Throb(3)

“It ain’t beginner’s luck,” Ben guffaws.

Two more hands and Ben and Frank fold again, leaving just Kate and me. My cards are shit, but I like the way she pushes back every time I raise the ante, so I just keep throwing good money after bad.

After my last raise, Kate brushes her thumb over the worn chip she’s kept at her side all night, looks down at her pot, then back to me, studying my face. I return the challenging stare. Her blue-green eyes squint ever so slightly as she tries to read what I’ve got sitting face-down on the table. For a second, she drops her gaze and lingers on my mouth before returning to my eyes. I have no idea what she sees, but something makes her smile. It’s slow and confident and she arches one eyebrow before she pushes her chips in. “Call.”

I don’t take my eyes off her as I turn over my pair of twos. She smirks, then turns over a pair of threes. Ben and Frank laugh their asses off and decide we need a short break, one long enough for me to “pull my head out of my ass.”

The two men disappear to the men’s room, leaving just Kate and me sitting at the table. Leaning back in my chair, I ask. “How did you know?”

She shrugs and smiles. “It’s all about reading people.”

“So you can see what I’m thinking?” I lift my beer to my lips and take a slow draw without breaking eye contact.

“Sometimes.”

“What am I thinking about now?” I try in vain to keep a stoic face, but the corner of my mouth tilts up to a dirty grin.

She shakes her head and walks to the restroom smiling, leaving me watching the sway of her ass.



A few hours later, Frank calls for the last hand. I pull a money clip out of my pocket and lay it on the table. Ben takes out a business-card holder engraved with his initials and Frank tosses a pair of my father’s cufflinks to the middle.

“What’s going on?” Kate questions, a look of confusion on her face.

Apparently Frank failed to tell her about the tradition of last hand of the night, so he begins explaining. “Last hand isn’t for cash. It’s something that means something to you, that all of us might want.”

Kate lifts her purse and spends a minute looking through it. Finally, she takes out a pen and paper, writes something down, and folds it up.

“We don’t take IOUs,” I tease.

She looks me in the eye. “It’s my phone number. Didn’t think any of you would want my lipstick or a tampon.” She arches one eyebrow, daring me to question her choice. Another damn twitch. I might have to sit at the table for a while if this is another quick hand.

I laugh, but damn she anted up something I want. Badly. Unfortunately, true to the rest of the night, Kate is the one pulling in the pot at the end of the game.

“You better give me a chance to get my friend’s cufflinks back tomorrow, little lady.” Frank wags his finger at Kate. So she works here. Good to know.

Frank tells us to go, he has a few things to do before he can lock up. Ben takes off quickly, answering yet another call from his third wife. I walk Kate to her car.

“Lucky chip?” I ask, referring to the solid black worn chip she took from her purse and slid her thumb over on more than one occasion while playing.

“It brought my dad a lot of luck over the years.”

I nod. “I’m glad I came tonight. I had a great time. It’s been a while since I played with those guys.”

“Seems like you guys go pretty far back.”

“Pretty sure they were all playing cards in the hospital lobby when I was born,” I joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. I’ll have to ask one day.

“This is me,” Kate says as we arrive at an old Jeep in the parking lot. It’s a beautiful night and the top is already off. She clicks her keys to unlock the door. I open it for her to get in, but hang on to the top, not letting it close.

“Listen, I’d love to take you to dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“You left me a couple of bucks, figured I’d like spending them on you as much as I liked losing them to you.”

“You liked losing to me?”

I contemplate the question for a moment. “Oddly, yes. Which is strange because I hate to lose.”

“I’m guessing it doesn’t happen often.”

“What? Losing?”

She nods.

“No, actually. It doesn’t. I tend to go after what I want until I win.” Our eyes lock on each other, something passing between the two of us, a thick tension swirls in the air. “So…dinner?”

Kate smiles, but the uptick at the corners of her mouth quickly turns down. “I can’t.” She looks hesitant, but offers no further explanation. “I had fun tonight.” She reaches into her purse, pulls something out, and extends her hand to me. “I don’t really want to keep your money clip. I noticed it wasn’t your first initial engraved on it. Maybe it means something to you?” She tilts her head, observing me.

“It does. But that’s okay. You keep it. It’ll give me a reason to see you again.” I reach down, close her fingers back around the money clip, and lift her hand to my mouth. My lips brush the top lightly, my tongue sneaking out to fleetingly touch her skin. The brief contact stirs an ache inside me. This woman tugs at something—more than arousal—something that makes me want to slow down time just to spend a few more minutes standing here.

“Did you just …” she stammers a bit.

“Did I just what?”

She squints at me. “You know.”

“Do I?”

“I felt your tongue on my hand. You … you licked me.”

I’d been dying to run my tongue along her neck all evening, although I hadn’t really meant to be so crude about it. It just sort of … happened. “I wouldn’t say licked, maybe just a little taste.”

“So you tasted me?”

My entire body suddenly has interest in this conversation. “I suppose I did. But it wasn’t nearly enough. That brings us back to my invitation for dinner. Tomorrow night?”

“I can’t.”

“The day after then?”

She laughs and shakes her head. The sound makes me smile.

“Good night, Cooper.” She pulls the driver’s side door shut and leaves me standing there … for a full five minutes after she’s gone.





chapter two


Kate


Distracted as I drive home, my mind replaying the evening over and over, I miss my damn exit as a picture of Cooper standing beside my jeep pops into my head for the twentieth time. Dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal sexy strong forearms, he exuded power, yet something about him was playful … down to earth. Not like the typical guys I’ve been meeting the last few years.

His square, deeply defined jaw had just a hint of a five o’clock shadow on his perfectly tanned skin. Bright, startlingly green eyes stood out, the shade somewhere between jade and moss. Beautiful, but the color wasn’t the part that mesmerized me. It was the gold ring around his pupil that captured my attention, surrounding the rich dark brown. It reminded me of a sunflower, painted in a field of green grass. And every time he tried to bluff, the sunflower grew bigger, making it that much more difficult to focus on my hand. It didn’t help that the soft green and glittering gold were set off by the thickest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a man. Why do men get the good eyelashes?

I hold my breath and make a wish as I enter the tunnel. I’ve been making the same wish as I drive through the burrowed rocky canyon for years. It’s always about my brother. Selfishly, today my wish is for me.

After a twenty-minute detour, I’m surprised to find my roommate, Sadie, still awake when I walk into my apartment.

Collapsing onto the couch dramatically, I slouch down, stretching my long legs across the coffee table.

“Bad day, Angelina?” she says. Every day since I started filming the reality show, she has a new actress name for me. Yesterday I was Reese.

“Long day of sitting around doing nothing. But, actually, it was a good night.”

“Did you get to see Flynn?” She sits up on the couch, hoping to hear some good gossip. Gossip I’m not supposed to share by the terms of my contract, one that I violate pretty much daily. Even if I weren’t anxious to tell my best friend about a guy I was seeing, she’d get it out of me. Sadie Warner could pull gossip out of a priest.

“No, he wasn’t on set today.”

Deflated she won’t be getting the juicy inside scoop about Bachelor Flynn today, she continues anyway. “What did you do tonight that was fun then?”

“I played cards.”

“Cards? Booooring.” She drags out the word in that singsongy way.

“Not when one of the players is hot.”

“Why didn’t you say that sooner?” She tucks her feet underneath her, giving me her full attention.

“You lost interest the minute I told you Flynn wasn’t there, and only regained interest once I mentioned a hot guy.”

“So?” Clearly she can’t fathom what is wrong with my statement. I roll my eyes.

“What if I had a nice night catching up with an old family friend? A female old family friend who is important to me. Would you have wanted to hear about my night then?”

“Absolutely not.”