Desert Heat (7 page)

She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to hear that silky drawl or look into those lying blue eyes.

She had passed him a couple of times around the rodeo grounds, but he had always been with someone else or getting ready to ride. She had watched him compete, of course. He had drawn a couple of good horses and ridden well enough to come in third in the overall and take home a sizeable chunk of money.

He wasn’t around when she and Shari pulled out of Vegas and headed for Reno. They checked into the Silver Slipper, where Dallas had again come up with free rooms, though they all knew Shari would be spending the night with Stormy. Dallas won a little day money in the saddle broncs, took a third in the calf roping, and Stormy took a day money third.

It wasn’t what they were hoping for, but in rodeo, there was always another show, another chance to win, and Prescott and Greeley were both coming up. Dallas would also be competing in Cody, Wyoming, Shari told her, then flying on up to the Calgary Stampede.

It was just getting dark when they pulled into Prescott, which still retained the flavor of the old West gold-mining town it once was.

“The guys got in a couple of hours ahead of us,” Shari told her as they drove through the gates of the rodeo grounds. “That’s Button over there—tied to Dallas’s trailer.”

Charlie Carson was also there. Patience saw Circle C livestock trucks parked in the staging area, though the animals had already been unloaded.

“They’re probably over at Miller’s bar,” Shari said. “It’s kind of a hangout whenever the rodeo’s in town. The guys like to play cards there.”

Patience felt a little tug of excitement. She loved to play cards. She had played with her dad and sisters since she was a little girl. Occasionally in the evenings, when she wasn’t busy with her research or typing on the computer, she and Shari had spent the evening playing gin, but it was poker she enjoyed the most. As a child she had demanded her father teach her as soon as she had seen it being played in an ancient black-and-white Gary Cooper movie.

“You feel like going downtown?” Shari asked.

“Sure. I’ve never seen Prescott and it’s early, yet. And I could use something to eat.”

“I’ll check on Button and the other two horses, then we’ll unhook our trailer and head out.”

Sitting at a round table in the back room of Miller’s bar, a narrow, smoky little beer joint on the square in downtown Prescott, Dallas leaned back in his chair. “Ante up, boys, I haven’t got all night.”

Seated next to Cy, who was clowning the show with Junior Reese, Stormy tossed in a couple of chips. Blue Cody sat across from him, next to Reno Garcia, a short, stout, mustached bull rider who had won some money in Vegas. They were playing Texas Hold ’Em, one of Dallas’s favorite games, and the pot was leaning his way, though not by much. Stormy was usually a pretty fair player, but tonight he couldn’t seem to keep his mind on the game.

Every three minutes, he kept looking at the door, the way he was now, as if he could will that little redhead of his to come walking in.

Dallas kicked him under the table. “Your bet, slick.”

“Sorry.” Stormy studied the two cards in his hand and the three cards that were sitting faceup in the middle of the table. “I’ll check to Blue.”

Blue bet and so did Wes. Reno raised the bet, which Dallas met, and Stormy folded. Which Dallas figured had more to do with the fact that Shari was finally shoving her way through the door than the cards that he had been dealt.

Dallas sat up a little straighter himself when he saw the tall blonde who walked in behind her. Ever since Vegas, he’d been torn between wanting to see her and telling himself it was better if he just left things alone—let her continue to think the worst of him.

He knew she did. He’d caught a glimpse of her on the steps as he had followed Jade into the limo after the party. He didn’t have to see her face to know she thought he was lower than pond scum. She had refused to have sex with him so she figured he had taken Jade home instead. Like it didn’t really matter who he screwed.

Like hell it didn’t.

Patience was mad at him for taking Jade home and Jade was still pissed at him for refusing to join her in bed. He had heard her throwing things against the door as he’d walked away.

But it wasn’t Jade Egan he wanted.

The woman he wanted was walking straight toward him and just looking at her made him hard under the table.

“Hi, guys!” Shari waved and Stormy got up from his chair.

“I’m out.” Stormy tossed down his cards with barely a glance at any of them. He was out, all right. He hadn’t seen his lady in what? Six or seven hours?

Dallas damned near smiled, might have, if he hadn’t caught the go-to-hell look on Patience’s pretty face.

“We got an open seat,” he drawled in her direction, just to goad her a little. She was still mad as hell. Why he found that heartening he couldn’t quite say. “What do you think, P.J.? Maybe you’d like to sit in.”

The other guys laughed. Reno Garcia grunted and Blue Cody grinned. Dallas couldn’t believe his eyes when Patience dragged out Stormy’s vacated chair and planted her luscious behind squarely in the seat.

The laughter immediately faded.

“We…um…kind of have a standing rule,” Blue Cody said. “We’re playing for money—not high stakes but still…it wouldn’t be fair to take advantage of someone who’s new to the game.” Translation—they didn’t have time to put up with a female who had no idea how to play cards.

Patience just smiled. “I’ll take my chances.” She opened her purse and took out a fifty-dollar bill. “This enough to buy in?”

Blue sat up a little straighter. “Like I said, this isn’t a high-stakes game.” He pushed fifty dollars worth of chips in her direction.

“Texas Hold ’Em, right?”

Dallas shoved his hat back on his head and tried to read her expression. He had underestimated her before, but…Man, there was no way in hell Little Miss Boston University knew how to play poker good enough to win.

An hour later, he was silently eating his words.

When Patience laid down a pair of aces, which combined with the cards on the table gave her a full house, Reno Garcia threw in his hand and shoved back his chair. “What the hell we got here—a goddamned mechanic?” A card shark. Reno wasn’t a guy who liked losing, especially to a woman.

“Beginner’s luck,” Patience said, smiling as she raked in another pile of chips. But she was hardly a beginner. Dallas had watched her set a bear trap for Reno, hardly betting at all when it was now clear she had drawn a powerful hand. Since another ace lay among those in the shared hand in the middle of the table, she’d had at least three of a kind before she started betting.

Earlier, she had over-bet the pot, making it appear as if she were bluffing, playing like the greenhorn they expected her to be. She had sucked them all in, including himself, then calmly laid down a Jack-high straight and scraped in her winnings.

He might have laughed if she wasn’t enjoying herself so much at his expense. Every time she won a hand, she flashed him a kiss-my-ass smile and it was beginning to get on his nerves. Still, secretly it tickled him that she could play so damned well.

They gambled a couple more hours. Patience was clearly the winner when the game finally ended. The men were grumbling but looking at her with a new sort of respect. Dallas wanted to know who the hell P.J. Sinclair was and how she had managed to sucker five poker-playing cowboys out of their rodeo winnings.

Dallas shoved back his chair and came slowly to his feet as Charlie Carson walked in. Though Dallas had called him every couple of days, he hadn’t seen him since Silver Springs and he had been worried about him. The last time they had spoken, Charlie said a marshal had served him with a multi-million dollar lawsuit over the incident at the fairgrounds with the bulls.

Charlie’d had to hire his own set of bloodsucking attorneys to deal with the insurance company, which was trying to weasel out of paying any kind of settlement.

Dallas excused himself and went over to talk to his uncle, who was speaking to a couple of other men, one he recognized as Salty Marvin, a grizzled, old-time cowhand who worked for the Circle C, the other, a guy named Lem Wilkins, one of the owners of the Flying S, Charlie’s main competitor in the rodeo production business. Lem looked a little like an aging hippie, with the same mustache and sideburns he’d been wearing since the sixties.

Dallas had never really liked him. Wilkins and his partner, Jack Stiles, had been after Charlie to sell out to him for years, even going so far as to pressure Annie about it, but Charlie had always refused. Dallas wondered what the hell Lem was up to now.

“Hey, Dallas!” Charlie waved him over. “Good to see you, son.” He clasped Dallas’s shoulder and gave it a hearty squeeze.

“It’s damned good to see you, too. Hello, Salty. Lem.” He glanced between his uncle and the other two men. “What’s going on?”

Charlie’s smile slipped a notch. “What’s goin’ on is I’m thinkin’ of selling a couple of Circle C bucking horses to Lem. He’s offered me a damned good price for them.”

Dallas frowned. It wasn’t like Charlie to sell his stock unless he absolutely had to. Worse yet, he was selling it to Lem. Apparently money was tighter than he thought.

Dallas drew Charlie aside. “You’re not seriously thinking of selling those horses to Lem?”

“More than serious. The truth is, we’ve pretty much come to an agreement.”

“Listen, Charlie. You need money, I could loan you some. You know I’ve got a good bit saved up.”

But Charlie shook his head. “I ain’t takin’ your money, son. Not now or any time in the future. You worked too hard to get it.”

“You’ve helped me, Charlie. It’s only fair that I—”

“I said no and that’s the end of it.” Charlie tugged his hat down a little lower on his forehead and Dallas didn’t say another word.

“Which ones are you going to sell?” he asked, thinking how often Annie had grumbled about her hardheaded husband.

“Crawfish, Geronimo, and Spitfire.”

Dallas was stunned. They were all Finals horses, some of the best buckers Charlie owned. Dallas shook his head, hardly able to believe it. “You sure about this?”

“We got some good stock coming up on the ranch. They’ll be ready in a year or two. We got enough good horses to last until then.”

Dallas just nodded, knowing there was nothing he could do. He let the men finish their dickering, but he didn’t like what was going down. He didn’t like it one bit.

“I love it!” Shari laughed as Patience moved away from the card table and sat down next to her and Stormy. “I had no idea you could play poker like that.”

“To tell you the truth, it’s not that I’m particularly good. It’s just that those guys are all pretty bad.”

Shari laughed again. “They don’t really play all that much. They usually don’t have time.” The place was filling up with cowboys just getting into town. The jukebox played Garth Brooks’s “Friends In Low Places,” and a guy and his girl got up to dance. A couple of barrel racers came in and sat down at the bar. A few minutes later, Jade Egan walked in.

She strolled straight up to Dallas, bent and whispered something in his ear.

Patience’s stomach tightened. It was ridiculous. The fact that Jade was sleeping with Dallas had nothing to do with her. Still, she didn’t have to like it. “I think I’ll head back to the trailer,” she said to Shari. “That is…if Stormy wouldn’t mind giving you a ride.”

Stormy just grinned. “No problem.”

Shari flicked a glance at Jade, who still stood next to Dallas. “You shouldn’t let her get to you.”

“It isn’t that…Well, not exactly. I’ll catch you later, okay?” Patience crossed the bar, pushed through the old-time swinging doors, and felt a rush of warm air as she stepped out into the Arizona evening. She started up the walk toward her brown pickup truck.

“Hey, Patience—wait up!”

It was Dallas. Just the sound of that soft Texas drawl made the hackles rise on the back of her neck. Instead of stopping, she started walking faster.

“Dammit—wait a minute! I need to talk to you.”

She turned to face him, kept walking backwards. “Whatever you’ve got to say, I don’t want to hear it. Why don’t you go back in the bar? Jade’s in there. Or if you’re tired of her, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding someone else.”

She turned around and kept on walking. A tug on her arm spun her around, then she grunted as Dallas’s shoulder connected with her stomach. Hoisting her over his shoulder, he started for his truck.

“Are you crazy? Put me down!” She pounded on his back but did more damage to her fist than she did to him.

“I’m not letting you go till you hear what I have to say.”

“Damn you!”

He rounded his truck to the passenger side, clicked his car keys to open the door, then set her down on the black leather seat. “I know you’re pissed. I know you saw me leaving with Jade the night of the party.”

She bristled. Pissed? He didn’t know the half of it, but she’d be damned if she’d let him know. “So I saw you. So what? It’s none of my business who you spend the night with.”

“Maybe it isn’t. But that particular night was different. I wanted to make love to you. I told you that and I meant it. And I didn’t sleep with Jade.”

“Right.” She tried to jump down from the seat, but he braced his arms across the door, trapping her inside the cab.

“The truth is, Jade got wasted that night. She was drunk, doing marijuana with a couple of rich boys in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Ruth Collins came after me, asked me to get her out of there before she really got herself in trouble.”

Patience looked at him hard, trying to decide if he was telling her the truth. “So I’m supposed to believe all you did was play Sir Galahad and rescue her?”

“I guess you could put it that way.”

“But you didn’t sleep with her.”

“I’m not interested in Jade. I haven’t been for quite a while.”

Patience sighed and leaned back against the seat. “It really isn’t my business, Dallas. You don’t owe me an explanation. I don’t have any kind of hold over you.”