“I give him a ten on both technique and style. And since that was a number of years ago, I can only assume he’s improved even that.” She laughed, got up to pop a movie in. “Now Mrs. T is trying to figure out if she should make a comment or a statement of any kind, and Mum is sitting there steaming over the idea that the disreputable Michael Fury has had his very tasty lips clamped on all three of her girls.”

“That’s just the kind of talk I expect from you,” Ann said with a sniff.

“And I’d hate to disappoint you. He’s one of the dangerous men, all right.” She leaned back and patted her mother’s knee affectionately. “Thank God for them.”

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

He wasn’t feeling particularly dangerous with the trash Byron had dealt him. He’d held fairly steady in the first hour of the game, keeping his bets conservative, even predictable, while he studied each of his opponents for their tells.

They were good, he admitted, all three of them. This wasn’t any sucker’s game. They may have been the classy high rollers who normally gambled in palaces, but he had learned his skills aboard ship, where boredom could tempt a man to toss a month’s pay into the pot just to break the monotony.

At a card table, any card table, Michael knew a wise man studied his quarries, and his foes.

Josh flicked a thumb over his jaw when he had a solid hand, and his eyes went blank and cool when he was bluffing. De Witt tended to reach for his beer when he had a winner. And Templeton, well, Templeton was a cagey dog, but as the second hour got under way, Michael noted that the man puffed harder on his cigar when he prepared to rake in the chips.

Calculating, Michael discarded, drew into a pitiful pair of treys. He had a choice, considered the practicalities, and decided it was time to shake things up.

“There’s your ten,” he told Josh, flipping in his chips. “Raise it ten.”

“Twenty to me.” Absently Byron reached down to scratch one of his dogs. A sign, Michael thought smugly, that he had nothing. “I’m in.”

“Twenty.” Tommy knocked into the pot. “And ten more.”

“Out.” Josh tossed his cards down and rose to help himself to one of the fat sandwiches on the counter.

“I’ll see your raise and bump it twenty.”

“And you two can fight this hand out.” Byron pushed back, gulped his beer.

The boy had been bumping the pot since the deal, Thomas mused, and studied the pretty trio of ladies in his hand. Well, they would have to see what he was made of. “Your twenty, and fifty more.”