Only 03 - Only You

hadn’t had time to deal himself the rest of his full house.”
    Eve blinked, surprised by Reno’s quickness. “Are you a gambler?”
    He shook his head.
    “Then how did you know what Slater was doing?” she persisted.
    “Simple. When he dealt, he won. Then you started dropping out too soon, and I started winning hands I shouldn’t have.”
    “Your mama didn’t raise any stupid children, did she?” muttered Eve.
    “Oh, I’m one of the slow ones,” Reno said in a lazy drawl. “You should see my older brothers, especially Rafe.”
    Eve blinked as she tried to imagine anyone faster than Reno. She couldn’t.
    “All through explaining?” Reno asked politely.
    “What?”
    “This.”
    Reno bent just enough to cover Eve’s mouth with his own. When he felt her tighten beneath him asthough to fight again, he settled more heavily on her, reminding her of the lesson she had already learned: When it came to a contest of strength, she didn’t have a chance against Reno Moran.
    Tentatively Eve relaxed, wondering if Reno would release her if she didn’t fight him.
    Immediately the overwhelming pressure of his body lifted until it was little more than a warm, disturbingly sensual contact from her shoulders to her feet.
    “Now kiss me back,” Reno whispered.
    “Then you’ll let me go?”
    “Then we’ll negotiate some more.”
    “And if I don’t kiss you?”
    “Then I’ll take what is already mine, and to hell with what you want.”
    “You wouldn’t,” she whispered weakly.
    “Care to bet?”
    Eve looked into the cool green eyes so close to her own and realized that she never should have allowed Reno Moran to sit down at her poker table.
    She was very good at reading most people, but not this man. Right now she couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or telling her the simple truth.
    Don Lyon’s sage advice rang in Eve’s mind: When you can’t tell if a man is running a bluff, and you can’t afford the ante if you lose, then fold your cards and wait for a better deal.

3
    W ITH trembling lips, Eve lifted her head to give Reno the kiss he had demanded. After a quick pressure of her mouth against his, she retreated, her heart beating wildly.
    “You call that a kiss?” Reno asked.
    She nodded, because she was too nervous to speak.
    “I should have guessed you’d cheat with your body the same way you cheat with cards,” he said, disgusted.
    “I kissed you!”
    “The way a frightened virgin kisses her first boy. Well, you’re no virgin, and I’m no wide-eyed country boy.”
    “But I—I am,” she stammered.
    Reno said something beneath his breath, then added in a cutting voice, “Save the wide-eyed act for a pup that’s still wet behind the ears. Men my age know everything worth knowing about women’stricks, and everything we know, we learned the hard way.”
    “Then you didn’t learn enough. I’m not what you think I am.”
    “Neither am I,” he retorted dryly. “I haven’t been taken in by that look of wide-eyed innocence since I was innocent myself. That was a long time ago.”
    Eve opened her mouth to further argue her innocence, but a single look at Reno’s face convinced her that he had already made up his mind on the subject. There was nothing of comfort in his ice green eyes or in the flat line of his mouth beneath his mustache. He believed she was a saloon girl and a cheat, pure and simple.
    Even worse, she couldn’t wholly blame him. She had cheated him. Although she hadn’t started out to use Reno in her deadly game with Slater and Raleigh, in the end she had risked Reno’s life without so much as warning him of what was at stake.
    To add insult to injury, she had run off with the very pot she had cheated to give to Reno. The fact that he had survived at all was due to his own unusual skill with a gun. She hadn’t even known who he was, so she could hardly say that she was certain he would be able to fight free of the trap he had walked into.
    A kiss seemed a simple enough apology to a man whose death she had nearly caused.
    Lifting up again, Eve put her lips over Reno’s. This time she didn’t retreat instantly. Instead, she increased the pressure of the kiss gradually, learning the smooth resilience of his lips in a silence that was bounded by the frantic beating of her heart.
    When Reno made no move to deepen or to end the kiss, Eve hesitated, wondering what she should do next. Though Reno didn’t believe it, she hadtold the truth about her innocence. The few