Swanson’s humming stopped abruptly. He stared at the small hillock of money that sat temptingly under the circular spill of light and his jowl twitched and shivered as if it were possessed. He had a good hand—full house, fives over aces —but was it worth nine hundred dollars to see just how good?
“Bah. Only money.” He slid the bet forward and looked expectantly at Tarrington.
Tarrington casually stroked the ends of his moustache and seemed to take a close look at his cards for the first time. He suspected Whitney was running a bluff—he had already managed to convince the hummer he would play only if his hand was solid. Swanson’s twitch meant he had enough for at least a run at the prize. Scott was running low on cash and would probably fold. The woman was the puzzle. She was good—damned good—and was either bluffing to the tips of her distractingly luscious breasts, or she had them all cold and was reeling them in like fish on a line.
It was worth the gamble, he decided, just to satisfy his own curiosity. He covered the bet, sweetened the pot by fifty more to keep his options open, and patted his jacket pocket, finding and extracting a slim gold cigar case.
Ainsley Scott’s hands trembled visibly where they cradled his cards. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his upper lip, and his eyebrows arched up and down as if he was having an argument with himself.
“That’s four hundred and fifty to you, boy,” Smith said impatiently. “And that’s why it’s called cutthroat. You either show the balls to stand behind them cards of yours, or you toss ’em in and let the grown-ups finish playing.”
Scott’s flush deepened. He flexed one of his hands into a fist then started to count out his cash.
“Are you certain you want to do that?” Tarrington asked quietly. “He’s only goading you.”
“Yeah, well, I guess that’s all he’s got the balls to do. And I can play my own hand, if you don’t mind. Four fifty to call? Why don't we take it up to an even thousand?”
He pushed his money into the middle and Tarrington shrugged. He withdrew a thin black cheroot from his case and smiled his thanks at the brunette as she leaned over quickly to light it.
The acrid cloud of smoke drifted straight across the table and caused Montana’s nose to wrinkle with distaste. Tarrington noticed. He also noticed that she covered the bet without so much as blinking an eye.
Play went to Whitney, who again riffled the small stack of cash in front of him as his eyes, shadowed by the brim of his hat, flicked around the table doing a rough calculation of the money remaining in everyone’s stash. Satisfied, he counted out what he needed to call and a thousand more to raise.
Swanson started shaking his head even before he conceded and threw his cards down in disgust. Across the table, Scott mouthed a particularly graphic oath that stopped play before it even went to Tarrington.
Norman Smith chuckled deep in his throat and picked at a cavern in his tooth with a wooden matchstick. “Looks like you ain’t going to have enough to bluff out this round, boy,” he said, indicating the few bills and coins Scott had left. “Should have got out last round, like Tarrington advised, while you still had enough to maybe buy your way into a game of Old Maid.”
“I can write a note for the amount I’m short. I’m good for it.”
“No dice,” Whitney grated. “The rules were stated plain enough at the outset. Cash on the barrelhead. No notes. No credit.”
“A personal loan then,” Scott countered. “Between players. There was nothing said about that.”
“True enough,” Swanson agreed. “But just who are you going to get to spot you, son? I don’t believe anyone here is willing to throw good money after bad … unless, of course, Mr. Tarrington here has another soft spot?”
The Yankee officer studied the end of his cheroot a moment before spitting out a shred of tobacco and crossing his arms over his chest. “I believe he told me he was capable of playing out his own hand.”
Scott surged to his feet and threw his cards on the table. “You raised on purpose just to shut me out!”
“The game is cutthroat, boy,” Whitney said, his voice low enough to scrape the floor. “You win some and you lose some. No one is going to coddle you because you smile real pretty and boast about your daddy’s fortune.”
“At least I’m not a cheap cheat,” Scott countered furiously.
The brim of Whitney’s hat came up again and his dark eyes screwed down to slits. “You accusing somebody of something … boy?”
Scott’s flush deepened and his breath, laboring in and out of his lungs, sounded like bellows. His hand, rigid with indignation, inched back toward his waist, and Montana wondered if he was truly stupid enough to try to draw on a man like Paul Whitney.
Luckily, he wasn’t. He did push away from the table, however, sending the chair flipping backward onto the floor. He snatched up the meager remains of his cash and stormed out of the curtained alcove, consigning all their souls to rot in hell.
Montana released a slow sigh of relief and reached uncharacteristically for the as-yet untouched glass of whiskey that sat at her elbow. Norman Smith dug in his nose in lieu of any verbal comment, an act that was frozen rather comically midway when he saw Whitney’s hand emerge from under the cover of the table. It was not the sight of the small, pearl-handed derringer that was the most unnerving. It was the fact that he had palmed it and aimed it at Scott without anyone noticing.
Or almost anyone.
A second muted snick came from the gleaming Remington revolver that Michael Tarrington uncocked and returned to his hip holster.
“I see we both had the same idea,” Whitney said with a crooked grin.
“A similar idea, perhaps,” Tarrington agreed, “but I doubt our intentions were the same.”
Whitney’s smile faded. “Meaning?”
“Meaning … I wasn’t aiming at the boy.”
“He accused me of cheating,” Whitney snarled.
“A poor choice of words on his part. Manipulating would be more like it.”
“Because I raised the stakes higher than what he could afford? I didn’t notice your heart bleeding too much at the time. Or is it just bleeding now because you can’t meet the stakes yourself?”
Tarrington’s gaze narrowed through the fine ribbon of smoke that curled up from his cheroot. He smiled slowly and carefully counted out the greenbacks he had in front of him, then, with every eye on him, he reached into the breast pocket of his coat and produced a leather billfold. From it he extracted enough to call Whitney’s bet … and added five thousand more.
Montana suffered a distinct sliding sensation in the pit of her belly as she followed the motion from billfold to table. Tarrington's hands were strong, she noted absently, with long square-tipped fingers that looked more than capable of crushing her smaller, finer-boned one to pulp.
Of more importance, however, there was over twenty thousand dollars sitting within arm’s reach. She’d had enough to meet Whitney’s raise—barely—but Tarrington’s flamboyance left her almost five thousand shy.
Now, as she watched his fine, strong hand retreating again, moving as if it were being dragged through a heavy liquid instead of air, she thought it might well have been an axe he had wielded, not a billfold. And she wondered if anyone had yet noticed the blood.
She looked up and, indeed, the attention had shifted from Tarrington’s grandiose gesture to her own meager reserves.
“In or out, lady?” Whitney demanded. “Is that all you have?”
Montana cursed inwardly. She glanced at Tarrington, but he had obviously used up his quota of sympathy and the gray eyes were as cold and hard and flat as Whitney’s.
“It’s surely all I have … in cash,” she murmured, putting every ounce of seductive innuendo she could muster into the last two words.
It had the desired effect. Smith and Swanson both had to breathe through their mouths as she stared at each of them in turn and made her meaning even clearer by trailing her fingers along the deeply scalloped edge o
f the green velvet bodice.
Smith mashed his unlit cigar to the corner of his mouth as he pulled out his billfold and started counting out greenbacks. “I’d say you’re a sweet enough risk to take. How much are you short, gal?”
Whitney flashed an angry glare. “Didn’t we just have this discussion with the kid?”
“We discussed credit,” Smith countered. “And I ain’t offering any. This here is a loan, between friends, with real friendly terms of interest.”
For the briefest of moments, Montana hesitated. She had no illusions as to what he would expect in return for the privilege of losing his money, but before she would let herself think about it too long, she used the edge of her cards to push her bet into the center of the table. “I’ll just take you up on your offer, Mr. Smith, and I’ll call.”
Whitney sat back in his chair and, with an angry stab of his finger, thrust the brim of his hat up above his hairline. The act revealed more than just his mounting frustration. It uncovered a wide, jagged scar that ran across his forehead from temple to temple, the kind a knife might make in a botched attempt at scalping. Immediately above and below the scar, the skin was a smooth, shiny pink, translucent enough to see the veins pulsing beneath the surface.
Without another word, he folded his cards and threw them face down on the baize. He gripped his whiskey glass tight enough to shatter it and tossed back the contents. The brunette came forward out of the shadows to refill it, but he snatched the bottle out of her hand instead and pushed to his feet, stalking the short distance to the open porthole behind them before he filled his glass and drank again.
Tarrington stroked his moustache and stared across the table at Montana Rose. With the betting closed, it had come down to the two of them, as he had suspected it would.
He had, from the moment he had first laid eyes on her, been conscious of her intensely seductive beauty—what normal, warm-blooded man would not? The stunning cornflower blue of her eyes, wide and thickly lashed, gazed out at the world from a face as flawless as a Botticelli Venus. Her mouth was lush enough to send the most erotic images through his mind, especially when she sent the tip of her tongue across her lower lip to moisten it.
He would give a year of his life to see her naked. Envisioning her so was costing him dearly enough, for just the thought of her lithe, supple body stretched out beneath him, her skin smooth and white as cream, her hair spread in a soft, silky pool … made him ache as if he hadn’t had a woman in years. Which he had, of course, the last one being two hours before he’d come on board the Mississippi Queen. And perhaps that was what was corrupting his perceptions, for the experience had been mechanical and perfunctory, no more than a pleasant way to release some tension. With this blonde beauty he doubted anything would be perfunctory. And he would need hours, not minutes, to release the kind of tension she was inspiring.
Tarrington drew deeply on his cheroot before placing his cards down on the table, displaying four nines with an ace high, and the glimmerings of an I-tried-to-warn-you look in his eyes as he waited for Montana’s reaction.
She drew an equally deep, slow breath, and her hand betrayed the slightest of tremors as she reached up to grasp the comfort of her locket.
Norman Smith, leaning over with all of the solicitude of an oiled snake, placed a fat hand over hers and squeezed. “Well now, looks like I saddled me a pretty filly after all.”
Montana turned the full, seductive power of her eyes on him as she smiled and fanned her cards face-up on the table. Three unobtrusive sixes became five of a kind in the company of the pair of wild card deuces she laid beside them.
“Sorry, Mr. Smith. But I prefer to ride bareback.”
Michael Tarrington stared at the cards, then at the faintly mocking smile that still lingered on her lips.
“My compliments,” he mused, his tone genuinely admiring. “I would have bet everything I owned you were bluffing.”
“I rarely bluff, sir. And never when the odds are so heavily stacked against me.”
“Against you, madam?” Lyle Swanson huffed. “I should have thought it the other way around, considering we are all gentlemen here.”
“We are all gamblers here, sir. And as Mr. Whitney and Mr. Tarrington have both demonstrated, a very prickly bunch indeed. I hardly consider it a favorable climate for testing temperaments. Now, if you all have no objections, a short break would be much appreciated.”
Montana slid her chair back from the table, but before she could move very far, a pale, long-fingered hand reached out and curled tightly around her wrist. Her first instinct was to wrench free. Her second was to hold her arm very still so that her bones were not crushed under the pressure.
Paul Whitney had stepped away from the porthole and now stood blocking her path to the exit. “You are planning to return, I hope?”
She smiled and twisted her wrist slowly out of his grasp. “I am, indeed, sir. If only for the pleasure of relieving you of whatever you may have left.”
In truth, Montana’s prime desire was to escape both the room and the company with all haste possible. Her blood was singing through her veins, her pulse was thrumming in her temples. The thrill of victory had never tasted so sweet, and she was hard-pressed to control the urge to throw her hands wide and embrace the world in laughter. Discounting the five thousand she had temporarily borrowed from Smith, she had won nearly twenty thousand dollars in that last hand. She had beaten Whitney at his own game, and she had given the moustachioed Yankee something to ponder other than the brunette’s long legs and come-hither smile.
Montana scarcely noticed the clamor of music and noise filling the main salon of the riverboat as she threaded her way through the crowds. She located a familiar face at the bar and gave him a nod, tilting her lovely head slightly to indicate an invitation to join her out on the deck. She waited long enough to see him take a last swallow of beer, then hurried out into the cool, fresh night air.
The riverboat was docked alone at the end of the jetty and on the port side, the waterfront was garishly ablaze with the lights from a legion of cheap taverns, saloons, and hotels that crowded the shoreline. It was not the most reputable part of Natchez, for the merchant district and more prosperous hotels and homes sat on the crown of the hill that overlooked the river. On nights when the big gambling boats were in, detachments of soldiers had to patrol the main roads and safeguard the passage of the wealthy patrons and their fine carriages to and fro.
Montana preferred the relative quiet of the starboard deck. There she could lean against the rail and drink in the beauty of the vast, starlit sky. Overhead, a faint drift of smoke rose from the Queen’s boiler stack, spreading outward in long, filmy scrolls. Beside her, the river rolled by like a sheet of molten glass, pewter-colored from the starlight, a mile-wide silver ribbon that divided the state of Mississippi from the distant shoreline of Louisiana.
Tonight, for a change, there was not a cloud in the sky, not a trace of haze to blot the opposite bank from sight. If she leaned far out over the rail and looked south, she could just see the twinkling lights of Vidalia across the river; to the north, the dark tip of Natchez Island.
Hearing the anticipated footstep behind her, Montana straightened and spun around with such enthusiasm the luxuriant emerald velvet of her skirt swirled outward and was brought to a frothing halt against a pair of polished black boots. “Oh!”
“I beg your pardon. You were, perhaps, expecting someone else?”
Montana collected her wits about her as quickly as she could. The last person she had expected to see following her onto the deck was Michael Tarrington.
“No,” she said quickly. “No, not at all. I … you just startled me, is all.”
Tarrington smiled slowly at the succession of rapid changes that came over her expression. The thick wings of her lashes immediately swooped low to conceal the disappointment in the vibrant blue eyes. Her smile—the fullest and loveliest he had seen in quite some time—was repressed to a tight, formal curve. Han
ds, slender white and delicate, that had been poised for a greeting, flew instinctively to the juncture of her breasts as if to catch a heart that threatened to leap from its confines.
“In that case,” he mused, “forgive me again, but for a greeting like that, I would gladly startle you several more times.”
“I … beg your pardon?”
“Your smile. It is quite dazzling.”
Montana stared for as long as it took to read the mockery in his eyes. “Do you make a habit of following women around to startle them into smiling?”
“I hadn’t really thought of it as a worthwhile pursuit … until now. Usually I only follow them if they are intriguing. Or enigmatic. Or beautiful.” He saw her eyes narrow and her jaw set against what must, he imagined, be a familiar opening gambit. “But in your case, I only wanted to commend you on your flawless performance back there.”
She arched a delicately shaped eyebrow. “Performance?”
“Certainly. One of the best I’ve ever seen. Bluffing successfully is one thing. Pretending to bluff is quite another.” He paused long enough to strike a match on the deck rail and touch it to the end of a cheroot. “You’re really very good.”
“You sound surprised, as if it never occurred to you to regard me as a genuine threat.”
“Oh, I regarded you as a threat, all right. I just wasn’t sure what kind.”
Montana felt a tug at the corners of her mouth. “And are you sure now?”
“No.” He exhaled a long, slim streak of smoke and offered her his own dazzling smile—the one that usually had women melting into their pantalets. “I’m not sure about anything concerning you.”
To his surprise and pleasure, she laughed. It wasn’t the coquettish titter most females affected with the expectation of having some swain salivating at their skirt hems, it was soft and throaty, and set the skin across the neck of his neck tingling.
“I’m also hoping you won’t assume it will be so easy the second time around,” he added. “Those … gentlemen … you so artfully fleeced back there will be anxious to prove they aren’t as foolish as you made them look.”
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