The Millionaire's Club: Jacob, Logan and Marc. Brenda Jackson

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      Jake left the office early that day and hightailed it to the Cattleman’s Club for a little diversion. He breathed a sigh of relief when one of his buddies, Logan Voss, spotted him and motioned him over to join a poker game. A friendly game of five-card stud was exactly what Jake needed to take his mind off Chrissie and the way she’d turned him inside out yet again.

      “So, how’s it shakin’, Jake?” Logan asked as Jake hung his black Stetson on a brass hat rack in the corner of the bar.

      “Can’t complain. How about you boys?”

      He got what he’d expected—mumbled “fines” and head nods. While members of the club often tackled matters of grave importance and danger within these walls, it was also a haven. As a rule, a man didn’t come to the Cattleman’s Club to talk about his troubles. He came here to get away from them, to simply hang out with men of like minds.

      Of all of his friends at the club, he felt a particular kinship to Logan Voss. Voss ran a large cattle ranch just outside of town. Like Jake, the rugged rancher, who was a hands-on owner, was divorced. Unlike Jake who took pains to see that no one saw his pain, Logan’s scars occasionally showed in the bleak look in his eyes and the weary set of his shoulders. Or maybe Jake was just sensitive to Logan’s situation since he’d gone through an ugly divorce himself.

      “You in, Thorne?” Mark Hartman asked. “Or you gonna sit there and admire your cards the rest of the night?”

       “Yeah, yeah, I’m in,” Jake said and called Hartman’s good-natured haranguing.

      Jake didn’t know Mark Hartman as well as he knew Logan, but he liked what the guy stood for. Jake didn’t know the entire story, but the retired soldier had lost his wife in a violent mugging. Mark played his cards—and his feelings—pretty close to the vest, too. The African-American appeared to be independently wealthy but still spent hours at his gym where he gave self-defense classes to women. No one had to wonder what motivated him.

      “Read ’em and weep, boys.” This came from the fourth man at the table, Gavin O’Neal, as he laid down a diamond flush.

      Jake groaned and tossed in his cards. He hated this run of luck. But how loudly could one complain about losing to the sheriff? A decent one at that. O’Neal had been a wild man in his day, but he took the shiny badge that he wore on his chest seriously. The badge also didn’t hurt his standing with women. As a rule, Jake loved to give O’Neal grief about his reputation.

      Tonight, though, Jake just wasn’t in much of a joking mood—mainly because of one particular woman giving him so much grief.

      O’Neal dealt Jake another stellar hand. Not. He arranged his cards, rolled his eyes and folded. When Voss won the hand, Jake was down fifty bucks—and he hadn’t been in the game a full hour. He was starting to think his luck had deserted him altogether when Voss dealt him a pair of queens. Finally. A bidding hand. He was about to raise Gavin’s bet when a commotion by the front door had the entire table on their feet.

      “What the hell?”

      It was Nita Windcroft. Her violet eyes were shooting sparks and the slim young woman, who had recently taken on one helluva responsibility when she’d assumed management of her father’s horse farm, appeared to be in one high and mighty snit.

      “Sheriff,” she said, marching toward the table. “You’ve got to do something.”

      O’Neal met her halfway across the bar and laid a settling hand on her arm. “Good Lord, Nita, settle down before you bust a vein. Not another word until you calm down. Take a deep breath now. That’s it. Give me another one. Okay. Now tell me what’s wrong.” He steered her toward the table where the men had been playing.

      Even off duty and out of uniform, Gavin had an air of command that Nita responded to.

      “The Devlins are at it again,” she said, rage coloring her voice. “And if you don’t put a stop to it, so help me, I will. I can’t let them destroy my ranch.”

      “Okay, Nita. Settle down,” Gavin repeated with a soothing calm that seemed to make Nita at least stop and take stock of her surroundings.

      Besides their table, only a half a dozen other TCC members sat in the bar. After Nita’s initial outburst, they all returned to their respective conversations.

      “You want to talk to me in private?” Gavin asked.

       “I don’t care if the whole county hears what those snakes have been up to! You’ve got to do something.”

      The Windcrofts and the Devlins had nursed a Hat-field-and-McCoy-style feud for close to a century. Old Jonathan Devlin had liked to keep the situation stirred up, but Jake had thought things would settle down now that Jonathan was gone.

      Judging from the look on Nita’s face, he’d thought wrong.

      If he had his facts straight, the Windcroft-Devlin feud had started when Richard Windcroft lost over half of his land to Nicholas Devlin in a poker game. The Windcrofts always had maintained the game was rigged. СКАЧАТЬ