The Winning Hand by Nora Roberts

spared her a glance. The ice was all for her new friend from Dallas. “Ah, this is Jake. He was showing me how to play the poker machine.”
    “So I see. The lady’s with me.”
    Jake ran his tongue around his teeth and, after a brief internal debate, decided he wanted to keep those teeth just where they were. “Sorry, pal. Didn’t know I was poaching.” He rose, tipped his hat to Darcy. “You hold out for that royal straight flush now.”
    “Thank you.” She held out her hand, confused when Jake’s eyes shifted to Mac’s before he accepted.
    “My pleasure.” After a short and silent male exchange, Jake swaggered off.
    “I’d been doing it wrong,” Darcy began. And that was as far as she got.
    “Didn’t I tell you not to come down here at night alone?” The fact that he was speaking softly didn’t lessen the power and fury behind the words. It only added to them.
    “That’s ridiculous.” She wanted badly to cringe, and had to force herself not to. “You can’t expect me to sit in my room all night. I was only—”
    “This is exactly why. Ten minutes at a machine and you’re getting hit on.”
    “He wasn’t hitting on me. He was helping me.”
    Mac’s opinion of that was short and pithy and put some steel back in Darcy’s spine.
    “Don’t swear at me.”
    “I was swearing in general.” He put a hand under her elbow and hauled her to her feet. “The cowboy wasn’t going to buy you a drink to be helpful. He was just priming the pump, and believe me, yours is easily primed.”
    She started to shake, and realized it was just as much from anger as fear. “Well, if he was, and it is,it’s my business.”
    “My place. My business.”
    She hissed in a breath, tried to jerk free and failed. “Let go of me. I don’t have to stay here. If I’d wanted some overbearing male ordering me around, I’d still be in Kansas.”
    His smile was as thin and sharp as his name. “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”
    “That’s both obvious and unoriginal. Now let go of me. I’m leaving. There are plenty of other places where I can gamble and socialize without being harassed by the management.”
    “You want to gamble?” To her shock and—God help her—excitement, he backed her up against the machine with something close to murder in his eyes. “You want to socialize?”
    “Mac?” Deciding she’d seen quite enough, Serena stepped up, a bright, friendly smile in place. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”
    He turned his head and stared. He’d completely, totally forgotten about his mother. He saw easily beyond the smile to the command in her eyes. And felt twelve years old again.
    “Of course.” With a smoothness that blanketed both his straining temper and embarrassment, he shifted his grip on Darcy’s arm. “Serena MacGregor Blade, Darcy Wallace. Darcy, my mother.”
    “Oh.” Not nearly as skilled as Mac, Darcy didn’t come close to hiding both her distress and mortification. “Mrs. Blade. How do you do?”
    “I’m so happy to meet you. I just got into town and was about to ask Mac about you.” Still smiling, she slid an arm around Darcy’s shoulders. “Now I can ask you in person. Let’s go get a drink. Mac,” she added, casting a smug look over her shoulder as she led Darcy away, “we’ll be in the Silver Lounge. Tell your father where I am, will you?”
    “Oh sure,” Mac muttered. “Fine.” He resisted, barely, giving the slot a swift kick, and instead dutifully cashed Darcy out.

    In a relatively quiet corner of a cocktail lounge gleaming with silver tables and rich black cushions, Darcy ran her fingers up and down the stem of a glass of white wine. She’d taken one sip, to clear her dry throat, but was afraid to take more.
    Mac was probably right about one thing, she’d decided. She didn’t hold her liquor very well.
    “Mrs. Blade, I’m so terribly sorry.”
    “Really?” Serena relaxed against the cushions and took stock of the young woman facing her. Prettier