Betting the Rainbow (Harmony) Page 9

  When she believed that he really loved her.

  An hour later when the plane landed, Big Biggs was there waiting for her. He picked her up in his strong arms and gave her the hug she needed. In truth, she barely remembered calling him just before she’d silenced her phone. He was her one friend who never asked questions before standing on her side of any fight.

  Reagan tried to smile, but he saw right through her pretend bravery. “What did that bum of a cowboy do to you this time? I swear I’ll knock that oatmeal he’s got for brains right out of his head this time.”

  Now Reagan smiled. “He didn’t do anything, but thanks for the offer. I might remind you of your plan one day.”

  “It’s been a standing offer for years, Reagan. In fact, you’re probably the only reason he’s alive today. Course, you’re the reason I want to kill him too. He’s never known what a treasure he’s had in you.”

  She stood on her toes and kissed Big’s cheek. “I love you, Big.”

  “I know. I’m downright adorable. My Ester tells me I should be the first human cloned; then there would be more me’s to go around.”

  They walked toward his truck. “Where is Ester?”

  “She pulled an all-night shift in the emergency room last night. I had some vacation coming so I’d already planned to take off today and cuddle in with her. When you called, she told me to come on over and get you so she could get a few hours’ sleep. I promised to wake her when I get home.”

  “Got time to buy me breakfast before we head back?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  “Sure. I’m starving. Only you’re buying. I’m saving my money for the game. My grandmother says every room in town is booked with poker players coming in. The ones staying at the bed-and-breakfast are already playing every night to practice. If Ester works another night shift, I might go over and get a little practice in too. Martha Q makes them play for toothpicks ’cause she swears she won’t allow nothing illegal to happen at Winter’s Inn.”

  Reagan raised an eyebrow. She’d never thought of Martha Q as the “by the letter” type.

  Big blushed. “The crazy owner told me she was too old to get arrested and have to use a toilet in front of jail guards.”

  Reagan fought to get the image out of her mind. “I didn’t know you were a poker player, Big.”

  “I’m not, but I plan to stay around eating barbecue and drinking beer while I watch all the fools I work with lose. A twenty-dollar buy-in will be worth the price. Half the men on my road crew think they’re born to gamble.”

  Reagan climbed into his pickup and they stopped to eat at the first truck stop out of Amarillo. She told him about the trip and how it was all her fault. Big, as usual, didn’t believe a word she said and swore it was all Noah’s problem.

  She didn’t tell Big about Noah saying he’d been at the Hampton when she’d checked and he hadn’t been registered.

  When they started home, Big pulled an old blanket from behind his seat and she curled up against the window and went to sleep. The rocking of the truck, the warmth of the day, and the comfort of knowing she was safe let her relax into dreamless slumber.

  The next morning Truman Orchard business took all her energy. Planning a fund-raiser is no easy job, but having a successful one was almost unheard of in the history of Harmony, and Reagan had to do it on top of all her normal workload.

  A dozen people had offered to help, and all wanted to be kept informed on every detail. Around it all she had a business to run, and they’d be moving into their busy season soon.

  Since the day she’d made it home, Reagan had tried not to think. Logic told her not to dwell on Noah’s deliberate lie. She just worked.

  Chapter 13

  DELANEY FARM

  DUSTI STRETCHED OUT IN THE KITCHEN’S BAY WINDOW AND alternated between watching her sister bake pies and staring out the window down Rainbow Lane.

  Her great-grandfather had walked up on this land a hundred years ago and seen a rainbow over the lake. The house might be falling down around their ears now and the barn needed major patching, but this little spot had been her home all her life.

  She dreamed of traveling and living other places, but she couldn’t sell the land for her dream any more than Abby could sell it to reach hers. They had to find another way, and this one poker game just might be that way.

  It was an hour past time for her poker lesson, and Kieran hadn’t shown up yet. She wasn’t sure whether she missed him or was simply angry that he’d skipped a lesson he’d promised to teach her this morning.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Abby tossed a cracked egg at her.

  Dusti made no effort to catch it. She just stared at the spot on her knee where the yolk exploded. “Nothing,” she said, answering the same question for the third time.

  Abby lifted another fresh egg and took aim.

  “Just the cracked ones,” Dusti yelled from five feet away. “Remember what Mom said.”

  Both girls laughed, obviously sharing the memory of an argument they’d had one morning when they’d been small. Neither could recall what had started the disagreement, but four dozen eggs lay splattered around them like deformed sunflowers in the dirt when their mother had stopped the fight.

  “We were still in grade school. We didn’t know eggs meant money.” Abby smiled. “I swear I started gathering eggs the day after I learned to walk.”

  Dusti nodded. “You told Mom they were all cracked the day of the great egg fight. She made you clean the coops for a week for lying and another for fighting.”

  Abby went back to her baking. “She grounded you from swimming for starting the fight.”

  “I never thought that was fair.” Dusti wiped off her jeans. “Why’d she think I started it?”

  “Because you always start the fights, Dusti.” Abby reached for the small pitcher full of wooden spoons, obviously picking out another weapon to keep handy if the ingredients ran out. “I remember the twenty-six months of my life before you came along. I was an only child, not knowing how great the title was until I lost it. No one yelled at me. No groundings. No fights. The world was a peaceful place before you were born.”

  “You think you had it bad. Imagine being me and finding out my parents had already tried having a kid and failed at the job. I can just see Pop looking at Mom and saying, ‘Surely we can do better the second time. I’m afraid, dear, we’ll have to sleep together again.’ Then, I come out and you take on the job of bossing me around.”

  The argument they’d loved for as long as either could remember was on. Pie ingredients and insults flew back and forth in rapid fire along with wooden spoons, eggs, and tin pans.

  Dusti didn’t notice the back door had opened until it was too late to stop a pie pan in flight.

  Kieran took the blow to his forehead without ducking. He just stood like a statue watching two grown women covered in eggs and flour. Calmly, he looked around as white dust settled. “I guess I must be too late for breakfast.”

  Abby and Dusti both tried to act as if they weren’t covered in ingredients, but it was hopeless. Both doubled over laughing.

  When Dusti finally got control enough to look at the big Scot, she saw blood dripping from the pie pan wound. “You’re hurt? Oh, Abby, you hurt him.”

  “I hurt him? You threw the pan.”

  “But you started the fight.”

  He touched the blood on his forehead, brushing it into his hair of almost the same color. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “This is my first encounter with insane country cooking. We must not get that channel back East.”

  The New Yorker in him was in full control as he added, “It’s probably on the same cable as mud fishing and distance barfing.”

  Another pie pan sailed through the air. Kieran had the sense to duck this time.

  Dusti stared at Abby, who, of course, looked innocent. �
�Don’t aim for the head. You’ve got to leave him with enough brains to teach me to play poker.”

  Abby curtsied. “So sorry. Want me to patch you up, Mr. O’Toole?”

  “No, he’s my teacher, I’ll put the Band-Aid on him.” Dusti took his hand and tugged him into the downstairs bathroom. The little powder room was barely big enough for them both to stand.

  Pushing him down on the stool covered to match the rose-colored shag carpet, Dusti stood between his legs and opened the door to the medicine cabinet behind his head. “When we were growing up, we called this the hospital. If one of us got hurt, this was where we came. Scrapes were so common, Mom didn’t want to waste time or get blood on the stairs so she kept everything needed for doctoring here.”

  Kieran didn’t say a word. In fact, he didn’t move while she cleaned the small cut and doctored it with antiseptic. When she leaned to turn the water off in the sink, her leg brushed the inside of his thigh and she felt the muscles tighten. As she set the first-aid kit back above him, the side of her breast brushed his cheek. Again, he froze.

  “Are you all right?” He looked strong as a linebacker, but maybe he was one of those people who fainted at the sight of his own blood. “The cut wasn’t deep. In fact, it’s stopped bleeding. I don’t think you really need the Band-Aid.”

  “I’m not worried about the cut.” The hint of the Highlander was in his voice. “I’m just not used to being so close to the nurses.”

  Leaning back, she looked down at him. “Does my being so close to you bother you, Kieran?”

  “No,” he answered, staring at her face. “But I’ll admit you bother me, Dusti. You always have.”

  She didn’t lean away. “That why you told your creepy cousin that you were afraid of me?”

  “I am afraid of you.” Before she could react, his hand brushed upward along her leg. “Even covered in this mess, you bother me, lass.”

  He brushed flour off the side of her shirt, then rested his hand in the spot he’d cleaned. She could feel his warm palm moving along her ribs to the side of her breast. “When you’re near I forget which way is north. It took me a year to ask you out and you turned me down in five seconds.”

  “My mother was ill,” she said.

  His hand kept moving over her shirt, almost touching, as he continued to torture her. “And the second and third time?”

  Dusti closed her eyes. “I can’t think with you doing that.”

  The urge to kiss him almost buckled her knees, but she remembered he’d said he’d let her know when he wanted to kiss her.

  Slowly, he straightened to his full height, suddenly making the room seem very, very small. He moved his hands up her body as he stood so close she could feel the heat of him even through both their clothes. He bent, picking up the towel she’d used to wash the cut, and began blotting flour and egg from her face.

  Keeping her eyes closed tight, she let the feeling of being cared for, cared about, pass over her for the first time in a very long time.

  He picked bits of eggshell from her hair and soaked the towel in warm water before moving slowly over her face and down the V of her shirt. His touch was gentle, like he was treasuring her, like she was priceless.

  When she lifted her gaze, she saw the passion in his gray eyes. The room must be running out of air. They’d pass out at any moment, like miners trapped in a cave. He didn’t seem to notice. His hand, wrapped in the corner of a towel, moved feather light down over her shirt, making her ache for a more intimate touch.

  “You going to kiss me now?” she whispered.

  He dropped the towel as his hands circled her waist. With one tug she was against him from chest to knee, and it felt so good.

  It had been so long since she’d been so on fire for a man. They’d have to do it standing up, but if he wanted her, the tiny room would have to work. She wasn’t sure she could wait until they ran up a flight of stairs to her room in the attic.

  She leaned closer, opening her mouth, dying for the feel of his lips on hers.

  But Kieran pulled away.

  Patience was never a high card in her deck. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” She had other things in mind, but she’d start with one long “turn to jelly” kiss.

  “No. I was just cleaning you up so we can play poker. I wouldn’t want the deck getting dirty.” His hand slid below her waist to her hip and he gently patted her as if hurrying her along.

  The man patted her bottom!

  If she’d had another pie pan he’d need more than a Band-Aid to cover his next injury.

  In one glance she realized he had no trouble reading her thoughts.

  “First lesson,” he said as he moved to the door of the bathroom. “Never show your emotions. Never let another player see you upset. If you do, he’s just found the way to control you and the game.”

  Dusti turned her violent nature inward. If she had a pie pan she’d beat it on her own head. In fact, she’d become a one-woman band. All her wild Saturday nights, all her “going to sin city” in the back of some guy’s car hadn’t prepared her for Kieran O’Toole.

  If he played another trick like that one, she’d go out of her mind. How was she going to sit across from him and play cards?

  Right now she didn’t care about poker. She wanted revenge. Apparently she’d asked the Loch Ness Monster to teach her to play. He might want her showing no emotion while he turned her on and walked away, but Dusti wasn’t built that way.

  Who knew, maybe he was simply torturing her to death for turning him down for a date three times in a row.

  Dusti smiled. Two could play the torture game, and this time she had skills. This time he’d be the first to fold.

  She might not know poker, but she knew flirting. She considered herself world class even if she hadn’t played in a while.

  Chapter 14

  DELANEY FARM

  WHEN DUSTI FINALLY FOUND ENOUGH CONTROL TO LEAVE the bathroom, she was surprised to see Austin Hawk standing in the open front doorway. He was dressed like he’d just made a cameo appearance on Wilderness Journey. His hair needed cutting and his beard looked to be three or four days old. For an unfriendly type, he still looked sexy.

  She must be so sex-starved even the local recluse looked appealing.

  Two good-looking men in her house at the same time was definitely overdosing. Only Austin wasn’t shy, he fell more into unsociable territory. He’d been back at Hawk House for weeks this time and barely did more than wave at them when he walked across their front yard to the garage where he stored his Jeep or boat, depending on which one he wasn’t using.

  They’d charged him double the usual rate to use one of the storage barns. Abby thought he looked like the kind of man who kept bodies pickled in his basement, but Dusti was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since he had been a nice kid a dozen years back. Only nice had vanished along with his pimples.

  “May I help you, Austin?” She fought the urge to pick up the rifle kept stored on the hallway bookshelf. Austin was big like Kieran, but Austin was dark, moody, haunting. Whereas the Scot looked fit, Austin Hawk looked hard. Like sometime between the days that he’d been a boy running about the lake and now, he seemed to have had parts replaced and was more machine than human.

  “I’m here to see Kieran,” he said, as if she were no more than a voice box near the doorbell. “He texted me to come over.”

  “Oh, sure.” She relaxed a fraction. “Come on in. I think he’s in the kitchen.” Dusti was glad to pass the guy along. Let the Scot, who’d probably never get around to kissing her, handle Hawk.

  Austin followed her past the powder room to the kitchen. She just stood silent at the door and let him step around her and stare at the chaos before him. No explanation for the mess came to mind for flour, sugar, and eggs to be everywhere.

  He finally looked at her. “Smells good,” he sa
id, as if stating a fact and not paying a compliment.

  “Thanks. We’re baking pies for the livestock auction lunch tomorrow. They always order twenty buttermilk.”

  He nodded as if the world made sense.

  Dusti decided she liked Austin Hawk. After all, he wasn’t feeling her up and refusing to kiss her. On today’s scorecard that made him the winner.

  A moment later, Ronny came through the back door with Abby. They were laughing about the chickens.

  For just a flicker, Dusti caught something in Hawk’s eyes. One look that vanished as quickly as it had sparked, but it told her something.

  Austin Hawk had eyes for no one but Ronny Logan, and Dusti doubted the woman even knew it.

  While she scratched Hawk off the list of eligible men in the world, her Scot stepped into the room. Suddenly, the kitchen seemed way too small for them all. Dusti swore she could feel Kieran’s hands on her even though he was five feet away.

  Kieran moved, not toward her, but next to Austin, and the men shook hands.

  “Thanks for coming. Ronny said you’d act as dealer this morning so she could help with the pies.” Kieran moved the couple toward the dining room table. “Sorry we’re getting off to a late start. My grandmother had a guest this morning.” He smiled and looked at Ronny. “Your mother came by to pay a call.”

  Ronny took her seat without looking up at anyone. “I’m glad you stayed with your grandmother. My mother tends to eat the weak.”

  No one laughed. They’d all been around Harmony long enough to know Ronny’s words were true.

  Then, as if a bell had sounded, everyone except Ronny began talking at once. All wanted to change the subject.

  Austin asked if anyone had seen the wild hogs.

  Kieran picked up the deck of cards and said as he removed the jokers, “I found the deck. We’re all here finally,” as if they’d been lost. “Maybe we should get started.”