Page 51 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

Wilder prepared forwar.

He decided not to think too closely about what was riding on this particular card game. He told himself it was the metaphor that mattered, and that it was high time for a Carey to win back the family honor.

Not that this particular story was one he could imagine telling over Thanksgiving dinner.

Still,hewould know that he’d avenged Matthew Carey.

But first, he went out to his truck and got her suitcase. When he hauled it in, he set it on the floor.

“I’m going to need you to start wearing the same amount of clothes that I am,” he drawled. “Just to keep it fair. Assuming Lisles know what that means.”

Cat only smiled. “If you insist.”

In the end, they both wore jeans, socks, and T-shirts. She had panties on underneath that. He had on boxer briefs. She put on a flannel shirt because he was wearing his.

“Winter coats?” she asked mildly, though her blue eyes were gleaming. “Hats and scarves?”

“I think we’re good,” he muttered.

Then they resumed their positions on either side of the wooden coffee table.

“Five card draw?” Cat asked.

Wilder nodded and she dealt. Five cards to each one of them, and then it began in earnest.

And Wilder realized quickly that he should have expected that Cat wasn’t bad at a poker game. Not just because she was a Lisle, and he presumed it was part of the family tradition to play cards.

But card games were also something that could be done in the middle of winter when the storms took out all the power and it was candlelight and the camp stove until the weather cleared. He never met a Montanan who wasn’t good at games.

Luckily enough, he was also a Montanan.

She took off her socks first. One and then the other in different hands. He took off his outer shirt, throwing the flannel onto the couch next to her.

Then, when she won two more hands, Wilder went over to get the woodstove going again, because it was properly cold out there today. Colder than he could remember it being pretty much since he’d met her.

He expected there to be shit-talking, as in any other proper poker game, but he realized pretty quickly that her strategy was to go in the opposite direction.

Cat said nothing.

She sat there, looking like a feral goddess, while he tried to deal with the fact that he was the reason her hair looked like she’d just rolled out of a man’s bed after a long, hot night.

Because she had.

Her eyes were a little bit sleepy and every now and again when she shifted position, she would freeze for a second. Then her gaze would get a little bit bluer.

And he knew. Heknewthat she was feeling sensation, everywhere, which was only to be expected after a night like the one they’d had.

Cat didn’t speak, but she studied him. Especially when they were both down to T-shirts and drawers. Hers, of course, being that frilly white pair that he’d taken off with his teeth last night.

He was sweating.

And it wasn’t because he was hot.

He was trying to focus on the damned cards, but all he could seem to pay attention to were the things she’d said, circling around and around in his head.

Her insistence that what his mother’s cousin had said was wrong. That his mother had chosen her suffering, out of love.

Wilder told himself that Cat was too young. That she didn’t know what she was talking about.

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