Page 16 of Texas Hold Em’ (The Devil’s Luck MC #3)

CARRIE

C aroline’s red lipstick blended with her bloodied nose. She licked her upper lip and her tongue came away stained in red. She didn’t spit. She swallowed.

I wanted to lean forward and brace my hands on my knees to catch my breath. I wanted to drink a gallon of water and nurse my injuries. Caroline was a fierce fighter, but she’d underestimated me. I was not Suzie. I was a trained Ranger, and I could take a hit just as good as I could give one.

I forced myself to smile. “Are you done yet?”

Caroline threw her head back and laughed.

Meanwhile, her two guards, who I’d mentally nicknamed Meat and Potatoes because they looked like thick-skulled dimwits who were good for nothing besides knocking skulls and eating carbs, stood beside the Rover with their arms crossed over their thick chests.

At Caroline’s laughter, the taller of the two shuffled his weight from side to side and looked at his feet.

I had to admit, it was an unsettling sound.

Caroline dragged her hand under her nose, and her knuckles came away stained in red. “You know, I have to give credit where credit is due. You know what you’re doing, Hart. I underestimated you. ”

My guard shot up. “I prefer when you don’t compliment me.”

“I’m not a one-sided bitch, Hart. Sure, I’m a ruthless businesswoman, but I can appreciate skill when I see it. You’re still alive for a reason. Now that reason is starting to make a little more sense.”

“I hardly think you can call yourself a businesswoman.”

“What would you call me, then?”

Skank. Criminal. Bitch. Master Manipulator. Murderer. Con Artist.

“Something more colorful,” I said.

Caroline laughed again. “Get in the car.”

“Uh, no thank you. The last time I tried that you sucker punched me.”

“I was testing you, and you passed.”

I narrowed my eyes at her.

Caroline threw her hands in the air. “Fine. I’ll get in the car. Boys, you too.” She swirled her finger in the air and the men got in the car, one behind the wheel and one in the passenger seat, leaving the other seat in the back beside Caroline open for me.

Grudgingly, I inched forward and peered inside while she put her seatbelt on.

“My father doesn’t have all night,” Caroline said. “Do you want to talk to him, or don’t you?”

Here goes nothing.

I got in the back seat beside the woman I trusted less than anyone I’d ever met, put my seatbelt on, and tried to take deep breaths to recover from the fight.

It had been ruthless.

Caroline fought like a feral cat, but I figured out her tactics fairly quickly.

She liked to use my own momentum against me.

She’d get me off balance, and as I teetered or leaned one direction, she’d come slamming toward me.

It only worked a handful of times before I caught onto her and shifted how I was fighting.

Instead of letting her lead, I forced her to react.

Unpredictable movements that didn’t result in landing a hit confused her, and while she tried to figure out what I was playing at, I managed to kick her in the ribs, slam the heel of my hand into her nose, and drive my elbow into her spine .

It was enough to slow the fight down enough that we were evenly matched.

I didn’t know how much time passed as I sat in the back of that SUV trying to act calm, cool, and collected while I was screaming inside. My body hurt. I was terribly tired. All I wanted was to climb back into bed with Jameson, but that seemed like a far-off pipe dream at this point.

We arrived at the estate shortly before five in the morning. Over the roof of the sprawling house, sunlight painted the sky dark blue instead of black. Security cameras hummed on swivels as we approached the front door. A little red light blinked and followed me as we moved inside.

We passed through a wide foyer with an iron chandelier overhead and moved down a massive corridor that broke off to several rooms of the house like a lounge, formal sitting room, and what appeared to be a grand ballroom of sorts set up for some sort of training like fencing.

Peculiar, I thought.

Potatoes opened the back door and held it for me. I stepped out onto a cobblestone patio surrounded by solar lights around the edge. A large fountain with an eagle in the middle bubbled and a violin played from a speaker mounted on the outside wall.

I smelled Bates’s cigar before I spotted him standing on the other side of the fountain.

Instinctively, I stopped walking, but Caroline put a hand between my shoulder blades and pushed me forward, leading me all the way around the fountain and out in front of her father, whose cool blue eye left its target of the full moon in the starry night sky.

His lips spread in a smile and his cigar dangled precariously out of the corner of his mouth.

“Miss Hart. What a pleasure it is to see you again. You’re in much better shape than the last time we ran into each other.

Well, sort of.” He reached for my cheek, which I was sure was either bright pink or beginning to bruise from Caroline’s first strike.

I recoiled.

Bates seemed to like my reaction because his smile stretched. “ Don’t tell me you’re afraid now, Miss Hart. You were the one who came looking for me, remember? I’m merely accepting your invitation to discuss our situation.”

“You mean the Devil situation?” I asked, trying to sound sly. I wasn’t sure if it worked. My voice sounded hollow and scratched my throat as I spoke.

The last time I’d been face to face with the man, I was sure I was going to die.

Mason had been beside me, bleeding out on his carpet, and Suzie had been locked in his fridge to keep her safe from the spray of bullets.

I remembered the way Bates had looked at me as I knelt in front of him and he balanced on the balls of his feet.

He’d been smoking a cigar then, too. He’d blown smoke in my face and liked the way it made me choke.

When I tried to stop him from hurting Mason more, he almost burned the inside of my wrist with the burning ember of his cigar.

If Mason hadn’t been there, I would have the scar to remind myself of that night on my wrist right now.

“Yes.” Bates sounded like a man on the edge of a release. “The Devils.”

His hatred for them ran deeper than I could ever fathom, and bloodlust burned in his single blue eye while his other milky white one dared me to look into its depths.

I did not.

Bates slid a hand in the front pocket of his navy blue suit jacket and withdrew another cigar. He used a cigar clipper from his pant pocket to chop the end off before twirling it neatly in his fingers and holding it out to me.

“Care for a smoke?” he propositioned.

“No thank you.”

“I insist.”

I looked from the cigar to him and wondered if there was danger in accepting such a thing from him.

Could it be laced with something? Was he going to try to poison me or get me high?

If he did, what would his end game be? Use me however he wanted while I was out of it, or spare me suffering and murder me while I was unconscious?

My stomach did a somersault.

Bates chuckled and lit the fresh cigar while his still simmered between his lips. He exchanged the one he’d been puffing on for the new one, inhaled deeply to show me it was safe, and handed it back to me. “Smoke.”

Backed into a corner, I lifted it to my lips and drew the smoke into my mouth. It tasted like dirt, blackberries, and something musky.

“My father let me smoke my first cigar when I was thirteen years old.” Bates turned his back on the moon and gazed into the fountain.

No coins glimmered beneath the surface. It was cold and sterile.

“He told me I was a man then, and a man knew how to smoke a cigar without being a pussy. ‘Course, when you’re thirteen and have cleaner lungs than an Olympic athlete, it’s going to fuck you up.

I inhaled right into my lungs and coughed and sputtered like a fool.

” Bates chuckled at the memory and surprised me with the rest of the story.

I marveled how he could find humor in it all.

“He beat the shit out of me. Told me to toughen up. Act like a man. And he explained you don’t inhale cigar smoke.

Funny thing, don’t you think? Now I can’t stop puffing on the damn things. ”

“Sounds like a trauma response to me,” I said.

He barked with laughter. “You’re a peculiar woman, Miss Hart. You know that?”

“And the more you share with me, the less peculiar I think you are,” I said coldly.

Sure, poking the bear might have been dangerous, but the Ranger in me wanted to rock the boat.

The best information came from men who thought they had the upper hand when speaking to a woman they saw as nothing more than a fly on the wall or a pretty thing to look at. To use. To claim.

To damage.

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” he asked quizzically.

“Well,” I said, taking another puff on my cigar, “it’s taken me a long time to riddle out whether you were a psychopath or a sociopath. I gather your father was an abusive man, which leads me to the conclusion that you are, in fact, a sociopath.”

His eyes narrowed.

I smiled. “It means your mental state was created by your situation, not your biological makeup.”

“I know what it means,” he growled.

I blew smoke. If he wasn’t two heads taller than me, I might have been able to blow it in his face like he’d done to me all those weeks ago. Dimly, I wondered when and how my balls got so big. Maybe it was after killing a few guys.

“Tell me what you want out of this deal, Miss Hart.”

I glanced at Caroline. Had she not told him the details of our conversation?

Caroline looked away, and I felt a tug at my subconscious.

Are Bates and his daughter not as co-dependent as I thought? What is this tension between them?

More than anything, I wanted to put my cigar out, but I took another pull and hoped I looked as cool as Tex when he puffed on his cigarettes. It was unlikely, but I felt a bit like a bad ass as I stared up at the man who’d nearly killed me and had killed others. “I want to go home.”

“I’m listening.”

This was it. My big moment. If I didn’t sell this, he might kill me right there in his little garden.

“I’ve given too much to this shithole town,” I started, “and the Devil’s Luck aren’t worth my career, let alone my life.

I’m done letting them have power over me.

I’m done letting them tell me what I can and can’t do.

I want out, and I figure the best way I can do that is to go to the man who runs this place and give him what he wants. ”

I wasn’t sure if flattery would work with a man like Bates, but his eyebrows lifted and he looked almost impressed. “And what is it that I want, Miss Hart?”

Shrugging, I flicked the end of my cigar like it was the most casual thing I could ever do. “The Devil’s Luck on a silver platter, obviously.”