break his concentration. He was fairly certain Dorset was cheating, but he had expected that. The other men at the table didn't have enough brains to cheat with any success, and he disregarded them as opponents. It was Dorset he wanted to break.
He cursed as the hand went to Dorset, but he didn't allow his fury to show. Instead, he glanced toward Maryellen and surprised a frown on her face.
It hadn't taken a day of traveling for Tyler to recognize that Maryellen Peyton's stunning beauty held a quick and altogether too-clever mind, although she occasionally inhabited a world all her own. He wondered what fantasy she had entered into now. She was whispering eager questions to Benjamin and enlisting the interest of every man around her, but she was up to something. He glanced at Daniel. The boy was easier to read than his sister.
Daniel was well employed bending his elbow at the bar, but the frown that had been on Maryellen's face was now on the boy's. Tyler returned his attention to the dealer, but his concentration was divided. He caught Maryellen's ingenuous smile as she looked at Dorset's cards, and he noticed Benjamin had forsaken his place to her. That wasn't at all according to plan.
Dorset threw out a pair of low cards of unmatched suits and drew two more. Maryellen frowned. Tyler folded. A few minutes later Dorset took the pot with a pair of knaves. Tyler ordered the lady a lemonade.
"Hell, Monteigne, I thought you was a gambler." Dorset threw back a shot of whiskey, and winked at the lady behind him before turning back to the table and accepting the deck of cards. "Looks to me as if you're as piss-poor at gambling as you are at farming."
Tyler grunted and picked up his cards, disregarding Dorset's insults. He knew more about the psychology of gambling than the other man would ever learn in a lifetime. He didn't look at Maryellen as he scanned his cards, then lay them facedown on the table.
Dorset lost the next round to one of the other players, and he complained about Benjamin. Maryellen patted him on the back and whispered some joke in his ear that ended his complaint before Benjamin could be thrown out. Daniel limped over and put a beer at Dorset's fingertips, appeasing the bastard.
In his thirties with thick raven black hair that the ladies adored and a jaw that stuck out and dared anyone to defy him, Dorset was accustomed to being pampered. He chucked Maryellen under the chin, and Tyler ground his teeth together.
The little pestilence was going to hear about this later, but now wasn't the time. He needed to keep Dorset in this game.
Maryellen smiled at every card that Dorset drew in the next hand. She told jokes to the men around them, evidently enjoying herself. Mostly her listeners were dirt farmers, and their limited means didn't allow them much entertainment. Maryellen took the haunted look of desperation out of their eyes and made them grin. They offered her more lemonade. One with a little more beer in him than sense offered her a cigar. She stuck it in her mouth and chomped on it like a licorice stick. Tyler won the round.
Dorset was still enjoying himself. Tyler took the deal, and Maryellen continued smiling when Dorset picked up his cards, a sure sign that the man's cards were bad. Tyler wondered if she knew what she was doing. He tipped her a wink, and she stuck up her nose at him. The men around her laughed and Tyler pretended to frown, but elation soared through his veins. The witch was damned good at this game. Benjamin had taken the sidelines for sound reason.
The next hand was long and drawn-out, and money began to build again in the table's center. Benjamin gave him the signal that a card was floating in the game that shouldn't be there, but Tyler hadn't seen Dorset pull it. He ventured a quick look up and found Daniel leaning drunkenly on Maryellen's shoulder. Two beers didn't make even an eighteen-year old drunk. Tyler was beginning to feel as if this scenario was spinning out of control.
Maryellen patted her brother's hand and sent Daniel back to the bar. But when she turned her attention back to the table, she spilled her drink down Dorset's coat. The planter roared and leapt to his feet. Benjamin grabbed him before he could swing, and Maryellen chirped and patted his vest with her