Snowbound Baby (Silhouette Romance) (9 page)

“All day? Don’t I get a chance to call the game?”

“Five-card stud is pure.”

“I still want the chance to call my game.”

“Fine. You deal next. You call the game.”

“Great.”

Cooper picked up his cards and had to work to keep his expression blank when he saw he had two aces. Grinning like a fool was not appropriate in poker. Especially not when the prize was such a good one. He’d never been given such a wonderful opportunity, and already luck was with him. He couldn’t help wondering what piece of clothing she would take off first. Her sweater seemed the obvious place to start.

His collar suddenly felt
tight and his nerves began to crackle. He couldn’t believe Zoe had caved about sleeping with him, but technically she wasn’t caving. She didn’t know he was a skilled poker player, so she thought she could win. Still, he understood why she was taking this risk. She was a bundle of emotion and unless she got a poker face for life, people would always take advantage of her. Hadn’t he quickly honed in on her weakness and kept the upper hand through their entire stay? The woman needed to toughen up. And it would be his pleasure to help her.

“Draw?”

He lifted his gaze from his cards and caught hers with a steely-eyed look designed to confuse her. “Gimme all three.”

She dealt his cards and his serious look crumbled when his eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. He got another ace. Somebody up there really, really liked him. If his luck held, this game would be over in about four hands. Sweater, jeans, bra and panties. His stomach clenched. Four hands seemed like an eternity.

“Since we’re not betting, show your cards,” she said.

Maintaining as solemn an expression as possible, Cooper set down three aces.

He saw her blink then draw a breath, but otherwise remain calm as she said, “Beats my two kings.”

Confidence flooded him. This would be like taking candy from a baby, and he would use her poor choice of poker when he explained his life. He never took a bet he didn’t know with absolutely certainty he could win. She’d underestimated him, or overestimated herself. In challenging him to cards, she’d set herself up to lose.

“And I think you owe
me a sweater.”

“Not yet, cowboy. The first hand gets a sock.”

He gaped at her. “Socks? Three aces gets me your socks?”

“I said
sock.”

His eyes widened even further and his mouth fell open. “One damned sock?”

“Well, it seems to me that you probably have a really long story. No sense rushing things.”

He studied her for a second, giving her points for keeping control. He hadn’t thought she had that in her, but since she’d thrown him into the role of her teacher, he couldn’t just let her walk all over him.

“Okay. Fine. If you’re insecure about your poker skills, we’ll play your way.”

“We’ll play my way because it’s my game. I’m not insecure,” she said and proved it by beating him the next hand.

She rested her elbow on the table and after a few seconds of studying him said, “I’d like to hear about your parents.”

“I had no say in the sock decision. You get no say in what I tell you. And what I consider to be equal to a sock is this—I have two brothers.”

“I already knew that.”

“I’d already seen your right foot.”

She sighed. “Give me the cards.”

She beat him again and this time he told her about the family construction company. When he beat her, she gave him her second sock. Her ankle bracelet came after her third loss.

“What? Are you going to
give me polish chips off your toenails if you lose again?”

She only harrumphed, but she didn’t lose again. He did. She was craftier than he gave her credit for, and he worried that the little girl who’d come to him for help dealing with life was about to outwit him. Concluding he was somehow missing an important element about this game, something obvious she was doing to best him, he nonetheless told her that Ty had been old enough to become fifteen-year-old Seth’s guardian when their parents were killed.

At the next loss, he admitted that Ty had put him through college.

At the next, he regaled her with a story of how Seth had been a hot commodity with the ladies.

She laughed. “So your younger brother is a sex symbol?”

“We all had our moments with the ladies.”

He saw her swallow and was gratified that—at least—she wasn’t totally unaffected by him. But none of that would matter if he didn’t figure out how she was winning.

She beat him again the next hand and Cooper’s head was spinning. Just as she’d said, five-card stud was pure, especially when there was no betting involved so neither one could bluff. Unless she was pulling cards from the bottom of the deck, out-and-out cheating, she had the best luck he’d ever seen.

“I want to know about your moments with the ladies.”

“I think my moments with the
ladies are irrelevant.”

She caught his gaze. “Tell me anyway.”

He sighed. “Okay, you won the hand and I’m out of stupid, equal-to-socks things to tell you anyway, so I’m going to give you the equivalent of my shirt.”

Her eyes brightened and she leaned across the table eagerly. Cooper’s chest tightened. She was so darned beautiful that he knew her ex had to be a total dimwit to leave her. And so darned fresh-faced and enthusiastic, he began to wonder if sleeping with her would be as easy and uncomplicated as he kept all his other liaisons. He hadn’t wanted to get to know her. She’d slipped past his defenses. He hadn’t wanted to talk to her, yet he was now halfway through his entire life story. He
had
wanted to sleep with her. She was gambling him out of it.

Still he’d promised her something good, so he said, “I once dated the same woman for five years.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

“Nope. Not kidding.” But he was feeling odd. This part of his life story did not paint him in a good light. “Same woman. We weren’t in love. Not the passionate, icky, sticky kind that you feel when you’re eighteen.”

She nodded.

“But…well, I think you need to win another hand to hear the rest.”

She groaned. “That’s not a shirt’s worth!”

“Okay, consider it my wristwatch.” He handed the cards to her. “Deal.”

Clearly frustrated, she dealt the cards. Cooper didn’t think he had a very good hand, but much to his surprise he had better cards than she did.

She passed her wristwatch across the table.

“Very funny.”

“Give me something substantial
in your next loss and I promise you will get something substantial in mine.”

Her statement brought him back to the fact that all he had to do was get her naked and this stupid game would end. He either had to beat her more often, or he had to step up his story so she’d be compelled to remove her more important garments.

He was almost gratified to lose since that gave him the opportunity to tell her something good—and something good should net him, at the very least, her sweater the next time she lost.

“Okay,” he said, working to word his next revelation in such a way that it would have value. “My girlfriend called it quits because she told me I’m not very thoughtful. But I think of myself first because that’s how I stay on top of things. I might lose a woman here or there, but I don’t make any major life mistakes.”

Zoe studied him. “Let me get this straight. Your girlfriend put up with you for five years, suddenly called you inconsiderate and left?”

“I’d missed a lot of birthdays. She’d given me a lot of second chances.”

“Wow. It sounds like it crushed you.”

He shrugged and picked up the cards. “Zoe, that’s the whole point. I never let myself invest so much that I get hurt. Life taught me that lesson right off the bat. I lost my parents. I fought almost constantly with my brothers until they asked me to get the hell out of their lives. Losing my parents hurt because I loved them. Losing my brothers hurt because I had trusted them. And they didn’t trust me. In fact, they distrusted me so much it was easier for them to lose me than put up with me.”

With that Zoe fell silent. And Cooper
was damned glad because the god-awful odd feeling was back in the pit of his stomach. He’d never suspected his sparse love life was entwined with losing his family and, frankly, he could have gone the rest of his days without knowing.

Without saying a word, he dealt, looked at his cards, tossed two, and motioned to her to tell him how many she wanted.

“All three.”

He dealt her three cards, then gave himself two. Two kings to go with his three sevens. If this wasn’t perfect timing, he didn’t know what was. Now that the real truth about his life was out, he was determined to start winning so they could move on. To the bedroom.

“Only the strong survive,” he said, then caught her gaze and flipped over his hand, revealing his full house. “I intend to survive and I want your sweater.”

She turned over her hand. Four nines.

He stared at her. “How the hell do you do that?”

“Once I warm up, I’m lucky at cards.” She shrugged. “Lucky at cards. Unlucky at love.”

Though he had been gathering the deck, what she said stopped him, and he suddenly knew why she wanted to hear about his life. “You don’t want my story. You want to know how to live like me.”

“I believe I told you that.”

“No, you made it sound as if you wanted my life philosophy but you don’t want the generic facts. You want to know my decisions. You want to
copy
my life.”

She said nothing, only looked
across the table at him.

“Zoe, I’m on the road, have no kids, and have a partner who can back me up…. You
can’t
make the decisions I’ve made.”

“Are you saying a girl can’t live like that? Because if you are, you should know that I beat my male cousins at cards. I was also a better marksman. And I got better scores on the SATs.”

But she hadn’t gone to college, likely because her parents deserted her. He and Zoe were comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they had similar pasts in that they had both lost their parents and neither one of them had fit into the life that was left after their parents were gone. But the real reason he lived his life the way he did wasn’t a decision—it was an admission that he was untrustworthy. She was about the most trustworthy person he had ever met. There was no reason for her to live like he did. If she copied his life, she would essentially go from being good and reliable to being a relationship schlep like him. He felt like a heel for giving her the idea.

“What do you do for a living?”

She shook her head. “Nice try. But you lost the hand. So you’re the one who’s supposed to be talking.”

He drew a frustrated breath. She had a baby. She needed to be soft and sweet and honorable. This was all wrong. Even having an afternoon fling with her suddenly seemed horribly, horribly wrong.

He swore he heard his hormones groan, but he knew it was true and he knew he had to stop this right now. “My fight with my brothers began over a woman.”

One of her eyebrows rose. “Really?”

“My brother Ty, the oldest, was engaged. His fiancée ran around on him all the time, but I didn’t tell him until she hit on me.”

“Holy cow!” Her eyes
widened in disbelief and Cooper realized he had a quick way to end this game, the conversation, even their bet.

“You want to hear about some more cows? My brother had already taken the family business much further than my parents ever dreamed. Anita was a gold digger. Ty had money and she wanted it.”

Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Your family had money?”

“Ty made Bryant Construction into Bryant Development. He’s probably worth a billion dollars right now.”

“You left
billions of dollars?”

“No, when I left we were only millionaires.”

“You’re a millionaire?”

He shook his head. “No. I washed my hands of it.”

“Are you insane?” She rose from the poker table with her eyes flashing fire. “Every month I wonder whether or not I’m going to have enough money to pay my utilities. This fall, I got a notice from the county that my parents haven’t been paying the taxes on my house. I’m going to lose it soon because after so many years of unpaid taxes the county can sell a piece of real estate right out from under anybody living there.”

“Money isn’t everything.”

His quiet statement seemed to bring her back to earth and she shook her head and sat again. He had expected her to storm out of the room. Instead she grabbed the cards. The game was still on.

Anger ripped through Cooper. Under normal circumstances hearing that someone was about to lose her house would have made him think the involved person was a nitwit who couldn’t keep up with life. But having felt the sting of betrayal after reading the letter from his brothers’ attorney, he knew that sometimes some people really were innocent victims.

This woman was about as
innocent as they came and he would
not
be the one to ruin her.

“Why don’t
you
pay the taxes?”

Calm again, she shuffled the cards. “I didn’t realize they were going unpaid. I was eighteen when my parents left. Which means six years have gone by. When I got the notice that the taxes were so far behind, I called my dad, and found out he had paid for a few years but he’d felt it was my mother’s responsibility to pay for a few years.”

“And your mother?”

“My mother was busy. She couldn’t believe I had called her. She said that since she didn’t live in the house, she had no reason to be responsible for the taxes and hung up the phone.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t,” she said, holding up her hand to stop the flow of sympathy he could feel ebbing from himself and which she undoubtedly could feel as well. “After I got off the phone, I realized she was right. I’m twenty-four years old. I shouldn’t be calling my mommy to bail me out. Since I’m the one living at the house those taxes are my responsibility.”

She drew a quick breath. “Unfortunately, with the penalties and interest that have accrued, I owe so much I can’t even get a loan for the amount. But even if I could, I couldn’t afford the loan payments. I’m a clerk at a grocery store. The only thing that has made it possible for me to live on my own and support a child is that I have a house and haven’t had to pay rent.” She paused and sighed. “But we’re talking about me again.”