Page 20 of The Wrong Ride Home (Wildflower Canyon #1)

Seated around the dining table in the common room, they leaned back in their chairs, elbows resting on the worn wood.

Poker chips and playing cards lay scattered across the surface, and half-empty beer bottles sweated rings into it.

A bottle of bourbon stood sentry in the center, with glasses within easy reach.

Cal smirked as he picked up a deck of cards and started to shuffle. "Well, look at this. The boss man came to slum it with the likes of us."

Laughter rippled through the room.

"That a funeral suit, boss ? Or just your regular ensemble ?” Roy Taggart joked.

That was part of it, the gentle and not-so-gentle ribbing.

“Suit or not, I can still beat you motherfuckers.” It was as easy as apple pie to slide back into ranch dialect. “Now deal me the fuck in, yeah?”

I removed the offending cufflinks and set them on the table before I rolled up my sleeves, like I meant business .

“You using those instead of poker chips?” Hunt mused.

“They look like diamonds.” Sawyer’s eyes glinted with greed—yeah, he liked the bling.

“You wanna play for them, Sawyer?” I asked, sizing up the punk.

“Sure.” He even licked his lips.

Hunt shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“Boy, you’re playin’ outside your weight class,” Roy warned him.

Sawyer shrugged, grinning like a boy who didn’t know he was already losing. “I don’t know, Roy. Maybe I got some luck in me tonight.”

Hunt huffed. “Luck don’t help when you’re playing against?—”

“Now, Hunt, let the man play to win, yeah?” I grinned at Hunt, who shrugged. This was no skin off his nose.

“Yeah, man, let me win some of that bling-bling-bling, ” Sawyer laughed.

Cal continued shuffling the deck, the cards snapping clean against the wood.

I edged back in my chair, memories pressing into me.

The scrape of boots on the floor, the smell of whiskey and horse.

It had been a long time since I sat at a table like this, since I let myself just be here, in this place, with men who saw me for who I was, stripped of the polish…

well, except for Sawyer, who would regret saying what he did about Elena .

The first hand was dealt, and cards slid across the table. I picked mine up and let my gaze flicker over them.

Sawyer studied his cards with the relaxed stance of a man pretending to understand the game he was playing better than he did. “What’s the buy-in?” he challenged.

I smirked. “You already bet my cufflinks, didn’t you?”

He grinned, tapping his knuckles on the table. “Guess I did.”

I rolled a cuff link between my fingers. “Tell you what, Sawyer—why don’t you make it interesting?”

His eyes sparked with greed. “What are you thinkin’?”

I glanced at Hunt, who said nothing and watched me over the rim of his glass. He knew where I was going with this.

I set my cards down slowly, deliberately.

“You win, you keep the cufflinks. Hell, I’ll even throw in my watch.

” Everyone looked at my Rolex as I took it off and set it on the table next to the bling-bling-bling .

Sawyer’s eyes got bigger. “But if I win?” I paused and then smiled pleasantly at Sawyer.

“You pack your shit and get off Wilder land by sunrise.”

The man blinked. “What?”

“You have trouble hearin’ me?” I asked pleasantly.

Roy snickered. Cal chuckled. Hunt drank some more, but he was smiling.

He laughed, the sound a little too forced. “You serious?”

“As a rattlesnake in your boot. ”

Roy patted Sawyer’s shoulder. “Might be time to fold, boy.”

Sawyer scoffed, but I caught the flicker of nerves in his face. He glanced around the table, searching for someone to back him up, but no one said a damn thing.

They’d all seen me play. I was good when I was twenty, and they figured I’d only gotten better.

I tapped my fingers against the cards in front of me. “You in or out?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. He shoved his last few chips into the pot with some force. “In.”

The room went still.

Roy chuckled, “Boy, you got more guts than brains.”

“No guts, no glory,” Sawyer threw at him.

“Let’s find out,” I said.

The game played out with each player folding. Roy was the first to fold, followed by Hunt and Ben until it was just Sawyer and me as I knew it would be. The boy didn’t have the sense God gave him.

Sawyer grinned, tapping his fingers against his stack of chips, looking surer of himself than he had any right to be. He thought he had me.

“All in.” He shoved his remaining chips forward. They clattered against the wood. “That watch’s gonna look real good on my wrist, boss.”

I barely looked at my cards. I didn’t need to.

I sighed, shaking my head like I was debating. Like, this wasn’t going my way. Then, slowly, I slid my watch and cufflinks into the pot with the rest of the stakes.

"Call.”

Sawyer flipped his cards over, triumphant. He had a full house—eights over queens. He grinned like the son of a bitch he was. “Read ‘em and weep, boss.”

I let the moment stretch just long enough.

He leaned over to take the cufflinks, but I shook my head in warning. “I have two pairs.”

“And? Didn’t you see I have a full?—”

I slowly turned my cards, and he shut the hell up when he saw my two pairs were, in fact, four kings.

The grin on Sawyer’s face faltered, then disappeared entirely.

Laughter exploded around the table, loud and sharp, Cal and Roy slapping the table in appreciation. Hunt shook his head, finishing off the last of his whiskey. Ben watched wide-eyed, excited like he’d never seen anything this thrilling before.

“Boy, you should’ve listened to your elders.” I picked up the bottle of whiskey and poured myself a finger into Hunt’s empty glass and downed it.

Sawyer’s face burned red. His hands clenched into fists, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Hunt leaned forward, voice calm but final. “Time to go pack your things, Sawyer. Someone’ll drive you to town in the morning.”

Sawyer’s jaw ticked. “This is bullshit.”

I just smiled. “No, boy. This is poker.”

He glared at me, then shoved himself up from the table, his boots stomping heavily against the wood floor.

Ben snorted, grinning as he leaned back in his chair. “That was some luck.”

“Luck’s got nothin’ to do with it,” Cal muttered. “The sumbitch sees patterns before the rest of us even know we got cards in our hands.”

Ben’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh…I….”

“You wanna play more, you can’t do that crap,” Hunt warned me.

I raised both hands in a peace offering. “It was just this time.”

Ben still looked confused, so Hunt took pity on him. “He played to get rid of Sawyer.”

Roy guffawed. “Easiest fix.”

Cal shook his head, his smirk saying he wasn’t sure if he was impressed or irritated. “You heard him shoot his mouth off, didn’t ya?”

I just tipped my head in acknowledgment.

“Is someone gonna deal so we can play, or are we gonna talk about the fuckin’ weather next?” I demanded.

The men laughed, shaking their heads, and just like that, the tension was gone. Someone slid cards across the table, another hand already starting.

Roy picked up his cards and gave me a knowing look. “Your old man used to come and play, but he had the decency to lose his money.” He paused, shaking his head with a half-smile. “He wasn’t a Goddamn card shark like you, Duke.”

I smirked, collecting my cards. “Well, I gotta be good at something. Now, can I have a beer or what?”