Once A Gambler

The door opened and a shorter, pug-faced man poked his head into the room. “You told me to wake you, Jake. It’s—” He got an eyeful of her and of the sheet-wrapped Jake and faltered. “Uh, it’s time.”

“Jake?” Ellie repeated. “That’s your name?”

The man at the door slid a look down her, then winked at him. “I’ll give you this, my friend. You are good at what you do.”

Jake scowled back at him. “It’s not—She’s not—”

Ellie cocked her head, awaiting his explanation.

“Give me a minute,” Jake told him, watching her the way her old cat, Toby, used to watch the lizards he cornered in the garden—like he wanted to eat them. The other man withdrew, leaving them alone again.

“Time?” she asked. “Time for what?”

“The game.”

“Ohhh, right…” She nodded knowingly, although it made no sense at all. Any of it. “The game. Well, listen, babe, I’d better be going. So…just go ahead and pinch me, please.”

That earned her another scowl. “What?”

“Pinch me and we’ll call it a day. I’ll wake up, and…”

JAKE SHOOK HIS HEAD. He’d seen it before. This sort of delusional female. Once he’d known a girl who worked for Tom Blaine at the Rialto in Missouri who carried a little doll around with her pretending it was her baby. This one wasn’t too far off that mark, he suspected. But he doubted tonight was her idea. He meant to get to the bottom of it.

“You’re one of Hennessy’s girls, right?”

“Who?”

“Calder’s?”

“What?”

“Did they pay you to roll me? Steal my money? Miss the game?” He moved his hand back up to her rear end and gave her a generous squeeze.

A high-pitched squeak escaped her.

“Awake yet?”

She frowned, looking confused. “I don’t think so.”

“Take a seat.” He pointed at his bed with his gun as he began pulling on the long johns. “Turn your head.”

She obliged promptly, but he kept his eye on her. She was the tallest woman he’d ever seen. Those gray eyes were nearly even with his own, and those legs went on and on. The denim trousers didn’t fit like any miner’s denim, either. They fit her as if she was hot butter and they were the mold. The memory of running his hand up the inside of them made him miss the leg of his pants as he tried to pull them on.

Easy, he thought, trying again.

But it wasn’t just her legs. She had a face that could cause a man to throw away a winning hand at faro just to get a better look. And hair the deep auburn color of a banked fire. What the hell was someone like her doing with a bastard like Calder? In his experience, her kind of beauty meant only one thing: trouble. If Calder wants an edge, Jake thought, I’ll give him an edge. One he can step right off from.

He pulled on his shirt, watching the way she ran her hand over the bare ticking of his unmade bed like she’d never felt anything like it before. Staring at his whole room, in fact, as if it was a sideshow in a traveling circus, something unreal and beyond her capacity to understand.

Why me? he wondered, fingering the buttons on his shirt. Of all the times for an interruption like her, why now? Just as he was about to win the biggest pot of his life? Well, it was no mystery if Calder was involved. He’d been out to sabotage him since he’d lost his home in New Orleans to Jake two years ago. But to take his watch. That was low.

The deep, harmonic whistle of the Natchez sounded, making her jump. Her eyes—Jesus, those eyes—jerked back to him.

“What was that?” she demanded, sounding genuine. But how could she not recognize the whistle of the very boat she was on?

Okay, he’d play along. “Just the Natchez announcing itself around the bend in the river. Or maybe pulling into shore to throw off pickpockets.”

Agitated, she stood and ran her hands over the table beside his bed, then handled the brass rail of his headboard.

Then, she squeezed her eyes shut tight. Hard. Then opened them.

Jake’s hands stilled on the buttons of his shirt. What the hell?

She stomped up and down. Twice. Which only seemed to intensify her agitation. Then, like a lunatic, she reached for the cup of water by the bed and tossed it in her face. Whatever it was she was expecting to happen, didn’t, so she wiped the streaming moisture from her nose and whispered, “Oh, my God.”

He was staring at her now, half-dressed and dumbstruck.

“What the hell is going on here?” she asked. “I…I can’t wake up! I mean if I was dreaming, could I do this?” She dropped the china cup on the floor and it shattered against the worn wood.

“Hey!”

“Or…or this?” Lifting the hurricane glass off the lamp, she dipped her finger into the flame and held it there. “Ow!” she shrieked, pumping her hand in front of her, then blowing on her index finger.

“Easy.” He stepped in then, grabbing her arms and tugging her over to the bed. Forcing her down, he looked her in the eye, feeling like a man who’d found himself suddenly stranded in the middle of a wide, muddy river. “Listen, Visa,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re doing here, or who put you up to it, but panel thief or not, they should be hung for taking advantage of a deranged woman—”

She held up her injured finger. “See? It actually burned my—Deranged?”

But what his eyes landed on instead was the rock on her finger. It was yellow and perfect and didn’t look like any paste jewel he’d ever seen in his life. If someone put him up against a wall, he would swear it was a diamond. What was a little pickpocket like her doing with a rock like that? Against his better judgment, he began to calculate what a ring like that might be worth.

He ran a disconcerted hand over his mouth, then bent to pull on a polished pair of boots. “And on that account, I might be persuaded not to press charges.”

“Press charges? For what?”

“Breaking into my room.” He fitted a pair of cuff links into his cuffs. “Stealing my watch.” He tried to avoid looking at the ring, but the sparkle drew his eyes to it again.

“Listen, mister, I did not come here willingly. When I woke up this morning I was minding my own business. It was like any other day in Deadwood.”

His hands went still on the buttons of the burgundy silk vest he’d just slipped on. “Deadwood?”

“That’s right, Deadwood, South Dakota—”

“You mean the Dakota Territory.”

“No, I mean South Dakota, the state.”

He chuckled and finished buttoning his vest. “There’s no state called South Dakota. The gold rush that madman, Custer, set off two years ago is the only organized civilization in the Black Hills, be that what it is. If you don’t count the starving Sioux and Cheyenne up there.”

“Custer? As in Custer’s-last-stand Custer?

Jake frowned. “Last stand? That’ll be the day someone gets that black-hearted bastard.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m gonna hate myself for asking this, but…what’s the date?”

“May tenth.”

“And the…year?”

“Same as it’s been since January first, Visa—1876.”

She gasped. “First of all, huh? And second of all, what?”

He shook his head, slipping on his black coat and tucking the money envelope into his inside pocket. “How long have you been like this?”

“Five minutes. Maybe six. I mean, please, do I look like I’m from 1876?” She spread her arms wide. “C’mon. Sports Illustrated? Last year’s Swimsuit Issue? You’d have to have been living in a cave to have missed it—” she stopped at his blank stare “—or…or in 1876…”

He raised a brow patiently.

Tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, no.”

He shoved his gun into his gun belt and strapped it on. And from underneath the pillow he pulled a much smaller, palm-size handgun, which he then concealed inside his boot. “I don’t have all night,” he said at last and held out his hand to her.

“Okay, first, my name’s not Visa. It’s Ellie.”

“Where’s the watch?”

“And that little square thing? That’s a credit card. Plastic.”

“I don’t care if your name is—”

“Have you ever seen plastic before?” she asked, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. “It’s money in the real world. Not that play stuff you have in your pouch. But real money. With magnetic strips, computerized chips with security encoding…and…and automatic transfer.”

He blinked at her, unsure how to proceed with someone as unstable as she.

“Lady, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Snatching up the square card from where it lay on the floor, he confronted her with it. “But real money is in that poker game down the hall. A thirty-thousand-dollar pot just waiting for me to claim it. Real money is what I need to get the hell out of here. This…little…bendable piece of…glass—”

“Plastic—”

“—only proves my point about you.” He flung the card across the room, where it smacked against the wardrobe. “You’re a liar and a thief. And you’re—pardon me for saying so—unstrung.”

“I’m,” she began, looking lost, “somebody in 2009. You may not know that, but I am. I’m on Vogue covers.”

“Vogue covers?” he repeated, unbuttoning his pants and tucking his shirt into them. “What’s that?”

Her face clouded up. “You’re right. How pathetic is that? The one thing I swore never to trade on, my celebrity, and first mess comes along, what do I do?” She sighed. “Forget what I said. If you could just please tell me how to get back to—”

“Take off your clothes, Visa.”

“What?”

“Your clothes. Take them off.”

“I will not.”

“Or,” he suggested, “I can just take them and toss you from my room bare-ass naked. On the other hand, I can lock you in here until I get back. Without your clothes, of course.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He pulled his gun out of its holster again and cocked the hammer. “Oh, yes. I would. And you’re not leaving this room until I get back what you stole.” He flicked the tip of his gun in her direction. “Do it.”

Something shifted in her eyes. Something catlike and unsettling. “All right,” she said, unbuttoning the top button on her denim britches. “But first you have to tell me one thing. Where exactly are we and how do I get back to Deadwood?”

“That’s two things.”

She smiled slowly. “Fine. I’ll give you one piece of clothing for each answer then.”

Why was it that women like her could turn a civil conversation around on a man?

“All right.” He cleared his throat. “We’re on the Natchez, a Mississippi River steamer out of New Orleans heading to St. Louis. We’re twelve hours out of Memphis, a day or so more out of St. Louis.”

“St. Louis?” she said, talking to herself. “I’ve flown through there a few times, but only diverting from O’Hare.” She looked up at him. “That’s smack-dab in the middle of the country, isn’t it?”

He tipped the gun toward her trousers, waiting.

“Oh, right.” She slid them over her hips, stepped out of them and kicked them his way. “That’s one.”

Jake didn’t reach for the pants. He couldn’t. Because he was too busy staring at her smooth, mile-long legs and what she was—or rather wasn’t—wearing. “What’s that?” he asked, gulping.

“What? This?” She shifted her hip to give him a better view. “You’ve never seen a thong before?”

He felt color rise high in his cheeks.

“And Deadwood?” she asked.

“Huh—wha—?”

“Where is it?”

“Oh.” He dragged his gaze up to hers. “North. About eight-hundred and fifty miles as the fish swims. It’s partly reachable by steamer, but this one only works the Mississippi. You’d have to catch one in St. Louis going up the Missouri.”

“Interesting.”

He gulped again as she tugged off her top and tossed it to the floor at his feet until she was standing before him in some little smooth scrap of fabric covering her breasts that seemed to push them up like a pair of—

“Thank you…Jake. How long will you be gone?” She cocked her hip slightly and put her hand on it.

“What?” He was back to looking where he shouldn’t.

“Playing your game. How long will it take you to finish?”

“I—” He remembered the gun in his hand and uncocked it. “As fast as I can,” he replied.

“Good.” She kicked off her shoes and hopped into his bed and pulled the blanket around her. “See you when you get back, then.”

He didn’t move for a full ten seconds because his feet felt rooted to the floor. She tucked the blankets around her fists and pulled them to her mouth to hide what he supposed was a grin of triumph.

Damn that woman! he thought, gathering up her discarded shoes and clothes, still warm from her skin. Damn the self-imposed celibacy he’d endured for the past three months which now appeared to be near an end. And finally, damn Calder or Hennessy for sending her here to confuse him right before the game.

That was their intent all along, no doubt. Well, we’ll see who wins this round, my friends. He turned and walked out the door. And just for emphasis, he slammed it behind him. It reverberated satisfyingly in its frame before he found his key and locked her in.

4

ELLIE SANK BACK on the pillow, her smile slowly fading. 1876? What the hell was going on? What he’d said couldn’t be true. None of this could. And yet…

She threw the sheets aside and tiptoed toward the porthole window. Outside, only a thin sliver of moonlight illuminated the blackness. She squinted into the murky darkness over the ship’s bow. Moonlight wavered across the surface of the water like a snake, but did little to reveal the shape of the land on the distant shoreline or, from this vantage point, anything else.

Her mind spun back to the expression on her captor’s face as he’d watched her undress. Shocked. That was the word. She’d shocked his nineteenth-century sensibilities. But she’d gotten what she wanted. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t stripped practically naked in front of strange men before. She’d done it a thousand times backstage at runway shows or fittings. But most of those men had fortunately been more interested in each other than in her.

Jake definitely did not come close to fitting into that category. And beneath the shock, behind those extraordinary hazel eyes, rumbled an unchecked hunger that nearly filled the room. It had scared her. And she didn’t want to wait around for him to come back to find out what else he had in store for her. She studied the porthole window beside the bed with a fresh eye and considered her options.

She hurried to the wardrobe from which she’d escaped only minutes ago. If he thought he could keep her prisoner here by taking her clothes, she had a thing or two to teach him about modern women. She had to get out of here and get her bearings. And she had to find a way off this boat.

She pulled his only other shirt off a hook in the closet and tried it on. It would do. His second pair of pants that lay neatly folded on a shelf fit her nearly perfectly. Thank God for tall men. His clothes carried his scent, and almost against her will, she found herself pressing his sleeve to her nose.

Okay, just because the man smells good does not make him a good guy. Who knew what he was capable of?

Something caught her eye, wedged under a saddlebag, and she reached for it. It was the picture. The one of Reese. She must have dropped it in the wardrobe when she’d…when whatever had happened to her happened.

She clutched the photo between her fingers, staring at it. If there had been any doubt in her mind before, in the attic, there was none now. It was absolutely her sister, staring at her out of the antique tintype frame. Reese, who had swiveled in her direction with a look that implored her to—what? Help her? See her? Save her? Had this same thing happened to her, too?

But what did that mean? And where the hell was she?

Ellie shook her head and tucked the tintype in the waistband of Jake’s pants and decided to think about it later. Right now she had more important things to deal with.

It took some concerted effort to wedge herself through the tiny round window, but she did it, tumbling out onto the deck a few feet below like a landed trout. The pain of the ensuing thump subsided only as she stood up and took in her surroundings.

The place seemed deserted. It was, after all, she guessed from the rise of the three-quarters moon, the middle of the night. Strange time for a card game, but who was she to question the sanity of anything at this point.

Ellie took a few steps to the wooden railing and gripped it with both hands. From the darkness below came the chug of the ship moving through the water and the heavy turn of a paddlewheel slicing through the current. Now she could make out more of the shoreline. It was merely an inky shadow in the darkness, but what she could see held no clues as to her location. The landscape was bereft of any sign of civilization. No phone poles, no roads filled with late-night travelers, no headlights, no electrical lines or cities or even, she realized suddenly, any traces of civilization. Just…a rolling empty swell of land that seemed to disappear into the black night.

“We’re twelve hours out of Memphis, a day out of St. Louis,” Jake had said. How could that be true? Surely that was one of the most populated shorelines of the entire Mississippi River. There would be houses. Businesses. People.

Lights.

She gripped the rail harder. What if it was true? What if it wasn’t a dream or a joke? If she had somehow leaped into the past?

Oh, God. Panic started a small tremble that grew inside her. Her normally rational brain took an unexpected turn into a Twilight Zone frame of mind. Perhaps she’d soon hear the rat-a-tat-tat of keys typing on some unseen rooftop, informing her she was merely part of some elaborate story, her every move controlled by some twisted, unknown author.

Oh, hell, she thought. That’s just crazy talk.

No, there had to be a rational explanation. One she could make sense of. Perhaps she hit her head when she fell in the attic and, like Dorothy, had awoken in Oz. And Jake and the pug-faced man and Petunia were merely figments of her overactive imagination. And all it would take would be one swirling ride on a hot-air balloon—if she could only find one—to get her the hell off this freak show and back to Aunty Em…er, Dane. Perhaps, à la Dorothy, there was some great lesson she needed to learn from all this. Like There’s No Place Like Home. But now, looking out into the bleak gray beyond the rail of this boat, she could not imagine what that lesson might be.

On the other hand, there was that picture.

Ellie stared down into the black water moving swiftly below the bow. If she jumped in, could she swim to shore from here? How far was it? And once—if—she reached the shore, what then? She had no money, no transportation, no phone.

Phone.

Her cell phone! She’d had it in her pocket in the attic. She’d spoken with Bridget just before—

It must have fallen out of her pocket, probably when she was in that wardrobe. If there was a signal—any signal—it would prove once and for all that this was just some kind of elaborate prank.

She would call Dane, beg his forgiveness and get herself booked on the next flight out of St. Louis.

She cast one last glance at the lifeboats lashed to the side of the steamer. They looked heavy. Too heavy to manage alone. She filed them mentally in the “last ditch emergency” column and headed back to Jake’s window.

It was when she was poised, squirming half in and half out of that devilishly small portal that she felt someone’s hands clamp around her ankles and yank her backward.

Fire scraped across the front of her chest as she was dragged along the metal window edge before landing gracelessly on the deck again.

“Ow!”

“Get outta there, ye mangy thief, you!” a man shouted at her, reaching down to clasp one of her hands behind her back to yank her upward.

“Hey!” Ellie yelped as he clapped an arm around her chest, then almost as quickly, released her as if she’d burned through a layer of his skin.

“Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Yer a…a woman!”

She rubbed her aching shoulder. “Cleverly deduced, Sherlock. But it’s not what it looks like.”

“It’s Captain to you, ye sneaky little badger.”

It wasn’t until that moment that she’d noticed he was dressed in a navy-blue uniform that barely covered his protruding belly. He had a face full of neatly trimmed gray whiskers, and despite or because of that official-looking insignia on his lapel, he was officially peeved.

“Badger?” she repeated warily. Whatever that was, she didn’t like the sound of it.

He snatched up her arm again without mercy and shoved her in the direction of the door to his right. “Female or no, I don’t tolerate no knucks on my steamer. Ye’d better have a good explanation as to why ye were climbin’ in that window, missy. Or you’ll be pickin’ Mississippi mud from between yer teeth before the night’s out.”

THREE QUEENS.

A beatable hand, to be sure. But he’d had worse. Jake eyed Bill Jackson as he lowered the corner of his hand back to the table. A man of the cloth, Jackson was well-known to be one of the best gamblers on the circuit and regularly won big pots. His religious affiliation had no apparent influence on his penchant for gambling, nor on his ability to hold his liquor, both of which he’d consumed enthusiastically tonight. In fact, Jake knew, it wasn’t usually until his fifth whiskey that the “tell” he normally kept under wraps became apparent. At least, apparent to Jake.

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