The Marriage Dare

She flinches, but tosses out another chip. I’m still smiling, and she’s still staring at me. “What do you really want, Monica?”

“That’s not an easy question.”

“What tripped you up?” I ask, grinning.

She shakes her head and takes a sip of water. “There’s what I should want. And what I do want.”

I burn a card and flip the turn, and I freeze my expression. The card is a jack. I now have three of a kind. That’s a damn good hand and her expression tells me that it didn’t help her in the slightest. “What should you want?” I ask as she knocks the table to call. I raise the bet another hundred, and she fingers her own chip.

“Why are we betting? Aren’t we pretty much all in either way?”

You are, I say silently. Out loud, I say, “Of course. But betting is just as much a part of the way the game is played as the cards. I could be betting because I have the better hand. But I also could be betting to make you think I have better cards. But you didn’t answer the question.”

Monica tosses the chip into the center of the table. “I should want to win this poker hand more than anything in the world, and I do. It should be the only thing that I want.” She looks at me involuntarily. Interesting.

I burn a card and flip the river. A seven. Monica sucks in a breath. So that helped her. She doesn’t have a straight and she doesn’t have a flush or full house. Unless she’s a very good actress, I’m pretty sure that she’s exactly where I want her. There shouldn’t be any hand possible that can beat three of a kind.

“And what do you actually want?”

Monica fingers her chips, looking down at the table. “I want none of this to matter. I want all our history too be put aside and for us to pretend that we were two strangers that met in a casino. And to just…see what happens.” Her blue eyes are dark and shining, looking up at me through her lashes. She wants me. And I let a slow smile settle across my lips. I want her too. But she doesn’t realize what I already know, which is that I get what I want, and the way I want it. Even if we were two strangers who met in a casino, everything would still be on my terms. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Maybe you’ll be the rich stranger that I come across at the bar,” I say. “Maybe we’ll see what happens.”

She peeks at her pocket cards again, and smiles. Then she pushes her chips to the center of the table. “All in. We don’t have a choice anyway.”

“You’re right,” I say, pushing my own stack in. “Let’s see.”

She flips over her cards, and reveals a queen and a seven. Two pair. Not bad. It could have gone her way. But it didn’t.

“Your turn,” she says, practically bouncing with energy.

I flip my cards, and I watch the color drain from her face as she goes still. Then she stands up so quickly she knocks the chair over. “You cheated.”

I narrow my eyes. “That’s your first response? That I cheated? That’s rich, coming from you, Princess.” Color floods back into her face in a furious blush. “You don’t know who I am sweetheart.” I nod to the wall behind her near the door, the one she passed on the way in and didn’t give a second look. The wall that’s covered in plaques that show my poker history. Not all of them. I’d need another room for that.

Monica turns back to me, eyes blazing. “This isn’t legal, you know. You can’t just force me to marry you. We don’t live in ancient Scotland. You can’t just…carry me off and make me your bride.”

I stare at her. She’s incredibly beautiful when she’s angry. The flush on her cheeks tells me what the color of her skin will be like when she’s flushed with desire, and I want to see that pink on every inch of her skin. Even though her dress doesn’t fit well—even more because of that fact—it leaves little to the imagination, and I take my time drawing my gaze down her body and back.

“You’re right,” I say. “We didn’t have a written agreement, and I’m not going to kidnap you.” She straightens, expression trending toward smug, thinking once again, that she’s won. “But imagine for a second the game had gone the other way. I could easily use the same argument. It’s not legal, I don’t have to give you two million dollars. Do you think you would have thought our bet was legal then?”

Monica’s hands ball into fists, and she grits her jaw so hard, if she were closer to me I think I’d hear her teeth crack. “So no,” I say. “You don’t have to marry me. But you will.”