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a deck of cards.” His voice was very soft. Only she heard it. “Three hundred dollars is a lot of money—for any woman. Sit!” he warned her.
    “I won’t—”
    A dry smile curled just the corner of his mouth. “You should be praying it’s me, and not the Frenchman!” he warned her.
    Why? The Frenchman was the fool making the wager! He’d have to let her go. But if McKenzie won …
    She was startled to discover herself suddenly in his arms, pulled back against him as he addressed the others. “I want this goddamned game over with!” He lowered his voice again and his words were for her ears alone. “Sit in the chair, or you’ll be sitting in my lap!”
    Tears stung her eyes. Panic seized her for a moment. No! This was not
her
life!
    She grit her teeth down hard. And she sat. She had no choice.
    The fourth man at the table, the handsome young man Marie had mentioned with the sandy hair and warm green eyes, set a hand on hers. McKenzie frowned at him in warning, but the man still offered her a wry grin. “It will be all right, miss. It will.”
    “We’re still playing the damned game, Robert!” McKenzie snapped.
    He sat, too, those ebony eyes of his on the Frenchman now across the table. “The girl is the wager. Fine. I’ve been called on my hand. Here it is.”
    He laid out his cards. Tara felt her heart leap as she stared at them. A three, a four, a five, a six …
    And a seven.
    They didn’t look very good to her. Oh, God, this was ridiculous! She wasn’t even sure who she wanted to win the hand. What was going to happen if the Frenchman beat McKenzie? At least McKenzie had mentioned that she might not be wanted!
    But she had been set down as the wager against a three-hundred-dollar bet.
    What if
none
of these men wanted to believe her, that she served tables here and no more? Nothing that she had to say seemed to mean anything to them. Maybe Eastwood had hired her because he knew that there would eventually be an occasion like this.
    The Frenchman swore violently, throwing his cards down. Tara’s heart leapt again. He had three aces, a king, and a ten.
    Who the hell had won this thing? Seconds ticked by in silence. She wanted to scream.
    “Mine again,” McKenzie said at last, very softly. “I think this time, Jack, the game is over!”
    “Mais, oui!
The game is over!” the Frenchman cried furiously.
    Tara screamed, shrieking out in warning as she jumped away from the table. The Frenchman was pulling out a weapon, a pistol. And he was aiming it straight at McKenzie’s heart, at a distance of no more than three feet.
    But the Frenchman’s weapon never fired. McKenzie moved like a cobra, more swiftly than the eye. Even as she blinked, he was on his feet, reaching to a sheath at his ankle and hurtling a blade like a streak of silver across the distance between himself and the Frenchman.
    The knife hit the top of the Frenchman’s hand. He screamed with pain.
    The Frenchman’s hand was pinned to the table with the knife. His pistol, freed from his injured hand, went flying across the wood to land with a thud against the wall.
    The Frenchman looked furiously from his hand to McKenzie. “You should be arrested!”
    “And you should be dead,” he said flatly. “You meant to shoot me down in cold blood, and every man here witnessed the attempt.”
    “You cheated. You should have been shot! And if it weren’t for this little whore—”
    “How dare you—” Tara began furiously, but neither man was paying her any heed at the moment.
    “I’d have
still
been faster than you,” McKenzie interrupted him sharply.
    “Swamp-loving bastard!” the Frenchman said.
    McKenzie stood quickly, wresting his knife from the table and the Frenchman’s hand. Smiling Jack screamed out with a cry of pain, then fell silent, nursing his injured hand as McKenzie leaned low against him and spoke softly. “I’ve never cheated in my life,
mon ami
. And you know that. You should be dead. Be grateful I left you