Page 41 of Holiday Home 3
“Three threes.”
Avril’s expression soured immediately, and her gaze dropped to her hand. But Anna, again, did not check her hand. This time, he wasn’t the only one to notice that.
Groaning, Avril didn’t dispute his claim. However, Liam was more focused on the bad habit he’d gleaned from Anna.
“Hold on,” he said before she could put down any number of fours in her hand. “Anna, you’re never glancing at your hand after we put down our cards.”
“But I don’t have any twos or threes, so why would I do that?”
“To bluff. You’re giving it away that you don’t have those cards, so Avril and I know not to call the other one of us. Even when it’s not your turn, you’re still playing against both of us, not just the person who put the cards down. You want to make it hard for the other players to read what cards you do or don’t have. Bluffing, obfuscation, and all that stuff is important here. You want to have us guessing at all times. It’ll only work out in your favor if you can manage that.”
“All right,” Anna said. “I’ll make sure and do more of that.”
This was his ulterior motive for picking such a game as this. As intelligent as she was, intelligence alone wasn’t enough to win most card games. Unlike Blackjack, Texas Hold’em wasn’t just about counting cards and probabilities. It also wasn’t a game against the house, but all the other players at the table.
It wasn’t enough to know your hand and how to play it. Detecting your opponents’ tells, intuiting how they felt about their hands, and keeping them from doing the same was vital to success. And he wanted her to perform well, even if he was going to be one of her opponents. There was nothing worse than being continuously blown out for however many hours they might be playing on New Year’s Eve. No matter how composed Anna might be, he knew she’d have a better time if she could stand up to her competition.
Based on his estimation, excluding himself, Victoria would be the best player at the table, in no small part due to her neutral expression already being as impenetrable a poker face as he’d ever seen. Tess seemed to have some experience, and Avril would be dealing. So, Anna was the newbie among them.
For her sake, he wanted her to win a few hands. For his sake, he wanted a challenge from all three of his opponents. Therefore, now was the perfect time to speed Anna’s education along.
“One four,” she said as she put a single card onto the stack. As she did so, proving herself a quick learner once again, she scanned his and Avril’s responses. They both checked their hands, even though Liam knew he only had a single four himself. So, if everyone had played an honest game so far, that meant Avril had two fours in her hand. Information he filed away for later.
“Two fives,” the redhead said.
Anna dropped her gaze to her hand. Liam withheld an approving smile as he looked at his hand, which was devoid of any fives. Now, here would be a potentially spicy turn.
“I think you’re lying, Avril,” Anna said. Her mouth flattened as Avril’s eyebrow shot up, which they all knew wasn’t due to her being called a liar but due to a word she wanted to hear her prim and proper best friend utter. Anna sighed.
“Bullshit,” she said, unconsciously lowering her volume by several octaves.
“What was that?” Avril asked, holding a hand to her ear.
“You heard me,” Anna said, face slightly flushed.
“I guess I did, you naughty girl,” the maverick redhead said. “Now, let’s see.”
One four—Hearts—appeared as Avril smirked and flipped it over. And then, after an appropriate amount of buildup, she flipped over its cousin, the Four of Spades.
“All for you,” Avril said, gesturing at the pile and leaning back.
As Anna collected the stack, she appeared far more annoyed than he could remember seeing her ever getting during Blackjack. No matter how many hands she’d lost, she’d neverseemed particularly torn up about it. And even though he’d designated her the ultimate winner, he’d hit her with a few bad streaks during the evening. Yet even then, she hadn’t appeared perturbed by her misfortune.
That wasn’t the case as she and Avril shared looks while she reordered her now much larger hand. As Liam would discover, it would be a trend going forward, but only when Avril got one over her or called her out. When he did it, she took everything in stride. When Avril bested her, it vexed her.
Avril certainly noticed, as well.
“Nice try, nice try,” she said sarcastically when she caught Anna lying midway through the first round.
While Liam considered if he should intervene, electricity crackled between the two women whenever they brushed against one another. There only being the three of them, that was rather often. It also paved the way for him to quietly take the lead, and he eventually turned it into a win.
“You want to shuffle from now on, right?” he asked once he emptied his hand by plopping down a pair of eights, which he’d received after Avril called his bluff a while earlier. Thankfully, he’d only picked up a small stack of cards at that time, and it’d only delayed his victory by a matter of minutes. When he put the eights down, both women had known—or at least suspected—that he had them, but Avril had bit the bullet, of course, and called “Bullshit.”
Once he’d proven they were the eights he’d promised they were, he’d briefly reveled in his victory.
“Yeah, I’m shuffling,” Avril grumpily said, snatching all the cards on the table and extending a hand toward Anna.
Her best friend handed over her cards, and they all sat silently as Avril shuffled.