Read Beauty and the Bounty Hunter for Free Online

asked.
    “Frenchie,” the barkeep agreed, and jerked his chin toward the ceiling.
    Frenchie.
That figured. Cat headed for the stairs.
    Though no one had ever discovered one of his ruses—at least while he was still in town—Alexi made certain to leave not a trace of Count Sukhorukov after he disappeared into the wagon. By the time he exited the other side, he’d already become someone else.
    “Where ya think yer goin’?” the barkeep asked.
    “He told me to come and get paid after I tended his horse.”
    As Cat appeared to be a thin, harmless boy, the man shrugged. He returned to his customers, who, considering the ailments they were discussing and the bottles of black water they clutched like the Holy Grail, had recently been the count’s customers. That they hadn’trecognized the Frenchie was yet another testament to the masquerade of Alexi Romanov.
    “I’s got the bloody flux,” declared an old-timer, who also appeared to have something that caused pustules upon his bald head. “Been crappin’ red fer a month.”
    “The missus has the King’s Evil,” shared another, much younger, much hairier gent. “Her neck’s done swole up the size of a tree stump.”
    Cat cut around the newel post and headed upstairs, grimacing at the continued litany of disease.
    “Young’uns done sprouted trench mouth.” A short, dumpy fellow dashed back his whiskey, his hiss of pain making Cat think he had a bit of the trench mouth too.
    “I’ve got a strangery,” the barkeep muttered. “Right-chere.” He rubbed his crotch, and everyone laughed.
    Cat bit her lip and averted her eyes. Men were such…men.
    As she reached the landing, Cat contemplated a line of doors, then waited for a break in the chatter below. When it came, she caught a low, throaty woman’s chuckle followed by the murmur of a man’s voice.
His
voice.
    Cat tossed her pack against the wall, then strode forward and pushed open door number two. A gorgeous redhead sat before the mirror, brushing her hair.
    Naked.
    Alexi sprawled on the tousled mattress, watching Cat through half-lidded eyes. He did not appear surprised; he appeared a little bored.
    The duster and slouch hat he’d worn in Abilene, along with a gun belt, had been discarded atop a nearby table. Not very original, but combined with a French accent it had obviously done what he’d meant it to do.
    Made the count disappear.
    He still wore the black trousers of the Russian aristocrat, but he’d removed the silky black shirt and lay bare-chested and barefoot, a glass of amber liquid in his long-fingered, magical hands.
    Those hands. She still thought of them some nights when she couldn’t sleep.
    Alexi’s gaze flicked from the woman’s pale peach breasts to her face. “
Sortez,
” he ordered, which, when she didn’t move, he followed with a heavily accented, “Get out.”
    She tossed the brush onto the dresser with such force it bounced off the mirror and onto the floor. “Since when d’ ya like boys?”
    “Go,” he said, eyes returning to Cat.
    The woman stomped her foot. “This is my room!”
    Alexi slid his attention to the redhead. She gulped, grabbed a robe, and fled.
    He made no move to rise, just sipped his drink, then set the glass on the flat plane of his belly. A droplet of water rolled onto his skin, leaving a glistening trail along the curve of his waist. “You see something you would like,
ma chère
?”
    He dropped the accent, but his return to foreign endearments reminded Cat exactly what kind of man Alexi was. She yanked her gaze from his stomach and cleared her throat. “We need to talk.”
    He sat up, the movement languid yet quick, the uncoiling of an annoyed snake, prepared to strike but too warmed by the sun to actually bother. “Have you at last given up searching for your outlaw needle in the midst of the great American haystack?”
    “No.”
    As Alexi stood, then moved past her, Cat caught a hint of his scent. No matter how far they traveled, nomatter the