Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
After dinner, we play cards because we need something normal to do.
My brothers and I have played cards at tables, on rucks, in barracks, in the dirt, in the back of transport vehicles, and under ponchos in the rain. Poker mostly, often with whatever rules we could invent to separate tired Rangers from their cash.
Wren sits at the table with a mug of tea and watches Rhett shuffle. “Do you play a lot?” she asks.
“Only when we’re bored,” I say, “or tired, snowed in, pissed off, avoiding sleep, or trying not to talk about our feelings.”
“So most of the time,” she says.
Rhett deals her in without asking.
She looks at the cards but doesn’t pick them up. “I don’t know if I should gamble with men who shared a womb and a Ranger team.”
“Smart,” Cade says.
“We’ll go easy,” I say.
She slides the cards to the edge of the table and picks them up. “No, you won’t.”
“No,” Rhett says. “We won’t.”
She smiles at that, then proceeds to win the first hand with a pair of queens and an expression so bland I almost miss it.
After a few more hands, she’s leaning in, her eyes bright with the thrill of competition. I’m sure she’s tracking discards and calculating odds, but she won’t admit it. She calls Cade’s bluff once and looks so pleased with herself that he stares at her for several seconds without blinking.
Rhett watches her like he’s watching a new variable enter a battlefield. I watch her like a man discovering religion.
She’s not just smart out on the trail, doing her job. She’s sharp everywhere. Sharp enough to be dangerous.
I get the impression she enjoys being underestimated. She smiles when she wins, but it’s not a smug smile. She looks satisfied, and it makes me want to put that expression on her face in every way a man can.
CHAPTER 14
BOONE
The next night, Rhett is on the back porch talking on the phone with another postponed client, and Cade is out in the garage doing some sort of repair work. Wren and I are inside with a deck of cards at the dining table, and there’s a restless energy in the air.
The lights are low in the cabin, casting a golden glow on her skin. That’s all good, except for the especially enticing triangle of cleavage exposed by the V-neck of her snug white shirt.
She beat me the first three hands, and that distracting bit of flesh might be the reason.
She folds on the fourth hand, and on the next one, she bluffs. Badly.
Her face loses all emotion, and her fingers tap once against the edge of her cards before she catches herself. She keeps her shoulders relaxed, but her pulse flutters at the base of her throat.
Instead of matching her bet, I lean slowly across the table.
Her eyes narrow as I come close enough to count the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. Close enough to smell her shampoo and see the way her breath catches and how determined she is not to show it.
“You have a terrible poker face,” I say.
Her eyes stay fixed on mine, and the air gets hotter between us. “I’m not the one who’s obvious.”
Every thought in my head dissolves.
An owl hoots somewhere nearby, and the cabin settles with a creak, but Wren doesn’t move away, and neither do I.
Her lips are right there. Dusky pink, bare, slightly parted.
I’ve been careful with her. We all have. But there’s only so much careful a man can be when the woman he wants looks at him like she sees his hunger and doesn’t intend to run from it. Like she has a hunger of her own.
I shift closer, and her fingers curl around her cards.
“Boone,” she whispers.
Her saying my name like that crumbles my resistance.
Then Cade comes into the kitchen from the back door, and Wren jerks back.
I close my eyes as Cade fills a glass of water and drinks half of it, saying nothing. Wren stares down at her cards like they contain the world’s deepest secrets.
I turn in my seat and fully stare at my brother, and he stares back.
“You need something?” I ask.
“Water.”
“Got it?”
He lifts his glass, then drinks the rest, sets it in the sink, and comes our way. “Deal me in next hand.”
The moment is dead, but the temptation to crawl across the table and finish what Cade interrupted takes longer to fade.
The next couple of days follow a familiar pattern. Mornings start with coffee and Wren continuing to wear my shirt like a short robe, knocking the air out of me every time I see her curves in flannel.
She checks in with her supervisor, but nothing much changes on their end. Wren fills the daylight hours working on her laptop, her body angled toward the mountains like she’s straining on a leash.