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Once A Gambler
Carrie Hudson


A riverboat card man, Jake Gannon is about as nogood as they comedespite that good looking hotness that can make a gal's skirts twirl in most unladylike ways.Suspected to be traveling under an assumed name, Jake has a mighty troublesome past, and was last seen in the company of one fiery filly who goes by the name of Ellie Winslow. . . . But Ellie ain't no ordinary looker. No sir, she landed here in 1876 by accident and is looking for her sister. . . and some answers.But first she needs to find a way off this here steamer with a man who fascinates her more every minutea man who's about to teach her just how wild the West can be!









“Take off your clothes,” Jake ordered her


“I will not,” Ellie retorted.

He pulled his gun out of its holster and cocked the hammer. “You’re not leaving this room until I get back what you stole. Now, do it.”

Something shifted in her eyes. Something catlike and unsettling. “All right,” she agreed, unbuttoning 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. One piece of clothing for each answer, then.”

“We’re on the Natchez, a steamer, heading for St. Louis.”

She slid her pants down and kicked them out of the way. “That’s one.”

Jake didn’t react. He couldn’t. He was too busy staring at what she was—or rather wasn’t—wearing.

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







Dear Reader,

Some books come kicking and screaming into the world; others are simply gifts. Once a Gambler, which I’m thrilled to say is my first Harlequin Blaze novel, was a gift. That’s because Jake and Ellie were so easy to love, and because my wonderful editor, Kathryn Lye, took a chance on a time-travel story from me, a time-travel virgin! Having written both contemporaries and historicals, though, I found merging these two worlds really fun.

A friend once told me of a weird experience he’d had on a boat one night at a local lake. For a few moments before they vanished, he saw an antique flatboat full of men, poling across the foggy lake with long sticks. They appeared to be from the 1800s and my friend believed he’d glimpsed another time.

You can guess that sent my writer’s imagination running hog wild. What if time travel was possible? And if you found true love in that other world, would destiny allow you to keep it? That’s exactly the dilemma in my novel.

If you’ve already read the prequel to this story, Once an Outlaw, by Debbi Rawlins, my friend and plotting partner, then you know you’re in for an adventure. So sit back and enjoy the ride!

Happy reading,

Carrie Hudson




Once a Gambler

CARRIE HUDSON







TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Carrie Hudson lives in Southern California and worked in Hollywood as a successful commercial actress before giving it all up to follow her dream of becoming a writer. Creating stories that spin on an axis of love and happily-ever-after comes naturally for this incurable romantic. It’s not entirely her fault. She’s married to a fabulous guy, has two wonderful children and a pair of mismatched cats who spend much of the day licking one another, madly in love. Really, what chance did she have? To contact the author, please visit www.carriehudsonbooks.com.


To my dear friend Debbi Rawlins,

who shoved me back up on the horse when

I needed shoving and for loving the whole

Old West world as much as I do.

And as always, to my husband, David,

without whom I could never do this.

You’re the best.




Acknowledgment


In 1874 George Armstrong Custer’s announcement that gold had been discovered at French Creek triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and the rise of Deadwood. The town sprang up quickly, reaching a population of over 5,000 in an alarming amount of time, and attracting a slew of businesses from saloons to brothels to dry goods stores. Buildings were hastily erected and sometimes even tents were used by vendors, as well as attorneys plying their trade, but for the purposes of this book, I’ve focused on a much more scaled-down version of the camp. Also you will note that during this period, some of the newer inventions enjoyed back East were not yet available to the citizens of Deadwood.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14




1


Question: Is it always fundamental to know one’s destination? Or, can not knowing be the path to truly knowing?

(A little-known Confucius-ism)

Hollywood, California

March 2009

THE PHOTOGRAPH of Ellie and her sister swam just beneath the surface of the chemical bath, appearing slowly as if rising through a bank of fog. Like a puzzle it evolved: her own dark hair, their clutched hands, her sister Reese’s head thrown back in laughter—until finally the two of them appeared just as Ellie remembered they’d been that day before everything had changed.

That day, she remembered, was a Friday. She had worked for thirty minutes setting up that shot and kept getting it wrong. Either she would miss getting seated altogether before the autoshutter went off, or Reese would make a silly face and they would dissolve into laughter again. There was a decent posed shot—all terribly serious. Even she had to admit they both looked great, but she didn’t like it as much as this one. This accidental one. This shot captured the real Reese. Not the physician the world knew on TV news shows. Not the brilliant, accomplished one their parents adored.

But simply her big sister whom she had loved.

She transferred the photo into the stop bath, swirling it beneath the surface with the plastic tongs. She liked the contrast on this one. It was good and she knew it. But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t for the show she was putting together. The point was—she’d realized sometime late this afternoon—she’d begun to forget that little dimple in Reese’s cheek and the way the lines around her eyes crinkled when she laughed hard. It had taken almost a year to work up the nerve to even develop this roll. Now she wondered why she’d waited so long.

Reese would have said it was because Ellie always did everything the hard way: school, their parents, falling into a career in modeling. “RWC” Reese would call her with a smile. Rebel-without-a-Cause. And deep down, Ellie suspected that maybe her driven, accomplished sister envied that just a little.

She studied the photo under the safelight for anything—any sign that a mere twelve hours after this uproarious laugh, Reese would be gone forever and Ellie would be left alone.

There was nothing. No precognition. No warning. Just two women sharing a rare moment of sisterly hilarity. Maybe that was just how life was. A constant collision of happiness and loss.

“Ellie?” Dane knocked on the makeshift darkroom door. “Are you dressed? It’s almost six-thirty.”

She looked down at her ripped jeans and fixer-stained T-shirt. “Um…” she hedged, pulling the photo out and slipping it into the third tub containing the rapid fixer.

On the other side of the door, she heard Dane cursing. She couldn’t see him, but imagined that about now, he’d be dragging a hand through his perfect dark-brown hair and starting to sweat through the perfect charcoal Prada shirt it had taken him two hours to pick out.

“Just give me a minute, okay? I’m almost done.”

“Ah, God, Ellie.” The words were gruff, husky, disappointed.

“I know.”

“This screening is important to me. You said you’d come, dammit. I need you there.”

“I know. I’m coming.” She’d done enough red carpets in her lifetime to pave the Great Wall of China, but she detested them. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to do this for Dane. It was what she knew would come along with it.

“What are you doing in there? Can I come in?”

Ellie switched off the safelight and turned on the regular one. Outside the door the red warning light would no longer be on, and Dane took that as an invitation.

He appeared at the door, looking very Hollywood producerlike in his power suit and spiffy Italian shoes. In another lifetime, Dane Raleigh could have been a movie star, with his looks and his confidence. But now, he was a producer with a film that had made it to screen and that, in this town, was like winning the freakin’ lottery.

He glanced down at the photo in the stop bath and went quiet for a second. Ellie slipped the photo into the hypo fixer.

“So this is about Reese again?”

“Again?”

He slid his hands around her shoulders and turned her toward him. “Just for tonight, can we not put your sister between us?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I want all of you tonight. Not fifty percent. Or eighty. I want a hundred percent of you. You know the damned studio has got us opening against Lands’ End, the best reviewed gangster movie since The Godfather, and that behemoth animated kids’ movie Pixar Films made about damned ladybugs.”

“I know.”

“And if we can’t get press on this thing tonight, we’re screwed for opening weekend. And if opening weekend is screwed—”

“It won’t be. And you have me,” she said, leaning her cheek against his hard shoulder so she didn’t have to lie directly into those rich-colored eyes. “It’s just…you know I hate these things. With the paparazzi and the media.”

He patted her awkwardly with his palm, distracted by his own problems. “They’re just people trying to make a living. And for a girl who spent half her adult life on the world’s best runways facing flashbulbs, you should be used to it.”

She could explain to him again about the things she didn’t want the world to know about her, about how a chunk of her had gone missing after all those years of modeling. She could try to explain that the rock he’d put on her finger a month ago did not give them the right to invade her private life one more time. But she had the sneaking suspicion that Dane liked the attention that came with having her on his arm and the ring making the tabloids. But underneath everything else she believed about him—about them—was the fear that he loved all of that more than he loved her.

He swatted her on the rear and pushed her toward the door. “Go get ready. The driver’s here in twenty minutes. Let’s not keep him waiting.”



THE GAUNTLET set up along Sunset Boulevard beneath the historic archway of the old Cinerama Dome came complete with a red carpet and banks of halogen lights. Beacons of bright light pierced the night sky, as heavy banks of clouds hovered over the Hollywood.

There was a deep crowd just outside the railing, which included fans and paparazzi who hadn’t been lucky enough to nail a press pass. The media had already swarmed Ross Neil, the only money star of Ticking Clock!, and his little-known female costar up the line. Fans were shouting at them across the railing, hoping for autographs or even eye contact.

Ellie touched the jade necklace at her neck, Grandma Lily’s necklace, like a talisman. She hadn’t taken it off since Reese vanished. And though it complemented the designer canary-yellow dress she’d worn, she didn’t care if it did or not. It made her feel safe to wear it.

She’d spent her life, it seemed, at events like this, tugged around by her parents. Yes, they’d brought her and Reese to their movie openings. The happy family photos would show up on the pages of the latest gossip rag with captions about what great parents they were, and wasn’t it fabulous that two big stars could keep it all together the way they did? Until they’d gotten divorced.

For a while, Ellie had cherished these red carpet events as the only way she would have any time with her parents. But that was old water, way under the bridge now.

Ellie gripped Dane’s hand tighter as they exited the town car beside Caleigh Nguyen, Dane’s publicist. The woman was wearing her official I’ve-got-everything-under-control look and a lime-green, Rachel Pally kimono dress. For about the count of three, they were anonymous. Unnoticed.

Then…all hell broke loose.

Camera strobes flashed. The crowd swelled in their direction. A tribe of paparazzi and media rushed them.

“Ellie! Ellie Winslow! Look this way! This way, Ellie!”

“You look beautiful tonight, Ellie. Can you show us the ring?”

“Dane, have you two set a date?”

And then the zinger she was bracing herself for: “Any new leads on Reese’s disappearance, Ellie?”

As she felt her stomach sink, Dane slipped his hand under her arm and guided her away from the reporter who had asked what all the others hadn’t had the nerve to. “Just ignore ’em,” he told her under his breath.

“Yeah, this is me,” she answered, pasting a smile on her face, “ignoring them.”

“Good girl.” His hand slid down her hip and patted her there—a photo op missed by no one.

Dane turned to the reporters as strobes flashed. “I’d like to thank you all for coming. This is a big night for us,” he told the crowd. “And my beautiful fiancée, Ellie Winslow, is here to support me. My film Ticking Clock! has been a labor of love for us and I hope you all enjoy it and, come opening weekend, you bring your friends. By the way,” he added with a wink, “we have set the date. But that’s our secret right now.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. And a pretty good secret it is, she thought, since they were about as close to “setting a date” as they were to jetting to the moon.

Ellie allowed herself to be pulled along under Dane’s protective arm as he worked the crowd. She bore the questions with a patented smile as photographers clicked away. Caleigh leaned close to her ear and shouted. “He’s doing great, right? Look at him. He’s a freakin’ press monster.”

And she actually meant that in a good way. “Hmm,” Ellie said by way of reply.

“How are you doing?” Caleigh scanned the crowd behind Ellie’s head like a shark for chum. “Great dress. Who is it?”

“Um, it’s a Chlo—”

“Hey, would you mind if I steal Dane away from you for a sec to talk to Lara Walker from The Inside Edge? They wanna do a segment on him and I promised them I’d steer him her way.” She wrinkled her perfect little nose. “Thanks, sweetie.”

And without further ado, Caleigh removed Ellie’s hand from Dane’s arm and spirited him away, leaving Ellie momentarily alone. “Sure. Why not?” she mumbled, mostly to herself. Then, head down, she made her way toward the theater entrance, hoping to lose herself in the ladies’ room for a little while as Dane did the rounds.

A reporter with a TV tabloid logo on her mike thrust it under Ellie’s nose, cutting off her path. “Ellie, when are you going to go back to modeling? I hear Vogue is still making you offers, and all the runway designers would love to get you back up there for the Paris season.”

Ellie sent her an even smile. “I’m actually done with modeling. Completely done. I’m just a photographer now.”

The woman tilted her head like a confused rottweiler. “Does being the daughter of film luminaries like Linea Marks and Brad Winslow make it somehow easier to walk away from a career a million girls would give their right arm for, or is it really because you still feel in some way responsible for your sister’s disappearance?” She smiled and thrust the microphone back in her face.

“Ya know, I’ve got to get inside now.” You slime-sucking codfish. “Would you excuse me?”

“Word from the South Dakota police,” the reporter continued, “is it’s a cold case now. Care to comment on the fact that they’ve given up on finding her?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” She smiled an evil smile at the bottom-feeder’s cameraman and plunged into the crowd, feeling a panic sweat travel up her chest toward her face. She dug into her purse for her cell phone. Elan, Dane’s driver, would come and rescue her. Dane would never even know she had gone.

But a tall guy on the other side of the velvet ropes caught her by the arm in the chaos and, with an imploring look, tugged her to a stop. “Please, Miss Winslow. Please just a moment of your time.”

Except for the facial hair—the Colonel Mustard goatee and mustache, and the way he was dressed, in an ill-fitting, poorly made windowpane-check suit that looked like it might have been borrowed from an old theater company—he wasn’t bad-looking. And the gold watch fob dangling from his front pocket looked…well, real.

Desperation glinted in his world-weary blue eyes. She suspected he wasn’t more than thirty, but appeared older. His grip was strong.

“Please,” he said, “it’s taken me so long to find you.”

He wasn’t the first crazy fan who’d laid hands on her, and he wouldn’t be the last. Ever since the swimsuit issue she’d done for Sports Illustrated, they’d crawled from under the oddest rocks to get a closer look at her.

She tried shifting from his unyielding hold and glanced around to see a burly security guard dressed all in black heading her way. “Let go of me now or I swear they’ll bodily remove you,” she warned.

He did. Instantly. Ellie pivoted to make her escape.

“It’s about your sister,” he called after her over the din around them.

She exhaled sharply and turned back on him. “When the hell will you people stop—”

“You’re almost out of time.” His gaze fell to the necklace at her neck.

She narrowed her gaze at him. “What?”

“You must look for the photo.”

“What photo?” Her mind skipped back to the darkroom and the photo she just developed. To the smile on Reese’s face.

The refrigerator-shaped security guard with the buzzed haircut was almost on them, barreling toward them as if he’d skipped breakfast.

Urgently the man leaned into her. “You must go back to the beginning. To the trunk. That’s how you’ll find her.”

“Trunk?” Uneasiness frizzled up her spine. “Who are you? And what do you know about my sister?”

“Hands off the celebrities, amigo.” The guard shoved himself between them, grabbed the stranger’s arm and yanked him practically off his feet. “No touchy, touchy.”

Ellie backed up a few more steps, muted by fear.

“Please,” the man shouted, trying to be heard above the noise of the shouting fans. “I just need to—”

“Sorry about this, Ms. Winslow,” the guard said, as he hauled Colonel Mustard toward the curb. “Man, the locos that show up for these things, eh?”

“In two days,” the man shouted over the triangle of the guard’s arm, “it’ll be too late! I beg of you! I won’t be able to help you after that!” A moment later he was swallowed by the crowd and disappeared.

Frozen in place, Ellie stood watching the humanity close in around them as if they’d never been there. Gradually, all the shouting disappeared, and the crowd blurred into a hazy halo around her.

Because all she could focus on was an image of that antique, humpbacked trunk in Grandma Lily’s attic—the last place she’d seen Reese alive.



“SO LET ME GET THIS straight,” Dane said three hours later as she lay sprawled on top of his bed watching him undress. “The crackpot of the century shouts Chicken Little warnings at you at my opening, you actually fall for it, and now you’re jumping on the next flight to Deadwood?”

“Actually,” Ellie commented, rubbing the ache in her temples, “it’s not a straight-through flight. It’s—”

“God almighty, Ellie.” Barefoot, he sauntered closer, working the diamond-studded platinum cuff links out of his sleeves. “Maybe you should be passing out dollar bills to the hopeful drunks down on Los Angeles Street, or…or better yet, buy stock in video recorder technology.” Dane tugged off his shirt and tossed it onto the leather club chair near the walk-in closet.

Ellie rolled over and buried her face in the royal-blue down comforter. Dane’s scent clung to it and she turned her head. There was no arguing with his logic. Of course he was right. She shouldn’t go. But she was going. As soon as she got rid of this headache.

“And while we’re on the subject of believing, could we just, for one minute, celebrate the fact that the critics freakin’ loved my movie tonight? It was a smash. Did you hear the applause at the end? There’s even some Oscar buzz already.”

She was a terrible person. A terrible, terrible person. “I know,” she said. “Congratulations. That’s really…wonderful, Dane.”

“Thank you,” he said, his weight on the mattress tumbling her sideways toward him. He rolled her over and settled himself down on top of her. There was no mistaking what he was after. A little victory dance after his victory. But she wasn’t in the mood. In fact, she was having trouble remembering the last time she’d been in the mood for sex with Dane.

Sliding a coppery strand of hair out of her eyes, he kissed her on the cheek. “Hey, I know you miss your sister. But, babe, she’s gone.”

He said things like that, so offhand that he might as well have been talking about a misplaced parking ticket. Or his ex-wife. It made Ellie wonder sometimes if she was making a mistake. Had she settled? Or was she being too critical?

“And this guy…he’s probably a junkie. A wacko. A fan. I’m hiring some personal protection for you.”

Ellie’s fingers dug into his chest. “Absolutely not,” she insisted. The last thing she wanted was some LAPD flunkie shadowing her every move. That was Dane’s job.

She frowned. Wait. That didn’t sound right.

“Who knows what that lunatic was really after,” he said, kissing her jaw.

“He told me the answers were in the trunk. That photos didn’t lie. And something about time running out. He said I only have two days.”

“Yeah. In two days we’ll have that freak in custody.” He dropped his mouth onto her neck to explore the pulse throbbing there.

She willed herself to enjoy his kisses. But her mind was elsewhere. “Two days. That’s the anniversary.”

He sighed. “Who wouldn’t know that from just reading the papers?” Intent on his pursuit of her attention, he nibbled at her earlobe.

“But the trunk thing…how would he know—”

He paused long enough to tilt a “C’mon” look at her. “Just a wild stab…but, something that might be in a grandmother’s attic…?”

She slid her arms around his neck. Right, she thought. Dane Raleigh, the voice of reason. He was good for her. He was. Who else would put up with the emotional chaos of the past year?

She should just put aside all the doubts about him that had been cropping up lately like bad weeds. He was everything she’d ever wanted all wrapped up in a neat, gorgeous package. He wanted the same things she did: a home, a family—the whole deal. And the fact that he made the most of his engagement to her when he was doing press junkets really shouldn’t cancel out all the positives about him. He had good hair, an innate ability to accurately predict the stock market and—

“So,” he murmured, adjusting his attention to the plunging vee of her dress, “just try to relax, forget about him.”

—and…of course there was something else.

She closed her eyes, willing his mouth to wash all thought of that tall, badly dressed man out of her mind. Think about Dane’s mouth. Think about what his hands are doing to your breasts. Think about—

“Besides,” he added, dragging his palm up her thigh beneath her gown, “I’ve already called a real estate agent about your grandmother’s house. They’re gonna auction off what’s left inside and sell the place.” His mouth paused over hers. “It’s already been on the market for a week.”

She struggled to push him off her and sat bolt upright. “What?”

He rolled to his side, supporting himself on one elbow, looking wary. “Well, yeah. It’s time to put all that ugliness behind you, Ellie. Let it go.”

“Let it go? Who…who gave you the right to tell me when it’s time?” The ache in her temples came rushing back.

“Look, I knew this might upset you, but it’s for the best. Linea and I discussed it, and we thought it was a good idea. That place is like an anchor around your neck.”

“My mother? You went behind my back and—I can not believe you. My grandmother left that house in Deadwood to us. To Reese and me.”

“Damn, Ellie, calm down. You’ll get the money.”

She launched herself off the bed and paced to the closet and back. “This isn’t about the money. You know I don’t need money. And since when are you and Linea so damned chummy? I mean, it’s all I can do to get a monthly text message from her. And that’s usually about how perfect you are for me and how she can’t wait for our upcoming nuptials which, she assures me, she will try her very best to attend, barring any unforeseen movie parts that might interfere.” Her voice had risen a shrill two octaves, but she didn’t care.

Apparently amused by her outburst, Dane sat down on the corner of the bed and folded his arms across his chest. “We’re not chummy. I called her, is all. I thought selling the place would be good for you. For us.”

“You did? Really? Well, it’s not. It’s not good. I hate that you did this without even consulting me.” The swell of anger that gathered inside her was like a wave that wouldn’t stop rolling toward the shoreline. It had replaced the grief that had pushed her under for months after Reese’s mysterious disappearance from Grandma Lily’s attic, and it came up at times like this, irrational and a little wild. Talking about Reese as if she were merely an episode in Ellie’s past seemed like a betrayal. Assuming the worst about her sister made her furious.

He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re not…altogether rational about that house, Ellie. It’s just a house. A piece of real estate. It’s not going to bring your sister back.”

Right. She gathered up her evening bag and the four-inch heels she’d kicked off and hopped on one foot, slipping them back on. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe going to Deadwood won’t bring her back. But that house is mine and Reese’s now. And we get to say when we sell it. And I am going tomorrow.”

“Ellie—”

“And I’m taking the house off the market.”

“C’mon. You’re blowing this thing out of all—”

She opened the door and turned back to him. “And you can tell Linea that for me. When you and she have your next little chat, that is.”

“Ellie,” he called after her, but she was already gone.




2


IT TOOK ELLIE most of the next day to get to Deadwood, with plane changes, car rentals and having to use a detour through the Black Hills for the better part of an hour. When she finally pulled into her grandmother’s driveway it was dark. Really dark.

It seemed crazy that South Dakota and Los Angeles shared the same sky. Because this one had a vast, starry splatter of lights arching over it against a velvety black, the likes of which was never seen in California. Too many houses. Too many lights. And even if there weren’t, who ever looks up in L.A.?

The cold night air smelled impossibly sweet from the roses that hugged her grandmother’s house and from the distant tang of snow sliding down off the jagged mountains. Winter came early here and lasted forever. Hugging herself from the cold, she surrendered to her need for warmth and went inside.

The house smelled musty when she opened it. Ellie flipped on light switches, grateful she hadn’t turned the electricity off. It had been months since she’d been here last, and whoever was trying to sell it clearly hadn’t been here much, either. There were white cloths covering the furniture and someone had begun gathering things together in the living room, probably for the auctioneer. She triple locked the door and took a deep breath.

With a frown she dragged her suitcase up the stairs toward the bedroom she had always slept in. It was small, with faded striped wallpaper and the twin bed she’d slept on as a girl when they’d come to visit. Made of mahogany with little pinecone finials on top, the bed still bore the signature handmade quilt from their grandmother’s hand.

She sat down on the bed and ran her fingers across the patchwork fabric. It was soft and worn with time and love. It smelled like her grandmother in here. She dropped back and rubbed her cheek against the old cotton, feeling tears prick her eyes. As infrequently as they’d managed to see her, Grandma Lily had been a force in her life and Reese’s. The only person to see past the photo ops, the trust funds and the Hollywood hype of their lives. Here they were just themselves. Just girls no one knew. Here she and Reese would dream of their futures late at night with the lights out and share secrets they would tell no one else. Here they’d felt loved.



SHE AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, still wearing the clothes from the night before. Light was pouring in through the undraped window and Ellie sat up, disoriented. God, she’d been exhausted. She didn’t even remember falling asleep.

Downstairs she made some coffee in the stove-top antique of a coffeemaker and took a mug with her as she climbed the squeaky stairs to the attic. Swallowing thickly, she opened the door at the top of the stairs and pushed the little button in to turn on the overhead light.

There was a window at the far end, in the eve, and piles of stuff her grandmother had hoarded up here. It was like a yearbook of her life. Little signatures of her friendships and triumphs, and a few of her failures. There was the wide bedstead she’d shared with the grandfather Ellie had never met. He’d died before she was born. There was an old crib and a bassinet, rocking chairs and hat racks. A pair of old wooden crutches and piles of National Geographic her grandmother wouldn’t part with. But draped across all of these, like spiderwebs, was yellow crime-scene tape.

It was this that made the coffee in Ellie’s hands shake as she approached the trunk that sat smack in the middle of the chaos. Morning light struck it with a pinpoint ray, as if it were announcing itself as different from the rest. Dust motes swam in the light above it. Ellie knelt down and set her coffee on the floor.

For six months they’d searched for Reese. No stone went unturned, no parolee unquestioned. But in the end, there were simply no clues. No ransom note. No indication according to the police that she had done anything but vanish into thin air.

“You must go back to the beginning,” that man had said. “To the trunk. That’s how you’ll find her.”

There was no doubt in her mind it was this trunk he meant. This was the last place Reese had been. This was the trunk she’d been exploring when Ellie had run out for coffee, leaving her alone. She’d left the door unlocked behind her. Everyone in Deadwood did. And that was the last time she’d seen her sister alive. She had vanished without a trace.

Ellie opened the lid on the trunk and tilted it back. It appeared to be the same as any of the other dozen weathered trunks piled in the attic. This one, still smudged black with fingerprinting dust, was stamped tin with leather straps and a crinkling wall-papered interior. She began to unload it: there were ribbon-wrapped letter collections and photos and pieces of lace, pressed flowers and hat pins and a velvet crazy quilt that was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Halfway down, she found an antique tintype camera and lifted it out of the trunk.

Sunlight glinted off the large lens as she uncovered it. It was a beauty in mint condition and she couldn’t believe they had missed this before. It must be over a hundred and thirty years old. She turned it upside down, examining it from all angles. The initials E.K. were engraved on the underside of it in beautiful scroll lettering. Who was E.K. and how had his camera ended up in her grandmother’s trunk? She wondered if it would still work and decided to take it with her when she went back to L.A.

She sat down and placed the camera beside her. She then dug into the trunk again. By the time she’d emptied it, her cell rang. She checked the caller ID and answered the call.

“Okay, are you really back in Deadwood?”

Bridget Meeks’s voice made her smile. Bridget, her best friend since high school and unofficial partner in more zany exploits than she could remember, had tracked her down via satellite. Probably in between feedings of her twin baby boys, Lucca and Isaac.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “Nuts, huh?”

“Dane called me this morning as I was wiping the oatmeal off my face, whining about it.” She sighed. “He said you two had a fight.”

Why Dane felt that he needed to go to her best friend when things were going wrong, she couldn’t guess. “That’s right. News at six…”

“Everything okay with you two? I mean besides the fact that you’re there and he’s here?”

Were things okay? She didn’t think so anymore. “Do you think I made a mistake, Bridge?” Ellie picked up an old book of historical photography and opened it.

“What? Going to Deadwood?”

“No, agreeing to marry him.” That thought hadn’t fully coalesced until just now.

An I-don’t-want-to-say-what-I-really-think hesitation ensued. “It’s how you feel that matters, El.”

Good answer. How did she feel? Right now confusion was the only emotion she could pinpoint. It swirled inside her like the dust in the sunlight spilling across the pages of the old book in her hands. “I don’t know,” she murmured, “maybe I’m expecting too much.”

“Maybe,” Bridget suggested gently, “it’s time you expected something of somebody other than yourself.”

And there it was. Except for Reese, she wasn’t sure she had ever been able to trust anyone. Not Dane, not even his feelings for her. She thumbed through the old book of photographs. Photos of people who had lived more than a hundred years ago stared back at her from the porches of schoolhouses and walkways.

“Do you love him?”

She thought she did. But if this was it—this feeling like there was something big she was missing, could it be the real thing? “Maybe I wouldn’t know it if I saw it.”

“Oh, I think you would. Maybe you just haven’t seen it yet.” In the background, Bridget’s babies started howling. “Hear that sound? Now that’s true love.” She laughed like she always did, taking the edge off the seriousness of what she was trying to say. “I’d better go before there’s a riot in my kitchen. We’ll talk when you get back. Okay?”

“Okay, hon. Thanks. I’ll be back tomorrow or day after.” They hung up. Ellie tucked the phone in her back pocket and stared at the book in her hands, suddenly wishing she could make sense of this whole trip to Deadwood. That man’s words had sent her running here. But was she running toward something or away from it?

She flipped the pages absently until she came across a loose tintype photo tucked into the book of a couple standing in front of an arbor, gazing into each other’s eyes. He was tall and good-looking—for the 1800s. Now, if that wasn’t love, she thought…

But the pose seemed so unusual for a photo in a time when people had to freeze for minutes to get a good shot. And there was something about it…something about the woman in the picture…It was grainy and faded, but she could swear it sort of resembled…In fact, it looked almost exactly like—

Oh, my God! Like Reese!

Ellie blinked hard, rubbed her eyes, but the woman still looked like Reese. Clutching the photo tighter, she wondered if it was some great-great-relative who had merely looked just like her. But no. There was Reese’s dimple, the little mole on her neck. Even her hands…If it wasn’t Reese, it was her exact double. But how could someone so long ago look exactly like someone from now?

And then without so much as a warning, the woman in the photo swiveled her head—

—and looked directly at Ellie!

Ellie shrieked and accidentally kicked the camera sitting beside her in her scramble to get up.

As she did, there flashed a brilliant white light. It consumed the air in her grandmother’s attic and she felt herself tumbling, falling, as the ground disappeared beneath her.

Until there was nothing at all around her but the white, white light that finally faded into blackness.



ELLIE OPENED HER EYES slowly, feeling muzzy and a little nauseous, as if she’d downed several too many Long Island Iced Teas…and mixed them with a few glasses of Bordeaux. But she hadn’t been drinking. Had she? She was having trouble remembering.

A pitchy dark surrounded her, broken only by a hint of moonlight spilling through some kind of slatted wood louvers inches beyond her nose. Even worse, she was flat on her back with her feet in the air, scrunched in some small, cramped place. Something was jammed painfully into her back and she shifted against it.

It felt like…footwear?

None of that made any sense. She backed up mentally, trying again. Okay, a second ago, she’d been in her grandmother’s attic, then…then what? Think, Ellie. Think.

A flash of light echoed in her memory and a feeling that she was falling. Had she been knocked out? Electrocuted?

Died? Had she gone toward the light?

She lifted her hand to her face and felt around. Okay…okay. That feels right. Solid. So…good. Alive.

She felt around the confines of her space. Some kind of a box? Her senses returned to her one at a time: the smell of old wood and musty leather and another smell—like that sharp tang of ozone in the air following a storm; the low rumbling sound of her neighbor’s Harley engine idling in the driveway below her grandmother’s attic.

She frowned. Wait, not a motorcycle. It was too rhythmic. Too…human.

She clapped a hand over her mouth. Someone on the other side of those slats was snoring.

From that deep, dark part of her—that part that had always, since her sister’s disappearance, been waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for that same brush of darkness to sweep over her, as well—came the awful rush of terror she had known would find her. Whoever had taken Reese had come back for her! And stuffed her in this…this box!

Oh, God, why the hell hadn’t she listened to Dane and stayed safely in L.A.? But why couldn’t she remember being taken? She had absolutely no memory after going through that trunk looking at old photographs of—

That photo of Reese. In her mind, she watched the woman in the picture swivel a look at her. Maybe she was crazy! Maybe she’d finally lost it. Because that made absolutely no sense. None. Photos do not animate.

Now, an odd calmness filtered through her, spreading a tingling rush of knowledge to the tips of her fingers. Of course. Of course!

She was dreaming. This was all a dream. A lame dream. And now, she was dreaming she was in this box. Dreaming there was a man on the other side of this door, snoring.

Of course! All she had to do was wake up.

In the room beyond the louvers, a shadow moved. She shifted her head sideways to get a better look. A woman standing in front of a small, round window lifted a piece of clothing off a chair and rifled through its pockets. Something shiny glinted in her hand for a moment before she pocketed it.

What Ellie did next was totally uncalled-for and—truth be told—unintentional.

Bracing herself, she pressed her hand against the wood slats and pushed. In the next instant, she tumbled ungracefully out onto floor to the sound of the pickpocket’s gasp of surprise.

“Hey!” Ellie shouted, but the woman dropped the piece of clothing and, silent as a bat, flitted out the door.

As she quickly struggled to untangle her legs from the stuff in the box, she heard what sounded like a cocking gun.

“Get up,” ordered a deep male voice from close by. “Slowly. Don’t make me shoot you.”

“Whoa, whoa! There’s no shooting in dreams,” she told him, throwing her hands up in surrender.

“Get up,” he repeated darkly, motioning with the tip of that cannon in his hand toward the tall piece of furniture out of which she’d tumbled.

It was prudent to oblige, she decided, and she got to her feet slowly with her hands spread wide. “Okay, fine. But don’t point that thing at me.”

With his gun still on her, he removed a glass hurricane cover from an old-fashioned kerosene lamp beside the bed, struck a match and lit it. A thin, watery light spilled from the lamp, washing the walls in soft gold.

Ellie’s eyes widened. Except for the gun in his hand, and the sheet he was clutching in front of him, he was naked as the day he was born. Against her will and good sense, she stared at him. All of him. He returned the favor, his unfriendly gaze sweeping down the length of her slowly and back up.

He was tall and strongly built. The lean musculature of his chest and arms born of a life lived hard. He seemed tightly strung as if, given provocation, he could just go off like that gun he was holding.

The gaslight carved his arrogance with shadows and fatigue. He wasn’t pretty the way so many Hollywood men were. His face had a ruggedness to it, accentuated by the scar that ran along his jawline. His mouth was wide and turned up a little at the corners without trying, but even that perpetual half smile of friendliness couldn’t mitigate the bruised look in his eyes.

“What the hell are you doing in my cabin?”

That voice. It sent a shiver down her. “Fair question. But on the subject of who’s supposed to be where,” she pointed out, “what are you doing in my dream?”

“Your what?”

She pointed to his clothing strewn across the floor. “Oh, and you’d better check your things. That little underdressed petunia who was in here a minute ago? She was rifling through them.”

He looked confused. What petunia? “The only one I see in this room is you.” He narrowed a look at her, then glanced around at his clothes. “You think I can’t spot a panel thief when I see one?”

“Panel what?”

“Hand it over.”

“Hand what over?”

“The money. And whatever else you took.”

Ellie was outraged. “Whatever I took? You’ve been robbed, pal, but it wasn’t by me. And—as if I owe you anything considering that minibazooka you have pointed my way—I believe it was a watch she took. Out of your coat pocket.”

Some of the color drained from his face. Keeping his gun trained on her, he shuffled to the other side of the bed to pick up his jacket, exposing—she had to admit—a very nice-looking behind.

One-handed, he went through the pockets until he came up with a little leather pouch filled with what sounded like coins. Next he reached under the mattress and recovered a small leather satchel chock-full of what seemed like play money. Relief flickered briefly over his face, but he kept searching nonetheless.

“Like I said, the watch went that way,” Ellie reminded him, pointing at the doorway and the now-vanished pickpocket.

He held out his hand.

She pursed her lips. “Don’t have it.”

A slow, wicked smile crossed his face. “Well, then, you leave me no choice. I’ll just have to search you.”




3


“OH, I THINK NOT.” Folding her arms, Ellie knew she’d sounded a whole lot more certain than she felt.

He wrapped the sheet low around his hips and tucked in the edge as he moved closer, eyeing her jeans suspiciously. “For a woman who dresses in miner’s britches and breaks into strange men’s berths in the middle of the night, and makes up stories about phantom thieves, your sudden concern with propriety, madam, is ill timed. Put your hands up.”

Ellie scowled at him. “Well, you have one thing right. You are a strange man. But I still didn’t take your watch. Feel free to search me, though. I have nothing to hide. Besides, this is my dream. And…well,” she admitted, raising her hands, “you’re not exactly trollish.”

He didn’t spend long trying to puzzle that word out, but shimmied closer in his sheet and nudged her arms up in the air with the end of his pistol. “I suggest you hold very still. I’m surprisingly good with this gun.”

“Sure, sure. Nobody really gets shot in dreams.”

He muttered something to himself about nightmares, then, he touched her. A slow, one-handed slide down the length of her rib cage, past her hip and around her back.

She inhaled sharply.

From the tips of his fingers to the center of her being, something akin to an electrical charge zipped through her body.

Which was strange because he seemed immune, more intent on what she might be concealing beneath her jersey top. When his fingers reached the clasp on her bra, they stopped and explored for a moment.

“What’s this?” he asked, fingering the hooks and eyes.

“Not a watch,” she explained.

A droll smile quirked his mouth as he followed the outline of her bra around her rib cage, finding the underwire that ran up the side of her breast. His palm fell naturally against the soft cup and lingered there, testing the weight of her breast in his hand.

His gaze lifted to hers. A bead of sweat had broken out in that little cleft between his nose and upper lip. Hmm. Perhaps not so immune, after all. The steely cold barrel of his gun rested warningly against her throat. “Who are you?”

“You first.”

“Apparently, you already have the advantage. It was you who broke into my cabin, remember?” The tip of his gun traversed her chest and rested against her belly.

Ellie was too distracted by what the other hand was doing to mind much. “I didn’t break in.” She leaned close and whispered, “I’m not even really here.”

That elicited another grudging smile. “Oh,” he said, sliding a palm down the front of her leg, “you’re here. You just don’t belong here.”

She gave him a solemn nod. “Exactly. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

What had she been thinking to agree to this? Even in a dream. His touch was not rough or even angry. It was a slow perusal. A lazy exploration of a foreign object. It was as if he had never touched a woman before. But the expertness of his exploration made it clear that couldn’t be true. He rubbed the jersey fabric of her top between his fingers, frowning at it. Then he moved lower, his hand making the trip over her hip bone and down the back pockets of her jeans.

His search missed nothing. Not the square shape of the credit card she’d left in her back pocket, which he glanced at curiously, front and back, before asking, “Your name is Visa?” She replied with a snort. Nor the topstitched seam that ran up the inside of her thigh, which he explored with thorough fascination.

Ellie held her breath. She’d had some vivid dreams before but this one had them all beat, hands down. Her breath quickened and she held herself rigidly, eyeing his weapon. His touch triggered a wick of tiny explosions of pleasure under her skin—and completely against her will, she found herself beginning to sweat. Had Dane ever deliberately touched her this way? Ever taken more than a second to really look at her? She couldn’t remember now.

“I will admit,” he murmured, scanning the hem near her ankle with his fingertips, “you’d be hard-pressed to hide a toothpick under these.”

“You,” she began, clearing the frog from her throat, “act like you’ve never seen a pair of skinny True Religions before.”

That disconcerted frown appeared again. “I never talk of religion when I have my hands on a woman, skinny or not,” he replied, examining the tiny buckle on her strappy sandal. “And these are…shoes?”

“Very funny.”

He straightened, and with his face only inches from hers, she wondered suddenly, and with a hopeful perversity, if he was going to kiss her.

It was her fantasy, after all.

His eyes were fixed on her. Hazel, but for the solitary spot of clear, emerald green in the iris of his left eye. The fringe of lashes—dark and unfairly long—hemmed in the heat of his look. She would have to remember this dream and those eyes for the next time she—

A knock on the door rudely halted the fantasy. Without taking his gaze off her, he spoke to the intruder. “Yeah?”

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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