Page 76 of Puppy Kisses

“Well, now that Gigi has chosen her seat, we can all get started.” Dawn clapped her hands once. It had the effect of bringing any remaining lingerers to attention. “As most of you know, we’re currently on a plot of land whose ownership is highly sought after. The Dearborns would like it to expand their ranch. The Smithwoods would like it to regain some of their lost holdings from a similar poker game over half a century ago.”

Such was the power of Dawn’s presence that no one interrupted or contradicted her.

“AndIwould like it because now that I’ve spent a few weeks out here, I realize that there’s nowhere on earth I’d rather live.”

At this, Adam’s entire body tensed, but Uncle settled himself directly on top of his feet. Between that solid bulk pressing on his toes and Gigi’s warm snuffling as she burrowed deeper into his neck, there was no escape for him.

“Which is why Bea has been so kind as to agree to sell to the winner of this poker game. The winner will be expected to pay full market value, of course, but this should put the question of who deserves the land to rest. No more fighting. No more bribes. This whole affair began with a poker game and will end with a poker game. Right, Bea?”

“Hell yes. I’m tired of all this nonsense. You people exhaust me.”

“You agree, Charlie?”

“Sure. Why not? Provided there’s no funny business involved…”

Adam tensed even more, ready to leap to his family’s defense, but Zeke beat him to it. “Oh, pipe down, Smithwood. You know as well as we do that your grandfather was a lazy waste of space. Our granddad did more with this land than he ever could have.”

“I thought this was going to be a friendly game,” Marcia interjected. Adam had been wondering what brought her to this spectacle, but even that was beginning to make sense. Marcia spent as much time on the Smithwood Ranch as the Dearborn one and was on friendly terms with both. If Dawn wanted to bring in a peacekeeper, she couldn’t have chosen a better one. “If you guys can’t leave off with the smack talk, I might sit down and join the game, too. Just imagine—a veterinary clinic right between my two biggest cash cows. Pun one hundred percent intended.”

Light laughter dispelled the tension.

“That leaves you, Adam,” Dawn said. Was it his imagination, or did she sound less friendly now that she was talking to him? “Can you find it in yourself to agree to those terms?”

No, he couldn’t. Everything about this situation was ridiculous in the extreme. No matter what had happened in the past, people didn’t play poker for land in this day and age. They should have been able to sit down like adults, discuss their options, and come to terms that were agreeable to all of them.

“Hell yes,” he said, speaking more forcefully than he intended. He didn’t take his words back, though. He was tired of acting like an adult, even more exhausted with being the only person in the room who put a damper on everyone else’s dreams.

He wanted things, too. Tangible things like land to expand the family ranch. Intangible things like love and acceptance and the prospect of waking up every morning next to a woman like Dawn.

Shifting Gigi just enough so that his hands were free to play poker, he turned his full attention to the felt in front of him. The intangible things he wanted might not be so accessible, but here, at least, was something he could do. Like most of the things he’d achieved in life, it had taken him more time and more work than most people to master the art of poker. He couldn’t read faces the way others did, forced to rely instead on audio clues and card counting. Forced to rely instead onhimself.

That one lonely constant. The only thing he could hold onto in times like these.

So, yes. He could agree to those terms. Win or lose, the game would end today. “Ante up,” he said.

Chapter 17

Dawn had been steadily losing since the game began.

It had been her intention to start off with a bang, frightening her competitors into upping their stakes and playing recklessly, turning this poker game into something worth noting. She should have known better. Where Adam Dearborn was concerned, intentions meant nothing.

“Full house, aces over fives.” He sat back in his seat, buoyed by his triumph but determined not to show it. Dawn could tell. She knew all the signs of that man’s excitement—the way he flushed just at the tips of his ears, the way his movements slowed down to become careful, methodical,purposeful.

This was normally the point where he demanded that she slow down and enjoy herself, when he told her that he was going to take his time and nothing she said or did would deter him from that path.

She was annoyed. Annoyedandaroused, which made the annoyance that much more difficult to bear.

“Goddammit, Dearborn.” Charlie threw his cards down in disgust. “I was sure you were bluffing that time.”

“He never bluffs,” Dawn retorted, tossing her own cards into the middle of the table. “He never lies, never says anything he doesn’t mean.”

Charlie cocked an eyebrow at her from across the table. He was a good-looking man, if a little uninteresting in a bland, all-American sort of way. His height was average, his build stocky, and his eyes so blue it looked as though his parents had plucked them from the wide prairie sky. From the way Phoebe kept shifting her glance his way, it was obvious she admired his style, but Dawn had been with enough guys like that to know all that corn-fed goodness had a tendency to pall after a while.

“Making up for the sins of the father?” Charlie asked. He coughed gently and added, “Or grandfather, as the case may be?”

Adam flushed darkly, though he still held himself careful and stiff in his seat. He was all hard lines and rigid angles, a tower of strength that might fall at the least provocation. “Are you accusing me of cheating, Smithwood?”

He made a big show of rolling up the sleeves of his red-checked flannel shirt, exposing his sinewy forearms one tantalizing inch at a time. Dawn tried her best not to stare and was forced to take her lower lip between her teeth and fix her gaze out Bea’s front window to the twilight beyond.