“And do what?”
“Fold.”
And let him have her share of the brownies she’d anted up? She didn’t think so. “I’m comfortable.”
His smile reached his eyes. “There are more brownies in the basket.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She pinched a crunchy edge off the nearest. “These are mine.”
He caught her hand, bringing her fingers to his lips, catching the crumbs on the tip of his tongue, holding her gaze as he took them into his mouth. Not once did his mouth meet her hand, but the knowledge that it would take very little initiative, either on his part or, more shockingly, hers, to alter that seared deep. “Not yet they’re not.”
She tugged her hand. He didn’t let go. Suddenly, she was very aware of the breadth of his shoulders, the latent strength behind his grip, the nearness of his lips, the solitude of the house. The fact that this was their wedding night. “You haven’t won them yet.”
“Neither have you.”
Jerking her arm free she reached for her whiskey, an odd breathlessness making it hard to talk. “Fine.”
She took the last three swallows in a rush, coughing and wheezing as the fumes burned her nostrils from the inside out.
Fanning her face, she choked, “What do you have?”
His finger brushed down her cheek in a touch as soft as the smile that ghosted his mouth. “Three aces.”
There was something odd about him knowing that, but odd wasn’t nearly as fascinating as the tingles that radiated outward from that brief touch. It meshed so well with the fascination he held for her on other levels. The fascination that had her admiring once again the sculpted perfection of his lips—not too thin, not too wide, but full enough to give a smile depth, thin enough to give anger emphasis. He had a very expressive mouth and if one watched it as much as she did, one soon learned to read his moods. Right now, he was amused by a joke only he understood. The way he always seemed to be. “Why am I not surprised?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been playing poker for a long time.”
“It’s a simple game.”
“With a lot of strategy behind it.”
A coherent thought burst through the fog as he reached for the brownies. There was no way he could have known what those three cards had been. He hadn’t even turned them over. She slapped at his hand. “You forgot to mention cheating.”
With those lightning reflexes that always startled her, he caught her hand on the upswing of the next swat. “I was careless?”
She was entirely too conscious of his fingers lacing between hers. “You didn’t even look at your cards.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yet you knew what they were.”
His thumb stroked the inside of her wrist, once, twice, and then lingered, pressing lightly on the pulse. “Yes, I did.”
“Because you cheated.”
“I prefer to think of it as influencing fate.”
“You’re not supposed to influence fate.”
“I like to hedge my bets.”
“Preachers aren’t allowed to bet.”
“I do.” Propping his elbow on the table, he brought her hand within inches of his mouth. A mouth she could easily imagine kissing hers. “Are you going to tell?”
Humor lightened his gaze, softened his expression, tempted her wild side, aroused her. “What will you give me if I don’t?”
“A chance to get even.”
“Are you going to cheat again?”
“You never know. I tend to hedge my bets every chance I get.”
“That sounds like a warning.”
“I’m a fair man.”
“And that was fair warning?”
“Pretty much. You going to have a problem with that?”
At the moment she couldn’t think of a single reason she should. Her head felt too heavy, her eyelids weighted. It felt right to lean into his hand. Right that his hand open and his broad palm cup her cheek. “Not if you teach me to cheat, too.”
Even talking was hard.
“You’d be lousy at it.”
She blinked. “I’m never lousy at anything I attempt.”
“You care too much to lie with equanimity.”
“I want to cheat, not lie.”
“They go hand in hand.”
“Then I’ll learn.”
“I’m not sure I want you to.”
Forcing her eyes open, she frowned at him. “Because I have to be the perfect minister’s wife. Boring!”
His chuckle wafted across her cheek. When had he gotten so close? “You might have to be a little restricted during the days, but I guarantee your nights will be anything but boring.”
“Big talk.”
His chair scraped back as he stood. “But I’m a big man.”
Yes, he was. She craned her neck back, squinting against the blurring of his expression. “I think I need some more whiskey.”
He took the glass out of her hand. “I think you’ve had enough.”
“Being boring already?”
“Just stating the obvious.”
“Says you.”
The sexy smile left his lips. “Yeah. Says me.”
“Why are you frowning?”
He helped her to her feet, which was good because the room started swaying as soon as she stood. “Because I overestimated your tolerance for drink.”
She caught his arm and closed her eyes. “I’m past chuckler?”
“Not quite.”
“Good. Because I feel rather floaty.”
“That might be because I’m carrying you.”
She opened her eyes. Disappointment shot through her. So he was. “Darn.”
She’d been enjoying the illusion that she could float, but then again, she decided as she absorbed the fact that he was carrying her with so little effort, there were benefits to this, too. Being carried made her feel dainty and feminine. Something she’d never had the opportunity to experience. Snuggling in, she decided to enjoy it.
“Where are we going?”
“The bedroom.”
There was something she was supposed to remember about that. She wrestled the memory from deep within the haze. “I’m not sleeping with you.”
“Why not?”
“You’d be too much.”
Of all the things Brad expected her to say, that wasn’t it. “Too much?”
“You’ll want to take over, and I don’t want to be taken over. I want a nice, malleable husband.”
That she could boss around and control. Turning sideways to get through the doorway, Brad shook his head. Evie would be miserable with a man like that. She enjoyed a challenge too much to spend her life with someone who’d let her walk all over him. That would truly bore her.
Belatedly, her arms came around his neck. He stopped beside the bed. She glanced around the room. “Why are we here?”
“In this room or this house?” He thought the room was pretty obvious so he wasn’t surprised when she answered.
“This house. It has such a sad story.”
It did at that. Elijah’s hope had died here. “Maybe I just want to bring it a little happiness.”
While she seemed to consider that, he let her feet slide to the floor.
“No. That’s not it.”
He steadied her while she swayed. He didn’t have to tip her head back. She did it naturally, frowning at him, obviously still considering her point. He caught the point of her chin on the edge of his finger, more because he wanted to touch her than that he needed to steady her. She was tipsy, but not drunk. “Then what is it?”
“I asked you first.”
“And I asked you second.”
“Which means?”
“You have to answer me.”
He did love the way her eyes sparkled and her voice snapped when she got annoyed. So much spirit packed into one very feminine, sweet body. Which was his. Every fiery, sexy, opinionated inch. He touched his thumb to the middle of her nose, smiling when her eyes crossed to see it. Cute, too. “I didn’t want to be interrupted when I make love to you, so I decided to borrow this house tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll go back to mine.”
Another frown. “You don’t love me.”
But he liked her, was fascinated by her, and had been attracted to her from the moment he’d seen her stop a cowpoke in the middle of the street so she could sketch him against the sunset. She’d been oblivious to the man’s annoyance. Brad doubted, even if she’d known that the wrangler had been more interested in whoring than art, that she would have cared. She was a little single-minded when it came to her work. “Then we’ll just pretend.”
She wrinkled her nose and squinted. She always did that when she got close to things. He’d wondered, though he’d never seen her in them, if she needed spectacles. “More influencing fate?”
“Just smoothing the path.”
Enough so she didn’t need to be scared. As if she read his mind, her head cocked to the side and she whispered, “Are you going to hurt me, Brad?”
“No, what makes you ask?”
“You’ve got to be mad. It’s my fault we’re married.”
“I’ve got to admit, I’m a little annoyed things went as they did. No man likes to be forced.”
Her fingers curled into fists. “I understand. It is pretty unforgivable.”
It probably should be, and he’d thought it was at first, but over the last two weeks, his initial rage had faded to annoyance as he’d come to understand that Evie had never intended any maliciousness. He’d piqued her curiosity, and she’d responded by investigating. For Evie, that meant she followed him, drew him, studied him, and eventually, painted him. And when her family’d backed her into a corner, she’d rebelled by putting the painting she’d done of him on display. In an effort to prove . . . he wasn’t sure what. “Why’d you show your mother the painting, Evie?”
Her response, though immediate, didn’t make a lot of sense. “Leverage.”
“That you’ll have to explain.”
“You know how when you apply a lever to a fulcrum, the job gets a lot easier?”
He did, but he was surprised that she did. Not that he doubted her intelligence. The woman was as smart as a whip—it was just the terminology. He should have known she would be a big reader. “I’m not following your drift.”
She sighed as if he were being particularly dense, then she actually pouted. Up until that moment he would have sworn Evie didn’t know how to pout. It was too passive. “My family wanted to send me back East to learn from my aunt.”
“Learn what?” He leaned over the bed.
“How to be a dried-up, bitter wreck of a person, if you ask me.” She let go of his neck and dropped onto the mattress. “But no one ever asks me.”
She didn’t seem to know what to do now that she was on the bed. He slipped his arm behind her back and under her legs and slid her around. “So the painting was to show them how much trouble you could get up to if they sent you away.” He leaned her back against the headboard. “You didn’t want to go back East?”
“I have more freedom here.”
Maybe, maybe not. He’d learned a long time ago that while the grass on the other side of the fence might look greener, it was still the same grass, just located in a different spot. “That didn’t quite work out like you planned, did it?”
She frowned at him as he straightened, her bun listing off center as she adjusted herself down against the pillows. “You weren’t supposed to agree to marry me.”
“Funny, I had the same thought about you.”
She shoved her falling bun back upright. “It
is
kind of funny when you think about it. Everybody thinks we’re so stubborn, but we ended up getting married because we weren’t stubborn enough.”
“I guess that means then, that neither of us has a right to be mad at the other.”
She didn’t look comfortable in that dress, not to mention it was getting completely wrinkled. As excuses to get a woman naked went, it was thin, but he could probably make it sound good, come morning. After all, with him being a preacher, she likely didn’t even think he could get it up. He sat on the edge of the bed and reached behind her neck for the row of tiny buttons that marched in a seductive line down the center of her back. There were twenty-five of the round pearl teases. He knew because he’d counted them. Twice. The top button of the collar of her dress proved obstinate.
“No, I guess we don’t.” The frown on her face was evidence that she knew there was a flaw in that reasoning, but she got distracted by his fumbling and reached up, her fingers tangling with his. “What are you doing?”
“Not putting much shine on my skills as a lover, that’s for sure.”
“You shine there?”
There was no blaming her for the shock in her voice. Preachers who lectured weekly on morality were expected to live as shining examples of what they preached. Which meant any self-respecting one probably shouldn’t have any skill whatsoever between the sheets. Lucky for Evie he didn’t have trouble with a little double-sided living and had only recently become a practicing minister. Before he’d found the advantages that religion could provide him, he’d spent a long time studying up on how to please the ladies. “I’m hoping to, for you.”
She blinked and that invisible tension that always held her slipped a bit more, putting a feminine softness in her posture that he recognized. Another invitation.
“That’s very sweet.”
Sweet
.
He smiled carefully. No one called him sweet. Not even the little old ladies of his
—
of the
—
congregation. He tucked his fingertip into the warm nape of her neck as he pondered the slip. He’d been making slips like that more often of late. That could be deadly. This role was only temporary, and when the time came for him to move on, the town would get a dedicated preacher. One who could actually do them good rather than just use charm to put a fine haze on things the way he’d used liquor to haze Evie’s entry into marriage.
“Brad?”
The trust with which Evie looked at him was the kind a woman gave her husband. The kind that came from knowing your future was completely tied to someone else, and there was only one way to get through and that was together. He didn’t deserve it. If he was any kind of decent human being, he would let her go untouched. Tuck her under those covers, and walk away. Go sleep in the other bedroom. Leave her to her dreams and illusions. If he was any kind of decent. That was a mighty big if. “I’m right here, princess.”