“Hit me.”

I shot my best friend Gage a grin, the same one I tended to use when I was about to close a deal. The one my older brother called my salesman smile. “You sure you want to do that?”

Gage stared me down, his almost-black eyes giving nothing away. “Hit me, jackass.”

Shaking my head slowly, I clucked and frowned. “You’ll bust.”

“You trying to play this game for me?”

“Nope. Just looking out for you.”

He squinted, trying hard to make me crack. But I wasn’t about to hang myself with the rope he fed me. I waited him out, sitting deep in my seat. Casual and confident. And bluffing like a motherfucker to throw him off his game. The guy had luck to spare when he played cards, and I hated to lose.

Gage clenched his jaw. “Hit me.”

I tossed his fifth card across the table, noting what he already showed. A spread made up of two threes, a five, and a four. Fifteen on the way to not pass twenty-one. No way did he not go over with the new card.

“Either you just busted, or you’ve got yourself a five card Charlie hand. I’m going to go with the first option. I stand.”

Gage flipped the card over, giving me no tell as to whether he’d gotten a good one or a bad one. And then he laid it down.

Six of hearts. Twenty-one on a five-card spread.

“Motherfucker.” I picked up my own cards—totaling just eighteen—and waggled my fingers for his.

“You’re a sore loser,” he noted as he handed over his cards.

“Am not.” Okay, that might have come out a little more petulant than I’d intended. “I’m just not used to losing is all. It’s such a rarity for me.”

Gage snorted. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“Bishop trying to pull that ‘I never lose’ line again?” Deacon, owner of the bar we’d decided to play blackjack in, set a plate of Buffalo wings in front of us and dropped into an empty chair. “He’s been trying that crap since the day I met him.”

Gage might have smiled—hard to tell considering the impressive beard the man sported. “He’s been trying that crap since the day I met him, and that was a hell of a lot earlier than you did.”

“So you’re saying he’s been a sore loser for a long time?”

“Fuck off,” I said, tossing a napkin at Deacon.

Gage wasn’t about to be deterred. “I need to know how far back this inability to lose goes. Where’s Alder tonight?”

Deacon nearly choked on his beer. “Dude’s been drooling over Shye for three damn long years and finally managed to convince that little blonde to give him the time of day. Where do you think he is?”

No way was I arguing that. “If the man isn’t face, finger, or cock deep right now, he’s doing life wrong.”

Deacon raised his eyebrows…and his beer. “Cheers to that.”

Gage looked as if he wanted to reply, but his phone lighting up distracted him. He tapped the screen a few times then ran his finger along the edge, scrolling. The more he read, the more the furrows in his brow deepened. I’d have bet money he was frowning under all that dark hair.

“Problem?” I asked before taking a long, deep pull from my beer.

Deacon gave me a smirk. “It’s late. That’s either a booty call, or someone’s drunk and needs a ride home.”

“If they’re drunk, that means they’re buying their liquor someplace other than your bar,” I replied.

Deacon shrugged, looking around at the almost-empty bar. The Jury Room was busier than it should be for a Tuesday night but not packed. “If they want to waste their money on the well liquor and warm beer over at Tracks in Rock Falls, that’s their own problem.”

Tracks was the only other bar within a forty-mile radius of Justice, the tiny town where I’d been raised and where I still lived. It was a shithole, too, which made Deacon’s place the crown jewel of the area. Not that it was all that nice. Dive bar definitely described the place, but the food was good and the beer was cold. What more did anyone need?

Gage finally looked away from his phone. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Shit.” Deacon set his beer down and leaned in. Ready and focused. Looking so much like my brother Alder in that moment. “Sheriff Baker nosing around town again, or is it the Soul Suckers?”

Gage grunted, focused on his phone again. His thumbs flying over the screen. “Hang on.”

Oh sure, right. We could just hang on. As if either option Deacon mentioned could simply be set aside so he could send emojis to whoever was on the other end of the conversation. The Soul Suckers motorcycle club had caused a fuckton of trouble over the past couple of weeks. The sort of trouble that led to burned-down houses and a funeral for a friend’s wife. My brother Alder’s new girl had been at the center of the first wave of attacks, which had all stemmed from a meth lab the club had been running in our woods. They’d sent their guys to take out Alder after we’d cut them off from their drug kitchen—men who never made it back home. Not that anyone other than those of us who’d handled the situation knew anything about that. Gage, Alder, and I had made sure those men could never tell the tale of what had happened that night.

The motorcycle club had to assume we’d killed them, yet it’d been quiet for a couple of weeks in town. Too quiet. And Sheriff Baker…well, he was crooked as fuck. Always had been. And if he caught wind of what we’d done, we’d likely go to jail. Not nearly as bad as what the Soul Suckers would likely do to us.

“I can’t believe they haven’t hit us already,” I said as I spun my beer bottle, my mind whirling faster than the glass. “Two of their club brothers never made it home. If they were my guys—”

“We’d go after them right away.” Gage—current heavy machinery mechanic for my family’s logging business, Kennard Mills, and my former SEAL teammate—seemed to be on the same wavelength. Not surprising. “You and me, we’d bust through their doors and take their team down before they got their bearings. Alder and Deacon here wouldn’t.”

Deacon grabbed a wing and bit into it before throwing out an extended, sarcastic-sounding, “Nope.”

They weren’t wrong. That was a huge difference in how my older brother and I handled conflicts—as SEALs, Gage and I powered in and did what was needed. As Green Berets, my brother and Deacon plotted and planned, looked at every angle before deciding on the best course of action. SEALs were direct—Green Berets were sneaky as fuck. The Soul Suckers were being sneaky. I’d bet my life on it.

“Let’s double up on security at the ridge.” I cracked my neck, trying to think like my older brother. “Alder would rely on sabotage to throw the enemy off, which means the Soul Suckers might as well. We don’t need anyone coming in to fuck with our equipment.”

“Already on it, though that brings us to another issue. The texts I just got.”

“Your booty call?” Deacon asked, waggling his eyebrows in the most ridiculous way.

“If that was a booty call text, he’d be out the door already. Not sitting here with me, Deac.”

Deacon shrugged. “Maybe he likes your smile more than hers, pretty boy.”

I pulled out my best grin for that one. “I am quite popular.”

Gage just rolled his eyes. “You two know Felicia in Rock Falls?”

Sure did. As did every other man who worked at Kennard Mills. Felicia had been the topic of conversation since she’d moved to the area a few months back. She’d flirted hard and had made a few obvious moves to get my attention, but there was no way. I didn’t fuck close to home—too easy to fall into a mess of clinginess and a woman wanting more than I was willing to offer. And I was definitely not interested in more or her.

Deacon grinned. “Tall, legs for days, sweetest little swing to her ass when she walks around the liquor store where she works. Yeah, I know her. That’s your booty call? I figured Bishop would be hitting that. Seems more his type.”

True, she had a look every man would go for, but she had one thing I avoided.

Before I could say a word, Gage shook his head. “Bishop doesn’t mess with redheads.”

Deacon sat back, obviously stunned. “Why the hell not?”

Both men looked at me expectantly, but there was no way I was heading down that path. “I prefer blondes. What’s Felicia texting you about?”

“The weather.”

I blinked, searching my mind for the euphemism in that answer. I didn’t find it.

Deacon must not have either. “The hot redhead working at the liquor store is texting you about the weather? Man, and Bishop said Alder might be doing life wrong.”

“Shut up, old man,” Gage said without a bit of anger in his voice. “The chick’s got a degree in meteorology and has been watching the forecast models for the past two weeks. Our rainy season is about to get worse.”

That definitely caught my attention. Wood ruled my life. Always had, always would. Growing up the son of a sawmill owner, I had no choice. The obsession with growth rates, species diversity, and forestry just sort of happened. I’d been out in the woods with my dad as a child, had learned to detect the healthy trees from the ones that needed to be culled by the time I started playing peewee football. Like every logger’s child, I’d learned geometry calculating stumpage, the amount of board feet possible based on the diameter of a tree trunk at chest height. Of course, at that age, it’d been at a height over my head, but my dad made sure I could figure out the calculations. Trees and lumber had become my thing. Weather came in at a close second, though. Especially bad weather.

And in a Rocky Mountain Front rainy season, there was only one kind of bad weather. “That cold front moving up the range is going to stall right on top of us, isn’t it?”

“Looks like it.” Gage took another drink of his beer, killing the bottle. “She told me at least a week of solid rain, likely starting tomorrow afternoon.”

Fuck, that wasn’t good. “Looks like we’re going to get wet, boys.”

Deacon snorted. “It’s going to rain. Whatever. Let’s get back to the more important question of why Felicia isn’t getting wet from either one of you.”

Gage shrugged, picking up his phone and typing out a message. “I’m not interested.”

The former Special Forces sniper across the table just shook his head disbelievingly. “And, Bishop? No redheads? What’s the matter with gingers?”

Still not going there. “I’d rather know why you’re not the one hitting that if you think she’s so perfect.”

Deacon balked. “That girl is half my age.”

I did the math—Deacon seemed to be about as old as my brother, Alder. Felicia looked to be about as old as my youngest sibling, Lainie. That made him a lot less than twice her age. “No way. She’s maybe a decade younger.”

The look he shot me held a hell of a lot of sarcasm. “Not much better, man.”

Gage grabbed a chicken wing, finally ignoring his phone for a minute. “So Bishop doesn’t date redheads—”

“Keep that D-word to yourself,” I interrupted.

Gage just huffed. “Bishop doesn’t date at all, and he doesn’t do redheads. Deacon doesn’t like women too much younger than him. That right?”

Deacon sat back with a grin. “I’m waiting for some rich cougar to come sweep me off my feet.”

“You’re going to be waiting a long damn time,” I said.

“Nah. I went to a psychic when I was in Vegas last time. She said I’d find my soul mate before the end of the year.”

My chest tightened. Vegas psychic hit all of my fuck no buttons, not because I didn’t think some of them had talents. No, I knew some did. One in particular. The one who was the reason I never messed with redheaded women.

Gage stared across the table. “You went to a psychic?”

“Yeah. Cute little thing—all blond and big-eyed. Great rack too.” He held out his hands as if cupping said breasts, making Gage laugh as I grabbed my bottle and took another swig. Trying to force down the sick rising in my gut.

Not her, not her. Blond not red. Can’t be her.

“So were you trying to find out about your future or get a date?” Gage asked.

“Definitely a date. Which I would have gotten, but then she saw the soul mate thing and said she couldn’t poach another woman’s man so close to us meeting.”

“Wait,” Gage said, holding up his hand. “You got cock-blocked by your own future?”

I choked on my beer.

Deacon scowled. “Fuck off.”

Gage’s laugh exploded, drawing the attention of the few bar patrons sitting around. It even made his dog Rex get up out of the little bed Deacon kept by the door for him and come padding over. We’d never had a pet growing up—with five kids, I always figured my mom and dad had enough to deal with—so Rex and I had tenuous sort of relationship. One that had not been strengthened when he and his owner had moved in with me a few months back. But Gage loved the hairy little fucker. As did Deacon, though he’d never come right out and say it.

Still, the dog made for the perfect distraction.

“C’mon, Rex,” Deacon said, pushing to his feet. “Let’s go see what kind of treats I have for you in the back and leave these two dumbasses to their cards.”

No way was I letting an opportunity pass. “Watch out, man. You might miss your soul mate if you disappear for too long.”

Deacon flipped me off as he headed to the back. I considered that a win.

“He can’t believe that bullshit,” Gage said, shaking his head.

“You don’t buy it?”

“Psychics and future-telling and stuff?” He frowned. “Not a bit. You do?”

I shrugged, trying hard not to think about tarot cards and tea leaves and all the things I’d been completely surrounded by at one time. “I think some people are more intuitive than others.”

“Well, I think some people are more devious than others and know how to manipulate people into giving up just enough information to feed their lies.”

“Remind me to take you to meet Miss Hansen one of these days. You might change your mind.”

“The old lady up on Widow’s Ridge?”

“Yeah. She’s psychic—used to read tea leaves and tarot and shit.”

He grunted. “Some old lady with a good sense of people isn’t going to change my mind.”

It wouldn’t have changed mine either. But then her granddaughter had moved in with her, and I’d learned firsthand how the talent Miss Hansen displayed had transferred down through the generations. But Gage didn’t know about Anabeth Monroe—Vegas performer and famous tarot card reader—and if I had my way, he never would.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing the cards and shuffling the deck. “Let’s play another round or two.”

“You going to pout when you lose again?”

I grinned, clinging to the distraction with every fiber of my being. “You’re assuming I’m going to lose. I told you, it’s a rarity for me.”

Unless we were talking about women. About me losing my heart and soul to the fiery redhead who’d walked away without a word of explanation. The one I’d never really gotten over. The one I occasionally saw on pop culture news reports even though I tried to avoid anything having to do with her.

I sucked at romance, apparently, but I could play cards. And I wouldn’t lose again.

“Hey, Deacon,” I yelled, catching the owner’s attention when he came out of the kitchen. “Two more beers over here. I’ve got a long night of winning ahead of me.”