Keegan outlined his ideas for the workstudy program and asked Cheyenne some penetrating questions. He seemed impressed with her responses, and so did Rance, and she felt guiltier with every passing minute.
“The job is yours if you want it,” Keegan told her.
Rance nodded agreement. “When can you start?”
Don’t do this, Cheyenne’s conscience protested.
“Tomorrow?” she said.
Keegan smiled. “Great,” he said. “You’ll need a company car, of course. We’ll have one sent down from Flag today.”
Cheyenne had been expecting to share the patchwork van with her mother, so the offer of a car came as a happy surprise. Conversely, it also made her feel worse. “Thank you,” she said.
Keegan and Rance rose from their chairs.
She shook hands with both of them.
“I’ll show you your work space on the way out,” Rance said.
Keegan glared at him.
Rance took her elbow again, grinning.
Even with the high salary and the car, Cheyenne had been expecting a cubicle at best. Instead, she had a corner office with a desk almost as big as her front yard. She resisted an urge to sit down in the pricy leather chair and take a couple of spins.
“It’s great,” she said.
Rance escorted her all the way to her car.
“I’d ask you to lunch,” he told her, with charming bluntness, “if I hadn’t seen you dancing with Jesse last night. Welcome aboard, Cheyenne.”
She nodded, shy again. “Thanks.”
She zoomed to the supermarket, where Ayanna worked, grabbed her change of clothes out of the backseat and rushed inside, headed for the restroom.
She was in a stall, shinnying out of her panty hose, when the outside door opened and she heard her mother’s voice.
“Cheyenne, are you sick?”
“No,” Cheyenne answered. “I’m taking off my panty hose.”
Ayanna laughed, but she sounded a little nervous. “How did the meeting go? Did you tell Keegan that Nigel asked you to spy on them?”
Cheyenne squatted, checking the other stalls for feet. All clear, unless somebody was standing on a toilet seat. “Gee, Mom,” she said through the door, stepping out of the panty hose and pulling on her jeans. “Why don’t you just go to Customer Service and ask if you can use the microphone? That way, you could announce it to half of Indian Rock.”
“Sorry,” Ayanna said, in an after-the-fact whisper. “Did you tell them, Cheyenne?”
“No,” Cheyenne told her.
Ayanna gasped. Cheyenne didn’t need X-ray vision to know her mother had slapped one hand over her mouth in shame and horror.
She zipped and buttoned her jeans, pulled a T-shirt on over her head, pushed open the stall door and came out, carrying her neatly folded suit over one arm. Kicking off her heels, she tugged on the shoes she’d dropped on the floor on the way in.
Ayanna looked swoony. “You’re not actually going to—?”
“Spy?” Cheyenne snapped, pulling the pins out of her hair and letting it fall around her shoulders. “Of course not, Mother.”
“You only call me Mother when you’re irritated.”
“I’m not irritated.” She did the feet test again, just to be sure. “I’m also not a spy!”
“Cheyenne,” Ayanna reasoned, still whispering, “you are on very dangerous ground. When the McKettricks find out that you’re still working for Nigel Meerland—”
Cheyenne juggled her suit and heels to finger-fluff her hair. “I’ve got this under control, Mom,” she said. “You’re going to have to trust me. And—please—don’t put this out over the PA system, okay? Don’t breathe a word to anyone—not even Mitch.”
Ayanna’s eyes were huge with worry. “This is a mistake,” she said.
“This is damage control,” Cheyenne replied.
The door opened and a middle-aged shopper entered, looked Ayanna up and down, and said, “No wonder you can’t get any service around here. The employees hide out in the restroom.”
Ayanna rolled her eyes.
Cheyenne laughed, kissed her on the cheek as she passed. “Remember, Mom,” she said. “Mum’s the word.”
Five minutes later, she pulled into the lot at Lucky’s. Her hand shook noticeably as she rummaged for her cell phone and speed-dialed Nigel.
“Send someone for the car,” she said. “I took the job.”
“Excellent,” Nigel answered. “Just for show, I’ll take back the laptop, too. You can keep the phone.”
“Nigel—”
“Good work, Pocahontas,” he said and hung up before she could tell him what he could do with the car, the laptop and the cell phone.
A rap on the car window startled her out of her dark musings, and she jumped, dropping the phone in the process.
Sierra McKettrick smiled through the glass.
Cheyenne rolled down the window. “Oh, hi,” she said, feeling as though a transcript of her conversation with Nigel had been written on her face.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Sierra said. She scanned the front parking lot. “Looks like the others are here. Let’s go inside and grab some lunch. Fortify ourselves for the poker game.”
The others were Janice White, a petite blonde who lived on a ranch neighboring the Triple M, and Elaine Perkins, co-owner of Perkins Real Estate.
After the introductions had been made, everyone settled in a booth to examine menus.
“That game’s been going on since midnight,” the weary waitress announced, cocking a thumb toward the back room. “It meant a double shift for me, and I’m dead on my feet, but, hey, the tips are good.”
“What game?” Sierra asked idly, focused on the menu.
“Five-card stud,” the waitress answered. “And I’m tellin’ you, it’s cutthroat, too.”
“Great,” Janice said. “We get to share the room with a bunch of sweaty poker fiends. I’ll take the fish and chips. Extra tartar sauce.”
“Chef’s salad,” Elaine chimed in. “Thousand Island on the side.”
“Gotya,” said the waitress. Her tired eyes came to rest on Cheyenne. “What’ll it be, honey? I gotta put this order in and sit down before I fall down. Trust me, these dogs are barkin’.”
“That’s way more information than we need, Delores,” Janice remarked.
“Club sandwich on wheat,” Cheyenne said. “Easy on the mayo.”
Delores scribbled dutifully and turned to Sierra, who immediately asked, “Can we play poker out here, in the restaurant?”
“Against state law,” Delores said, tapping her order pad with the tip of her pencil. “What’s your poison?”
Sierra smiled. “I’ve got a wedding dress to fit into. Make mine tomato soup, and hold the crackers.”
Delores gave a wistful sigh, and her eyes looked dreamy. Maybe, Cheyenne reflected, it was the mention of a wedding dress, accompanied by a fantasy of some cowboy-prince coming into Lucky’s for a burger and fries, falling madly in love and taking her away from it all.
“Travis Reid,” Delores said. “He’s a looker.”
“He sure is,” Sierra agreed.
Delores limped away to hand in the orders.
“I’ll bet she’s been taking her shoes off in the back room and rubbing her feet on breaks,” Janice whispered, making a face. “I just hope she washed her hands.”
“Again,” Elaine said dryly, “more information than I really find necessary.”
“I don’t think I’m hungry anymore,” Cheyenne said.
“Delores is the worst housekeeper in Indian Rock,” Janice confided.
Elaine elbowed her. “Shut up, or I’m going home, and taking my poker expertise with me.”
“What expertise would that be, pray tell?” Janice asked archly.
“I’ll have you know,” Elaine said, “that I play Texas Hold ’Em on my computer at least twice a week.”
“Oh, well, then,” Janice replied, “the world championship w
ill be a cinch.” She gazed at Sierra. “Tell me again why we’re doing this? We’d have a better chance of winning a triathlon.”
“To get out of our comfort zones,” Sierra answered. “Expand our horizons. Test our limits.”
“You McKettricks,” Janice sighed. “You just can’t stand to be ordinary. We could start a bowling league or something, you know. Trust me, wearing rented shoes is going to take this gal way beyond her comfort zone!”
Sierra laughed, looked down at the doorknob diamond shining on her left-hand ring finger.
Cheyenne felt a little pang of envy.
Elaine turned to Janice, who was sitting beside her, opposite Cheyenne and Sierra. “You can’t ask the poor woman to bowl with that boulder weighing down her hand,” she teased. “It probably weighs more than the ball.”
Delores shuffled over with the food. Glanced poignantly at the big clock behind the counter, and went away.
Sierra watched her go. “Poor thing,” she said. “Waitressing is hard work. Believe me, I know.”
Cheyenne glanced at her, surprised. “You do?” She didn’t have to voice the rest of the thought—it hung in the air as if it had been spoken aloud.
But you’re a McKettrick.
“I’m sorry,” Cheyenne said, miserably embarrassed. She just wasn’t good at this girlfriend thing; she hadn’t had enough practice. Her feet didn’t hurt, and she wasn’t a half-bad housekeeper, but other than those things, she probably had more in common with Delores than with Elaine, Janice and Sierra.
“It’s okay,” Sierra replied, smiling. “I was the family’s lost sheep,” she explained. “My mother and sister and I reconnected last winter. I’m still getting used to being a McKettrick.”
“But she’s not changing her name when she gets married,” Janice said. “The McKettrick women don’t, you know. They don’t even hyphenate. And if they have girl children, they’re McKettricks, too.”
“How does Travis feel about that?” Elaine asked.
Cheyenne realized she was hungry and began wolfing down her sandwich. The process served a dual purpose—filling her stomach and making it impossible to stick her foot in her mouth.
“He’s fine with it,” Sierra said, “as long as the boys are all Reids.”
“I guess that’s fair,” Janice allowed.
They finished their meals, pooled their money to pay the tab and left Delores a generous tip.
Cheyenne was the last to step into the poker room, and when she did, she froze on the threshold.
There was Jesse, in the thick of the all-night game Delores had mentioned, unshaven, with a baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead and enough chips in front of him to fill a five-gallon bucket.
As if sensing her presence, he looked up. One corner of his mouth tilted slightly upward. His gaze lingered.
Something caught fire inside Cheyenne, and she felt like a complete fool for being so stunned. Indian Rock was Jesse’s hometown, after all, and Lucky’s was one of his regular haunts. Why was she so taken aback to find him here?
Delores’s words echoed in her head. That game’s been going on since midnight.
Sierra, already halfway across the room to the table where Elaine and Janice were pulling back chairs, came back, whispered in Cheyenne’s ear, “He doesn’t bite,” she teased.
Everything about Jesse said he did bite—in the kinds of places that made a woman catch her breath and arch her back.
Heat surged through Cheyenne’s body. She gathered her composure, by force of will, smiled a wooden smile and ordered herself to act normally.
It wasn’t seeing Jesse that had thrown her, she realized, as she took her chair at the poker table with Sierra and the others. At least, not initially. It was seeing Jesse here, where she used to come looking for her dad, with his clothes rumpled and his beard growing in. It was knowing he’d been there since midnight.
“Are you all right?” Sierra asked her quietly.
“I’m fine,” Cheyenne said. She sat with her back to Jesse, but she could feel it when his gaze rested on her back, like a caress, and on the nape of her neck, too. Like a kiss.
It was bad enough, being reminded that neither she nor her mother had ever meant as much to Cash Bridges as this seedy poker room. Her visceral responses to Jesse’s presence only made things that much more complicated.
“You girls need a dealer?” It was Nurleen Gentry. She’d aged some, of course, since Cheyenne’s last visit when she was twelve, but she still smelled of stale cigarette smoke, cheap perfume and musty, half-forgotten dreams.
“Might as well make it as real as we can,” Elaine said.
Nurleen pulled back a chair, sat down next to Cheyenne and nudged her with a plump arm while reaching with the other hand for the new deck of cards in the middle of the table. “How you doin’, kid?” she asked. “It’s been a long time.”
Cheyenne’s throat ached. She swallowed, summoned up a smile. Met Nurleen’s knowing eyes. “I’m doing okay,” she answered. “How about you?”
“It’s a living,” Nurleen said, opening the package of cards, setting aside the jokers and beginning to shuffle. “Your daddy was a good man. We miss him around here.”
Sierra, Elaine and Janice all pretended not to be listening, fiddling with purses, shutting off cell phones, fluffing their hair.
Busy, busy, busy.
And not missing a word or the slightest nuance.
Suddenly, Cheyenne was twelve again. She wondered if she could speak without bursting into tears.
“Everybody ante up,” Elaine said brightly.
“You sound as though you know what you’re talking about,” Janice marveled.
“I told you, I play Hold ’Em on my computer all the time.”
“Then you ought to know,” Janice told her, “that there’s no ante in this game. There are blinds.”
Blinds, Cheyenne recalled, were the gradually increasing amounts players had to contribute, in turn, after every new hand was dealt. As the game progressed, the blinds got progressively steeper. It gave her a curious kind of comfort having something to think about besides Jesse, and what her dad’s penchant for poker had done to the family.
Nurleen produced a tray of multicolored chips from beneath the table and began dividing them.
“We’ll worry about blinds later,” Sierra said, biting her lower lip. “Like, when we figure out what they are.”
Masculine laughter rumbled, low, around the other table.
Cheyenne squirmed on her chair.
“I’ll teach you all you need to know,” Nurleen said. She turned to look toward the other table. “You guys keep it down over there. We’re trying to play some serious poker here.”
More laughter.
Nurleen faced the novices again. Sighed. Dealt two cards, facedown, to each player.
Sierra, Elaine and Janice all peeked at their cards.
Cheyenne didn’t touch hers.
Elaine raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll wait for the flop,” Cheyenne explained.
Nurleen gave a barely perceptible smile, set one card aside and laid three more faceup in the middle of the table.
King of clubs. Ace of diamonds. Ace of spades.
“Bets?” Nurleen asked when nobody moved or spoke.
Cheyenne separated three red chips from a stack and pushed them forward.
“You’re betting without even looking at your cards?” Janice asked dubiously.
“She wants to see the turn,” Nurleen said.
“Fourth card,” Elaine clarified.
“I’m not betting, then,” Janice said.
“That’s called folding,” said Sierra. She glanced in Cheyenne’s direction, then tossed in three chips of her own.
Elaine took another look at her cards. “Fold.”
That left Sierra and Cheyenne still in play. Cheyenne met Sierra’s bet and raised.
Sierra shook her head, mystified. Then she matched and raised.
The four
th card came down. Ace of clubs.
Cheyenne felt a slight movement behind her and knew, without looking, that Jesse had left the other table to watch the women’s game. Pretending he wasn’t there, she turned back the corners of her cards.
Sierra stayed in the game.
So did Cheyenne.
The fifth card, the river, was the king of diamonds.
More bets were made.
Jesse exuded heat.
Sierra, flushed with excitement, went all in, pushing all her chips to the center of the table.
Cheyenne called.
“Three of a kind!” Sierra crowed, laying down the king of spades, to go with the pair of kings on the table and a six of hearts.
Jesse whispered a mild expletive.
Cheyenne turned over an ace of hearts and the fourth king. “Full house,” she said.
“Does that beat what I have?” Sierra asked.
Jesse groaned, dragged up a chair between Sierra and Cheyenne.
“Ladies,” he said, “you need help.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LADIES, YOU NEED HELP. Having spoken in haste, Jesse now realized he would be repenting at leisure.
Three pairs of female eyes narrowed on him, glittering with indignation.
Definitely not the smartest thing you’ve ever said, McKettrick.
On top of keeping his mouth shut, he should have kept his distance, too.
Cheyenne’s hair was down, tumbling to the middle of her back in fresh-scented splendor. She wore a tight little pink T-shirt and jeans that clung snugly to her sleek figure, and just being in close proximity made Jesse want her with a kind of primitive ferocity he’d never experienced before.
He rubbed his beard-stubbled chin with one hand. What he ought to have done was go home at a decent hour, sleep like a dead man, then get up and lather his face, scrape off a layer of ugly with a razor. After a long, hot shower, with the sprayer set on Sandblast.
Then, remembering that Sierra and her friends had a poker game planned for today, right here at Lucky’s, he could have shown up as if by accident. Ambled in and acted surprised.
Too late for all that now.
The truth was, he’d forgotten about Sierra’s game, not to mention her lame-ass plan—for one of the group to get all the way to the final table in Vegas, and carry off the big pot—until the moment she’d walked through the doorway with Elaine and Janice, with Cheyenne bringing up the rear. She’d paused on the threshold when her gaze had met and locked with his, with an almost audible impact.
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