Page 1 of Dead Man's Hand

Chapter One

DJ Diamond shoved back his Stetson before glancing from the cards in his hand to the three men and one woman sitting around the table. After hours of poker, he felt as if he knew all of them better than their mothers did.

Except for the woman. She had a better poker face than any of the men. Also, she played her cards close to the vest—or in her case, the red halter top she wore. The top had the initialsALmonogramed on it. Not her initials. He’d bet she picked up the garment at a garage sale. Her blond hair was long, pulled back into a ponytail that made her look like jailbait. All of it was at odds with her sharp honey-brown eyes and her skill at the game. All part of her act to throw grown men off their game.

It was working. The men had trouble keeping their eyes off her as she leaned forward to ante up—forcing their gazes away from the huge pot of money in the center of the table.

DJ could feel the tension in the room around him, but he was as cool as a cucumber—as his uncle Charley used to say. He was aware of everything, though—including the exact amount of money in the pot as one of the men folded, but the other two stayed in, matching his bet, confident he was bluffing.

With luck, he’d be walking out with all the money—and the sexy young woman—before the night was over. And the night was almost over.

But right now, everyone was waiting on him.

He glanced down at his last five hundred dollars in chips for a moment, then picked them up and tossed them into the pile of money. “I’m going to have to sweeten the pot.” Across the table, he saw the woman who called herself Tina shoot him a disbelieving look. He grinned and shrugged. “You want to see what I’ve got. It will cost you.”

SADIEMONTCLAIRMUMBLED, “Arrogant fool,” under her breath. She knew the Montana cowboy was planning on taking this pot and when he did all hell was going to break loose. She’d been reading the table since she sat down. The big doughy former football star next to her had a possible three queens. The guy in the expensive suit on the other side of her had to have had two pair, maybe even ace high. Luckily, the appliance salesman with the bad rug had folded. She’d marked him as the wild card of the group even before he’d started sweating profusely after losing so much money tonight.

She sighed as she looked at her jack-high straight with regret and tossed in her five Cs. Placing her cards facedown on the table, she leaned back, stretching, all eyes on her heaving chest.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” the suit said, tossing his five hundred onto the pile of money and drawing the men’s gazes again to the pot.

Sadie gave the arrogant fool across from her a shrug as she reached for the gun in her shoulder bag hanging off her chair. Her hand closed around the grip. She brought it out fast as the cowboy said, “Read ’em and weep,” and fanned out his cards. An ace-high straight.

“You cheating bastard!” she yelled, kicking her chair back as she jumped to her feet. “Is it just him or were you all in on it?” she screamed as she waved the gun around.

The men were on their feet the moment they saw the gun in the hands of an angry woman, their chairs crashing to the floor behind them.

“You think you can cheat me, cowboy?” she yelled at him, wiping away his grin as she pulled the trigger.

The first report was deafening in the small dark room. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the men scrambling for the door, the appliance salesman the slowest of the group. She fired twice more, putting three slugs into the arrogant fool cowboy’s chest.

He fell backward, his chair crashing to the floor. She heard the others all rush out, the door slamming behind them before she stuffed the money into her shoulder bag, tossing the weapon in after it, and looked under the table. The Montana cowboy was lying sprawled on the floor, his Stetson beside him. “Arrogant fool.”

Chapter Two

“I heard that,” DJ Diamond said from the floor, and groaned. “Damn, Sadie. That hurt.”

“That was pure arrogance to raise the bet again,” she said. “You were just showing off. You can’t keep pushing your luck—and mine.”

He rose slowly, grimacing in pain as he tried to catch his breath. “Arrogant is shooting me three times. One wasn’t good enough?”

“Three just felt right tonight,” she said, cocking her hip as she watched him remove his shirt, then his body armor with the three slugs embedded in it.

“You must really hate me,” he said, and grinned through his pain.

With his shirt off, it was hard not to admire the broad shoulders, the tapered waist or the vee of dark hair on the tanned chest that disappeared into his button-up jeans.

“What do you think?” he asked, raking a hand through his thick dark hair.

For a moment, she thought he was asking about the way he looked. She blinked, realizing he was asking about their take tonight. “Not bad.”

He laughed. “Come on, we made a haul. Maybe I pushed it a little, but it worked out. Don’t forget the cards.”

She had forgotten them, which would have been a mistake. If one of the gamblers realized they’d been had, he might come back here and find the marked deck. She scooped up the cards and added them to her shoulder bag. “I’m hungry.”

DJSHOOKHIShead as the shirt and body armor went into the satchel he’d brought with him. He pulled a fresh shirt out and put it on. “You’re always hungry.”

“I’m so hungry I could eat steak and lobster.”

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