A Wife in Time (Silhouette Desire) by Cathie Linz Read Free Book Online

few minutes later, Kane returned to her side. “Are we leaving now?” she asked hopefully.
    “No. We’re going to play some poker. Or more precisely, I’m going to play poker. You’re going to stand nearby and keep quiet.”
    “Surely you jest,” she retorted.
    “Not at all.”
    “And how do you plan on playing poker with no money?”
    “I suppose I could try and use you as the stakes,” he responded teasingly.
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “Try and die.”
    “Somehow I figured you’d say that. So we’ll use your jewelry instead.”
    “What’s with this ‘we’ business? And you’re not getting your grubby hands on my jewels.”
    He raised an eyebrow at her, which gave him a devilish look that went well with his dark tux and tails.
    “You know what I mean,” she muttered.
    “You have a brighter idea?”
    “There must be another way. A more reliable way than gambling.”
    “If there is, we don’t have time to find out,” Kane said. “Jed tells me there’s a game just beginning in the back room. You’re welcome to wait outside with Polly, if you’d rather.”
    She gave him a look that would have withered a rattlesnake before coolly informing him, “I’d rather have an iced cappuccino in front of an air conditioner set on High, but that doesn’t appear to be an option at the moment.”
    “You’ve got that right. You’ll just have to make do with me.”
    The man was laughing at her, damn him! She was prepared to give him a tongue-lashing—to use the vernacular of the time—when he put his arm around her, as if to solicitously lead her through the crowd in the tavern to the back room and the poker game. As he did so, he whispered a warning in her ear. “Don’t cause a scene here. Remember Bellevue.”
    Bellevue? He had that right! She belonged in a mental institution for agreeing to this harebrained plan of his. Unfortunately she couldn’t come up with an alternative moneymaking scheme of her own at the moment.
    So she kept quiet as Kane used the two rings she always wore—one a wide gold antique filigreed band she wore on her left hand, the other a half-carat channel-set diamond ring her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday—as an opening stake into the game. Wryly wondering if her insurance policy covered losing her jewelry in a poker game held in 1884, Susannah was all too aware of the interested looks she was getting from the men in the smoky back room. Again, she was the only woman present.
    The blue haze of cigar smoke was enough to make her stomach turn. Her queasiness was increased by the speed with which Kane began losing. Next he demanded her bracelet.
    She immediately protested. “This was my—”
    “Favorite bracelet. I know,” Kane said in a curt voice. “I’ll buy you another one.”
    Despite the fact that he was losing, something about his confidence had her handing over her garnet-and-gold bracelet. And then her matching earrings. But she’d refused to take off her great-grandmother’s necklace. She absolutely drew the line there!
    She watched with concern as the stack of coins Kane had been given dwindled to one. Kane had warned her not to say anything, but he was crazy if he thought she was going to stand here and watch him go into hock.
    As if sensing her thoughts, he sent her a warning look before drawling, “Gentlemen, I appear to have a problem with dwindling resources.”
    “Too bad,” a cigar-smoking man named J. P. Bellows said after spewing a series of perfect smoke rings. He was the most talkative of the bunch. “Appears I’ve won, then.”
    “Not so fast,” Kane replied. “There’s still my wife’s necklace.”
    Wife? Susannah doubted her hearing. Her ears were starting to ring from exhaustion. She’d gotten up at four that morning to catch a flight from New York to Savannah and had arrived at the convention center a little before nine, spent the day on her feet with little to eat—not to mention time traveling 111 years. A