Chapter 7 #2
“I don’t want to fight with you.” She spoke quietly, lowering her eyes and wringing her hands.
“It doesn’t feel right. But then, nothing feels right anymore.
” She lifted her eyes to meet his. “I want to…” If she couldn’t feel right, maybe she should just give in and do things that were very, very wrong. “I really want to…”
He met and held her eyes as if he was having the same thoughts. The sizzle returned to the room. Lightning was about to strike, she could feel it.
“I know what we need,” he said at last. With a burst of energy, he launched into motion, striding right past her.
Miranda turned as he swept by and headed for the door and out into the hall. Was he trying to leave her? But no, that was physically impossible.
“What do we need?” she called after him, but he was already gone.
If Randall didn’t find a way to discharge the energy that had been building in him for the past few days as he and Miranda circled closer and closer, he would likely spend the rest of his life walking funny.
He marched into the saloon proper, snatching a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar and a pack of playing cards from one of the tables in the corner.
Days-worth of hovering in the scintillating space between respectability and notoriety had left him aching and exhausted.
It was time to make a choice one way or another.
But for that, they needed a little bit of social lubrication.
“What do we need?” Miranda demanded, more than a little frazzled, as he stomped back into the apartment.
Instead of answering, he plopped the bottle of whiskey on the table, followed by the deck of cards. “Poker. Five card stud is simplest.”
Miranda blinked at the whiskey and the cards, then blinked at him. “I don’t understand.”
“We’ve done all of the responsible, productive things there are to do in this building. There’s nothing left. We’ve done it all. It’s time we worked our way through all of the idle, irresponsible ones.”
“With whiskey and cards?” She took a step closer to the table.
“Do you know how to play poker?” he asked, pulling out a chair.
Pink-faced, Miranda sat with him. “Uncle Buford taught me to play.”
He nodded. “Have you ever had whiskey?”
Her pinkness deepened. “I sampled some of what the saloon has in stock just to see what it tastes like when I first got here. But only just a little.”
He nodded a second time, then set to work shuffling the cards. This idea of his was still unformed and half crazy, but if he didn’t do something with his hands and his mind…then he’d end up doing other things with his hands and his mind.
Miranda watched him, perched anxiously on the edge of her chair, cheeks staying as pink as roses. “Will we…will we need glasses for the whiskey?”
Randall shook his head. “We’ll drink out of the bottle.”
She glanced from the bottle to him. “Both of us?”
“Yep.”
She just sat there in stunned silence, rippling with tension.
The kind of tension that made him certain they were headed for a point of no return.
That’s the only reason he could think of for her to have suddenly turned so peevish with him.
She wanted what he wanted, and she wanted it bad.
Now he needed something along the lines of a coin toss to figure out if he was going to give in and pull her along with him.
He finished shuffling and dealt them each five cards, then set the deck to one side.
They both picked up their cards. Randall’s hand was nothing impressive.
But in all the poker games he’d played all throughout the country with all sorts of opponents, he’d learned that most poker hands weren’t impressive.
The game was partially the luck of the draw, but more about bluffing the other guy. Or girl.
Miranda arranged the cards in her hands with fingers that trembled just slightly.
She licked her lips, squirmed in her seat.
“Okay, I’m ready.” She met his eyes across the table.
A moment later, her determined expression faltered.
“Hold on, what are we playing for? We don’t have any chips.
I could go fetch some from the saloon.” She started to put her cards face down on the table.
“No,” he stopped her. “We’ll play for something else.”
Her brow crinkled into a frown, all of her exasperation back. “What? Honestly, Randall, I have no idea what you’re thinking or what you’re aiming for right now.”
A roguish grin pulled at the corners of his lips. “We’re playing to uncover the truth.”
“What truth?” Her voice rose a few notes, grew stronger.
“The truth of what’s going on here.”
“What is going on here?” She grew more frustrated still.
“The highest stakes you could possibly imagine.”
She burst with a growl of frustration. “I swear to you, Randall Sinclair, if you don’t tell me what we’re playing this silly game for, then I’m going to march out into that snow, and believe me, I’m angry enough right now that I’d melt a path all the way down Main Street to the church!”
His grin widened to a more genuine smile. He had no doubt that she would.
“We’re playing to find out how we really feel about each other.” He tipped his hand…the metaphorical one, at least.
“We’re…what?” She shook her head, puffing out a breath of frustration. But her eyes told him that she was fascinated with what they might find.
Randall took hold of the whiskey bottle with one hand and moved it to the center of the table between them. “Every time we lose a hand, we take a drink.”
Her brow flew up.
“Some people call alcohol truth serum. The more you ingest, the more likely you are to say what’s in your heart.”
She shook her head and waved the idea away with one hand. “I don’t need whiskey to say what’s in my heart.”
“No?” He leaned closer to her across the table. “Prove it.”
She pursed her lips and stared flatly at him. “I think you’re a very nice man—most of the time—and a fine friend, and I…I wish you lived here in Mistletoe.” She lowered her head, lashes fluttering.
“Any stranger, any traveling salesman waltzing through the saloon right now, could see that much.” He set his cards down and grabbed the whiskey bottle to pull the cork out. It released with a pop.
Miranda’s gaze jumped up to meet his, frown still in place. “Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I would have thought you’d be flattered that I’ve grown so fond of you so quickly.”
“As I’ve grown fond of you.” He nodded, pointing the cork at her. “ Really fond of you. But that’s just the point. People do things when they’re fond of one another. Men and women do things.”
She broke eye contact with him, picking up her cards. “Now you’re beginning to sound like Starla or my Uncle Buford.”
He wasn’t quite sure what, but something about her statement made him think he’d stumbled across the heart of the matter. “Why? What do Starla and your Uncle Buford sound like?” With only a brief pause, he went on with, “How many cards do you want?”
“Three.” She took three cards out of her hand and put them on the table.
Randall dealt her three from the deck and watched as her face twitched with excitement and thought. “I’m taking two.” He discarded two cards and took two more from the deck.
Her glance flickered up to meet his. “Now what do we do? We’re supposed to make bets and raise and hold and fold, but we’re not playing that way.”
He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Simple poker, then. Do you stay or do you fold?”
She peeked at her cards, then at him again. “I stay.”
He nodded. “Me too. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
With an uncertain arch of her eyebrow, she set her cards down. The best she had was a pair of nines. Randall grinned with unexpected relief and laid down his pair of jacks. “I win.”
A disappointed, then anxious look came over her. “So?”
He nodded to the bottle. “So drink.”
She stared at him for a long time, then reached for the bottle.
“Remember, it’s clear glass, even if it’s tinted brown. So I can see if you fake it.”
“I’m not going to fake taking a drink,” she informed him with haughty indignation, then lifted the bottle to her perfect, rosy lips.
She tipped the bottle up, her throat rippled with a swallow, and then she nearly dropped the bottle as she was seized with a gasping, choking cough. Her eyes began to water.
“Easy there.” Randle chuckled, his humor returning. “No need to lose and prove me right in one hand.”
“What?” she choked. “Prove you right about what?”
“About why you’re so twisted around the axle right now.”
“I am not twisted around the axle.” Her voice and her breathing slowly returned to normal. She pushed the bottle back to the center of the table as Randall gathered the cards and shuffled for another hand.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said as he dealt them each five cards once more.
She let out a breath, brushing her skirts under the table, then picked up her cards. “Honestly, Randall, I can’t keep track of any of your questions or your train of thought anymore.”
He huffed a laugh. She was probably right about that. His mind was so clouded with boredom and anxiety and lust and the longing for an adventure different from any of the cockamamie schemes his father had sent him off on that he wasn’t sure he was making sense to himself.
They continued to play. Randall lost the next hand and took a drink, then the one after that.
Then Miranda lost again, then him. The whiskey was strong, but it could have been much stronger.
He wasn’t exactly swigging down gigantic gulps and could tell that Miranda wasn’t either.
Still, after a few more hands, the mood between them took on a different shade of tension, more fuzzy and slippery than brittle.
He still wanted to know what she was trying so hard to avoid talking about, though. “So once again,” he tried after they’d both settled into the rhythm of the game and the mellowness of the alcohol. “What did Starla and your uncle say that has you so irritated?”
She pursed her lips, sorting through her cards. “It’s irrelevant.”
“I don’t think so.
“It’s irrelevant because it’s not true,” she repeated, stronger, swaying just a bit in her seat. She didn’t seem fully drunk, but she was definitely a bit tipsy.
“What’s not true?”
“That I need to loosen up.” She ended her sentence with a hiccup.
He couldn’t help it. He burst into laughter. Maybe that was the whiskey working on him. “They obviously haven’t seen you stuck in a saloon during a blizzard.”
“It has nothing to do with the saloon or the blizzard,” she fired back with less inhibition than she might have before the whiskey. “It has to do with—” At the last minute, she clapped a hand over her mouth.
A hazy grin spread across Randall’s lips. “Has to do with?” he prodded her.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Randi, are you calling me nothing?” He sensed their game reaching its end.
“Of course not, you’re—” Once again, she stopped herself with a look of alarm and wonder. Wonder about how she could say such things or wonder that she felt them at all, that’s what Randall wanted to know.
He set his cards aside, face up, revealing the king and queen of hearts. “What am I?”
“Are you laying down your cards early?” Her voice shook. “In that case, I win.” She put down her cards as well, including a pair of aces.
“Yes, love, you win. And you will always win.” If it was the alcohol turning him into a lothario, then thanks were due to the bottle.
He had a feeling the confinement and the snow would have gotten him to the same place anyhow, though.
“Go ahead and claim your prize, Randi. I can see exactly what you want. I’ve been seeing it in your eyes, in the tilt of your head, the softness of your lips, for days now.
And I want the same thing, Miranda. I want you. ”
“I—” She blinked rapidly, swaying closer to the table, propping herself against the edge…or perhaps using the table as the only thing that was keeping her from flying into his arms. “It isn’t right,” she whispered. “It isn’t proper or respectable.”
Randall shrugged. “I think we both forfeited the right to call ourselves respectable the moment we each stepped into this saloon.” And then he added his final ace to the argument.
“You know, one way or another, we’re going to face scandal for being snowed in together. Might as well make it worthwhile.”
Her bottom lip trembled, but whether it was because she was on the verge of crying or laughing or bursting into some other kind of emotion, he couldn’t tell. She sat there, frozen, her eyes blazing as her thoughts zipped through her head so fast he could practically see the smoke.
And then, all at once, she blinked, and the decision was made, the game was over.
She stood so fast that her chair tipped backwards and clattered to the floor.
“I do, want you, Randall. I’ve wanted you from the moment you got up on that stage to do your silly brush presentation.
More than I ever wanted that stupid lout, Micah.
Vicky can have him. She can have everything about that brittle, boring life.
I want this life. I want you. And now that we’ve gone through all of the things in the attic and discovered,” she swallowed, pressing her hands to her stomach, “ things , I want you even more. I’m tired of being prim and proper and missish.
I want to let go. I don’t care if it makes me the same as every other woman who’s slept in this saloon. I want you .”
Randall stood, stepping quickly around the side of the table to be closer to her. “Then take me, darling. I’m yours.”