Betting the Rainbow (Harmony) (8 page)

Chapter 13

DELANEY FARM

D
USTI STRETCHED OUT IN THE KITCHEN’S BAY WINDOW AND
alternated between watching her sister bake pies and staring out the window down Rainbow Lane.

Her great-grandfather had walked up on this land a hundred years ago and seen a rainbow over the lake. The house might be falling down around their ears now and the barn needed major patching, but this little spot had been her home all her life.

She dreamed of traveling and living other places, but she couldn’t sell the land for her dream any more than Abby could sell it to reach hers. They had to find another way, and this one poker game just might be that way.

It was an hour past time for her poker lesson, and Kieran hadn’t shown up yet. She wasn’t sure whether she missed him or was simply angry that he’d skipped a lesson he’d promised to teach her this morning.

“What’s the matter with you?” Abby tossed a cracked egg at her.

Dusti made no effort to catch it. She just stared at the spot on her knee where the yolk exploded. “Nothing,” she said, answering the same question for the third time.

Abby lifted another fresh egg and took aim.

“Just the cracked ones,” Dusti yelled from five feet away. “Remember what Mom said.”

Both girls laughed, obviously sharing the memory of an argument they’d had one morning when they’d been small. Neither could recall what had started the disagreement, but four dozen eggs lay splattered around them like deformed sunflowers in the dirt when their mother had stopped the fight.

“We were still in grade school. We didn’t know eggs meant money.” Abby smiled. “I swear I started gathering eggs the day after I learned to walk.”

Dusti nodded. “You told Mom they were all cracked the day of the great egg fight. She made you clean the coops for a week for lying and another for fighting.”

Abby went back to her baking. “She grounded you from swimming for starting the fight.”

“I never thought that was fair.” Dusti wiped off her jeans. “Why’d she think I started it?”

“Because you always start the fights, Dusti.” Abby reached for the small pitcher full of wooden spoons, obviously picking out another weapon to keep handy if the ingredients ran out. “I remember the twenty-six months of my life before you came along. I was an only child, not knowing how great the title was until I lost it. No one yelled at me. No groundings. No fights. The world was a peaceful place before you were born.”

“You think you had it bad. Imagine being me and finding out my parents had already tried having a kid and failed at the job. I can just see Pop looking at Mom and saying, ‘Surely we can do better the second time. I’m afraid, dear, we’ll have to sleep together again.’ Then, I come out and you take on the job of bossing me around.”

The argument they’d loved for as long as either could remember was on. Pie ingredients and insults flew back and forth in rapid fire along with wooden spoons, eggs, and tin pans.

Dusti didn’t notice the back door had opened until it was too late to stop a pie pan in flight.

Kieran took the blow to his forehead without ducking. He just stood like a statue watching two grown women covered in eggs and flour. Calmly, he looked around as white dust settled. “I guess I must be too late for breakfast.”

Abby and Dusti both tried to act as if they weren’t covered in ingredients, but it was hopeless. Both doubled over laughing.

When Dusti finally got control enough to look at the big Scot, she saw blood dripping from the pie pan wound. “You’re hurt? Oh, Abby, you hurt him.”

“I hurt him? You threw the pan.”

“But you started the fight.”

He touched the blood on his forehead, brushing it into his hair of almost the same color. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “This is my first encounter with insane country cooking. We must not get that channel back East.”

The New Yorker in him was in full control as he added, “It’s probably on the same cable as mud fishing and distance barfing.”

Another pie pan sailed through the air. Kieran had the sense to duck this time.

Dusti stared at Abby, who, of course, looked innocent. “Don’t aim for the head. You’ve got to leave him with enough brains to teach me to play poker.”

Abby curtsied. “So sorry. Want me to patch you up, Mr. O’Toole?”

“No, he’s my teacher, I’ll put the Band-Aid on him.” Dusti took his hand and tugged him into the downstairs bathroom. The little powder room was barely big enough for them both to stand.

Pushing him down on the stool covered to match the rose-colored shag carpet, Dusti stood between his legs and opened the door to the medicine cabinet behind his head. “When we were growing up, we called this the hospital. If one of us got hurt, this was where we came. Scrapes were so common, Mom didn’t want to waste time or get blood on the stairs so she kept everything needed for doctoring here.”

Kieran didn’t say a word. In fact, he didn’t move while she cleaned the small cut and doctored it with antiseptic. When she leaned to turn the water off in the sink, her leg brushed the inside of his thigh and she felt the muscles tighten. As she set the first-aid kit back above him, the side of her breast brushed his cheek. Again, he froze.

“Are you all right?” He looked strong as a linebacker, but maybe he was one of those people who fainted at the sight of his own blood. “The cut wasn’t deep. In fact, it’s stopped bleeding. I don’t think you really need the Band-Aid.”

“I’m not worried about the cut.” The hint of the Highlander was in his voice. “I’m just not used to being so close to the nurses.”

Leaning back, she looked down at him. “Does my being so close to you bother you, Kieran?”

“No,” he answered, staring at her face. “But I’ll admit
you
bother me, Dusti. You always have.”

She didn’t lean away. “That why you told your creepy cousin that you were afraid of me?”

“I
am
afraid of you.” Before she could react, his hand brushed upward along her leg. “Even covered in this mess, you bother me, lass.”

He brushed flour off the side of her shirt, then rested his hand in the spot he’d cleaned. She could feel his warm palm moving along her ribs to the side of her breast. “When you’re near I forget which way is north. It took me a year to ask you out and you turned me down in five seconds.”

“My mother was ill,” she said.

His hand kept moving over her shirt, almost touching, as he continued to torture her. “And the second and third time?”

Dusti closed her eyes. “I can’t think with you doing that.”

The urge to kiss him almost buckled her knees, but she remembered he’d said he’d let her know when he wanted to kiss her.

Slowly, he straightened to his full height, suddenly making the room seem very, very small. He moved his hands up her body as he stood so close she could feel the heat of him even through both their clothes. He bent, picking up the towel she’d used to wash the cut, and began blotting flour and egg from her face.

Keeping her eyes closed tight, she let the feeling of being cared for, cared about, pass over her for the first time in a very long time.

He picked bits of eggshell from her hair and soaked the towel in warm water before moving slowly over her face and down the V of her shirt. His touch was gentle, like he was treasuring her, like she was priceless.

When she lifted her gaze, she saw the passion in his gray eyes. The room must be running out of air. They’d pass out at any moment, like miners trapped in a cave. He didn’t seem to notice. His hand, wrapped in the corner of a towel, moved feather light down over her shirt, making her ache for a more intimate touch.

“You going to kiss me now?” she whispered.

He dropped the towel as his hands circled her waist. With one tug she was against him from chest to knee, and it felt so good.

It had been so long since she’d been so on fire for a man. They’d have to do it standing up, but if he wanted her, the tiny room would have to work. She wasn’t sure she could wait until they ran up a flight of stairs to her room in the attic.

She leaned closer, opening her mouth, dying for the feel of his lips on hers.

But Kieran pulled away.

Patience was never a high card in her deck. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” She had other things in mind, but she’d start with one long “turn to jelly” kiss.

“No. I was just cleaning you up so we can play poker. I wouldn’t want the deck getting dirty.” His hand slid below her waist to her hip and he gently patted her as if hurrying her along.

The man patted her bottom!

If she’d had another pie pan he’d need more than a Band-Aid to cover his next injury.

In one glance she realized he had no trouble reading her thoughts.

“First lesson,” he said as he moved to the door of the bathroom. “Never show your emotions. Never let another player see you upset. If you do, he’s just found the way to control you and the game.”

Dusti turned her violent nature inward. If she had a pie pan she’d beat it on her own head. In fact, she’d become a one-woman band. All her wild Saturday nights, all her “going to sin city” in the back of some guy’s car hadn’t prepared her for Kieran O’Toole.

If he played another trick like that one, she’d go out of her mind. How was she going to sit across from him and play cards?

Right now she didn’t care about poker. She wanted revenge. Apparently she’d asked the Loch Ness Monster to teach her to play. He might want her showing no emotion while he turned her on and walked away, but Dusti wasn’t built that way.

Who knew, maybe he was simply torturing her to death for turning him down for a date three times in a row.

Dusti smiled. Two could play the torture game, and this time she had skills. This time he’d be the first to fold.

She might not know poker, but she knew flirting. She considered herself world class even if she hadn’t played in a while.

Chapter 14

DELANEY FARM

W
HEN
D
USTI FINALLY FOUND ENOUGH CONTROL TO LEAVE
the bathroom, she was surprised to see Austin Hawk standing in the open front doorway. He was dressed like he’d just made a cameo appearance on
Wilderness Journey
. His hair needed cutting and his beard looked to be three or four days old. For an unfriendly type, he still looked sexy.

She must be so sex-starved even the local recluse looked appealing.

Two good-looking men in her house at the same time was definitely overdosing. Only Austin wasn’t shy, he fell more into unsociable territory. He’d been back at Hawk House for weeks this time and barely did more than wave at them when he walked across their front yard to the garage where he stored his Jeep or boat, depending on which one he wasn’t using.

They’d charged him double the usual rate to use one of the storage barns. Abby thought he looked like the kind of man who kept bodies pickled in his basement, but Dusti was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since he had been a nice kid a dozen years back. Only nice had vanished along with his pimples.

“May I help you, Austin?” She fought the urge to pick up the rifle kept stored on the hallway bookshelf. Austin was big like Kieran, but Austin was dark, moody, haunting. Whereas the Scot looked fit, Austin Hawk looked hard. Like sometime between the days that he’d been a boy running about the lake and now, he seemed to have had parts replaced and was more machine than human.

“I’m here to see Kieran,” he said, as if she were no more than a voice box near the doorbell. “He texted me to come over.”

“Oh, sure.” She relaxed a fraction. “Come on in. I think he’s in the kitchen.” Dusti was glad to pass the guy along. Let the Scot, who’d probably never get around to kissing her, handle Hawk.

Austin followed her past the powder room to the kitchen. She just stood silent at the door and let him step around her and stare at the chaos before him. No explanation for the mess came to mind for flour, sugar, and eggs to be everywhere.

He finally looked at her. “Smells good,” he said, as if stating a fact and not paying a compliment.

“Thanks. We’re baking pies for the livestock auction lunch tomorrow. They always order twenty buttermilk.”

He nodded as if the world made sense.

Dusti decided she liked Austin Hawk. After all, he wasn’t feeling her up and refusing to kiss her. On today’s scorecard that made him the winner.

A moment later, Ronny came through the back door with Abby. They were laughing about the chickens.

For just a flicker, Dusti caught something in Hawk’s eyes. One look that vanished as quickly as it had sparked, but it told her something.

Austin Hawk had eyes for no one but Ronny Logan, and Dusti doubted the woman even knew it.

While she scratched Hawk off the list of eligible men in the world, her Scot stepped into the room. Suddenly, the kitchen seemed way too small for them all. Dusti swore she could feel Kieran’s hands on her even though he was five feet away.

Kieran moved, not toward her, but next to Austin, and the men shook hands.

“Thanks for coming. Ronny said you’d act as dealer this morning so she could help with the pies.” Kieran moved the couple toward the dining room table. “Sorry we’re getting off to a late start. My grandmother had a guest this morning.” He smiled and looked at Ronny. “Your mother came by to pay a call.”

Ronny took her seat without looking up at anyone. “I’m glad you stayed with your grandmother. My mother tends to eat the weak.”

No one laughed. They’d all been around Harmony long enough to know Ronny’s words were true.

Then, as if a bell had sounded, everyone except Ronny began talking at once. All wanted to change the subject.

Austin asked if anyone had seen the wild hogs.

Kieran picked up the deck of cards and said as he removed the jokers, “I found the deck. We’re all here finally,” as if they’d been lost. “Maybe we should get started.”

Dusti offered everyone coffee and promised the first pie out of the oven as a snack during break time, as if poker games always had snack time halfway through the game.

Ronny finally raised her head and smiled gratefully at all of them.

The lesson began with Austin dealing and Ronny circling by to watch now and then. Kieran explained all the rules again as if this were the first lesson, Dusti took it all in, nodding to let him know when she remembered a rule.

By the time Abby brought in slices of warm pie, Dusti had decided she could learn this game . . . along with whatever other ones the Scot wanted to play.

In the end, he’d be the one begging for a kiss and, who knows, for once in her life, she might be the one walking away.