She leaned back, looking smug and shyly pleased all at once. "Now you have to entertain me. We're in here for at least another 12 hours."

Lee kind of wanted to tell her that she made no sense, that that whole thing should have been harder, and that someone had no business looking like that two minutes after they'd basically labeled all human interaction as essentially destructive. Mostly though, he just wanted her to keep smiling.

"If you think I've got juggling balls hidden somewhere in my flightsuit, you're sorely mistaken," he informed her. "I didn't come equipped to be a floor show."

"You'll just have to be creative then," she told him, "Maybe if you're nice, Horace will agree to get you some props." Her tone of voice that told him that he probably shouldn't have said 'juggling balls' if he didn't want to listen to innuendo for the next 12 hours. Perhaps on another day he could have taken it, but today his nerves were already shot enough as it was.

Although she'd actually had a good thought there, what with collusion with the guard and all. "Okay," he told her. "Use your hard-won connections with Horace, and see if you can't rustle us up some triad cards."

She grinned at him, a blinding smile that told him he'd said something right, then went to the front of their cell and called for Horace. Five minutes later, they had triad cards, and also enough evidence for Lee to suspect that Horace had a rather serious crush on Kara. Not that he could blame the man.

--------------------------

He'd heard that Kara had a good triad face. He had thought that meant that she would be stoic, but he should have realized that that wasn't the way she operated. Instead, her version of the triad face consisted of acting as if she had the best hand possible, no matter what the circumstances. He could see how she got into bar fights. If he hadn't been so stupidly relieved to see her smiling, he might have been tempted to wipe the smirk off her face too. Either by force, or possibly by kissing her. He decided then that he was never, ever going to play triad with Kara while drunk. There was no way it would end well.

It was going okay now though, especially since he kept beating her.

"You're cheating!" she finally exclaimed, though she seemed more admiring than angry.

"No, I'm winning," he informed her.

"How?" she demanded.

He looked at her playfully, "Maybe I'm just better than you are."

"You're a terrible triad player. You have the worst triad face ever, and you tap your left hand on your knee when you're nervous, and I can always tell if you have two of the same color by the way you arrange your cards."

"And yet I'm still beating you."

"Which brings me back to my original question, 'How?'"

"I'm counting cards," he admitted.

"That's cheating!"

"I'm not actually looking through the deck. I'm counting discards, and the cards in my hand, and calculating the odds of you having something better than me. It's not cheating, it's math."

"It still sounds suspicious to me. Show me how."

And he did.

Three hours later, he had created a monster. More often than not, she actually seemed to have to cards to back up her poker face, and he started to believe her when she told him that she was going to beat her.

"I owe you one, Lee," she told him. "What do you want me to buy you?"

"Huh?" He wasn't quite sure how the conversation kept on running away without him. Perhaps the whole day had taken more out of him than he'd thought.

"I'm going to go out and play triad tomorrow. And then I'm going to be rich. And it's going to be because of you, so what do you want me to buy you."

"A history book."

"I think you just might be the most boring person on record."

"I've kept you entertained for hours, haven't I? I can't be that bad."

"No," she said, studying him, "You really aren't. I think it might be almost in spite of yourself, but still. I kind of like having you around."

Even with the day's events having convinced him that his Kara-reading skills weren't up to par, Lee was still pretty sure that that meant she really had forgiven him. He reveled in that for a few minutes, sitting with her in companionable silence.

And then the lights dimmed for the evening shift, and his conjugal visit thought came back, and he realized with sudden clarity that there was only one cot in the cell.

Even in the dim light, his panic must have been obvious, because she winked at him and said, "Don't worry, Mr. Adama, your virtue is safe with me."

She went over to the front of the cell and called for Horace to get another cot. Lee settled back on the first cot, gave up the battle to keep his eyes off her ass and the curve of her waist, and thought forlornly, "what if I don't want my virtue to be safe?"