Page 20 of Ready to Score

“It’s your turn to place your bet,” Landry told her.

She looked down at the table. She’d been so caught up, so distracted that she hadn’t even seen everyone else put their cards down for the river—a final round of betting that ultimately determined who won and went home with the pot.

The community cards on the table were a nine, a jack, a seven, and, thanks to the river, a pair of aces.

With the two aces in her hand, Jade was sitting on four of a kind. This was the kind of luck she’d been looking for all along, and it was definitely up there.

She took another peek around the table. Byrd still had little droplets of sweat beading at his temples, Bell looked just as clueless as he always did, and Lim’s lips were still curved in that infuriating smirk.

Her mind immediately went to probability, a lesson plan she’d be teaching her freshmen in just a few months. There were 1,326 possible hole card combinations in Texas Hold’em. Among the eight people sitting around the table—including her—that made for a lot of goddamn possibilities.

She did know that none of them had any aces, though, which was something. There were no other four-of-a-kind combinations to be had using the community cards anyway. Even if she couldn’t literallyprofile everyone at the table, she guessed that her chances of coming out on top were pretty high.

With one last peek at the two cards in her hand, she pushed every last chip she had sitting in front of her into the center of the table. “I’m all in.”

Almost immediately, Jeremy Bell folded, turning over his cards to reveal a pair of twos. Cody Ross was the next to go down, followed by Lionel Price, both men folding with grace. Every other man at the table followed suit until the only two left standing were her and Lim.

Now she had a reason to stare. Jade tried to wipe every thought and emotion off her face until the only thing to be seen was her slightly curled upper lip. Lim bit down on her bottom lip for a split second before she pushed all her chips into the center as well. “I’ll call,” she said.

Lim laid down two jacks, the look on her face smugger than it should have been.

Something surged through Jade then, strong enough that she had to plant her feet on the floor to keep from jumping out of her chair. This time, it wasn’t to kiss the other woman. She wanted to dance and gloat and be the sorest winner there ever was.

Instead, she silently laid her aces down. Four of a kind was always better than three, and more than that, she had the higher-ranking cards.

She’d won.

And from the looks of almost everyone at the table, she’d managed to impress with it as well. She outright grinned at Lim as she made a show of scooping up all the chips, collecting her winnings—all $400 of it.

“Well, look at that,” Landry said, and she glanced over to see a spark of pride in his eyes. This only bolstered her mood even more. “I thought for a second there you were about to lose your shit, Dunn.”

“So did I.” Byrd snorted. “But you robbed us blind instead.”

Jade shook her head in disagreement. “I didn’t rob you, I won.”

“Barely,” Lim’s low voice chimed in from across the table.

“How about you come talk shit to me after you come up with something better than two lazy-ass jacks.”

Less than an hour later, Lim practically cornered her next to her car after leaving Landry’s. It was dark out, but the lack of sun did nothing to curb the heat. The second she’d stepped outside, she’d felt like the air was sticking to her skin. She’d taken a second to shed her T-shirt in the back seat, leaving her in just a tank top. She was ready to get home and take a long, hot shower before cranking her air conditioner up high enough to damage her power bill this month.

Instead, she found herself so close to Lim that she could practically feel the other woman’s breath on her face when she spoke.

“Good game tonight,” Lim said, her hands tucked deep into the back pockets of her jeans.

“Uh,” Jade stammered. She had not been expecting a compliment. What was it with this woman reducing her to a bumbling fool all the damn time? “Yeah, I got lucky with good cards tonight.”

“I’m sure the guys were sufficiently impressed.”

Jade shrugged. “I’m not trying to impress them. I’m just throwing my weight around, letting them know that they don’t own this space, they don’t own any of these spaces.”

Lim looked at her silently for a while, so long that apprehension started to well up in the center of Jade’s chest.

“Fair enough,” Lim said finally. “You know, if you weren’t so hell-bent on hating me, we might be able to show them that together.”

“I can do it myself.”

Jade was quick to answer, almost reflexively. She hadn’t always been one of those people. The kind who stubbornly insist on never receiving help. There had been a time when she’d been an eager student,open and vulnerable. A veritable sponge who had never been afraid to raise her hand high enough to seek guidance. Then she’d decided to coach high school football and that girl had been forced to fall away. She’d hardened herself piece by piece with every new offense—each racist joke and misogynist macroaggression—until all that was left of her was a forced grit that made her too stubborn to ask for anything. Part of her was proud of that. Part of her resented it—though she acknowledged this part far less often for her own peace of mind.

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