“I know what I’m doing. The only thing I’m worried about is luck—and that you can’t control. You can make up for it with skill, though. And I’ve got that in spades.”

She reached up to his face. “I’m so proud of you.”

“I haven’t won yet.”

“I don’t care about the outcome—well, I do. I just … you’re doing what you said you were going to do. You’re saving your family. You’re taking care of your business. You’re … you’re really amazing, you know that?”

As she went in to kiss him, he laughed deep in his chest. “Not a recalcitrant playboy anymore, am I. See what the love of a good woman will do for a guy?”

They kissed for a moment, and then he pulled her into his lap. Putting her arms around his neck, she smiled.

“Absolutely.” Lizzie smoothed the hair at the base of his neck. “And guess what?”

“What?”

Lizzie put her mouth to his ear. “Win or lose … you’re getting lucky tonight.”

Lane let out a growl, his hands tightening on her waist, his hips rolling underneath her. As he went to kiss her again, she stopped him. “We better head for the game room now before distraction sets in.”

“It’s already set in,” he said dryly. “Trust me.”

“Just remember,” she murmured as she got off of him. “The sooner you’re done … the sooner we can go—”

Lane burst out of his chair, nearly knocking the thing over. Grabbing her hand, he started dragging her out of the room at a dead run.

“Will you quit wasting time, woman!” he said as she laughed out loud. “Jeez, I got poker to play …!”

FIFTY

About half an hour later, Lane sat at the circular poker table in the game room about three chairs away from Lenghe. The spectators, by mutual agreement of the players, had taken a lineup of chairs on the far side of where the cards were being thrown so no one could see over anyone’s shoulders. Lizzie and Miss Aurora were together, with Jeff and Gary, the head groundskeeper, sitting next to them.

There was no way of pretending that this wasn’t one of those moments that was inevitably going to become Bradford lore, just like when one of Lane’s ancestors had lent money to Abraham Lincoln or another had had to fight a fire at the Old Site with water from the aquifer, or when Bradford horses had come in one, two, and three in the 1956 Derby.

That trifecta had won his grandfather enough to pay for one whole new barn out at the Red & Black—

“Are we too late?”

Lane looked over to the doorway. “Mack, you came.”

“Like I’d miss this?”

Lane’s Master Distiller walked in with a very nice-looking young woman—oh, the assistant, Lane thought. That’s right.

“Mr. Lenghe,” Mack said as he went over. “Good to see you again.”

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite distiller.”

After the two clapped palms, Mack said, “This is a friend of mine, and my assistant, Beth Lewis.”

Introductions and greetings were made all around, and Lane couldn’t resist pumping his eyebrows at the guy behind Beth’s back. Which got him flipped off in return.

“Anyone else coming?” John asked as the group resettled.

“This is it,” Lane said.

“Heads or tails?”

“You’re the guest, you choose.”

“Heads.”

John flipped a coin in the center of the table. “Heads it is. I deal first. Big blind is one hundred, little blind fifty.”

Lane nodded and watched the guy shuffle the cards. They’d mutually agreed on arbitrary values for the stacks of red, blue, and yellow chips, with both of them having the same number of each. There were going to be no buy-ins—which meant when you were out of chips or couldn’t make blind, you were done.

Lane put in a red chip as big blind, John a blue, and then John was dealing them two cards each. There would be a round of betting based on what they had in their hands, and then the dealer would “burn” a card by putting it aside and lay the next card face-up. More betting. Another “burn” and face-up card. More betting, et cetera, until there was a line-up of five cards that each of them was free to use to complete sequences with the help of whatever they personally had and kept private.

High card beat fruit salad if nobody had anything. Two pair beat one pair. Three of a kind beat two pair. A flush, which was five cards of one suit, beat a straight, which was five cards in numerical order, regardless of suit. A full house, which was three of a kind and two of a kind, beat a flush. And a straight flush, which was five cards in order of the same suit, beat four of a kind, which beat a full house.

A royal flush, which was ace, king, queen, jack, and ten, all of one suit, beat everything.

And probably signified that Miss Aurora did in fact have a direct line to God.

Assuming Lane held those cards and not Lenghe.

If John pulled something like that? Well, then his wife was back in Kansas was praying harder than Miss Aurora was here in Kentucky.

Lane picked up his first hand. Six of diamonds. Two of clubs.

In short … nothing.

Not even a card high enough to get excited about.

The flop, which was what the first three face-up cards were called, was his only hope.

Across the way, John was studying his pair, his eyebrows together, his heavy shoulders curled in like he was getting ready for a tackle. He chewed on his lip a little. Rubbed the bottom of his nose. Shifted in his chair.

He was more juiced than nervous, though: With so much playing time ahead of them, no pot developed yet, and five cards yet to come, it was too soon on a lot of fronts for the guy to be exhibiting anxiety.

Lane, on the other hand, was utterly calm, more interested in what was happening in his opponent’s chair than even his own cards.

The key was remembering the ticks and twitches of his opponent. Some of them would fall by the wayside as playing wore on and they got into a groove. One or two the guy would keep, though—or fight not to show.

Or maybe something else would be revealed.

But as Lane had learned long ago, there were three things that mattered at the table even more than how much money you or your opponent had at your disposal: the math of the cards in play, which going mano a mano was going to be hard to apply with any specificity because there were no other players making bets; the cards you had and those on the flop; and your opponent’s facial and bodily reactions around their betting patterns.