Now, he was sinking fast. It was Sierra who threw him a lifeline.
“Well, Jesse,” she drawled, with a little smile, “fancy meeting you here.”
Cheyenne wasn’t looking at him, but she shifted in her chair, as though to move it an inch or two away. But she didn’t move, and Jesse was more relieved than he liked to admit.
“Of all people,” Elaine added wryly. Her eyes moved from him to Cheyenne and back again, adding up the numbers. He’d gone to school with both Elaine and Janice; knew them better than his own sisters, since they were closer to his own age. Unfortunately, they knew him just as well. The mild indignation they’d greeted him with at first had given way to speculative amusement.
“Just imagine,” Janice said, heaping it on. “Jesse McKettrick in an all-night poker game. Will wonders never cease?”
At last, Cheyenne spared him a glance.
We don’t need your help, it said.
Jesse supposed that was preferable to Get lost, you loser. Nothing to do but brazen it out. Make the best of an awkward situation.
“On second thought,” he said with an ease he didn’t feel, “Cheyenne can probably show you everything you need to know.”
She frowned.
“About poker,” he clarified.
Still room for the other boot, he thought. Just open your mouth a little wider, hotshot. You can jam it right in there, alongside the first one.
“Looks as if you’ve been winning,” Sierra remarked, glancing toward the pile of chips he’d left on the other table. Without looking that way himself, he knew Utah Slim and the others were glaring at him. He was holding up the game; they wanted a chance to win their money back.
“I always win,” he might have answered, if he hadn’t caught himself in time. Still one boot on the floor, anyway. The other one was halfway down his throat and fixing to choke him to death.
Jesse pushed back his chair, stood. “I guess I’d better finish what I started,” he said.
“Guess so,” Sierra agreed.
He looked down at Cheyenne, risked laying one hand on her shoulder for a moment, then turned and walked away.
Utah Slim’s hound-dog eyes were smoke-reddened and bleary. “For a minute there, McKettrick,” he said, low and gruff, “I thought you were about to duck out on us. Play another game. And I’m not talking about poker.”
Jesse’s temper surged, but he kept it under wraps. Mostly. “You a sore loser, Utah?” he asked easily. He’d almost said Milton instead of Utah, but the old man probably would have overturned the table in a rage if he had. Then there’d have been a fight, and he didn’t want Cheyenne and Sierra and the others in the middle of a knock-down, drag-out brawl.
Utah checked his watch—a thin Rolex at odds with his baggy trousers, stained polo shirt and ancient Diamondbacks jacket—and winced visibly. “I gotta get out of here, soon. Who’s dealing?” He threw an irritated glance in Nurleen’s direction. She was still busy at the estrogen table, but she caught the look and threw it right back. Overhand.
“I’ll do it,” sighed Fred Gibbons, the only other local in the game besides Jesse himself. Five men remained, counting Jesse and Utah. The other two were Utah’s buddies; Jesse was acquainted with them, since they played on the same circuit, but he didn’t figure them for insurance salesmen like Milton “Utah Slim” Jackson. They were hard-bitten, experienced players with cold, watchful eyes. The kind of men who never offered their names.
Jesse stacked his chips, waiting out the deal. He didn’t look at his cards until the flop was down and, as usual, the poker gods were with him.
“Fold,” he said, when it was his turn to bet.
“You gonna stonewall us?” Utah asked.
“I wanna see them cards,” added one of his friends.
“I don’t have to show them,” Jesse said, “and you know it.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the table, heavy and charged.
Jesse waited.
“He’s right, Utah,” Fred, the dealer, put in, but only after a swallow that made his Adam’s apple travel up and down his neck a couple of times, like an elevator with a button stuck.
Utah stared at Jesse.
Jesse stared back.
Happy chatter wreathed the women’s table.
“Next time,” Utah said with resignation, tossing in his cards.
Reluctantly, his friends did the same. They didn’t look resigned, though; they looked pissed off.
Nurleen, who had a finely honed sense of when things might go south in a hurry, left the ladies to trundle over.
“You want to cash in those chips, Jesse, or shall I put them in the safe?” she asked.
“Put them in the safe,” Jesse answered, as he always did.
Utah and the buddies pushed back their chairs, got up. Jesse figured the bulge under the one man’s denim jacket for a piece, but guns weren’t uncommon in Arizona, especially in card rooms like Lucky’s. Half the people in the state were packing.
If Cheyenne and Sierra and the other women hadn’t been around, he wouldn’t have been worried. As it was, he calculated how long his reach would have to be to get hold of the snub-nosed .45 Nurleen kept in an old holster nailed sideways to the underside of the tabletop.
Nurleen shunted Fred aside and sat down in her regular chair. No doubt, she was picking up the same vibes as Jesse. “Any trouble starts here,” she said, addressing Utah and his posse, “and I’ll be the one to finish it.”
“We’ll go,” Utah said quickly, all bluster. He probably had insurance up the yingy, and didn’t want his wife collecting. “Don’t want to wear out our welcome.”
“See that you don’t,” Nurleen said.
Jesse slid a glance toward the women’s table. Wished they’d all get up and leave. Utah might be concerned about wearing out his welcome, and there was his alter ego, Insurance Man, who had a lot of good customers in Indian Rock, to consider, but the buddies clearly didn’t give a rat’s ass if they made a bad impression. There were other games, in other towns. They knew Jesse’d thrown the last hand, quit while he was ahead, and they weren’t happy about it.
“We been losin’ all night,” complained the one with the bulge, while Utah and the friend gathered chips.
“That’s why they call it gambling,” Jesse observed. Once again, he looked toward Cheyenne, and this time, their gazes connected.
Cheyenne’s eyes widened, and he saw a knowing there that could only have come from sitting through a thousand games, waiting for her dad to lose the rent money.
Jesse gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
Cheyenne was quick; he’d give her that. She sprang to her feet, hesitated a fraction of a second and then blurted out, “I think I’m going to be sick!”
With that, she slapped a hand over her mouth and dashed from the room.
Sierra, Elaine and Janice, being women, rushed after her.
Jesse gave a silent sigh that seemed to rise from the soles of his feet.
The man with the gun slipped a hand inside his jacket.
But he wasn’t fast enough on the draw. Nurleen had the snub-nose out before the outsider could clear denim.
“You get out of here,” she said, cocking the pistol with an ease that would have given Doc Holliday pause, “and don’t ever come back.”
“Put that thing away, Nurleen,” Utah grumbled. “We’re leaving. We can cash in our chips some other time.”
Without looking away from the buddy, Nurleen answered, “You ought to run with a better crowd of people, Milton. These yahoos are going to get you into serious trouble one day.”
The buddy flushed a muddy-red at the insult, but there wasn’t much he could do, unless he wanted to get himself shot, and nothing he could say. He flung a bowie knife of a glare at Jesse, turned on his heel and headed for the back door, slamming it behind him. Utah and buddy number two followed.
Nurleen lowered the .45 and let out a long breath when they were gone. “I’m getting too old for thi
s shit,” she said.
Jesse got out of his chair, leaned down to plant a kiss on top of her graying head. “Thanks, Deadeye.”
“You’d better not go out the back way,” Nurleen said. “Milton’s probably past the city limits by now, but I’ll bet that pair of snakes he brought in here with him will be watching the door, just waiting to jump you.”
Jesse took the gun out of Nurleen’s hand, crouched and slid the weapon back into place under the table. Looking up into her face, he grinned. “I’ll be all right,” he told her.
“All you McKettricks think you’re invincible,” Nurleen said huffily. “Whole damn outfit’s cocky, if you ask me.” She smiled, but tears gleamed in her eyes. She took his hand and squeezed it, hard. “You be careful, Jesse.”
“I will,” he said, straightening.
“You’re a damn liar,” Nurleen retorted.
“Don’t spread it around.”
Nurleen got up from her chair, looking a little shaky, and crossed the room to lock the back door.
“Quick thinking on Cheyenne’s part,” she said, throwing the bolt. “There’s a lot of Cash Bridges in her. You see the way she played that first hand?”
“I saw,” Jesse confirmed thoughtfully, and headed for the inner door.
The restaurant was stone empty—even the fry cook was gone.
Through the front windows, Jesse could see Cheyenne and Sierra and the other members of the ladies’ poker club huddled in the parking lot. Delores was out there, too, along with a straggle of customers. They were all staring at the place as though they expected flames to shoot through the roof.
To complete the scene, Deputy Terp’s cruiser zipped in, lights whirling.
With a grin, Jesse made for the front door.
“Wyatt,” he said, with a nod, as Myrna’s eldest son got out of the car and took a few steps toward him.
Wyatt’s plain-featured face tightened. “You know you’re supposed to call me John,” he said, frowning.
Jesse tugged at the brim of his baseball cap. “Yes, sir, Wyatt,” he replied. “I know that.”
Wyatt’s jaw tightened. “What’s going on here, anyway? Why’s everybody out here in the parking lot?”
Jesse hooked eyeballs with Cheyenne again before answering. “Just a little disagreement in the card room,” he said, addressing the whole assembly, as well as Wyatt Terp. “It’s safe to go back inside.”
Just then, an old red pickup shot out of the alley that ran behind Lucky’s, bald tires flinging up gravel.
Nurleen had been right, then. Utah was long gone, but the buddies had hung around, out by Jesse’s truck, hoping to take a few strips out of his hide.
“Damnation,” Wyatt sputtered, dashing for the cruiser to give chase. “This ain’t the Indianapolis Speedway!”
Jesse went after him. Caught up to him just as he slid behind the wheel. “One of them’s packing, Wyatt,” he warned.
Wyatt nodded, reached for his radio, asked for backup, slammed the door and shot out of the lot with his siren blaring. Jesse would have followed, to even the odds a little, but Terp was an experienced cop. There would be more deputies converging up the road—and, anyway, it was unlikely the buddies would be stupid enough to draw on an officer of the law just to avoid a speeding ticket.
Cheyenne broke away from Sierra and her friends to approach Jesse. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Jesse wanted to kiss her till her toes curled. Instead, he resettled his hat and countered, “Are you? I know the food isn’t the best at Lucky’s, but I’ve never known it to give anybody an instantaneous case of food poisoning.”
She flushed, threw a pretend punch at his chest and then laughed. It was a self-conscious sound, though, and she wouldn’t quite meet his eyes.
He curled a finger under her chin, not giving a damn who was watching or what conclusions they might draw. “You’ve got good instincts, Cheyenne,” he said quietly. “You picked up on something in there that a lot of people would have missed.”
“I’ve seen a lot of games go bad,” she said. Wyatt’s siren gave a couple of distant whoops, far up the road, and then went silent. She looked that way, then back to Jesse’s face. “You’d better watch your back,” she told him. “The big guy’s nobody to worry about, but those other two—”
Jesse was moved by her concern in a way he hadn’t been by Nurleen’s, and it didn’t take a shrink to say why. “Be careful,” he said. “You might give me the impression that you give a damn about me, and not just those five-hundred acres you want to buy.”
She looked away. Folks were meandering back into Lucky’s, flowing past them in a divided stream.
Jesse let his hand fall to his side.
“I took a job with McKettrickCo,” Cheyenne said. “I start tomorrow.”
Jesse felt a peculiar mixture of relief and dread. If she was going to work for Keegan and Rance, then she must have resigned from the real-estate outfit, which meant the land wouldn’t be an issue between them anymore. On the other hand, his cousins were both single, and not above charming an attractive woman whenever the opportunity afforded itself.
Cheyenne was one hell of an opportunity.
“That’s good, I guess,” he said.
A brief silence buckled in the air between them, like a live wire getting too much charge.
“Jesse, I—” Cheyenne began. But then she stopped. Bit her lower lip.
“What?” he prompted.
She seemed fascinated by the gravel at their feet, but she finally looked up at him again. Smiled thinly. “If you change your mind about selling that land, I can still facilitate the deal.”
Disappointment hollowed his middle. “Guess I’d better get on home,” he said. “See to the horses. Maybe grab a little sleep.” He’d noticed her car, parked next to Sierra’s SUV. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have offered to drop her off on the way back to the ranch.
She caught at his arm as he turned to walk away. “Jesse?”
He stopped. Waited.
Another struggle played out in her face. “I—we need to talk. Do you think you could come by our place for supper tonight? Mom and Mitch will be there, but—”
Something quickened inside Jesse, an uneasy exhilaration. He’d felt the same way the first time he’d ridden a bronc in a rodeo. “Sounds serious,” he said when she left the sentence hanging in midair. “Tell you what. I’ll grill a couple of steaks at the ranch. Seven o’clock?”
If he hadn’t been holding his breath for her answer, he might have smiled at her obvious consternation. She knew as well as he did that, one of these times, the circumstances were going to be just right and the two of them would end up in a sweaty tangle between the sheets.
Maybe even tonight.
The prospect electrified Jesse. Woke up everything inside him, tired as he was.
“Okay,” she said uncertainly and after a long internal deliberation.
Jesse wanted to give a jubilant yell and toss his hat in the air, but he didn’t. He’d spook Cheyenne if he did, and he wasn’t about to take the chance.
Sierra, Elaine and Janice came out of the restaurant, in a chattering gaggle, and Sierra was schlepping an extra purse.
“Guess the practice game is over,” Cheyenne said with a faint smile.
“Guess so,” Jesse agreed.
“Should we walk you to your truck?” Sierra asked him, looking worried as she forked over Cheyenne’s handbag. All four of them must have left their gear behind when Cheyenne had caught Jesse’s signal and had bolted from the poker room. “Those guys might have doubled back, or they could have friends—”
Jesse chuckled. “This isn’t Tombstone, Sierra,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
Sierra clearly wasn’t convinced. “I could call Travis—he’s in town, meeting with the contractor about our new house. I’d feel better if he followed you out to the ranch, just in case—”
“Sierra,” Jesse interrupted. “Chill.”
“I’m
calling him,” Sierra decided aloud, reaching into her purse to pull out her phone.
“Sierra.”
“Oh, okay,” Sierra said. “But I don’t like it.”
Jesse kissed her cheek, tipped his hat and left.
“I THINK IT WOULD BE SAFER,” Elaine said as Cheyenne watched Jesse disappear around the side of Lucky’s Bar and Grill, “to hold the next practice game at somebody’s house.”
“Good idea,” Sierra replied thoughtfully. Out of the corner of her eye, Cheyenne saw that her friend had watched Jesse out of sight, too. “We have lots of food left over from the party. How about tomorrow night on the Triple M?”
Elaine and Janice nodded.
A moment passed, then Cheyenne nodded, too.
They all agreed to meet at Sierra’s the next evening, at seven, and went their separate ways.
Cheyenne sat stone still in her car, her heart pounding, her stomach churning.
Now that she’d let her guard down, she had to deal with the near-miss that had just taken place in Lucky’s card room. Sierra and the others probably didn’t suspect how near a miss it had been, even with all the drama of exiting the building at Cheyenne’s insistence, the arrival of the deputy sheriff, and the red truck roaring out of the alley at top speed.
Cheyenne knew only too well what might have happened.
She’d seen men pull knives over a hand of cards.
She’d hidden behind bars during fistfights, with glass from broken bottles and shattered mirrors raining down on her head.
She’d been driven home in the backseat of squad cars because Cash, bloody from some brawl, had been arrested for disorderly conduct. More than once, angry players had come pounding at the door of the house out beyond the railroad tracks in the middle of the night, shouting threats. Another time, she and her mom and dad had been out for a drive, on one of Cash’s rare poker-free Sunday afternoons, when a car full of sore losers had run them off the road.
Her dad had greeted them with a shotgun, pulled out from under the car seat, and Cheyenne had been so scared, she’d almost wet herself.
“Get down!” Ayanna had ordered, breathless with fear, but Cheyenne hadn’t obeyed. She’d seen the whole thing.
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