“What are you doing?” the other girl demanded softly.
Kayla’s gaze never wavered from Dalton. “I’m taking the bartender’s advice,”
she said simply. “I’m going to talk to your brother.”
Rachel sighed, but didn’t try to stop her, deciding to follow Kayla over to Dalton Jeffries’ table instead, and Kayla was glad for her friend’s support.
Dalton looked up as they neared the table, and he gave Kayla a mocking grin.
“Why, Miss Mathison,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I’d like to say this is a surprise, but it isn’t, real y, especially not in light of the evening’s events.”
Kayla wanted to slap that smug look off his arrogant face, but settled for giving him a contemptuous look instead. “The bartender said that he
overheard Cord agree to sell you his ranch,” she said, her voice dripping with disdain. “You must be so pleased with yourself.”
Dalton’s grin widened. “Quite,” he replied. “Holderness sold it to me not an hour ago. Seems he was fed up with his whole life out here, decided to head somewhere else and start over.”
The thought that Cord would not only sell the ranch without even a word to her, but would decide to leave town was so shocking that she almost felt her knees go weak. She was sure that Dalton had been the one to suggest that
Cord start over somewhere else, but she bore a lot of the blame, too. She
wasn’t sure how long she stood there, but she realized that everyone was
staring at her. Her chest hurt and her mind was a total blank. It seemed that for the first time in her life, she had no idea what to do. Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them back. Swallowing hard, she turned to Rachel.
“What am I supposed to do now?” she asked her friend.
Dalton spoke before Rachel could answer. “Why not sit and play a few
hands?” he suggested, gesturing to the deck of cards in front of him. “Unlike Holderness, I don’t see anything wrong with a woman playing cards. And I’m sure the other men would enjoy your company as much as I would.”
Kayla’s first instinct was to tell Dalton Jeffries to go to hell, but then another instinct took over – revenge. She may have destroyed everything with Cord -
and there was probably nothing she could do about that - but she could do
something about Dalton Jeffries. She would play cards with him, and win
every penny she could. What money she could win from him probably
wouldn’t amount to much, but her winning it would take him down a peg or
two, at least in her own mind.
“As a matter of fact, I think I will,” she said, giving him a fake smile.
Beside her, Rachel’s brow furrowed. “Kayla...”
“I know what I’m doing,” she said in an aside to her friend. Ignoring Rachel’s look of surprise, she pulled out the chair across from Dalton and sat down.
She smiled and nodded to the other men at the table, who seemed to be
uneasy with the direction their game had suddenly taken. Opening her
reticule, she took out the money she’d won from the other poker game she
had played and set it on the table in front of her. Along with the money that Abigail Murray had given her, it should be enough to start with.
With a grin, Dalton picked up the deck of cards and began deal. He probably thought that he had her right where he wanted her, Kayla thought, as she
picked up her cards. She could almost see the greed on his face. He thought that if he were charming he would end up getting her just like he had Cord’s ranch. But he would be surprised to discover that his charm had no effect on her. And he would be even more surprised when he found out that she was a
better poker player than he was.
Unlike when she had played poker at the saloon before, Kayla didn’t waste
time drawing Dalton in by pretending that she knew little about the game. She was all business this time, and her aggressiveness immediately put Dalton off balance. She challenged him every time he thought he had a good hand,
ignoring his banter and forcing him to meet her raises just to stay in the game.
She bluffed a few times, but most of the time, the cards just fell right for her, and she began to take the majority of the hands. She also noticed that the other two men at the table were playing into her hand more often than not, never raising unless she did. They were losing some money, too, but they just seemed to like watching Dalton lose even more. She didn’t win every hand, of course, but she won more than Dalton did, and after a few hands, her stack of money had more than doubled while his had started to dwindle.
He tried to laugh and make light of it as he reached into his wallet for more money, but no one else at the table was laughing, and she could see that
Dalton was becoming uncomfortable. Good, she thought. That was just the
way she wanted it. She didn’t just want to beat him; she wanted to embarrass him, and a few more good hands would do just that.
Cord stood in the front of the shelves at the general store, staring into space.
He felt like he’d been punched in the gut, and the whiskey he’d had to drink at the saloon earlier had done nothing to wash away the pain and confusion he was feeling. The realization of what Abigail – Kayla, he corrected himself harshly – had done to him just
