He looked at his hand and nearly shouted hallelujah. A flush. “You in or out?”
Emma took five poker chips from the stack in front of her. “In.”
Was she bluffing? No way could she beat him this time. That sweater was coming off. Or the socks. Please let it be the sweater. Please.
“You?” she asked.
He picked up ten chips, one that had the eye of the whale. “I’m in.”
“Show me what you got,” Emma said.
Erik laid down his cards, spreading them with flourish. “Boo-yah!”
“Oh, wow, that’s really good,” she said, her eyes widening.
“Yeah, so don’t cry when you take off that pretty little top of yours.”
Emma spread her cards. “But I think I’ll keep it on.”
She had a fucking straight flush.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No freaking way.”
Emma grinned. “Hey, you dealt me those cards, and now I will take my prize. Off with the boxers.”
Erik stood. “Are you cheating?”
“Absolutely not. I’m lucky, I suppose, so give me my prize, big boy,” Emma said, clapping her hands like an empress.
He had to wonder if this was really Emma or Jose Cuervo talking because she was so, so, so different from the put-together, reserved woman he’d observed the day before. It wasn’t that she came across as the shy-virgin type...just not a woman who would clap her hands and order him to remove his drawers.
“Are you sure?” he said, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers.
Emma only hesitated slightly before nodding. “Yeah, I want those cute little hearts to hit the floor.”
Yeah, he had on the heart boxers his ex-girlfriend had given him a few years back. Not the most manly of underpants, but they were comfy.
“Okay,” he said, jerking the waistband down.
Right at the moment he was about to clear his junk, the door to the cabin flew open.
Emma screeched as the door slammed into the wall, making the cabin shudder. A gust of wind roared in extinguishing the candles and blowing the fire wildly, making embers and ash fly out of the grate.
“Shit,” Erik yelled, not only because the wind was icy as shit, but also because embers from the fireplace scattered across the floor. “Get the door, Em!”
He lunged toward the fireplace, grabbing the puzzle box lid and slapping at the glowing embers that had scattered across the wooden floor.
“Holy crap,” Emma said, pushing against the door, finally getting it closed. The busted lock had failed against the storm. Snow had spilled into the doorway. “I can’t get it to stay.”
Smacking the last of the burning embers, he stood and grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and wedged it underneath the doorknob, sealing the door and preventing it from blowing open again. “Thank goodness it opens inward. This should not only keep the storm from scaring the shit out of us again, but also slow down the chain-saw murderer who could show up while we’re sleeping.”
“Oh, thanks for making me feel safer,” Emma joked, slumping against the door. “And now my poor wool socks are wet and I missed my reward for winning at poker. Did you plan that?”
Erik laughed. “Yeah, I have secret powers.”
“Exactly what I was trying to find out with the removal of your undies.” She sighed, a twinkle in her eyes.
“I can still shuck them,” he said.
She shook her head, making her honey waves tumble seductively. Or maybe it just seemed seductive because neither one of them was wearing pants.
“Nothing like a windchill of five below and a pair of cold wet socks to sober a girl up. Keep your hearts on, big boy,” she said, moving past him, snapping the band of his underwear.
And damn, if that wasn’t the sexiest thing a woman had done to him in a long time.
So confident, so breezy...and it had nothing to do with the wind that had just blown through.
“You want to play some blackjack or something?” he asked, moving back to the table where Emma perched on the arm of the tweed chair, tugging off her socks. “Hey, if I knew that could get you out of your socks, I would have summoned the wind earlier.”
She smiled and said, “So, do I get some burlesque music?”
“Only if you do it sexy,” he joked as he tugged on his shirt and jeans. He found one of his socks on the back of the chair, the other near the fireplace.
“I’m not sure you can pull polka-dot fuzzy socks off in a sexy manner,” she said.