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There was a long pause.
“That doesn’t seem too hard,” Oliver quipped from his spot away from the table, the charcuterie board in his hand. “Not at all.”
They all laughed.
“Is this for real? It sounds like you need several advanced degrees just to take part!”
“It’ll make sense as we play. I can stop and explain some of the minutiae, like the method behind cutting, playing with a kitty, taking blinds, sandbagging—”
“Sandbagging? That sounds naughty,” Oliver said.
“That’s teabagging, you git.” Jasper looked over at Dani and winced. “My apologies.”
“Trust me. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that word.” She looked at Jameson and winked.
“Are you blushing?” Rhys asked.
Jameson could feel the heat on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. Bloody hell!
“Okay, okay, enough talk,” Jameson said. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Usually, the score is to five hundred, but let’s start out at a cap of three fifty. Just so everyone gets a taste for it. Jay, you want to play with me?”
“Always, love,” he said, standing to round the table and sit across from her.
“Uh-uh. She’s played this game her entire life.” Rhys pointed at Jameson. “And he’s bloody brilliant. Plus, who know what signals they’ve worked out. Jameson, you play with me.”
Dani shrugged and continued shuffling. “Whatever. I’ll take Jasper.”
“Funny. That’s how Hetty accepted my marriage proposal.”
They switched chairs until they were each paired up with the correct partner.
Jameson turned to Dani, who was seated on his left. “Are you going to go easy on me?”
Her expression hardened briefly before she arched a brow and smiled. “No.”
They began the game and as Dani predicted, it only took a few hands before they got the gist of it. In the beginning, when someone would make a mistake—like when Jameson played a spade to win a book even though he had the correct suit in his hand—Dani would go back and explain his error, without penalizing them for it.
Once, when Jasper laid down a card that won a book, Dani picked it up and slapped it down again with a flick of her wrist.
“For those special occasions when you want to emphasize an ass whooping. We say, ‘Put some English on it!’”
Jameson intended to.
Observing her took him back to the feeling he had watching her perform. Of his pulse thumping in his throat and his breath fleeing his body as he was dazzled, mesmerized, and fucking awed by the woman before him.
But at a certain point she declared they were “taking the training wheels off” and she... changed.
When he cut a book she’d been about to win, she eyed him so fiercely he couldn’t believe those beautiful eyes had ever looked at him with love. Her string of curses when Jasper took a book with a king that she’d already won with a jack had Rhys’s eyes widening. Over the course of the game jackets were discarded, bow ties undone, and sleeves rolled up. She made daring moves, consistently taking risks that shocked him.
When he commented on her assertive style she said, “You play to win the game.”
On the last hand, she played with a single-minded focus he remembered from her tribute concert rehearsals. With mastery and precision, she won the final five books of the game, slamming each card down in the center of the table with a flourish that bordered on ruthlessness.
“That’s it! We won!” Jasper whooped and rushed around the table to sweep Dani into a hug.
Jameson sagged back in his chair and looked over to see Rhys looking as dazed as he felt. As if they’d been through a battle... and lost.
