“Five dollars a hand,” Lamoyne announced.
“Two,” Rafe corrected.
“Alors, perhaps you and your wife should go down the street where the stakes are lower and the company less discriminating.”
“Perhaps,” Rafe said smoothly and started to rise.
“Two dollars then,” Lamoyne capitulated ungraciously.
After an hour in which Rafe won some hands and lost others, Helen was disgusted to see that his pile remained pretty much the same as when he’d started. Lamoyne looked equally disgusted.
“Enough of these penny-ante games. Let us increase the odds here, monsieur.” The gambler laid a pile of nuggets in the center of the table. “Five hundred dollars.”
Reluctantly, Rafe shook his head. “Can’t do. I don’t have that much.”
The sleazeball twirled his mustache with sly satisfaction, his crafty eyes connecting with Helen. “Ah, but you are wrong, my friend. You have something of equal value to wager.”
Rafe’s body under her hand grew rock stiff. “She’s not for sale.”
The gambler shrugged and started to pull his pile of nuggets back.
Rafe raised a halting hand. “Perhaps we can make a deal.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. “Ray-Bans. Worth a hundred dollars,” he said and put them on to demonstrate. “They protect your eyes from sunlight.”
“I thought Pablo took those.”
“He did, but he gave them back to me today… said they were useless.”
Lamoyne checked out the sunglasses when Rafe laid them on the table. With a grunt of derision, he picked them up and tried them on. The senorita made a cooing sound of appreciation at his appearance, and the vain little fop preened.
“So, do you want them?” Rafe pushed.
With heightened color, Lamoyne snarled, “Oui, fifty dollars.”
Next Rafe took off his camouflage shirt, leaving on his tight-fitting green T-shirt.
“You can’t do that,” Helen admonished. “It’s against Army regulations.”
He cut her a telling glare that said clearly, “Get real!”
The shirt brought another fifty.
“How about black silk boxer shorts?” Rafe offered.
Helen burst out laughing. “You are crazy.”
“Well, I can’t think of anything else. I don’t want to give up my boots.”
“Boxer shorts?” Lamoyne asked.
“Men’s underpants.”
Lamoyne balked. “Why would a gentleman want another man’s filthy undergarments?”
“These are silk,” Rafe informed him. “And clean. I washed them last night, didn’t I, Helen?” Without waiting for her answer, Rafe leaned over and unlaced his boots. Then he stood and began to undo his pants. “Look the other way, honey,” he told the señorita, but he winked at Helen and told her, “You can look, though.”
By the time Helen peeked back, Rafe’s boxers were lying outrageously in the middle of the table, and he was zipping up his pants over bare skin. Helen forced herself to stop thinking about all that bare skin under his pants.
After examining the shorts — joined by the other card players and the senorita — Lamoyne agreed to another fifty dollars.
“That’s only a hundred and fifty dollars,” Rafe muttered.
“How about my underwear?” Helen blurted out, and everyone in the room turned to gawk at her. Including Rafe, whose gawk quickly changed to an ear-to-ear smile.
“I mean, if you can give up stuff, so can I,” she said in a weak voice. After a few quick words from Rafe, she went to a back room, partitioned by only a red calico curtain, and removed her bra and panties. Rafe stood guard on the other side of the drape.
Face flaming, she returned and placed the white lace bra and French-cut briefs on the table, along with her camouflage blouse.
Rafe sat back down, then glanced back over his shoulder, taking his first gander at her. His eyes locked on her breasts, naked under the thin T-shirt. Licking his lips, he whispered huskily, “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, after all.”
To her embarrassment, her nipples hardened under his appreciative scrutiny.
Rafe’s sharp inhalation of breath only made them tighten more. She folded her arms over her chest and demanded of Lamoyne, “Well, do you want them or not? We can always go elsewhere if you’re not interested.”
The gambler picked them up, one at a time, examining them closely, especially the filmy cups of her bra.