Luck Of The Draw

by Candace Schuler

  “Oh, I’m so pretty!” she squealed, turning her head from side-to-side to admire the perky bows and the swinging loops of braided hair. “Don’t I look pretty?” she demanded, her bright-eyed gaze darting to a point just past Eve’s right shoulder.

  “Just as cute as a calico kitten,” Travis said.

  Eve jumped and almost dropped the mirror.

  “Well, now, ain’t all you ladies gettin’ along just like a house a’fire,” Gus said, slanting a look toward Travis to make sure he noticed.

  Travis had noticed, all right. He couldn’t help but notice. Although what he noticed wasn’t quite what Gus had in mind. All he could see was the woman he had walked out on last night, with her fiery hair tumbling to her shoulders and every mouth-watering curve of her luscious bottom and long, slender legs faithfully outlined by a pair of Levi’s that clung like a second skin. He flexed his fingers as if he could still feel the lush curves against his tingling palms. When she bent to lift Gracie down off the stool, his heart jumped up into this throat and nearly strangled him.

  “What—” He paused to clear his throat. “What are you ladies up to?” he asked when he could talk without croaking like a frog.

  “Aunt Eve is fixing our hair,” Gracie informed him. “She cut my bangs. See?” She danced across the yard to preen for her uncle. “And she helped us make French toast for breakfast ‘cause it’s dangerous for children to use the stove without adult ‘vision. And she let us try her lip gloss.” She pursed her little cupid’s bow mouth to show him. “And we’re going to make cookies later, and maybe go to the video store in Selina to get Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin to watch while we have popcorn sometime.” She turned, skipping back toward Eve as she spoke. “I’m glad she’s our aunt,” she announced, and threw her arms around Eve’s thighs, giving her a quick, spontaneous hug of unfettered approval. “You’re much better than our old keeper,” she said, looking up at her with a smile so sweet that Eve felt her heart crinkle with motherly love. “Isn’t she, Uncle Travis?”

  “She certainly is,” Travis agreed warmly, seeking Eve’s eyes over the heads of his nieces. “Much better.”

  Eve’s gaze met his for a moment, then darted away. She was unsure how to read his expression, unable to bear such fierce, intimate scrutiny in the light of day. He’d looked at her exactly that way last night and yet-she darted another look at him—not quite the same way. There was something new under the heat in his gaze, a speculation that was more than sexual. It made her very, very nervous. “Who’s next?” she said brightly, patting the top of the stool.

  “Laura can be next,” Amanda volunteered as she headed toward the back door of the house. Ever alert to the possibility of food, Slik abandoned his position at Gus’s heels and trotted hopefully after her. “Aunt Eve put some French toast in the oven to keep warm,” Amanda said to the men. “I’ll fix it for you while Laura gets her hair cut.”

  “I appreciate that, sweetheart,” Travis said, putting a hand out to stop her, “but you stay out here and en joy yourself with the rest of the ladies.” He cupped his hands over her shoulders and turned her around, nudging her back toward the group under the tree. “Go on. Gus and I can see to ourselves.”

  “Well, now,” Gus said as the two men climbed the steps to the back porch with the potbellied pig close behind them. “I’d say she’s workin’ out real fine, wouldn’t you? Yes, sirree, bob, real fine. Them girls have took to her like little lost kittens to a mama cat.” He opened the screen door, letting Slik and Travis in ahead of him. “All you got to do now is make sure she stays,” he said pointedly.

  “She’ll stay,” Travis vowed, heading for the counter to get himself a cup of much needed coffee.

  She had to stay. No matter what happened between them, whether they were compatible or not, whether they fell madly in love or ended up hating each other, she had to stay for the sake of the girls. In one brief morning she’d given them things he hadn’t even known they needed. It hadn’t occurred to him that letting them use the stove alone might be dangerous. He hadn’t seen the need for barbering, even though their hair was hanging in their eyes. He hadn’t thought they might like to rent videos. Or bake cookies. Or make popcorn. And then there was the lip gloss. Lip gloss! And hair ribbons. French toast, and French braids, and who knew what else? Hell, there was no telling what he’d overlooked in his abysmal ignorance concerning the needs of little girls. He took a bolstering gulp of coffee, shuddering to think how badly he might have messed up Amanda’s first big step into womanhood if he’d had to handle it by himself!

  “Well, now, don’t this look good,” Gus said as he took the heaping platter of golden brown French toast out of the warm oven. He transferred half of them to a plate, pouring a generous portion of syrup over the top. “Looks like that little wife of yours is one mighty fine cook, don’t it? Mighty fine. You oughta come over here and get yourself some of this here whaddayacallit.”

  “Thanks,” Travis said absently, and reached out, taking the plate Gus had just fixed for himself. With his coffee in one hand and his breakfast in the other, Travis headed back outside, irresistibly drawn by the woman who seemed to have won the hearts of his nieces while tying certain other parts of his anatomy into painful knots. It had never occurred to him before that one woman could do both, and the possibilities of what it all might mean intrigued him.

  The luck of the draw was a curious thing, he decided as he ambled down the porch steps. There was no way to tell which way it would go. The best bulls were the hardest buckers, the ones who gave a cowboy the toughest ride and made him look good in front of the judges. Half of a cowboy’s final score depended on the bull he drew.

  The thing was, you couldn’t tell just by looking whether a bull was going to be a good bucker, whether he’d help you ride to a solid win or give a halfhearted show that was all style and no substance. The only way to find out was to hold on tight, ride it out to the whis tle and hope for the best.

  It was beginning to look as if the same logic applied to wives.

  Travis nodded to himself, once, like a rodeo contestant giving the signal to open the chute and begin the ride. His wife obviously had everything the girls needed to win; it was time to find out if she had everything he needed, as well.

  8

  EVE WATCHED her husband out of the corner of her eye

  as he settled himself at the picnic table, wondering uneasily what he was thinking. She could read him well enough by now to tell he was up to something; he had a determined look on his face that she was already beginning to recognize.

  “Hey, there, pardner.” He reached out to pat Timo thy’s bare leg when the baby chortled at him. Eve found herself holding her breath, half afraid he would inadvertently bruise the baby’s delicate skin with his huge, work-scarred hand, but Timothy smiled his sweet baby smile and cooed at the big cowboy, unhurt and unafraid.

  “He likes to be tickled,” Gracie said, climbing up on the bench beside her uncle to show him how it was done. “Like this. See?” She ran her little finger down the sole of the baby’s foot, laughing delightedly when he squealed in approval and kicked at her. “Now you do it.”

  Travis did it, carefully, his big hand exquisitely gentle as he tickled the baby’s tiny foot with his fingertip. Timothy squealed again, then began to babble enthusiastically and wave his little arms.

  Eve felt something go all soft and gooey inside her. Craig had never touched Timothy; he’d never even seen him. And here was this man, this stranger, really, tak ing the time to make her tiny son coo with delight. She told herself it meant nothing, that her husband was just trying to get to her through her son, but she had to blink hard a couple of times and stop what she was doing, untangling her fingers from the mess she was making in Laura’s fine silky hair so she could start the complicated braid all over again.

  “He sure doesn’t look sick,” Travis said, giving the baby one last tickling caress before he picked up his fork and tucked into his breakfast. “What e
xactly is wrong with him?”

  So Eve explained, carefully keeping her eyes and her attention on what she was doing; partly because looking at Travis wrought havoc with her concentration; partly because she’d learned she could talk about her son’s heart defect only if she affected an attitude of professional detachment.

  “Eventually he’ll have to have open heart surgery to repair the hole in his heart,” she said as she tied the end of Laura’s braid with a pink bow to match the one she wore on her cowboy hat.

  “Open heart surgery?” Travis looked at the baby’s tiny chest. “But he’s so damned little,” he objected, horrified at the thought of such a fragile human being going under the knife.

  “That’s why the longer it can be put off, the better. Every pound he gains improves the prognosis.” Eve helped Laura down from the stool, then turned and beckoned to Amanda to take her place. “What do you think?” she said as she draped the towel around the girl’s shoulders. “Shall I just braid it or do you want to go for broke and let me cut it a little, too?”

  Amanda stared at herself in the mirror for a mo ment. “Cut it,” she said finally, and together they decided on few wispy bangs and a slight layering around the face to give her a more grown-up look, now that she was almost a teenager. Eve finished the new style off by braiding a small section of hair at each temple and fastening them at the back of Amanda’s head with a silver-plated barrette shaped like a trophy belt buckle.

  “I like it,” Amanda said simply, smiling at herself in the hand mirror as Eve slipped the towel off her shoulders to shake it out. “Thank you, Aunt Eve.”

  “My pleasure,” Eve assured her, and started to fold the towel.

  “Are you any good at cutting men’s hair?” Travis asked as he pushed his empty plate a little away from him.

  Poised in midmotion, the towel held out in front of her, Eve looked at her husband. Definitely up to something, she thought. “Excuse me?” she said carefully.

  He raked a hand through his silky hair, dislodging bits of straw onto his wide shoulders. “I could use a trim, too,” he said and, somehow, it sounded like a challenge.

  A challenge Eve knew she had to meet squarely this time, with no quarter asked and no wimping out like a frightened, inexperienced schoolgirl. This was her second chance, the perfect opportunity to show him that she was up to the demands of being his wife.

  She cocked her head. “Sure,” she said, giving him a long, steady look from under her lashes. “I can cut men’s hair.”

  Travis grinned, recognizing the determination—and the wariness—in her vivid blue eyes. His luscious little wife still meant to “accommodate” him. Well, this time he would let her. Up to a point. That point being the one where she realized she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Then they would see who accommodated whom.

  He swung his long legs out from under the picnic table and rose slowly, walking toward her with that lazy, loose-kneed, hip-rolling cowboy swagger of his that made all the buckle bunnies drool. He stopped on the opposite side of the kitchen stool, looking bigger than life and twice as handsome, like some mythic hero come down off a movie screen. It didn’t matter that he was bare-headed with bits of hay clinging to his hair and sprinkling his shoulders, or that one of his boots was held together with duct tape. He was sex and seduction in faded denim and a dusty chambray shirt. Pure unbridled temptation with a lethal sure-you-can-trust-me grin.

  He would have been irresistible if Eve had been the kind of woman who could be tempted. Or who could trust.

  She tossed her hair back and patted the stool. “Have a seat,” she invited, determined not to quail before his overpowering masculinity a second time.

  Travis swung his leg over the stool, as if he were mounting a horse and sat down.

  Without a word, Eve flicked the towel up and out, swirling it over his head and behind him. The maneuver put her directly in front of him, between his splayed denim-clad thighs, with her bare arms upraised over his shoulders and the curve of her breasts swelling practically under his nose. They were eye-to-eye and less than a foot apart, standing in a near embrace. He could smell the faint, heady fragrance of jasmine rising up from the tempting valley between her lush breasts—ripe sensuality mixed with a hint of vanilla, underscored by the innocence of baby powder. She could smell horses and hay and healthy, hot-blooded man.

  He bent his head slightly and sniffed at her, the way he had the night before.

  She took a quick inadvertent breath, savoring him.

  Travis’s grin widened, slow and sweet and knowing. His eyes narrowed. Like a gambler facing his opponent across a pile of poker chips, he studied her, waiting to find out if she’d hold pat or fold, daring her to play out the hand. Daring her to trust to the luck of the draw.

  Eve couldn’t quite bring herself to bat her lashes at him, but she didn’t look away. With her gaze holding his, she arranged the towel, brushing it smooth with the flat of her hands as she moved them up across his wide shoulders to the back of his neck. Slowly, she turned his collar under, tucking the edge of the towel beneath it. His skin was warm against her fingers. His breath was warm against her cheek. His eyes were as hot as the blazing Texas sun.

  Some part of Eve was aware that the girls were gathered around the picnic table playing with her son and discussing their new hairdos, all the while sneaking peeks at their uncle and his new wife out of the corners of their eyes. She knew that Gus and his pig had come out of the house and were standing on the screened-in porch, watching them. She was even cognizant of the fact that Bear had abandoned the shady spot beneath the picnic table and risen to his feet. But none of that could break the spell her husband wove with his hot brown eyes.

  He didn’t touch her. He didn’t speak. He just looked at her, his hands flat on his thighs, his gaze unwavering and steady, his lips curved in a sexy little half smile.

  It was unnerving, being the center of such focused intensity. But it was thrilling, too. No man had ever looked at her that way before, as if no one and nothing else existed for him in that moment. Not even in their most intimate nighttime encounters had Craig looked at her the way her mail-order husband was looking at her now, in the clear bright light of day.

  She wondered if he was going to kiss her, right here in front of God and the girls and Gus.

  Then she wondered uneasily why he didn’t.

  He cocked an eyebrow as if in answer, challenging and enticing her with a glance.

  And she knew why.

  How far we go, how fast, is entirely up to you, he’d said.

  He was leaving it up to her.

  The sneaky devil.

  Determined, resolved, beguiled, Eve tilted her head and leaned forward, intent on meeting the reckless, teasing challenge in her husband’s eyes.

  Their lips were still a whisper apart when Bear tore across the patch of lawn, kicking up bits of dirt and rock in his excitement, barking wildly.

  Travis’s gaze flickered away from Eve’s face, widening for a moment, then narrowing in grim annoyance. All seduction, all challenge, all playfulness vanished from his expression. “Bear,” he said sharply, halting the dog as surely as if he’d yanked back on a leash.

  The huge animal stopped halfway to his goal and stood silently, quivering with eagerness and excitement, watching with the rest of them as a blue Chevy Nova came down the road and pulled to a stop behind the shiny red Dodge pickup in the driveway.

  Eve didn’t have to be told that the woman getting out of the car was from the child protection services. She’d dealt with enough social workers in her life to recognize all the various subspecies of the breed. When she was a child in Louisiana, they’d been all too frequent visitors to the succession of shabby apartments she and her mother had called home. The best of them, though truly sympathetic and caring, were still bound by the dictates of their job to intrude into the private lives of those they helped. The worst of them took pleasure in the power granted to them by the state, using their position no
t only to intrude but to intimidate and control.

  Eve didn’t need the sudden alert wariness of the three girls, nor the cold, shuttered expression in her husband’s eyes to tell her that the grim-faced woman marching across the lawn toward them was one of the worst. Like a missionary come among the natives to save them from themselves, she radiated disapproval and condemnation with every step. The smug selfrighteousness in her pinched expression clearly proclaimed her belief that she alone knew what was best for the poor unfortunates in her care.

  As she swept past Bear, the dog turned and followed at her heels, not in a companionable way, but suspiciously, with his neck stretched out and his tail at halfmast.

  “Miz Gillespie,” Travis said, rising from the stool with the instinctive good manners of a man country born and bred. “To what do we owe the honor of this unexpected visit?”

  Louise Gillespie didn’t waste time with formal cour tesies. “It’s my understanding that you got married yesterday, Mr. Holt. Is that correct?”

  “It surely is,” Travis acknowledged pleasantly enough, although Eve could feel the dislike emanating off of him in waves. He was watching Louise Gillespie the way a man watched a poisonous snake, warily, willing to let it live if it slithered on by, poised to de stroy it if it looked like it might strike. Instinctively, Eve reached out and put her hand on his arm.

  “I take it this is the woman in question?” the social worker said with a disapproving sniff, giving Eve a disparaging glance as she spoke.

  “This is my wife,” Travis said, a bit less pleasantly this time, but still well within the bounds of civility. He’d been raised to treat women with courtesy and respect, even when they didn’t offer it in return. “Eve, darlin’, this is Miz Louise Gillespie, the—”

  “You do know, don’t you, Mr. Holt,” Louise Gillespie interrupted, “that you’re not supposed to make any changes in the girls’ care without clearing it with me first? I should have been informed of your intentions in regards to this—” her gaze flickered over Eve again “—person. Who and what she is will have a direct effect on what I ultimately decide to do in regard to your nieces’ welfare.”