by Lisa Cooke
She took the last bite of her porridge and made a mental note to thank Mr. Stanley for the extra bit of sugar he had sprinkled on top. The deck was mostly deserted at this hour. A few people strolled to the restaurant or enjoyed coffee out in the deck chairs, but most took advantage of the cooler morning hours to sleep.
A man ambling in her direction grabbed her attention from the corner of her eye. Unruly dark brown hair sprung from beneath his hat, and untrimmed bangs covered much of his forehead. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, stopping in front of her.
“Yes?”
“I don’t mean to be forward, but have we met?”
Lottie smiled. “I don’t believe so.”
He removed his hat, allowing the brown curls to escape. “My name is Wayne Dawson.” He smiled.
Lottie held out her hand. “I’m Miss Lottie Mace.”
He took her hand in his, and she noticed his knuckles were smattered with red curly hairs. How odd. He shook her hand politely, then released it.
“I’ve booked passage on the Belle to go to the big poker tournament in St. Louis,” he said.
“Are you a gambler?”
“Oh, I try, but I think to be considered a gambler you have to win occasionally, don’t you?” He grinned.
She smiled. “It helps a little, or so I’ve been told.”
“Are you going to the tournament?”
“I, um, I work on the Belle.”
“Oh.”
Something akin to pity flickered in his eyes. Lottie started to tell him she normally wouldn’t work on a riverboat, but how could she do that without explaining why she found herself doing just that? Luckily, Dyer interrupted before the situation turned any more uncomfortable.
“Good morning, Miss Mace.” He spoke to Lottie, but his eyes were fastened on Mr. Dawson.
“My, oh my,” Wayne said. “If it isn’t Captain Obediah Straights.”
Lottie snapped her head toward Dyer. Captain?
Dyer’s gaze narrowed. “Do I know you?”
“I doubt it. But I was there when you were given your award. Not a soldier who fought in the war that hasn’t heard of Captain Straights.” Wayne offered his hand. “I’m Wayne Dawson.”
Dyer shook his hand warily. “Were you in the war?”
“Nah, but I followed the war in the newspapers and the like. You’re quite a legend, Captain.”
“I no longer go by Captain,” Dyer responded tersely.
He turned toward Lottie. “If you don’t mind going on up for our meeting, Miss Mace, I would like to speak with Mr. Dawson for a few minutes.”
Lottie reluctantly left the two gentlemen to their discussion. Who would have ever thought Dyer was a war hero? One of the South’s proud sons. Was there no end to that man’s surprises?
She glanced back before she headed up the steps to Dyer’s cabin. His intense expression was as dark as she had ever seen it. What ever Mr. Dawson had to say was of extreme interest to Dyer, more than just some passing conversation. Perhaps he would tell her when he joined her for lessons.
She continued to his room and tried his door, surprised to find it unlocked. It was an oddly intimate feeling to enter his room alone, despite the fact she had been in it many times. Once inside, she wasn’t sure what to do next. Pacing was an option, of course, but it was a small room and pacing might come across as fidgeting, so she took a chair at the table and tapped her fingers against the top.
Was finger tapping fidgeting? Probably. She clasped her hands on her lap and looked around the cabin.
Then her toe tapped.
Definitely fidgeting.
Maybe she should go ahead and get the cards out for the lesson. It would be a good opportunity for her to practice dealing while no one watched, anyway.
She went over to the bureau, opening the drawer where Dyer kept his deck. She spotted it quickly and was about to close the drawer when the edge of a tintype caught her eye. It was partially covered by a shirt, but enough of it was exposed to show a woman’s face.
She removed the picture. A beautiful young woman in a white gown sat in a fancy lady’s chair. Standing at her side was a young boy, no more than five or six. He wore his Sunday best and, based on the look on his face, he wasn’t too happy about it. He was a handsome little boy with thick black hair and dark luminous eyes.
Dyer’s eyes.
“I trust I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”
Lottie almost dropped the tintype at the sound of Dyer’s voice. She hadn’t heard him enter, and as tempting as it was to stuff the picture back into the drawer before facing him, she didn’t.
“Who are they?” She held the sepia image in front of her.
An unidentifiable emotion flickered across his face as he lifted the tintype from her hand, placing it back in the drawer.
“Just some people I once knew,” he muttered, then removed the cards from her hand. “Ready for today’s lesson?”
The last thing she wanted to think about was poker, but Lottie knew that asking any more about the woman and child would get her nowhere at the moment. So she said, “If you are,” and took her seat at the table.
“Did you learn what you needed to from Mr. Dawson?” she asked as he shuffled the deck. The slight hesitation in his hands confirmed her suspicion there was more to his conversation with Dawson than a casual discussion.
“I thought he might be able to give me some information, but I was wrong.” He finished his shuffle, then dealt each of them two cards facedown. “Up for a little Texas Hold’em, Miss Mace?”
There was a slight catch in his voice, and when her eyes locked with his across the table, the deep, aching emptiness she saw in their depths caused her heart to twinge. He glanced away.
“Dyer, I—”
“Well, Miss Mace?” he interrupted, and she realized with embarrassment she had used his first name. “Do you want to learn to play or not?”
When he returned his gaze to her eyes, his carefully built wall was back in place, and his soul was well guarded once again. Clearing her throat, she picked up her cards, surprised to see her hands trembling.
“Of course.” She fought to regain her composure. “I think I’m ready to learn a game.”
“You’re far from ready, but unfortunately you are also running out of time.”
A well-timed reminder.
“What are the rules for this game?”
“You can use your cards with any combination of five cards that will be dealt faceup on the table. The winner is the one with the best hand as a result. We will make our first bet with these two cards. Then I’ll lay three cards from the deck on the table, and we’ll bet again. There’s another round of betting after the fourth and fifth card.” He tapped the edge of his cards against the table. “You did bring money for betting, I assume?”
“I have some money saved, but I hardly think it would be wise for me to gamble with it just yet. You have a distinct advantage.”
“Hmmmmm.” He paused to think, though she suspected he’d already thought through this situation and was about to take advantage of her.
“Poker isn’t poker without the risks.” He returned to his bureau and retrieved a stack of chips in three different colors. “These,” he said, referring to the white ones, “will be worth five dollars. The reds are ten and the blue ones are twenty.” He counted out a stack. “Two hundred fifty dollars ought to be enough to start with.”
“I don’t have two hundred fifty dollars.”
“No, but I do.” He counted out his own stack. “If you win, I will pay you the amount in cash. That should help you with your stake, right?”
“Yes.” Two hundred fifty dollars would help a great deal toward her stake for the tournament, but she knew Dyer well enough by now to know there was a catch. “But what if you win?”
“I’ll take my payment . . . with a kiss.”
A kiss. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t kissed her before, and when she won the tournament, kissing would be the least o
f his requirements.
“Agreed.” She looked at her cards. A jack and a ten was a fairly good start. “I’ll open with five dollars.” She tossed a chip to the center of the table.
“I’ll see your bet and raise you forty.”
Lottie’s mouth dropped open. “Forty dollars?”
“Yes, Miss Mace, forty dollars.”
She tapped her cards on the table. “What do I do now?”
He shrugged. “That depends. If you think your hand can win, you want to call my bet, and we’ll turn over the next three cards. If you don’t think you have a good start, you fold and only lose the five dollars you’ve put in.”
“Oh.”
She concentrated on her hand again, hoping that somewhere among the clovers, a sign would magically appear. When none came, she realized she’d have to make this decision on her own.
“All right, I’ll call.” She picked up forty dollars of her chips and reluctantly added them to the table.
Dyer turned over the next three cards; an ace, a jack and another ten appeared.
She gasped. “Is it my turn to bet again?”
He nodded.
She had a pair. “I’m all in.” She shoved her chips to the center and smiled at him.
“You are not doing a very good job of masking your tells,” he warned.
“How do you know?”
“Good point,” he said. “I’ll call.”
He turned over the next two cards and another ace and ten were revealed.
She squealed and showed her cards. “I have a full house.”
She reached for the chips, but her grab was stopped when Dyer laid his hand on her hers. He turned over his cards to reveal a pair of aces. He had four of a kind.
“I believe, Miss Mace, my hand beats yours.”
She nodded silently.
“And since you have no more chips, I believe, it also means you owe me a kiss.”
“Yes.” She swallowed in an attempt to moisten her suddenly dry mouth.
He shoved back from the table and walked to her chair. “This will be much easier if you stand.”
The rumbling purr of his voice made her wonder if her knees would hold out long enough for her to make it to her feet. A deep breath gave her the fortification she needed to rise and face him.
The empty eyes that had met hers just a few moments before were now filled with something smoky and dark. He brushed his fingers against her cheek and down the column of her throat, where he slipped them under the thin chain around her neck. She felt him tug her momma’s locket from between her breasts before he clutched it in his hand and gently pulled her closer.
“It’s warm,” he whispered, then laid the locket back against her breasts, allowing his fingers to touch her heated skin for a moment before he slid his hands up her throat and cradled her head. Her body turned languid, and she watched, mesmerized, as he lowered his mouth to hers. She fought to control her breathing, but somewhere in the last few moments, all control had been taken over by his presence.
The essence of bay rum tickled her mind, and his warm breath brushed the side of her face as her eyes drifted closed to accept his lips to her . . . cheek?
It took a few moments for her mind and body to acknowledge the fact he had taken his payment with a chaste kiss on the side of her face. She should be relieved. She was relieved. She blinked her eyes and squared her shoulders, determined to be relieved. Which would be much easier if it were true.
“Paid in full, Miss Mace.” He tipped his head and stepped behind her to open his door. “Until next time,” he said in a form of dismissal, refusing to meet her eyes as she walked numbly out of his cabin.
Dyer closed the door and laid his forehead against the cool wood on the back. It had been a close call, and his body needed a few minutes to calm down. He could have had her. No doubt about it, but she was as innocent as a lamb, and she had no idea what she was doing to him.
Seemed only fitting, since he had no idea why she continually twisted him in knots. Maybe it was because she believed he could somehow save her from what ever she was running from.
Foolish woman.
The last one who’d believed that ended up dead.
Chapter Ten
Newt often watched the river from the top floor of the Belle. It was quiet there, and the breeze from the river helped clear his mind. Lately, it had needed a little clearing.
“Newt?” Lottie walked toward him from the stairs. “May I have a word with you?”
With a tip of his hat, he said, “Always a pleasure, Lottie. What can I help you with?”
“I found a picture in Dyer’s cabin a little while ago.” Blushing at the implications of her statement, she quickly added, “I had gone for a lesson, of course.”
“Of course,” Newt answered, trying to put her at ease.
“It was a picture of a woman and little boy. The boy looked like Dyer, but I don’t think it was him. I asked him about them, and he said they were just some people he knew once. Do you know who they might be?”
Newt rubbed his hand across his jaw, then leaned onto his elbows against the railing of the deck. This had the potential to get sticky. “Why do you want to know?”
“Whoever they are, it upset him.”
“He told you that?”
“He didn’t have to. I could see it in his eyes.”
Newt waited for a moment before answering, trying to determine how many of Dyer’s secrets he should give away.
Finally, he took a deep breath and sighed. “A few years ago, Dyer and I were in New Orleans, and he had a few too many. Well, actually we both did,” he added with a grin. “We had just left a whore house—” He stopped abruptly and winced. “Sorry.”
“Just continue with your story.”
He nodded. “Anyway, I could tell he was upset about something. Apparently the, uh, lady he’d been with looked like someone he knew. He kept saying it was his fault she was dead.”
“Who was dead?” she asked when he hesitated with his tale.
“When I asked him, he said, ‘Marianne.’ Then he looked at me like his guts were coming out and said she was his wife.”
“He’s never mentioned a wife to me.”
Newt shrugged. “Hasn’t to me either, before or since, but he said it was his fault she and Joshua were dead.”
“That must’ve been the little boy in the picture,” she whispered.
Newt nodded.
“Did he say why he blamed himself for their deaths?”
“He mumbled a lot of things. Most of it didn’t make any sense, but he said something about a man setting his home on fire while he was gone fighting in the war. Evidently they died in the fire, and he blames himself for not being there to help.”
“Does he know who did it?”
“One of the neighbors saw a man leave the house while it was still burning. Dyer knows the murderer was a soldier with the Confederacy, and he has a general description, but he doesn’t know his name. That’s why—”
“He goes into the towns alone,” Lottie finished for him. “He’s looking for the man who killed his family.”
Newt nodded.
“But he can’t blame himself for the sick actions of a rogue soldier.”
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
Lottie touched her locket. She understood a little about guilt. Even though she had never known her mother and never would’ve harmed her if she had, there still wasn’t a day gone by that she didn’t feel guilty for her death. “I’ve offered to help him find the killer more than once,” Newt said. “But this is something he seems set on doing by himself. I figure he has that right.”
“I suppose,” Lottie muttered, but only because it seemed impolite not to say something. In actuality, Newt’s information left her stunned. It explained so much about Dyer, and it seemed as though the more she learned, the more she wanted to help. Living for revenge made for an empty life.
“There are some things a man has to do, Lott
ie,” Newt said. “You can’t stop him, nor should you try.”
There he went, reading her mind again. “I have no intentions of doing anything of the sort. I’m only interested in Dyer for poker lessons.”
He chuckled. “And I’m going to St. Louis for the cold weather.”
“Well, from what I understand, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.” She refused to acknowledge his sarcasm. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a great deal to do before this evening.” She smiled and left Newt to head back to her room.
To night she intended to enter her first game, and she needed to spend time handling her new cards and studying her notes. She had twenty dollars, but she knew better than to risk all of it to night. She would start with five dollars, then see how she did from there.
Her boss, Mr. Craft, had encouraged her when she’d asked him if she could spend some of the evening at the tables. He seemed to think the novelty of a woman gambling would attract more men to the salon, though for the life of her, she didn’t know why. It wasn’t as though she had horns or purple hair. She simply wanted to play the cards like the other gamblers did.
The afternoon flew by, but as evening approached, the butterflies in her stomach doubled in number. She wasn’t afraid to play the game. It was the possibility of not being allowed at one of the tables she feared the most. She had no idea how the other men would react to her joining their game, and if one of them threw a big enough fit, she might not be allowed to try again. Then what would she do?
She hurried into her satin dress and down to the gaming salon, refusing to think of the consequences if she failed. Dyer wouldn’t arrive until sometime later, which was just as well. If she lost, at least he wouldn’t be there to witness her humiliation.
A table in the back of the room had already started to fill with eager gamblers. It was one of the lower ante tables she had kept an eye on for the last few nights. She sauntered over and smiled.
“You gentlemen mind if I join you?” she asked.
Ten eyebrows shot up at her question. Most of the men appeared at a loss for words, but one of the braver gents eventually cleared his throat and said, “You wantin’ to play cards with us?”
