Once A Gambler. Carrie Hudson
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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,