Free LaceysWay by Madeline Baker

niggling
question kept repeating itself in the back of her mind. She had to know. “Were
you cheating?” she asked, sitting up. Matt cocked an eyebrow at her. Then,
without a word, he pulled a deck of cards from his saddlebag. He shuffled the
deck several times, then dealt the cards. He gestured for Lacey to pick up her
hand. She had a full house, jacks over tens. She glanced up at Matt, a question
in her eyes, and Matt turned his cards over. He had a full house, aces over
kings.
    Matt looked at her, one black eyebrow arching upward as he
scooped up the cards, shuffled them, cut them, and dealt her another hand. This
time she had four kings, Matt had four aces.
    For the next fifteen minutes he shuffled the cards, making
the ace of spades appear on the top of the deck time after time, and then he
dealt two hands. Lacey had a full house, queens over jacks. Matt had four aces.
    Lacey tossed her cards on the ground. “You didn’t answer my
question,” she remarked, although the answer seemed obvious now.
    Matt shook his head. “I wasn’t cheating, but I would have if
it had been necessary.”
    “Oh.” It troubled her, his knowing how to cheat at cards
like that. What other nefarious talents did he have? Did she really want to
know?
     
    Matt Drago stared into the darkness long after Lacey was
asleep, his thoughts troubled. It was never easy, killing a man. Had he been
alone, he might have turned and walked away from the fight, but Red Hat wore
the look of a man who would have shot him in the back without turning a hair.
Matt couldn’t risk that, couldn’t take a chance on leaving Lacey alone in a
strange town, at the mercy of men who had little or no regard for a decent
woman.
    Loosing a long sigh, he closed his eyes. He had tried
gambling for a living once, but it had been a rotten way of life. Spending most
of his waking hours in crowded, smoke-filled saloons, depending on the luck of
the draw, or his own nimble fingers, to earn his keep. Having to defend himself
when he was accused of cheating. And he had faced that accusation more times
than he cared to recall, because he was lucky at cards, just plain lucky. Like
tonight. So he had given up gambling and earned his living breaking horses,
working at one ranch or another until he had enough money to move on, drifting
until his money ran out, and then working again. He drifted off to sleep, his
dreams haunted by the faces of the men he had killed over a game of cards. Red
Hat’s face was there, too, only this time it was Red Hat who cleared leather
first. Matt uttered a strangled cry as he saw Red Hat’s finger squeeze the
trigger. Time slowed and the images warped and he saw the bullet leave the
barrel of the gun and head straight toward him.
    “Matt. Matt!”
    Lacey’s voice penetrated his nightmare, and he woke to find her
kneeling beside him, a worried expression on her face, her long russet-colored
hair falling over her shoulders.
    “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.
    “Yeah.” He looked at Lacey, at the horses resting nearby. It
had only been a dream after all.
    Lacey sat back on her heels, a quizzical expression on her
face. “Were you having a nightmare?”
    “Yeah.” He hated to admit it, it seemed so childish. Damn!
It had seemed so real.
    “Do you want to talk about it?”
    “No.”
    “It might help.”
    It might at that, Matt thought, but how could he tell her
about the nightmares that plagued him? He was a grown man, not a little boy
frightened of the dark.
    “Go back to bed, Lacey.”
    “Not until you tell me what’s troubling you,” she argued,
and then, out of the blue, she knew what was bothering him. “It was that man
you killed, wasn’t it? That’s what your nightmare was about.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Do you have bad dreams often?”
    “No.”
    “Just when you…when you kill someone?”
    “Lacey—”
    “Have you killed a lot of men?”
    “I don’t know,” Matt replied sarcastically. “How many men
makes a lot?