Texas Hold Him by Lisa Cooke Page A

hurried down the deck, past the lounge and restaurant, and up the stairs to the passenger cabins.
    “Where—where are we going?” she asked, gasping for air as she struggled to keep up.
    “To my cabin.” He still had not turned to speak to her directly.
    His cabin?
“Why?”
    He stopped and turned so abruptly she collided with his chest. He grabbed her arms to steady her and smiled wickedly, his
     voice dropping to a dangerously low rumble. “For your lessons, of course.”
    Surely he wasn’t thinking . . . She blinked twice and swallowed. “Wh—what lessons?”
    “Why, Miss Mace.” Slowly, he traced his finger down the side of her face, then drew it lightly across her lips. “Don’t tell
     me you’ve already forgotten.” He leaned toward her until his mouth was just a few inches from her own. “Poker,” he whispered,
     then turned quickly away from her and headed down the deck.
    It took a few seconds before she was able to get her legs moving again, and by the time she caught up with him, he was opening
     the door to his cabin.
    “Wouldn’t it be more proper if we did this in the lounge?” she said to his jacket, thinking she’d had quite a few conversations
     with this man’s back.
    He entered his cabin, pitching his hat on the bed before he finally turned to face her. “I believe it is in the best interest
     of both our reputations if our little lessons are done in private.”
    She stood just outside his door, unsure of what to do next. She wanted the lessons, but . . . “I don’t see how going into
     a gentleman’s cabin alone could possibly be good for my reputation.”
    “That’s why it’s important that no one see you, but if you’re going to stand out on the deck. . . .” He shrugged.
    She looked quickly about and, seeing no one, hurried into his cabin and closed the door. She’d never been in a gentleman’s
     chamber other than her father’s, and the very thought of it had her nervous as a cat. She glanced around his room, surprised
     to see it was tidy but devoid of any personal items such as pictures or books. There was a faint smell of tobacco and bay
     rum lingering in the air and, much to her amazement, a lack of perfume.
    She darted her attention away from his bed, her face heating at the memory of the disheveled lady she had seen in the blankets
     the first morning she’d met him. Dyer, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable with the situation. He removed his
     jacket, added it to the hat on his bed and pulled a deck of cards out of a drawer in his bureau.
    “Shall we?” He motioned to a small table under his window, where he sat down without pulling out her chair and began shuffling
     the deck.
    “Tell me what you know about cards,” he said.
    She pursed her mouth, sat down in the chair opposite him and pointed to his hand. “
Those
are cards.”
    Surprisingly, his lips twitched with a quick smile. “That’s a start, I reckon.”
    He laid one of each of the four patterns of cards on the table. She had seen them before as she’d served drinks to the men,
     and once, after the gamblers had gone, she’d studied one of the decks left on a table. But as a lady, she was raised to never
     play with cards, and she didn’t know what they were called or which was more valuable.
    He pointed to a card with three little red hearts. “Those are hearts. The number of hearts on the card tellsyou the value of the card. This one, for instance, is referred to as the ‘three of hearts’ and is more valuable than a two
     of hearts, but less than a four.”
    So far this was quite simple. No wonder men enjoyed it so much.
    “This suit is called the diamonds.” He pointed to a card with five diamonds on its face. “What would be its value?”
    “Five?”
    He nodded and laid two more cards on the table. “This is a club and this is a spade. Each suit has a ‘two’ through ‘ten’ card
     as well as a queen, king, jack and ace.” He laid those four cards on the table as