Page 40 of Texas Hold Em'
“I insist.”
I looked from the cigar to him and wondered if there was danger in accepting such a thing from him. Could it be laced with something? Was he going to try to poison me or get me high? If he did, what would his end game be? Use me however he wanted while I wasout of it, or spare me suffering and murder me while I was unconscious?
My stomach did a somersault.
Bates chuckled and lit the fresh cigar while his still simmered between his lips. He exchanged the one he’d been puffing on for the new one, inhaled deeply to show me it was safe, and handed it back to me. “Smoke.”
Backed into a corner, I lifted it to my lips and drew the smoke into my mouth. It tasted like dirt, blackberries, and something musky.
“My father let me smoke my first cigar when I was thirteen years old.” Bates turned his back on the moon and gazed into the fountain. No coins glimmered beneath the surface. It was cold and sterile. “He told me I was a man then, and a man knew how to smoke a cigar without being a pussy. ‘Course, when you’re thirteen and have cleaner lungs than an Olympic athlete, it’s going to fuck you up. I inhaled right into my lungs and coughed and sputtered like a fool.” Bates chuckled at the memory and surprised me with the rest of the story. I marveled how he could find humor in it all. “He beat the shit out of me. Told me to toughen up. Act like a man. And he explained you don’t inhale cigar smoke. Funny thing, don’t you think? Now I can’t stop puffing on the damn things.”
“Sounds like a trauma response to me,” I said.
He barked with laughter. “You’re a peculiar woman, Miss Hart. You know that?”
“And the more you share with me, the less peculiar I think you are,” I said coldly. Sure, poking the bear might have been dangerous, but the Ranger in me wanted to rock the boat. The best information came from men who thought they had the upper hand when speaking to a woman they saw as nothing more than a fly on the wall or a pretty thing to look at. To use. To claim.
To damage.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?” he asked quizzically.
“Well,” I said, taking another puff on my cigar, “it’s taken me a long time to riddle out whether you were a psychopath or a sociopath. Igather your father was an abusive man, which leads me to the conclusion that you are, in fact, a sociopath.”
His eyes narrowed.
I smiled. “It means your mental state was created by your situation, not your biological makeup.”
“I know what it means,” he growled.
I blew smoke. If he wasn’t two heads taller than me, I might have been able to blow it in his face like he’d done to me all those weeks ago. Dimly, I wondered when and how my balls got so big. Maybe it was after killing a few guys.
“Tell me what you want out of this deal, Miss Hart.”
I glanced at Caroline. Had she not told him the details of our conversation?
Caroline looked away, and I felt a tug at my subconscious.
Are Bates and his daughter not as co-dependent as I thought? What is this tension between them?
More than anything, I wanted to put my cigar out, but I took another pull and hoped I looked as cool as Tex when he puffed on his cigarettes. It was unlikely, but I felt a bit like a bad ass as I stared up at the man who’d nearly killed me and had killed others. “I want to go home.”
“I’m listening.”
This was it. My big moment. If I didn’t sell this, he might kill me right there in his little garden.
“I’ve given too much to this shithole town,” I started, “and the Devil’s Luck aren’t worth my career, let alone my life. I’m done letting them have power over me. I’m done letting them tell me what I can and can’t do. I want out, and I figure the best way I can do that is to go to the man who runs this place and give him what he wants.”
I wasn’t sure if flattery would work with a man like Bates, but his eyebrows lifted and he looked almost impressed. “And what is it that I want, Miss Hart?”
Shrugging, I flicked the end of my cigar like it was the most casual thing I could ever do. “The Devil’s Luck on a silver platter, obviously.”
CHAPTER 17
JAMESON
I’d been cruising through Reno for half an hour looking for my Texas Ranger girl and had come up empty. There weren’t many places she could go at this time of the morning. Sure, some cafes that catered mostly to truck drivers and early morning workers were beginning to open, and the McDonald’s were open twenty-four/seven, but Carrie wasn’t there, and I’d have been a fool to think she’d left my house two hours before dawn just to get an egg McMuffin.
No, this was about something more than that.
