New Orleans, 1870. Charlotte (Lottie) Mason is under the gun to get money and get it fast to pay off the blackmailer threatening to expose her crippled father for the crime of murder. She hears about the big bucks that can be won in a game of cards aboard the river boats and decides that's her best bet to raise the money she needs and she hires on as a waitress and hopes to convince the notorious gambler Obediah Straights (Dyer) to teach her the ropes."She had told her family she would be away for about a week visiting an old friend. That should be plenty of time to learn a simple card game and win the money she needed to protect her father. Now she just needed a pseudonym to protect her family from any scandal her gambling might cause."Dyer's a hard drinking, hard lovin' kind of man, yet Lottie's innocent naive nature just seems to charm the pants right off of him and he agrees to teach her the ropes, but with a price attached at the end. The rest of the story continues with their flirting and card playing, silly attempts at humor (I'm assuming they were intentional), as well as a mystery surrounding Dyer and the murder of his wife and son. I don't need to tell you more, but you should have most of it figured out before the big reveal. I'll just leave a few quotes so's you can decide if this is the book for you or not. "He'd intended to scare her with his kiss, but instead she'd melted against him like butter.""Why, isn't that the cutest thing?" she said from over his shoulder. "All your cards match.""Perhaps she needed to explain things a little more slowly. He seemed to be having trouble keeping up. "You see, a king and a queen rule a country, so it makes sense they would be powerful cards, but there's no such thing as a jack, is there? Shouldn't that card be a duke card?""Perhaps you should invent a new deck with numbered pink butterflies and God cards."There's more, but you get the idea. It's all a very silly story in a wall paper setting, and definitely not my cuppa tea - but from looking at the positive reviews there are plenty who enjoy it - to each their own. Glad I got it free, and glad it was short enough to blow through quickly and move onto the next book.
