Cheyenne shook off the impressions, along with the tenderness those stirred in her.
He was the enemy.
Jesse didn’t need to play in the early rounds to enter the Vegas tournament; he was the defending champion, which meant he was comped in, with his entry fees paid, a free suite and God only knew what other perks. There was only one reason for him to be here, in a local casino, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and that was to bring her down. Knock her out of the running, just to prove he could.
Adrenaline surged through Cheyenne’s system. Damn him, if he thought she was going to slink away like a kicked dog. Most likely, he’d beat her—he was, after all, a shark—but not without a fight.
Her focus intensified. Everything she knew about poker came back in a rush of dizzying clarity.
She met and held his gaze.
Bring it on, she told him silently.
He gave a semblance of a grin, as if he’d heard the thought. Then he nodded.
Cheyenne survived the first round.
So did Jesse.
She hung in through the second, too, with a back-to-the-wall determination to stay alive.
Jesse came with her.
All afternoon, it went that way. Players fell away, including Elaine, Janice and Sierra, who were now clustered together on the other side of the fat velvet rope marking off the battleground. Mitch and Ayanna were somewhere in the crowd, too. Ayanna didn’t approve of poker any more than Cheyenne did, but she wanted to lend moral support.
The games wore on.
Finally, at seven o’clock in the evening, they were down to the final table.
Cheyenne. A man who looked like a truck driver. An old woman with blue hair. A biker, with a bald head and tattoos up both arms.
And Jesse.
Cheyenne began to sweat, on the inside, where it didn’t show.
She figured she could take the truck driver. He was nervous, despite an outward pretense of calm. The tells were there, in the tick under his right eye and the way he tapped his fingertips on the table between hands.
The old woman was harder to read. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and a cotton print dress, and looked as though she might have left a pot of jelly simmering on the stove at home.
The biker cared too much. He leaned slightly forward in his chair and constantly fiddled with his dwindling stack of chips.
And then there was Jesse.
Cool.
Quiet.
Totally in control.
God, how she wanted to beat him.
The biker went broke first, then the truck driver.
The old woman held on, then went all in on a bluff.
Jesse called.
Granny went down.
Cheyenne waited for her cards. Internally, she was a jabbering mess, and Jesse might have been picking up on that, but she’d learned a few things from her dad. One of them was never to reveal any emotion at all, not at the poker table, anyway.
She got a two and a four, off-suit.
The flop was three queens.
She was screwed, unless another two and four came up. Then she’d have a full house.
She could fold, but then Jesse, being the only other player still in the game, would take the pot by default. He had three times as many chips as she did as it was, and another win would put him in an unassailable position. The blinds were steep by then, and the next one would clean her out.
She shoved in a small stack of chips. Out of the corner of one eye, she caught sight of Mitch and her mother, watching from the sidelines. Ayanna put one hand to her mouth.
The turn came down, and it was a four of clubs.
Cheyenne didn’t move a muscle, but her heart was pounding.
Jesse raised the stakes, quietly relentless. There was blood in the water, and he knew it. He was circling in for the kill.
Cheyenne matched his bet.
The river, the fifth card, was a jack of spades, useless to Cheyenne.
Jesse sat back in his chair. Smiled a little.
Damn him. He had the other queen.
He went all in.
Cheyenne did the same, knowing there was no way in hell she could take the pot, unless Jesse was bluffing. Even if he was and she won, she’d have to surrender most of the chips to make up for the disparity in their bets.
He wasn’t bluffing. He had the fourth queen.
Cheyenne left her cards facedown, which was her prerogative, and pushed back her chair to stand.
Jesse stood, too, seemingly oblivious to the applause, and the exuberant man who appeared at his side with a microphone.
After all, Jesse McKettrick was used to winning.
No big deal.
Calling on all the dignity she possessed, Cheyenne turned and walked away. As she passed Sierra, Elaine and Janice, who were staring at her in awe, as though she’d just parted the Red Sea, as though she’d won, she shook her head.
She didn’t want them to follow her.
Didn’t want anyone to follow her.
All she wanted was a few minutes alone.
She spotted a side exit and headed for it. Stepped outside into a drizzling, chilly rain. It was dark, and the lights on the side of the building seemed muted.
The door opened behind her.
“Cheyenne?”
She didn’t have to turn around. It was Jesse. He’d come to gloat, of course.
“Go away,” she said without looking at him. “You won. You’re a better player than I am.”
He stepped in front of her, hooked a finger under her chin, so she had to look at him. “Is that why you think I came? To take you down?”
She swallowed. “Why else would you do it?”
“Because I love the game. Maybe because I love—”
Cheyenne’s heart stopped. “Don’t,” she whispered.
“Cheyenne, will you listen to me?”
“No.”
He kissed her, lightly. Cheyenne was electrified.
“I figured out one thing, while I was up there on the ridge feeling sorry for myself, Cheyenne,” he said. “I love you. I think you love me. So what if we start over? Play with a new deck?”
“You lied to me.”
“That makes us even,” Jesse said.
“You could have told me about Brandi.”
“I know,” he answered. “I’m sorry.”
She blinked. “You are?”
“Yes.” He waited.
“I tried to tell you about Nigel.”
Jesse nodded. “I know,” he repeated. “I guess I just didn’t want to hear it.”
Stubbornly, Cheyenne folded her arms. It was cold out and, besides, she had a dangerous impulse to throw them around Jesse’s neck and hang off him like a groupie at a rock concert. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t mention a little thing like being married.”
“I didn’t think of it as a marriage, Cheyenne,” Jesse answered. “Brandi and I were together for a week. It’s not as if we had any kind of a history together, or kids. It was a sexcapade.”
“Very colorful. Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He grinned. “No. But I can think of a couple of other things that might do the trick.”
Cheyenne opened her mouth to speak, but before a word came out, she saw a shadow move behind Jesse. There was another flash of motion, then a sickening thunk. Jesse’s eyes went blank, and he crumpled at her feet.
“CHEATING BASTARD,” said one of the two men Cheyenne had seen in the back room at Lucky’s, when Jesse had signaled her, with a single look, that things were about to go south in a hurry.
The assailant was holding a crowbar, and the other man had a knife.
Cheyenne stepped between them and Jesse, who was bleeding at the back of his head and groaning. She had no weapons, nothing but rage.
“Step aside,” Crowbar man said. “We’re not through with him yet.”
“Security!” a woman’s voice screamed in the thrumming void that buzzed around Cheye
nne like a swarm of invisible bees. “Somebody get security!”
Ayanna.
“Like we’re afraid of a bunch of casino cops,” scoffed Crowbar man. He shoved Cheyenne aside, sending her crashing against a Dumpster, and raised the steel bar over Jesse with both hands.
Acting on primitive instinct, and nothing else, Cheyenne scrambled toward Jesse’s prone form, intending to cover him, absorb the blow herself, anything.
She was nearly run over in the process.
By Mitch’s wheelchair.
He zoomed into Crowbar man, mowed him down, screaming like a warrior in the midst of battle.
Crowbar man shrieked in pain and terror, and his buddy dropped his knife, whirled and ran.
Mitch probably would have backed over Crowbar man if Ayanna hadn’t stopped him. Meanwhile, Jesse sat up, dazed, bloody and grinning like an idiot.
Security swarmed around them, radios crackling.
Cheyenne crawled to Jesse, threw her arms around him.
Sobbed with relief.
“Your brother is a good man to have around in a fight,” Jesse said, close to her ear. With one hand, he plucked the pins from her hair, so it fell down around her shoulders.
She rested her forehead against his.
The rain came down harder.
Medics closed in.
Somebody pulled Cheyenne to her feet, and she was surprised to discover that it was Mitch. Ayanna wrapped her in a tight embrace.
“Oh, honey. Are you all right?”
Cheyenne nodded, sniffling.
An ambulance arrived, and Jesse, protesting the whole time, was strapped to a gurney and loaded into the back, right alongside the man who had attacked him. Cheyenne wanted to go with Jesse, but it wasn’t in the cards. A policeman scrambled in, the doors closed, and the ambulance sped away.
Cheyenne was led back into the casino, by security, examined by a staff medic, and questioned extensively. Ayanna and Mitch stayed with her until she was finally, blessedly, allowed to leave.
Her mother and brother had come to the tournament in the van, but they left in Cheyenne’s company Escalade, with Ayanna at the wheel. Mitch rode shotgun, his chest swelled with pride because he’d been able to help Jesse when it had mattered.
Cheyenne, dazed with exhaustion and relief, was content to sit in the backseat.
When they got home, she was content to let her mother and brother fuss over her. She sat on the front porch, with Mitch, watching the rain fall, while Ayanna made tea.
“You were great, Mitch,” she said, when she thought she could trust herself to speak.
“You think Jesse’s okay?” Mitch fretted.
“I know he is,” Cheyenne said, reaching over to squeeze her brother’s hand. “It takes more than a crowbar to crack that hard McKettrick skull of his.”
“You came so close—at the tournament, I mean.”
Cheyenne smiled.
“You know, don’t you,” Mitch went on, “that you get the seat in Vegas? Jesse’s already in. I heard him tell one of the casino officials, during the last break, that he was forfeiting the prize. That means it goes to you.”
Cheyenne didn’t have time to absorb that bit of information.
The phone rang, the sound muffled by the walls of the house and the rain.
Cheyenne rose out of the ancient lawn chair she’d been sitting in and rushed inside to answer.
Ayanna, with a tea bag in one hand and an empty cup in the other, stood staring at the jangling black antique affixed to the kitchen wall.
Cheyenne grabbed the receiver. Her heart pounded and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. It had to be Jesse. It had to be.
It was.
“Hello?” he said when she didn’t speak.
“Jesse.” The name whooshed out of Cheyenne, like a sigh of relief. She’d been putting on a brave front, for Mitch’s sake, mostly, but now she could cry. “Are you—are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “Did I dream the part where I told you I loved you?”
She laughed, but she was crying at the same time. “No,” she said. “You didn’t dream it.”
“I don’t recall getting an answer.”
She drew in her breath. Let it out, slow and moist. “I love you, Jesse,” she said.
“Good,” he answered. “Good.”
“Are you all right, Jesse? What did the doctors say?”
“They stitched up the back of my head and plastered on a bandage. I have to have a CAT scan, and if that’s clear, I can come home. Or, at least, I could—if I had a ride.”
“I’ll come and get you,” Cheyenne said.
“I’ll be the guy in the gauze hat,” Jesse answered.
She laughed.
“Drive carefully, Cheyenne. The roads are slick and Arizona drivers aren’t used to rain.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised.
He gave her the name of the hospital and said goodbye.
Ayanna watched as she hung up the phone, a tentative smile playing on her lips. “Will you drop me off at the casino, Chey? So I can pick up the van? I need it for work tomorrow.”
Cheyenne nodded.
Ayanna didn’t move. “This can be good, Cheyenne. You and Jesse, I mean. Let it be good. Just relax and let it be good.”
“I will, Mom,” Cheyenne said softly. She took the cup and the tea bag from her mother’s hands and set them aside. Hugged her hard.
Forty-five minutes later, Cheyenne rushed into the waiting room at the hospital in Flagstaff.
Jesse was waiting, seated in a wheelchair.
She went to him, cupped her hands on either side of his beard-stubbled face. “The scan?” she asked, and everything inside her, every cell of every organ, went still, waiting, reaching for the answer.
“Nothing in there but a few rocks,” Jesse said, tapping his head.
She kissed him. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I was thinking we could play poker,” Jesse told her as a nurse wheeled him outside, over to the parked Escalade.
“Poker?” Cheyenne marveled when the two of them were alone, Jesse buckled into the passenger seat and her behind the wheel.
“Strip,” Jesse said. “Winner take all.”
Cheyenne laughed. “You’re on, buddy,” she replied.
They played sitting cross-legged in the middle of Jesse’s bed, and Cheyenne was on a losing streak. Every time Jesse won a hand, she had to take off another article of clothing, and he celebrated the victory by kissing and caressing every newly uncovered part of her anatomy.
She was down to her panties, her nipples wet and hard from Jesse’s tongue, when she finally protested.
Grinning, he got up, pulled his sweatshirt off over his head. Unbuttoned his jeans, tossed them aside, along with his boxer briefs. Except for the wad of gauze at the back of his head, he looked like his deliciously usual self.
Cheyenne swallowed, her gaze traveling from his impressive erection to his face, then back down again. She took off her panties.
He laughed at her expression, stretched out on the bed and reached for her.
Cheyenne gasped with anticipation, thinking he was going to set her astraddle of him, and take her in a single, soul-splintering thrust. She loved riding him like that, loved having him so deep inside her.
Instead, he scooted down until his head was between her legs. He nuzzled through, took her into his mouth and sucked, gently at first, and then with a hunger that set her blood on fire.
Clasping her hips, he stayed with her until she threw back her head, shouting with ecstatic surrender, her body buckling helplessly in the throes of a blazing release.
When it was over, she fell onto the mattress beside him, delectably spent.
He moved up, took her into his arms. Kissed her temple.
She crooned with contentment and cuddled against his side. “Maybe you should be resting,” she said. “After all, you just got out of the hospital.”
“Like hell I’
m going to rest,” Jesse replied. “And you’re not, either.”
She ran a hand slowly down over his chest and belly, closed it around his erection. Stroked him.
He groaned.
She went down on him.
And when he shattered, she was there to pick up the pieces.
One week later…
EXCEPT FOR THE BANDAGE, Jesse looked like any other member of the wedding party. He stood proudly beside Travis at the front of church in his fancy tuxedo.
Travis, of course, had eyes only for Sierra.
She made a beautiful bride, in her voluminous white dress and pearl-studded veil. Liam, precious in a miniature tux of his own, stood next to her, holding a pillow with Travis’s and Sierra’s wedding bands shimmering on top of it.
Cheyenne watched, stricken with love for Jesse and happiness for her friends, from the third pew. Ayanna sat beside her, and Mitch was on the aisle, in his chair.
“See?” Ayanna whispered, squeezing Cheyenne’s hand. “There is such a thing as a happy ending.”
Cheyenne nodded, but she didn’t take her gaze off Jesse.
As if he felt her eyes on him, he turned his head slightly and winked.
“Dearly beloved,” the minister began, to a chorus of female sniffles rising from the congregation, “we are gathered here—”
We are gathered here, Cheyenne thought.
Family.
Friends.
A whole community.
Gathered together as one, in celebration.
Somehow, Cheyenne reflected, her heart had found its way back to this place, and these people, and she had followed it, never dreaming what was in store for her here.
She had come home.
Home to Indian Rock.
Home to herself.
Home to Jesse.
At long, long last, Cheyenne Bridges had come home.
After the wedding, there was a reception in the hall adjacent to the sanctuary. Jesse, as best man, lifted a glass of champagne, gave a toast to the bride and groom.
Then came the cutting of the cake, and the band struck up a waltz.
Travis and Sierra took the floor first, alone, surrounded by a golden glow of love and summer sunlight. Cheyenne blinked away tears, watching them.
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