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say. “I finally started winning.”
    “Interesting,” said Zeb, since he’d noticed Cat blinking a lot each time she gave James the winning card.
    “James, I thought you were more of an adventurous type of man,” said Cat with a smile.
    “What do you mean?” he asked.
    “Do something crazy like your wild, stripper of a brothe r would do,” she suggested. “Bid everything you’ve got on this next hand.”
    “Hold on,” said Zeb. “James, don’t do it. She’s obviously cheating.”
    “What do you mean?” asked James. “I won the last two hands.”
    “That’s right,” said Cat. “And three times is a charm. So make a big bet and win big this time, James. I feel like you’re getting lucky.”
    “Don’t do it, James, or you’re a fool,” Zeb warned him aloud. “She’s not going to let you win. Let’s just go get a beer now and forget about all this.”
    “Are you going to let him tell you what to do?” Cat asked James. “Aren’t you man enough to make your own decisions, cowboy?”
    “For God’s sake, Cat, stop it,” Zeb told her. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, or why, but it’s got to stop right now.”
    Zeb got up angrily from the table, watching the devious little chit as she collected the cards from the last round. He thought it was odd that she played with a single deck instead of using the continuous card shuffling machine used by the bigger casinos. Then he noticed her hand covering the Ace of hearts that won his brother the last round and her eyes started blinking a lot at the same time. Now, from the angle he was standing, he caught a glimpse of her pinky-finger in the center of the deck, right where she put the ace, and then she pretended to shuffle, and he swore she did some kind of hand maneuver with the deck, though he couldn’t prove it.
    “I’ll bid it all this time,” he heard his fool brother say, pushing the entire pile of chips forward. Cat smiled and dealt him two cards as well as two to herself.
    He walked closer to see that James had a seven and a five and she had a queen turned upward and one card that was still hidden.
    “Hit me,” said James , and Zeb felt like hitting his brother at this moment to knock some sense into him. Cat dealt James a card and it was an eight.
    “I’ll stay,” James said with a satisfied smile on his face, having a total of twenty. So now the only combination that Cat could win with was a blackjack, which meant if she didn’t take a hit, she probably had an ace as her hidden card.
    She didn’t take a hit as Zeb expected, and he quickly moved in closer as she reached to turn over her face-down card.
    He slammed his hand down atop hers in order to keep her from flipping it over.
    Her head snapped around and she glared at him. “Let go,” she warned him.
    “Zeb, what are you doing?” asked James.
    “I saw her cheat,” he said .
    “You don’t know what you’re doing,” she told him, sounding a bit panicked if he wasn’t mistaken.
    “I know exactly what I’m doing. And so do you. I’m busting you for cheating.”
    “What’s going on here?” came a voice from behind him, and he let go of Cat’s hand and turned to see a dark-haired man a little shorter than himself walk up with two bouncers.
    “This woman is cheating,” Zeb told them. “And who would you be?”
    “I’m Denny Gianopoulos, the owner of this casino, and I assure you that my blackjack dealer is not cheating.”
    “Really. Then have her turn over that last card. I assure you it’s an ace of hearts.”
    Cat and De nny just stared at each other, and the crowd waited in anticipation.
    “Go ahead,” De nny told her. “Turn over the card.”
    “De nny?” She seemed hesitant and didn’t want to do it.
    “Do it!” he shouted, and she turned it over. And just like Zeb knew it would be – it was the Ace of hearts.
    “House wins,” she said with an unemotional face, staring at Denny the entire time.
    Zeb looked over to his brother