My apologies to all who had trouble reading "Dumb bet" because of the excessive use of italics. When I went to format the file for posting, I messed up and put an <em> where a </em> should have been. The result was the rest of the story pretty much was in italics. Sorry. I use italics to denote a persons thoughts and only sparingly to add emphasis to a word. The only other time I use italics is if I insert an authors note.

If you're like me and download (cut and paste to another program to read it) stories and read them off line, please do it all over again.