Page 115 of The Final Gambit

She sank the shot, and Thea strolled back toward her, shooting Nash a gloating look. “Still feeling cocky, cowboy?”

“Always,” Nash drawled.

“That,” Libby said, her eyes catching his, “is an understatement.”

Nash smirked. “Thirsty?” he asked my sister.

Libby poked him in the chest. “There’s a cowboy hat in the refrigerator, isn’t there?”

She looked down at her wrists, then stalked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a pink soda and a black velvet cowboy hat. “I’ll wear this hat,” she told Nash, “ifyoupaint your nails black.”

Nash gave her what could only be described as acowboy smile. “Fingers or toes?”

A yip behind me had me turning toward the doorway. Alisa stood there holding a very wiggly puppy. “I found her in the gallery,” she informed me dryly. “Barking at a Monet.”

Xander took the puppy and held her up, crooning at her. “No eating Monets,” he baby-talked. “Bad Tiramisu.” He gave her the world’s biggest, goofiest smile. “Bad dog. Just for that… you have to cuddle Grayson.”

Xander dumped the puppy on his brother.

“Are you ready for this?” Alisa asked beside me as Grayson let the puppy lick his nose and challenged his brothers to a round of hold-the-puppy pinball.

“As ready as I’m ever going to be.”

Thirty minutes to go. Twenty. Ten.No amount of winning or losing at pool, air hockey, or foosball, no amount of puppy pinball or trying to beat the high score on a dozen different arcade games could distract me from the way the clock was ticking down.

Three minutes.

“The trick to a good poker face,” Jameson murmured, “isn’t keeping your face blank. It’s thinking about something other than your cards—the same something the whole time.” Jameson Winchester Hawthorne offered me a hand, and for the second time that night, I took it. He pulled me in for a slow dance, the kind that required no music. “You’ve got your poker face on now, Heiress.”

I thought about flying around a racetrack, standing on the edge of the roof, riding on the back of his motorcycle, dancing barefoot on the beach. “Gen H verity,” I said.

Jameson arched a brow. “As in generational truth for people far older than us?”

“It’s your anagram,” I told him, “foreverything.”

My phone rang before he could reply, a video call from Max. I answered.

“Am I in time for the countdown?” she asked, yelling over what appeared to be very loud music.

“Do you have your champagne?” I asked.

She brandished a flute. Right on cue, Alisa appeared beside me, holding a tray of the same. I took a glass and met her eyes.It’s almost time.

“Piotr,” Max said darkly, “absolutely refuses to have a glass on duty. He did, however, pick a bodyguard theme song. I threatened him with show tunes.”

“That’s my girl!” Xander bellowed.

“Woman,” Max corrected.

“That’s my woman! In a completely not possessive and absolutely unpatriarchal kind of way!”

Max lifted her glass to toast him. “Elf yeah.”

“It’s time.” Jameson said. I leaned into him as the others crowded around. “Ten… nine… eight…”

Jameson, Grayson, Xander, and Nash.

Libby, Thea, and Rebecca.