Page 20 of Mister Daddy

The casino is straight out of a movie scene. Velvet purple walls cushion us within a private room, and there’s an elaborate gold candelabra above the poker table. The dealer is wearing an old-timey suit with elastics around his elbows, and pretty girls in short skirts serve drinks. But I’m not watching them because two things are clear after the first round of Carter’s poker tournament.

One: these people have alotof money.

Two: Carter is really smart. And I meanreallysmart. He’s barely lost any hands during the round. His pile of chips keeps growing, and the other guys at the table are giving him dirty looks.

The dealer lets the four guys left at Carter’s table know that they’ll start play again in fifteen minutes. Three of them get up to stretch, have a cigarette, and chase down cocktail waitresses for a drink. Carter stays in his seat, fiddling with his pile of chips.

“You can sit,” he says, motioning to the vacated seat next to him. “Just don’t touch the chips.”

“Okay.” I pull out the maroon, satin-covered chair and sit carefully to avoid showing my underwear to any lingering patrons.

“So, what do you think? You’re not totally bored, are you?”

I place my hand on his muscular arm. “No! It’s interesting watching you in action. You’re good.”

He shrugs. “I get a lot of practice. I play weekly tournaments like this.”

I try to wrap my head around how much money that would be. The buy-in for this tournament alone is more than I’ve made in my entire life, and these guys hand it over like pocket change.

Maybe Jess and Caitlyn are right. Maybe I don’t belong; maybe I shouldn’t be hanging around with a guy like Carter.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks, his expression quizzical.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was lost in my head for a minute.”

“No worries.”

“How did you start this business? Was it a family thing?” I ask, looking to change the subject.

He smiles. “I started it on my own, actually. I was twenty years old, screwing around with business classes in college, when I saw an ad for a river boat for sale. Luckily, my credit score was good. I got a bank loan and bought the thing for super cheap. The guy just wanted to offload it.”

Carter leans toward me as he tells his story. His face is bright, and his hands are gesturing like crazy. It’s clear he’s passionate about his business.

“That ended up being my first cruise ship. I did trips up and down the Mississippi River with less than a hundred guests at a time. I talked to people at all of the ports along the river and figured out fun excursions for the guests to pay extra for. I arranged for partnerships with fishing companies, hiking tours, and other shore fun. After the first year, word got around, and I had a budget for advertising, so we were selling out every cruise. After five years, we had three boats doing different cruises down the Mississippi.”

“That’s incredible,” I say.

He shrugs, a slight blushing forming on his cheeks. “Sorry. You’re probably bored to death listening to me ramble about my business venture.”

“No!” I assure him. “It’s really interesting. How did you end up with regular cruise ships? Do you still have a Mississippi line?”

“I sold the Mississippi cruise line to a bigger company fifteen years ago, after ten years of doing it. For two years before I sold, I used all of the profits from the Mississippi line to fund a new ship, an ocean liner, to start up that side. It was ready to go when the sale went through.”

“What was that first cruise like?”

He laughs. “It was kind of terrible, to be honest. Caribbean cruises are entirely different than river cruises. It took over a year for me to figure things out. Once I did, though, things took off.”

“How many ships do you have in your fleet now?”

“Twenty-three. We’re looking to add more in the next five years, but we’ve hit some red tape with what we want to do. I told you about the one new one, with the go-karts and stuff? That took forever to get permits. The next one is going to be even bigger, if we can get the right permits to do it.”

“That’s crazy. You’ve literally started from the bottom, and now you’re here.”

Carter laughs again. “I guess so. When my river line started to get more and more successful, a few papers called it a real life rags-to-riches story. I just took a chance on a raggedy old boat.”

“It really is a Cinderella story.”

“Is that lame?”