An Outlaw in Wonderland

by Lori Austin

“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.”