Fire and Rain Read Free Page A

"You know the rules. It costs good money to see those cards and you're broke."
     Carla withdrew her fingers and muttered, "I still don't believe that you couldn't crawl over a lousy pair of sevens."
     "You forgot the nine," Luke said.
     "It's easy to forget something that small," Carla shot back. She sighed. "Well, I guess this just wasn't your night, big brother. All you won was something you would have gotten anyway – a summer's worth of dinners cooked by yours truly."
     "Sounds like a damned good deal to me," Luke said.
     There was a moment of silence, followed by another. The silence stretched. Luke arched his dark eyebrows at Cash in silent query. Cash smiled.
     "You'll have to throw in wages," Cash said.
     "Same as I paid the last housekeeper. But she'll have to keep house, too. For that I'd bet everything on the table. One hand. Winner take all."
     "What do you say, sis?" Cash asked, turning toward Carla.
     "Huh?"
     "Luke has agreed to bet everything in the pot against your agreement to be the Rocking M's cook and housekeeper."
     "You're out of school for the summer, right?" Luke asked.
     She nodded, too off balance to tell him that she was out of school, period. She had crammed four years of studying in the three years since she had graduated from high school. It had been the perfect excuse not to spend summers on the Rocking M, as she had since she was fourteen.
     "You can start next weekend and go until the end of August. A hundred days, give or take a few," Luke said casually, but his eyes had the predatory intensity of a bird of prey. "Room, board and wages, same as for any hired hand."
     Carla stared at Cash. He smiled encouragingly. She tried to think of all the reasons she would be a raving idiot for taking the bet.
     Her blood sizzled softly, champagne and something more.
     "Do you have your toes crossed for luck?" Carla demanded of her brother.
     "Yep."
     She took a deep breath. "Go for it."
     Cash turned to Luke. "Five cards, no discard, no draw, nothing wild. Best hand wins."
     "Deal," Luke said.
     Suddenly it was so quiet that the sound of the cards being shuffled was like muffled thunder. The slap of cards on the table was distinct, rhythmic. There was the ritual exchange of words, the discreet fanning and survey of five cards. Luke's expression was impossible to read as he laid his hand face-up on the table and said neutrally, "Ace high … and nothing else. Not a damned thing."
     Cash swore and swiftly gathered all the cards together into an indistinguishable pile. "You're shot with luck tonight, Luke. All I had was a jack."
     For an instant there was silence. Then Luke began laughing. When he turned and saw Carla's stunned face, his expression changed.
     "When the isolation gets to you," Luke said carefully, "I'll let you welsh on the bet. No hard feelings and no regrets."
     "What?"
     "Women hate the Rocking M," Luke said simply. "I doubt that you'll last three weeks, much less three months. College has made a city slicker out of you. Two weekends without bright lights and you'll be whining and pining like all the other housekeepers and cooks did. You can make book on it."
     Whining and pining.
     The words echoed in Carla's mind, leaving a bright, irrational anger in their wake.
     "You're on, cowboy," she said flatly. "What's more, you're going to eat every last one of your words. Raw."
     "Doubt it."
     "I don't. I'm going to be the one who feeds them to you."
     Luke's slow smile doubled Carla's heart rate and set fire to her nerve endings. He laughed a soft, rough kind of laugh and gave her the only warning she would get.
     "There's something to remember when you start feeding me, baby."
     "What's that?"
     "I bite."
    ~3~
    What in God's name am I doing here? Have I gone entirely crazy?
     "Here" was on a dirt road winding and looping and climbing up to the Rocking M. All around Carla for mile upon uninhabited mile, the Four Corners countryside lay in unbridled