McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [109]
Smiling to himself, Holt caught Rafe’s eye and folded his arms. As far as his face was concerned, he gave nothing away.
“See you ten and raise you another nickel,” the Captain said. He kept his cards close to his chest.
Rafe threw his in. “Too rich for my blood,” he said, still watching Holt.
As much to spite his brother as anything, Holt drew back a chair across from Lorelei and said, “Deal me in on the next hand.”
Lorelei’s cards were fanned, and covered the lower half of her face, but he still saw her cheeks go pink. She didn’t look at him, though he suspected it cost her an effort to avoid it. After squirming a little—he wasn’t sure if it was the cards or the fact that he meant to join the game—Lorelei tossed in a quarter. What the hell was she doing? Those cards she was holding weren’t for shit.
The Captain considered long and hard, ruminating, rearranging his hand, then ruminating some more. Finally, he thrust out a gusty sigh and folded.
“Bluff!” Lorelei cried joyously, and scooped up the pot.
“Not so fast,” the Captain said politely. “In this outfit it’s customary to show your cards, Miss Lorelei.”
She laid out a pitiful mix, each from a different suit, and not so much as a pair of deuces among them. Her eyes shone with defiant triumph when she met Holt’s gaze across the table.
“Damnation,” said the Captain.
“Go ahead and take your money,” Rafe urged Lorelei, but he was looking at Holt, and his expression was anything but brotherly.
“You deal,” the Captain said, shoving the deck over to Holt.
Holt picked up the cards and bent the ends back with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. When he let them go, they snaked into his other palm, neat as could be.
Lorelei’s eyes widened, then narrowed.
“Name your poison, Miss Fellows,” he said.
She blinked. “Poison?”
Holt flipped the cards back the other way, caught them as deftly as he always did.
“Five card stud,” Rafe said, planting himself beside Lorelei.
Holt slapped the deck down in front of the Captain. “Cut,” he said.
“HE CHEATS,” Lorelei complained, in a whisper, two hours later, as she struggled into her nightgown in the bedroom upstairs.
Melina, who had been reading an outdated newspaper by the light of a lantern, looked up, obviously confused. Tillie and the baby were already asleep. “Who?”
“Holt McKettrick, of course,” Lorelei sputtered.
“I guess you lost,” Melina observed, smiling a little.
“Lost? I was robbed.”
Melina chuckled.
“It’s not funny,” Lorelei said, flinging back the covers on her bed. “The man is a sharp. Have you ever seen the way he shuffles? I swear he was dealing those cards from the bottom of the deck.”
“Not Holt,” Melina said, with quiet certainty.
“Why not Holt?” Lorelei demanded.
“He likes to win too much. Cheating would take the fun out of it.”
Lorelei flopped down on the bed and wrenched the covers up to her chin, even though it was a hot night and she’d probably kick them off again before she managed to go to sleep. “He enjoyed taking my money.”
“And you wouldn’t have enjoyed taking his?”
Lorelei sat up. If Tillie and the baby hadn’t been sleeping in the next bed, she might have flung her pillow at Melina. “Whose side are you on, anyhow?”
“When it comes to you and Holt, I’m not sure,” Melina answered sagely. “I kind of like watching the two of you go at it.”
Lorelei muttered an exclamation.
“That’s the way it is with Gabe and me,” Melina said, very softly. “It’s the way we make love when we can’t be alone together.”
Lorelei sat up, gulped and lay down again. “That’s ridiculous,” she said, but suddenly she wanted to cry, and it wasn’t just because she felt so sorry for Melina.
“You’re in love with Holt McKettrick,” Melina told her, folding the newspaper and turning down the wick in the lantern until the light guttered and died. “I am not in love with that man!”
She’d been in love with Michael. She’d tried to love Creighton, to please her father. Michael had never once made her angry. Neither had Creighton