Page 256 of A Vicious Love

Jamison continued staring at me, something between horror and fascination moving through his expression. “That is how you decide whether to keep a hand?”

“No,” I said, because I had dignity. Then I looked down at my cards. “Sometimes. Unless it is a two.”

He leaned back slowly, cigar in one hand, the other resting near his chips. “What about twos?”

I looked at the two of clubs on the table. It sat there hopeful, ignored by everyone, with its little black symbols arranged so carefully. Poor thing. People were always rude about twos.

“I feel bad for them.”

Jamison stared. “You feel bad for the twos.”

“No one wants them.”

“That is because they are weak.”

“Last summer,” Julian said, voice strained from amusement, “she bet half her chips on a pair of twos because she said they deserved one good night.”

“They lost,” Adrian added.

I frowned. “They were brave.”

Jamison looked at me with the same expression he might have used on a man who had confessed to setting fire to a casino.

I picked up my glass and took a careful sip of water because wine would only make my card judgment more compassionate. “Sometimes I ask everyone to play snap instead.”

Jamison’s head turned very slowly toward Julian.

Julian nodded once. “She does.”

“Or Go Fish,” Henri offered, far too gently.

“Go Fish has a lovely structure,” I said. “Everyone asks politely.”

Adrian grinned. “She likes it because if you need a queen, you can ask for one instead of waiting for fate.”

“That is practical.”

I set my glass down and tried very hard not to pout, because I was sitting at a family poker table, but the whole room had turned against my very reasonable belief that cards should have emotional wellbeing. “I think you’re all being unfair. Cards are supposed to be fun.”

“Cards are supposed to take money from people who think they are having fun,” Jamison said.

I narrowed my eyes. “That is bleak.”

The betting reached me, and because I had a queen and there was another queen on the table, I reached for a neat little stack of chips.

Jamison’s hand closed around my wrist before I could push them forward.

The touch was light.

It still stopped me completely.

His thumb rested over the inside of my wrist, right where my pulse had betrayed me far too often already that day. I looked at his hand around mine and forgot the chips entirely.

“How much were you about to bet?” he asked.

“All of these.”

“That is an overbet.”