Page 168

Kaz taps the deck against the table, resetting the hand. “Yeah. I bet you have.”

The cards move again.

The conversation doesn’t stop. It just deepens.

Mav wins the third hand on three jacks and deals the next without looking pleased about it.

The jukebox shifts. Something with a fiddle. Someone at the bar laughs loud enough for it to come through the wall.

I look at my hand. Ace high, nothing underneath. I fold.

Mav does as well.

“Aria’s sister said some stuff about her, and I got the wrong idea.” Mav refills his and my glass of bourbon while the others play. “I treated her like shit for a while.”

“And then?”

“Then I fell in love.”

“She forgave you for the shit?”

He looked at me like I had grown a second head. “Yes, man, but I had to work for it.”

The conversation veers off women and lands on ranching. That seems to be the beat here.

“You still gonna open that security thing?” Duke asks Kaz.

He winks at me. “Yeah.”

They all turn to face me.

“I’m thinking about it,” I tell them.

They all nod and then go back to talking about some steer that Cade bought that’s changing his herd in the best way possible.

“You get the guy who went to Clara’s place?” Mav asks.

Kaz’s jaw tightens. “Almost. Arrested him in Grand Junction, then someone intervened and cut him loose before we could get there. By the time we untangled it, he was gone.”

Apparently, Trafton has more skill than I gave him credit for because he’s in the wind. So much so that even my investigator has come up empty.

Sheriff Dillon was ready to put his fist through a wall when he found out he’d been released.

The thought of him still out there sits badly. But Wiley is with Clara, and I’m with Taya, so the people who need covering are covered—for now.

The next hand goes to me on three sevens, which is not a remarkable hand but is better than anything else at the table on a night when nobody’s head is entirely in the cards.

I look at the chips in the middle of the table. I don’t pick them up immediately.

“You think I can win her back?” I ask, feeling like a jackass.

This isn’t how I usually operate, talking to other men I barely know about matters of the fucking heart. But there’s something about this group of men—no posturing, no need to be untouchable—that makes the question pop out of my mouth.

“You fucked up. No doubt about it.” Hunt pulls out a cigar and looks around.

Mav nods, so he hands him one.

Duke shakes his head. “Elena is pregnant…and her nose is doing crazy shit. I smoke that she’s gonna puke.”