Secret Sweetheart, Chapter 3
*Quinn Valley Ranch Romance *Cowboys *Family Saga *Valentine's Day
Betsy contained the excitement at seeing Knox by shuffling extra hard and then practically throwing the cards around the table as she dealt. Knox Locke, sitting right in front of her. It was like God had heard her thoughts and listened to her prayers, and then answered them.
Thank you, Lord, she thought as she finished dealing and picked up her own hand. She was exceptionally skilled at poker, and everyone but Knox knew it. She felt them all watching her, but she pretended like she didn’t.
She moved one card over, and then another one to the front before looking up. “Bets in.” She reached for the bowl of peanut M&Ms in the middle of the table and took a handful for her own betting bowl. Everyone else did too, Knox the slowest and last to figure out that they used the candy to play.
Clay picked up the bowl of chocolate and set it by him, and if Betsy didn’t watch him like a hawk, he’d eat it all before the night was through. Everyone put one piece in to play, and then the real fun started.
She’d been playing poker with these guys for a few years now, and she had all their tells memorized. She could see Wyatt’s bluff from a mile away, and called him on it in the second round.
Her cards won, and she swooped all the candy toward her with a cackle. Clay dealt next, and Betsy didn’t get great cards. She traded out a couple of them and decided to play with what she had, though it wasn’t win-able. She could tell by Clay’s sniff that his weren’t great either, and Flynn’s ducked head meant that he was trying to decide if he should even play the hand.
Knox, she hadn’t figured out yet. He still looked a bit like he’d been hit in the face with a frying pan, his eyes a bit wider than normal and constantly scanning the table, watching what everyone else was doing.
She actually admired that, because he wasn’t loud or obnoxious. Of course, she’d never seen him speak louder than necessary, and he emanated a cool, quiet strength she really liked given her family’s loud, tense nature.
Sure enough, Flynn folded and Wyatt kept driving the bid up until Clay dropped out. Knox did just after that too, and Betsy studied Wyatt to see if he really had something or not. He stared back at her with his dark eyes, giving nothing away.
Which totally gave away that his cards could beat hers. “Fold,” she said, and he whooped. He placed his cards face-down on the table, and Clay immediately grabbed for them.
“A pair of eights,” he said with disgust, throwing the cards toward Wyatt, who was still scooping his winnings toward him.
Betsy shook her head. She couldn’t have beaten a pair of eights, but Wyatt had tricked her into thinking he had something really good. So she’d watch him closer. Bluff back.
Her eyes moved to Knox, and she couldn’t bluff her way out of the blush that heated her face when she found him watching her too. Their gazes locked, and she probably wouldn’t have known if the Yellowstone geysers blew up and started melting the planet. It would still just be her and him in this moment, because she saw something in his eyes she’d never seen before.
Maybe she hadn’t been looking. Maybe he’d been really good at hiding how he felt. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But no matter what maybe she landed on, Betsy could definitely see that Knox held an edge of heat and desire in his eyes. The same desire she felt flowing through her blood like liquid lava.
A card landed in front of her, breaking their connection. She cleared her throat under the louder noise of Flynn saying he better get something good this time and picked up her cards. She’d always loved her time in the east stables, playing poker. It got her out of the homestead, for one. And for another, she always felt like she was worth more than the last dish she’d prepared.
Sure, the cowboys loved what she brought to poker night, but she’d also been known to drive into town and buy several bags of candy and call it good. They were okay with that too.
As the game continued and she won again and then again, Betsy couldn’t help thinking about the homestead. What would happen when her father retired for good and Rhodes wanted to move into the house where she and all her sisters lived? What if he met someone and fell in love, and they wanted the homestead to start raising their own family in?
Betsy had always known she wouldn’t be able to live in the homestead forever, but a certain level of fear had started to constrict inside her whenever she thought about leaving it. Mostly because she had no idea where she’d go or what she’d do.
“I’m beat,” Clay finally said, throwing down his last hand. “And my stomach hurts.”
Betsy looked at the empty bowl of ante and started laughing. “You’re such a pig, Clay,” she said through her chuckles, and everyone got up and started cleaning up the table.
“Does Rhodes know you guys play poker out here?” Knox asked as he sidled up next to her at the table.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “He doesn’t care, as long as I bring him some of the spoils.” She grinned up at him, momentarily blinded by his good looks and close proximity. It may have been her imagination, but her voice sounded full of only breath when she said, “That’s why I took him his own container of pulled pork earlier this evening.”
“Smart.” Knox smiled at her, and that moment came flaring back to life. “Do you need help getting all of this back to the homestead?”
“Yeah,” she said, seizing onto the opportunity to spend some time alone with him. “That would be great.”
He moved away, leaving a cold space at her side, to help with the table and chairs, and before she knew it, everything was cleaned up and everyone was ready to go.
The other cowboys loaded up in their trucks and left while Knox was still helping her put the leftover buns and the Crock pot half-full of meat in her backseat. Depending on what she brought, she sometimes walked from the homestead. But not with pulled pork, and certainly not in the winter.
“I’ll follow you over,” he said, stepping over to his truck. Betsy got behind the wheel of her car and inched down the road, her nerves firing like someone had poured red ants into her brain.
“Calm down,” she told herself. “He’s not going to kiss you or anything.” She wasn’t sure if she swooned or blacked out for a moment at the very thought, but the next thing she knew, her car drifted and then full-on slid into the snowbank. A horrible, metallic crunching sound met her ears, and she got thrown over the steering wheel.
Once she’d come to a stop, she blinked out the windshield into the darkness, trying to figure out what had happened.
And then the man she’d been dreaming about kissing opened the door and peered inside. “Are you okay? There’s a really icy patch right there.”
Yeah, sure. An icy patch. Betsy nodded and got out of the car, sticking her hands in her coat pockets so they didn’t freeze. “Will you just take me home?” she asked. “I can have the boys deal with this in the morning.”
“Sure thing.” Knox walked with her to the passenger side of his truck and helped her up and into it. Then he returned to her car and collected the food before joining her. “How often do you guys play poker?”
“Once a month,” she said, taking a deep breath of this space that was so full of the smell of him. Cologne and pine and burnt metal. She’d never get enough of it. “Did you have fun?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Surprisingly, I had a great time.”
“Surprisingly?”
“Yeah, well, monthly poker night isn’t really my thing.” He barely moved the truck down the icy roads, and they were probably going five miles an hour.
“I thought you did great.”
He chuckled, the sound sending tremors through her body. “Are you kidding? By my count, you won all but two hands.”
“You counted?”
He cut a quick glance at her, and dang if that didn’t light her up like Times Square. Not that she’d ever been to Times Square. But she knew it had a lot of lights. “I’m just observant,” he said.
“Sure, okay,” she teased, liking this tether between them. Her phone lit up, distracting her, and she groaned when she saw Rhonda Drexel’s name on the screen.
“What?” Knox asked.
Betsy turned her phone over and looked out the window. “Just something for the Valentine’s dance.” A completely fantastical thought entered her mind. “Hey, you should sign up for the bachelor auction for the festival.”
He belly laughed then, and the sound was so bright and cheerful that Betsy couldn’t help smiling. “I just said I didn’t really do poker nights. And you want me to get up in front of women and be bid on?” He shook his head and chuckled some more. “You’re out of your mind.”
“You don’t think people would bid on you?”
He turned down the road that led to the homestead, and Betsy sensed her time with him was almost up. “No, Betsy. I don’t think the women of this town would bid on me.”
I would. The words filled her mind. Screamed in her ears. She swallowed, trying to hold them in. Knox parked in front of the homestead and unbuckled his seatbelt.
“I would,” Betsy blurted before he could get out of the truck. “I’d bid on you, Knox.”
His attention swung toward her, almost in slow motion, while she tried to figure out what she’d just said. His eyebrows went up. “Yeah?”
She nodded, suddenly desperate to get out of the truck. She grabbed the package of hamburger buns between them and opened her door. He met her at the front of the truck with the Crock pot and walked up the steps with her to the front door.
Inside, she said, “Just set that on the counter,” which he did while she tossed down the buns and started to unwind her scarf. She hung her winter clothes on a hook in the mudroom, noting the silence and stillness in the homestead that night.
Either poker had gone later than she’d thought or her sisters were downstairs watching a movie. Betsy was glad it was quiet, that she didn’t have anyone to tell about the night’s events quite yet.
Knox waited for her in the kitchen, and anticipation squirreled through her. “Do you want to stay for coffee?” she asked.
“It’s almost ten-thirty at night,” he said quietly, those foresty eyes delving right into her soul, learning all her secrets.
“Oh, right. I—” She went mute when he stepped into her personal space and took her hand in his. She looked down to see their fingers joined, and she enjoyed the river of heat as it cascaded over her entire body.
“It’s good to see you, Betsy,” he said, his voice nothing more than a husky whisper. He leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead. Cold as his mouth was, it still sent sparks flying down her spine.
He pulled his hand away and fell back a step. Their eyes met, and that magnetic attraction between them flared to life. “I’ll see you later.” He turned and walked toward the front door as if he’d held her hand and kissed her countless times before. Not too rushed, not too slow.
“Knox?” she called when he put his hand on the doorknob.
He twisted back toward her. “Yeah?”
“When will I see you again?”
A smile touched his mouth and crinkled those beautiful eyes. “Maybe next week. I’m out at Granite Springs this weekend.”
She nodded. He ducked his head and walked out, leaving her with the glow and warmth of his touch.
There was no way she was going to be able to sleep tonight, which meant she’d probably get roped into doing something she didn’t want to do at tomorrow’s Valentine’s Festival planning meeting.