An Outlaw in Wonderland (31 page)

Read on for a look at the first novel in Lori Austin’s

Once Upon a Time in the West series,

BEAUTY AND THE BOUNTY HUNTER

Available from Signet Eclipse.

B
y the time they reached the hotel, Alexi was behaving so strangely, Cat’s skin started
to itch. Was someone watching them? Following them? Was that target she felt on her
back real?

“How long should we stay?” she asked.

“Until full dark at least.”

Cat understood why, but she didn’t like it. She wanted out of this town.

Yesterday.

They strolled through the lobby, heads together, murmuring like the lovebirds they
weren’t. Alexi nodded to the clerk, who’d been here when the Signora arrived but obviously
hadn’t been when Jed did since the man stared at them without recognition.

“Jed and Meg Nelson.” Alexi held out a hand. “Room 12.”

The clerk handed over the key after a quick glance at the register. Knowing Alexi,
his scribbled name was so illegible it could be anything, even Jed and Meg. Another
trick of their trade. One never knew when an identity might need to be changed middodge.

Once Cat was inside, her gaze circled the room, which was exactly the same as hers
down the hall—right down to the deck of cards sitting in the center of the table.

She crossed to the window, through which a tepid breeze blew. Tossing off her bonnet,
she stuck her head out, knocking the “baby” against the casing. She wasn’t used to
having all this extra front.

She reached around to remove her costume, and Alexi snapped, “Leave it.”

Cat started and glanced over her shoulder. He was closer than she’d thought. Very
close. “Why?”

“All we need is for someone to knock on the door and you’ve . . .” He waved vaguely
in the area of her midsection.

“Lost the baby?”

He winced, and she heard what she’d said. The words gave her a strange, hollow feeling.
But what was his excuse?

Cat tilted her head. She couldn’t decipher his expression. His face seemed so . . .
different.

The bruises
, she thought. She’d never once seen Alexi with a bruise on his face. It changed him,
made him vulnerable. She wasn’t sure she liked that any more than he appeared to.

Come to think of it—she tilted her head in the opposite direction—she’d rarely seen
Alexi with a bruise anywhere. And she’d seen everywhere.

The memory of that seeing, the touching, the tasting suddenly hit her so hard, she
swayed.

He cursed. French? Spanish? Italian? She wasn’t certain, but whatever language, the
words, the tone, and the cadence were both beautiful and brutal. Kind of like Alexi
himself.

She brushed her fingertips across his face. “Why did you let him hurt you?”

“Sometimes,” he said, “the hurt just happens.”

She narrowed her eyes. She didn’t think he was talking about Langston anymore.

He peered at her as if trying to see into her mind, her heart, her soul. “Don’t you
agree?”

Cat froze, hand still in the air. She’d never shared a single word about her hurts.
As she didn’t plan to start now, she sidled away.

Alexi crossed to the table, where he picked up the deck of cards and began to shuffle.
She became entranced, seduced by the grace, the rhythm. How could she have forgotten?
In Alexi’s hands, cards did whatever he wanted them to. Kind of like women.

“When you say ‘knock,’” Cat murmured, bringing them back to their earlier conversation,
happy to pretend the other had never happened, “you mean ‘bust in here and drag us
back to jail’?”

“No.” He didn’t look up; he just kept shuffling the cards. “As long as you keep that
kid in place, and Meg on your face, we’ll be fine.”

Why was he irritated with her? She’d just saved his life.

Cat paced in front of the window. The urge to peer from it again was nearly overwhelming.
What was out there that was bothering her? If there was a rifle, and considering the
prickling of her skin, there might be, she should stay away from the window.

She sat. First on the bed. Then on the chair. Then on the bed again. Alexi ignored
her, seemingly captivated with the cards.

Cat went to the door, put her hand on the knob. Alexi tsked, and she turned away.
Her gaze went again to the window, and from this angle, with the horizon framed like
a picture, she saw what was wrong. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before,
but she’d been Meg, and Meg wouldn’t recognize that vista. Only Cathleen would.

She had not been back to the farm since she had left it nearly two years ago. It took
Cat only an instant to decide that she was going back now. Or at least as soon as
she could get away from Alexi.

“Deal,” she said. Alexi glanced up, expression curious, hands still shuffling, shuffling,
shuffling. “If we have to stay in here, we can at least make it interesting.”

His lips curved. “Faro?”

Cat took a chair at the table. “You know better.”

Cat loathed Faro, known by many as “Bucking the Tiger.” Every saloon between St. Louis
and San Francisco offered the game, and most of them cheated. Stacked decks, with
many paired cards that allowed the dealer, or banker, to collect half the bets, as
well as shaved decks and razored aces were common.

Alexi wouldn’t stoop to such tactics; he’d consider mundane cheats beneath him. Besides,
he’d already taught her how to spot them, so why bother? Certainly he cheated, but
with Faro, Cat had never been able to discover just how.

He’d swindle her at poker too if she wasn’t paying attention, but at least with that
game, she had a better-than-average chance of catching him.

Alexi laid out five cards for each of them. “Stakes?”

“We can’t play just to pass the time?”

He didn’t even bother to dignify that foolishness with an answer.

For an instant Cat considered forgoing the wayward nature of the cards and, instead,
getting him drunk. But she’d attempted that before. Alexi had remained annoyingly
sober, and she had been rewarded with a three-day headache, which Alexi had found
beyond amusing.

She had more tolerance now—Cat O’Banyon had drunk many a bounty beneath the table—but
she still doubted she could drink this man into a stupor. Sometimes she wondered if
he sipped on watered wine daily just to ascertain no one ever could.

Which meant her only other choice was this.

Cat lifted her cards. She gave away nothing; neither did Alexi. After pulling her
purse from her pocket, she tossed a few coins onto the table. With a lift of his brow,
he did the same.

They played in silence as the day waned. The room grew hot. In the way of cards, first
Alexi was ahead, then Cat. She watched him as closely as he watched her. Neither one
of them cheated.

Much.

Cat arched, rubbing absently at the ache in the small of her back with her free hand.

“Stop that.” Alexi flicked a glance from his cards to her face then back again.

“What?”

“You’re not expecting.” He set two cards onto the table, then took two more with stiff
yet fussy movements. “Stop acting like it.”

There was something in his face she’d never seen before. Was he scared? Had coming
a hair from a hanging frightened him at last? Or was she merely seeing in Alexi a
reflection of herself?

Cat bit her lip to keep from looking at the window. Instead she continued with the
game.

When the sun began to slant toward dusk, and the pile of coins on both sides of the
table lay about even, Cat lifted her eyes. “Wanna make this interesting?”

“
Khriso mou
,” Alexi murmured. “When you say things like that . . .” He moved a card from the
right side of his hand to the left. “I get excited.”

“How about we raise the stakes to . . .” She drew out the moment, and even though
he knew exactly what she was doing, as he was the one who had taught her to do it,
eventually his anticipation caused him to lean forward. Only then did Cat give him
what he sought. “Anything.”

“Anything?” he repeated.

“
Oui
.” He cast her an exasperated glance as she purposely mangled one of his favorite
words. “I win this hand, you give me anything I ask. You win—”

“I get anything I ask.”

“You’ve played this before.”

“Not with you.”

She doubted he’d played it with anyone. What moron would promise anything?

Only someone with little left to lose or . . .

Cat considered her cards without so much as a flicker of an eyelash. Someone with
a hand like hers.

“All right,” he agreed. “Who am I to turn down anything?”

Not the man she knew and—

Cat brought herself up short. Not the man she knew and what?

Well, not the man she knew.

Alexi turned his cards faceup. Cat kept her face blank as she placed hers facedown.

“You win.”