the “Oh, my God, she
was gambling with our rent money – that she didn’t have” kind of
sweat. I tapped her on the shoulder, drawing her attention away
from the table. I whispered low to keep Teddy and Tony from
hearing. “That’s it, Libby. You can’t do it again. You don’t have
four hundred dollars.”
    Confidently she smirked, “I don’t need
it. Watch this.”
    She racked for the sixth game, Teddy
had sunk four of the balls and looked like he was focusing as if
his life depended on the fifth.
    Libby innocently stood behind the
pocket he was aiming at and dropped her pool cue on the floor. The
sound of the cue hitting the floor distracted him for a fraction of
a second. In that fraction of time he saw her bend down to retrieve
it, and I heard music to my ears. A good shot had a solid sound to
it: Teddy had been distracted enough to miscue.
    Libby didn’t play with him. When she
bent over the table, she ran it. She had won the game before Tony
or I even had a chance to shoot.
    Teddy looked pissed. He threw his cue
on the table and went to rack. Libby’s sing-songy voice echoed, “Oh
my God, that’s four hundred dollars! Wow. I’m sorry about your
shot, well, not really.” She looked at the clock, and we had just
crossed Chris’s time limit.
    She squatted down next to Teddy who
was slamming balls onto the table in the rack hard. Her voice was
sweet, too sweet. “Sorry, maybe another night. We’ve got to
go.”
    His cocky voice had turned to anger
when he growled, “Double or nothing again.”
    Libby shook her head, “No
can do. I only had four hundred. I couldn’t afford to pay you if we
lost again, and you are really good.”
    That was a lie. If she had scraped all
the change in the bottom of her purse together, she might have had
fifty-two cents to go with the twelve dollars from her coffee can.
Four hundred dollars would have been catastrophic if she’d
lost.
    Teddy stood to his whole height
glaring at Libby, “I don’t carry that kind of cash.”
    She pointed to a dark corner of the
bar, “No problem. There’s an ATM right over there.”
    Teddy was fuming, his words angry and
measured. “I’m not paying.”
    Tony walked up to Teddy casually and
softly offered, “They won. Just pay and let’s go.”
    Teddy snarled, “No. I’m not paying
this bitch.”
    Others around us were suddenly very
interested in what was going on at our table. I wanted to blend
into the wall. I’d seen scenes like this before, and normally they
didn’t turn ugly because we had friends around, but tonight the
only ones we knew in the whole place were Chris, who didn’t want us
here to begin with, and Dave Brewer, who I hadn’t seen in almost
two years, neither of whom would go to bat for us if we needed
them.
    Tony stepped up to his brother,
towering over him with his lanky frame. “You’ve told me a hundred
times, a bet’s a bet. A man’s only as good as his word. Pay up or I
will.”
    Was he for real? Teddy’s little
brother was sticking up for us? He stood quite a bit taller than
his older brother, but Tony was willow thin. If looks were any
indication,