“It’s a hard situation, and, well, I know you already gave Dolly money for the baby.”

Those faded blue eyes flattened out. “It’s my money, and my blood.”

“I know that. It was good of you to want to help with Shiloh’s expenses, to stand in for Jim that way.”

He relaxed a little. “It was the right thing to do.”

“And it’s not always easy to do the right thing in a hard situation. I guess I’d worry bringing lawyers in might murk it up even more. At least right now.”

“It doesn’t hurt to talk. Everybody should do whatever’s best for the baby, right?”

“They should. I... I’m probably the wrong person to ask about something like this. Maybe, I don’t know, Matt, if your mother came out... if she and Mrs. Brakeman talked about everything, they could work out what’s best, what’s right.”

“Maybe. She looks like a Brayner, you know? The baby? Even Lynn said so. I’ve got to think about it.”

She supposed they did, Rowan decided when he headed out for his run. Matt, his family, the Brakemans, they’d all have to think about it. But she knew what it was to be the child everybody was thinking about.

It wasn’t an easy place to be.

22

Rowan watched Dobie painfully swallow shot number ten. His eyes had gone glassy on eight, and now his cheeks took on a faint, sickly green hue.

“That’s twenty.”

“Count’s ten, Dobie,” Cards, official scorekeeper, told him.

“I’m seeing double, so it’s twenty.” Laughing like a loon, he nearly tipped out of his chair.

Janis, official pourer, filled shot number eleven for Yangtree. “Experience,” he said, and knocked it back smooth. “That’s the key.”

Rowan smirked, licked salt off the back of her hand, then drank hers down. “I’d like to thank the soon-to-be loser for springing for the prime.”

“You’re welcome.” Gull polished off eleven.

“I got another in me.” Stovic lifted his glass, proved he did—before he slid bonelessly to the floor.

“And he’s out.” Cards crossed Stovic off the board.

“I am not out.” From the floor, Stovic waved a hand. “I’m fully conscious.”

“You leave your chair without calling for a piss break, you’re out.”

“Who left the chair?”

“Come on, Chainsaw.” Gibbons got his hands under Stovic’s arms and dragged him out from under the table.

Dobie made it to thirteen before surrendering. “It’s this foreign liquor, that’s what it is. Oughta be homegrown bourbon.” He got down, crawled on his hands and knees and lay down next to a snoring Stovic.

“Rookies.” Yangtree got number fourteen down, then laid his head on the table and moaned, “Mommy.”

“Did you mean uncle?” Cards demanded, and Yangtree managed to shoot up his middle finger.

Rowan and Gull went head-to-head until Janis split the last shot between them. “That’s all there is, there ain’t no more.”

“Shoulda bought three bottles.” Rowan closed one eye to focus and click her glass to Gull’s. “On three?”

Those still conscious in the room counted off, then cheered when the last drops went down.

“And that’s a draw,” Cards announced.

“I’m proud to know you.” Janis dropped a hand on each shoulder. “And wish you the best of luck with tomorrow’s hangover.”

“Gull doesn’t get ’em.”

He smiled, a little stupidly, into Rowan’s eyes. “This might be the exception. Let’s go have lotsa drunk sex before it hits.”

“’Kay. Drunk sex for everybody!” She waved her hands and smacked a barely awake Yangtree in the face. “Oops.”

“No, I needed that. Everybody still alive?”

“Can’t make that much noise dead.” Rowan gestured to snoring-in-stereo Stovic and Dobie as she swayed to her feet. “Follow me, stud.”

“I’m with the blonde.” Gull staggered after her.

“We can do this.” She fumbled at his shirt when he booted the door shut on the third try. “Soon as the room stops spinning around.”

“Pretend we’re doing it on a merry-go-round.”

“Naked at the carnival.” On a wild laugh she defeated his shirt, but started to teeter. When he grabbed for her, she took them both onto the floor, hard.

“I think that hurt, but it’s better down here, ’cause of the gravity.”

“Okay.” He shifted off her to struggle with her clothes. “We should do naked tequila shots. Then we wouldn’t have to take them off after.”

“Now you think of it. Alley-oop!” She held up her arms to help him strip off her shirt. “Gimme, gimme.” She locked her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, then latched her mouth onto his.

The heat burned through the tequila haze, fired in the senses. The world rolled and turned, yet she remained constant, chained around him. Caged, he met the desperate demand of her mouth, rocking center to center until he thought he’d go mad.

The chains broke. She rolled on top of him, biting, grasping, lapping, then rolled off again.

“Get naked,” she ordered. “Beat ya.”

They tugged at shoes, clothes in a panting race. With clothes still landing in heaps, they dived at each other. Wrestling now, skin damp and slick, they rolled over the floor. Knees and elbows banged, and still her laughter rang out. The moonlight turned her dewed skin to silver, glowing and precious, irresistible.

Breathless with pleasure, crazed with a whirling, spinning need, she threw her head back when he plunged into her.

“Take me like you mean it.”

And he did, God, he did, filling her up, wringing her out while she pushed for more. Catching fire, she thought, leaping into the heart of the blaze. She rode the heat until it simply consumed her.

“Merry-go-round,” she murmured. “Still turning. Stay right here.” This time she drew him close before they slept.

Another fire woke her, the fire that killed, that hunted and destroyed. It growled behind her, pawing at the ground as she ran. She flew through the black, yet still it came, stalking her to the graveyard where the dead lay unburied on the ground. Waiting for her.