Page 38 of The Black Trilogy

“Fortunately not. Have you seen the mess through there?” He jerked his head towards the Hunt Ball.

“It’d be hard to miss.”

“Yeah, you’d have to be deaf. Me and some friends got talked into bringing our kid sisters. They’ve got to be accompanied by responsible adults.” He gave a wry laugh. “My mother thought I fitted the bill.”

“I’m here with friends. And when I say ‘here with friends,’ I mean my job is to shovel them into a car at the end of the night.”

“Nightmare, isn’t it? We learned from last year, so we’ve rented a room.”

“Sounds cosy.”

“Not like that. We’re playing poker.”

The lift arrived and Mark pressed the button for the second floor with his nose. A poker game. That sounded more fun than the debacle in the ballroom. Would they let me stay? I figured I had two minutes to convince them.

As it turned out, that was easier than I thought. I backed through the door, and when I turned around, I found myself face-to-face with Luke Halston-Cain. The room was more of a suite, and he raised an eyebrow as he thumbed the stack of poker chips on the table in front of him.

“I see you managed to pick up Ash,” he said to Mark.

“Less of that talk—I’m spoken for. Anyway, she was the one who came over to me. It must have been my magnetic personality.”

“Or your inability to carry a round of drinks. I offered to help with the glasses. That hardly translates as wanting to strip you naked and do you over the bar,” I said.

That got a laugh from five of the men and a snort from the sixth.

“Makes a change from most of the women down there,” the man sitting next to Luke said. I didn’t recognise him.

Mark put his armful of glasses on the table, leaving wet rings on the polished surface. “Yeah, walking into that ballroom would be like taking a shortcut through shark-infested waters on your way home from the butcher’s shop.”

“Although if Luke doesn’t stop eating my crisps, I’ll march him downstairs and handcuff him to the bar. The women can take turns,” another of the men said.

“I’ll buy you another packet,” Luke said then turned to me. “Are you staying? You don’t seem drunk enough to hang out downstairs.”

I grinned at him. “Thought you’d never ask.”

He introduced the other players. Ben was the guy on his left, the one who’d had a dim view of the female partygoers, and his dimple distracted me while Luke waved at the other three, so I missed their names. I cursed myself—with regulation non-swear words only, of course—because I never used to lose my focus like that. In my head, I christened the blanks as Huey, Dewey, and Louie. That seemed to work. As Ben divvied the chips up, I gathered that they weren’t close friends of the others, anyway, but rather they’d been brought together by a shared desperation to avoid the havoc downstairs.

“Want me to deal the first game?” I asked.

Luke raised that eyebrow again. At least he hadn’t had Botox. “You know how to play poker?”

Come on, dude, it’s the twenty-first century. Women were allowed into casinos.

“I’ve played occasionally.”

“In that case…” He pushed the deck of cards in my direction. “Deal away.”

Game on.

CHAPTER 14

“ARE WE PLAYING Texas Hold’em?” I asked, naming the variant of the game beloved of casinos and frat boys the world over.

“Yeah,” Luke said.

I shuffled the cards and dealt two to each player, face down. They peeked, and betting commenced. Mark tried to hide his smile as he threw a handful of chips into the middle. He had something good.

Huey followed suit. “Come on, boys, make me rich.”

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