by Lucy Gilmore
As much as he appreciated the quick rundown of the guest list, Adam was finding it more and more difficult to make sense of all this. Was it a send-off? An intervention?
“If you want to come with me, I’ll show you to your seat,” Sophie said without providing any kind of enlightenment. “Your stack of chips will be waiting for you. Both they and the cards came from your house, so they should be familiar.”
If it weren’t for Sophie standing next to him, Adam would have reared back at this. Chips? Cards? Cigar smoke?
Enlightenment was starting to dawn—and with it, the sinking feeling that he’d been duped. There was no way that Zeke and Phoebe hadn’t known about this ahead of time. He’d been lured here under false pretenses, set up to take a terrible fall.
This wasn’t a party. This was a motherfucking poker game.
“Is it too much to ask to speak to Dawn right now?” he asked, his teeth clenched. “I’m sure she’s very busy, having set all this up and put it into execution, but it’s important that we talk.”
“She’ll explain everything in a minute,” said another familiar-but-not-familiar female voice. Lila. These were hardly the circumstances under which he would have chosen to meet Dawn’s sisters, but it felt oddly good to be given this opportunity. A woman who had written him off forever wouldn’t introduce him to the two most important people in her life.
“She could have explained everything before I left the house and saved us all a lot of trouble,” he said.
“True,” Lila agreed. “But you wouldn’t want to upset everything after all the work she’s done on your behalf, would you?”
There was a note in her voice that caused Adam to do nothing more than shake his head. Maybe he’d been a little preemptive in his optimism. That wasn’t the voice of a woman who’d been on the receiving end of high praise in his honor.
The two Vasquez sisters led him to a chair around an octagonal felt table. That wasn’t from his own house, he knew, but he didn’t dare question where it came from. He dropped to his seat and did his best to appear unconcerned instead.
He also carefully set his drink aside. As much as he could use something sweet and alcoholic right now, he wanted to keep his wits about him. The scuffle of footsteps and the general murmur of voices grew subdued, and Dawn’s nonscent grew more pronounced. Even without those signs, he’d have known Dawn was near because he was ruthlessly attacked by the puppy he’d been separated from for all of five days.
It was a little disconcerting to have Gigi wriggling and whimpering and leaping up into his lap while the entire room watched, but he could hardly berate the poor thing. From the way she was burrowing her face into his side, almost as though she was trying to take up residence inside his skin, it was obvious that she’d felt the separation as keenly as he had.
“Yes, Gigi,” he said, giving her his hand to lick—a thing she did with exuberance. “I missed you too, girl. Uncle and I both did. But this is no way to behave in public. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
She didn’t care. She transferred her affection from his hand to his face, licking and snuffling until she reached a comfortable spot with her head crooked against his. Literally. This was how people swaddled babies.
“What on earth did you do to that poor animal?” Charlie asked—presumably to Dawn.
This theory was confirmed when Dawn sighed and said, “Loved her. Took care of her. Offered her the very best parts of me. As you can tell, they’re not up to par.”
They are too up to par, Adam wanted to say. Maybe not for Gigi, who clearly had her priorities wrong, but for him.
“Well, now that Gigi has chosen her seat, we can all get started.” Dawn clapped her hands once. It had the effect of bringing any remaining lingerers to attention. “As most of you know, we’re currently on a plot of land whose ownership is highly sought after. The Dearborns would like it to expand their ranch. The Smithwoods would like it to regain some of their lost holdings from a similar poker game over half a century ago.”
Such was the power of Dawn’s presence that no one interrupted or contradicted her.
“And I would like it because now that I’ve spent a few weeks out here, I realize that there’s nowhere on earth I’d rather live.”
At this, Adam’s entire body tensed, but Uncle settled himself directly on top of his feet. Between that solid bulk pressing on his toes and Gigi’s warm snuffling as she burrowed deeper into his neck, there was no escape for him.
“Which is why Bea has been so kind as to agree to sell to the winner of this poker game. The winner will be expected to pay full market value, of course, but this should put the question of who deserves the land to rest. No more fighting. No more bribes. This whole affair began with a poker game and will end with a poker game. Right, Bea?”
“Hell yes. I’m tired of all this nonsense. You people exhaust me.”
“You agree, Charlie?”
“Sure. Why not? Provided there’s no funny business involved…”
Adam tensed even more, ready to leap to his family’s defense, but Zeke beat him to it. “Oh, pipe down, Smithwood. You know as well as we do that your grandfather was a lazy waste of space. Our granddad did more with this land than he ever could have.”
“I thought this was going to be a friendly game,” Marcia interjected. Adam had been wondering what brought her to this spectacle, but even that was beginning to make sense. Marcia spent as much time on the Smithwood Ranch as the Dearborn one and was on friendly terms with both. If Dawn wanted to bring in a peacekeeper, she couldn’t have chosen a better one. “If you guys can’t leave off with the smack talk, I might sit down and join the game, too. Just imagine—a veterinary clinic right between my two biggest cash cows. Pun one hundred percent intended.”
Light laughter dispelled the tension.
“That leaves you, Adam,” Dawn said. Was it his imagination, or did she sound less friendly now that she was talking to him? “Can you find it in yourself to agree to those terms?”
No, he couldn’t. Everything about this situation was ridiculous in the extreme. No matter what had happened in the past, people didn’t play poker for land in this day and age. They should have been able to sit down like adults, discuss their options, and come to terms that were agreeable to all of them.
“Hell yes,” he said, speaking more forcefully than he intended. He didn’t take his words back, though. He was tired of acting like an adult, even more exhausted with being the only person in the room who put a damper on everyone else’s dreams.
He wanted things, too. Tangible things like land to expand the family ranch. Intangible things like love and acceptance and the prospect of waking up every morning next to a woman like Dawn.
Shifting Gigi just enough so that his hands were free to play poker, he turned his full attention to the felt in front of him. The intangible things he wanted might not be so accessible, but here, at least, was something he could do. Like most of the things he’d achieved in life, it had taken him more time and more work than most people to master the art of poker. He couldn’t read faces the way others did, forced to rely instead on audio clues and card counting. Forced to rely instead on himself.
That one lonely constant. The only thing he could hold onto in times like these.
So, yes. He could agree to those terms. Win or lose, the game would end today. “Ante up,” he said.
Chapter 17
Dawn had been steadily losing since the game began.
It had been her intention to start off with a bang, frightening her competitors into upping their stakes and playing recklessly, turning this poker game into something worth noting. She should have known better. Where Adam Dearborn was concerned, intentions meant nothing.
“Full house, aces over fives.” He sat back in his seat, buoyed by his triumph but determined not to show it. Dawn could tell. She knew all the signs of that
man’s excitement—the way he flushed just at the tips of his ears, the way his movements slowed down to become careful, methodical, purposeful.
This was normally the point where he demanded that she slow down and enjoy herself, when he told her that he was going to take his time and nothing she said or did would deter him from that path.
She was annoyed. Annoyed and aroused, which made the annoyance that much more difficult to bear.
“Goddammit, Dearborn.” Charlie threw his cards down in disgust. “I was sure you were bluffing that time.”
“He never bluffs,” Dawn retorted, tossing her own cards into the middle of the table. “He never lies, never says anything he doesn’t mean.”
Charlie cocked an eyebrow at her from across the table. He was a good-looking man, if a little uninteresting in a bland, all-American sort of way. His height was average, his build stocky, and his eyes so blue it looked as though his parents had plucked them from the wide prairie sky. From the way Phoebe kept shifting her glance his way, it was obvious she admired his style, but Dawn had been with enough guys like that to know all that corn-fed goodness had a tendency to pall after a while.
“Making up for the sins of the father?” Charlie asked. He coughed gently and added, “Or grandfather, as the case may be?”
Adam flushed darkly, though he still held himself careful and stiff in his seat. He was all hard lines and rigid angles, a tower of strength that might fall at the least provocation. “Are you accusing me of cheating, Smithwood?”
He made a big show of rolling up the sleeves of his red-checked flannel shirt, exposing his sinewy forearms one tantalizing inch at a time. Dawn tried her best not to stare and was forced to take her lower lip between her teeth and fix her gaze out Bea’s front window to the twilight beyond.
Her sisters saw it, of course. So did Marcia and Bea and, unless she was very much mistaken, Zeke. His eyebrows shot to his hairline, but he didn’t move from where he sat on the couch.
“There.” Adam flipped his hands from palm-side down to palm-side up and back again. “Anything else I can do to address your concerns? Should we have Bea cover the mirrors? Clear the room? Strip me down to my shorts?”
He made a show of standing and reaching for the buttons of his shirt as if to disrobe right then and there. The forearms Dawn could withstand, but there was no way she’d be able to concentrate if Adam sat there in nothing but his underwear.
And concentrating was something she seriously needed to do.
“Cut it out, you two,” she said, sounding so much like Lila that her sisters had to stifle their laughter. “No one is accusing anyone of anything. Well, except for Adam being a cocky bastard with all the luck, but there’s not much we can do about that. Shall we keep going, or do we need a break?”
“Keep going,” both men said without a moment’s hesitation.
“Unless you’d like to take a few minutes?” Charlie asked with a glance down at Dawn’s rapidly dwindling pile of chips. “You, ah, aren’t looking so flush over there. If you’ll pardon the pun.”
She pardoned the pun but not the fact that Adam looked so smug about it. His intentions were obvious—he wanted Bea’s land, but more than that, he wanted to make sure she didn’t get it. He couldn’t stomach the idea of having her as a neighbor, was so determined to cut her out of his life that he’d sit here and carefully demolish her at poker to ensure she was exorcised forever.
“I’ll be fine,” she said in as sweet a voice as she could muster. And she would, too. She had her sisters at her back, and she knew now that she didn’t need anything else.
But, oh, she wanted more. So much more, and with so much longing that it was all she could do not to upend this poker table and demand that Adam see this game for what it really was.
She was reaching her hand out as far as it could go. All he had to do was reach back, just a little, and she’d hold on with every ounce of strength she had.
“Then ante up, and we’ll get this next hand going,” Marcia said as she gathered the cards and began shuffling them. As the most neutral party in this whole thing, she’d been designated as the dealer. “I’ll keep an eye on the sleeves from here on out.”
The next few hands went as well as expected, which was to say that Dawn was quickly and steadily losing her ground. Charlie was also losing, but he still had enough chips to make a recovery—provided the cards fell in his favor.
They didn’t. At least, Dawn assumed they didn’t because as Marcia tossed the next round of cards their way, Dawn picked them up to find herself facing the knobby braille of a straight flush.
Finally. Here was her chance to regain some of her lost ground, to show Adam that she was a contender worthy of the title. She needed to make a big show of this hand, to shake Adam out of his calm and make him realize that if he wanted this land, he was going to have to fight her directly for it.
“All in,” she announced, pushing her pile of chips toward the center. “I’ve got you beat this time, boys. I’m looking at a straight that’s dripping with diamonds.”
Marcia’s hand stopped over the top of the deck. “Um, aren’t you supposed to keep that a secret? The hand’s not over yet. In fact, I didn’t even call for your bets yet.”
“It’s also not her turn to start the betting,” Charlie said, his head tilted as he considered her. “Are you sure you know how this game works?”
“Playing games is the only thing I’m any good at,” she replied. Although she spoke to Charlie, her words were meant for Adam’s ears. From the looks of him, he knew it. His mouth was firm and his concentration more focused on her than the cards in his hand. “And I repeat—I’m all in.”
“She’s bluffing,” Adam announced as he matched her bet. It barely made a dent in his own chips. “She doesn’t have anything. She’s just making a mad last-ditch effort to throw us off since she knows this is her last hand.”
Dawn’s lips curved in a smile. Now they were getting somewhere. Now she could force Adam to discuss the real matter of importance between them. “Are you sure about that, Adam? I’ve always been straightforward with you before—told you exactly what I wanted, exactly what I was thinking. What makes this time any different?”
His lips pressed into a firm line. “She’s bluffing,” he repeated.
“I don’t know, Dearborn,” Charlie said. “She looks pretty serious to me.”
“No. She doesn’t actually want Bea’s house. In fact, this whole thing is a sham. She only set up this game to thwart me.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that?” Dawn asked. Even though she knew they were in a room full of people, that there would be no more pretending to Zeke that she wasn’t in love with his brother after this, she went all in on this matter, too. “Because I’m willing to place everything on this hand. In fact, I’ll even raise the stakes higher.”
“With what?” Adam asked. “You don’t have any more chips.”
Being down for the count had never stopped Dawn before, and she wasn’t about to let it stop her now. A stirring at her feet reminded her that the things she possessed went a lot higher than poker chips, that the things that mattered were a lot more valuable than a stupid house and a hundred acres.
“No, but I do have Gigi. She’s worth—what did you say, Marcia?—about a thousand dollars?” She fought a pang of regret as Gigi resettled herself, this time placing her head firmly on the top of Dawn’s foot. The poor puppy was exhausted by the day’s activities, and instead of sitting by Adam, she’d opted for Dawn. It had been a nice—if unprecedented—move on her part. “I’ll add her to the pot. That should help sweeten the deal, don’t you think?”
Adam’s mouth twitched and his hands faltered on the cards, but Charlie spoke up before he could say anything. “Uh, no offense, but I don’t really want a dog.”
“Oh, but this isn’t any dog,” Dawn replied sweetly. “She changes
lives. She charms uncharmable men. Isn’t that right, Adam?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “You can’t stake the puppy I gave you literally last week.”
“Yes, I can. She’s mine, which means I can do anything I want with her. You didn’t say I had to keep her forever.”
“Dawn.” Adam set his cards down, accidentally tipping over the one on the end in the process. It was, she noted, a two of spades—hardly the card necessary to beat her straight flush. “You absolutely cannot stake a living, breathing creature—especially not a living, breathing creature you’ve spent the past month trying to wrest out of my hands. Are you drunk?”
Her laugh came out a little breathless. “No, not drunk. This butterscotch schnapps only has like fifteen percent alcohol. I’d have to drink two bottles of it to even make a dent in my determination. I stake Gigi against everything you have in your pot. You and Charlie both. Winner takes all.”
“You can’t!” Adam protested, pushing his chair back from the table. The jostling movement had the effect of waking both puppies from their naps. Uncle lifted a weary head while Gigi gave a long, endearing yawn. “Marcia—will you please put a stop to this nonsense? I thought this was supposed to be a clean, fair game.”
Marcia took a long look at Adam before transferring her gaze to Dawn. Dawn was careful not to give anything away, but the veterinarian paused only a moment before speaking. “I don’t see why not, provided Charlie agrees.”
“Yeah, um, I don’t think—” Charlie began before his chair gave a lurch. Dawn glanced over to find that Phoebe had given it a healthy kick. “What the hell? What’s the matter with you, Phoebe?”
Phoebe gave him a look of such blandly sweet innocence that Dawn knew it to be a fake. “I must have tripped. I’m so sorry. You were saying?”
Charlie didn’t look fully convinced by Phoebe’s excuse, but he ran a hand along the back of his neck and tried again. “I was saying that as nice as I’m sure that dog is, I don’t think I’m willing to stake my entire chance at—”