of poker in the back room.”
“And you took advantage of him?” she demanded to know.
Seth laughed, the sound deep and rich despite the tension between them. “I know you’d like to believe I did, but I wasn’t the only one in the game. There were five of us present, but I seemed to be the one with all the luck. Your father lost all the cash he had on him and resorted to writing IOUs. At one point, he owed me over ten grand, and Gary Rial four grand.”
Josie groaned, staggered at the debt her father had incurred. “What happened?” she asked, not sure she really wanted to know.
“It came down to my hand against his, and since he had another three grand of IOUs in the pot and was about to write another just to stay in the game, I struck a deal with him.”
Her loathing gaze narrowed on him. “What kind of deal did my father make with the devil himself?”
He lifted a dark brow at her derogatory comment. “I told him if he put in the deed to the Golden M and he won the pot, I’d forgive his IOU to me and I’d pay off Gary’s. The same would apply if he lost. Either way, he’d have no outstanding debts.”
“My, wasn’t that generous of you!” Her fingers curled tightly around the deed in her hand. A deed that made the very porch she stood on, the house and ranch she grew up on, his. The thought made her nauseous.
He sat up in the chair, his gaze holding hers steadily. “He didn’t have to put in the deed, Josie.”
“Doesn’t sound like he had much of a choice.”
Anger flashed in his eyes, hot and dangerous. “He made every choice on his own. I offered a deal, and he accepted it with a stipulation of his own that I agreed to. If he wasn’t prepared to lose, then he never should have challenged me to join the game in the first place.”
He was right, she knew. Her father’s weakness was no one’s fault but his own. Still, she wasn’t going to lose everything that mattered to her without a battle. “I’m going to do everything in my power to get this ranch back.”
Slowly, he stood, looking entirely too sexy for someone she despised. “You can certainly try, but that document is legal and binding. Considering the ranch wasn’t in your name, you won’t have much of a leg to stand on.”
Her chest grew so tight it hurt to breathe. Oh, Lord! She’d never thought to change the deed to include her name, never believed her father could be so desperate as to risk their home in a poker game. She was the last McAllister, and the ranch would have been hers one day, passed on from father to daughter.
She found it ironic that Jake McAllister had lost the property to an O’Connor the same way her great-grandfather McAllister had won it from Seth’s great-grandfather so long ago—in a poker game.
That had been the beginning of the McAllister and O’Connor feud. Judging by the animosity vibrating between the two of them, that dissension was still burning bright and strong. But there had been a brief time when she believed she and Seth would be the ones to end the conflicts that had trickled down through three generations. She’d been so hopeful that the strife between their families would finally be over.
She’d been young and naive, and so wrong about Seth O’Connor’s intentions...so easily duped by a heart-stopping grin and so effortlessly seduced by the taste of her first real kiss and the promise of true love.
She was older now and certainly wiser about how the O’Connors operated. She’d learned the hard way their motives were always self-serving. With that thought, she hardened her resolve. “You won’t get away with this, Seth,” she vowed, and thrust the offending document back at him.
“I already have.” Expression uncompromising, he took the deed from her. When his fingers brushed hers, she felt as though she’d been zapped by a bolt of lightning. The sizzle coursed up her arm, spread through her breasts and settled in the pit of her stomach like a warm pool of molasses.
She shook off the unwanted sensation and jutted her chin up a notch, refusing to be intimidated by his superior height or the intense heat blazing in the depths of his blue eyes. “If you expect me to pack up and leave without a fight, then you better think again.”
“On the contrary, darlin’,” he said, his smooth drawl at odds with the resentment she detected in his voice, “I fully expect you to stay.”
Wariness pulsed through her with every heartbeat, making her feel like a cornered deer staring down the barrel of a rifle—with no means of escape. Was he tricking her somehow? Letting her believe that he wasn’t going to take away the only home she and Kellie had ever had? “I...I don’t understand.”
“There’s a stipulation to the deed,” he said very carefully, as if he wanted her to understand what he was about to say. “A provision your father set and I agreed to before I won that last poker hand.”
So, he’d made his own sacrifice to gain what he wanted—the property that once belonged to his family. She was certain whatever price he paid wasn’t as great as her father’s loss or her own dismal future. “What kind of stipulation?”
His smile was grim. “That we get married.”
CHAPTER TWO
JOSIE stared at Seth incredulously. Losing the ranch to him was one thing, but to marry him? She knew her father could be irresponsible, but she couldn’t imagine him making such a ridiculous demand, and an O’Connor, no less so.
“You’re joking!” He had to be.
“I wish I was.” He crossed his arms over his wide chest, his mouth twisting into a sardonic smile. “The stipulation states that I’ll marry you within one week in order to gain the Golden M.”
The way she saw it, if she refused her father’s terms, there was no way Seth could claim the property. Her father had outsmarted an O’Connor!
It was her turn to be smug. “What makes you believe I’d want to marry you to fulfill the terms of that stipulation?”
“Because it would be in both our interests to do so.”
He didn’t look the least bit concerned by her unwillingness to help him carry out the terms of her father’s stipulation, and that realization caused a niggling of unease to curl within her. “How do you figure it would be in my best interest to marry someone I despise just so he could claim my property?”
A hint of challenge flickered in his gaze. “Because if you don’t become my wife, you forfeit the Golden M.”
She frowned at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
From his shirt pocket where he’d tucked away the quitclaim deed, he now withdrew another folded piece of paper. Opening it, he held it toward her.
“Read the terms of the stipulation for yourself,” he prompted when she merely stared at the signed and notarized document. “It states that I’ll marry you within a week in order to procure the Golden M, at which time it will become joint property since we’ll be man and wife.” He gave her a moment to absorb that before continuing. “However, if you refuse to marry me within the specified week, then you lose the Golden M and I’ll have every right as the owner to
