Gambling On A Dream. Sara Walter Ellwood
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Cover Copy
With Everything At Stake….
It’s been years since Sheriff Dawn Madison said goodbye to Texas Ranger Wyatt McPherson. She’s closed the door on the heartache of her past. But when the sleepy town of Colton, Texas, is rocked by a series of shocking murders, Dawn has no choice but to trust the man who broke her heart if she wants to protect the ones she loves…
All Bets Are Off
Four years have passed. But Wyatt hasn’t forgotten the bold, Native American beauty who stole his heart . . . and broke it. Losing her and the life they had hoped to share left him an empty shell of himself. But if he wants to stop the deranged killer terrorizing the innocent kids of Colton, he’ll have to let Dawn back into his life. It’s a risk he’s willing to take, even if heartache is all he takes home…
Books by Sara Walter Ellwood
Colton Gamblers Series
Gambling On A Secret, Book One
Gambling On A Heart, Book Two
Gambling On A Dream, Book Three
Heartstrings
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
Gambling On A Dream
Colton Gamblers Series
Sara Walter Ellwood
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Copyright
Lyrical Press books are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2015 by Sara Walter Ellwood
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First Electronic Edition: June 2015
eISBN-13: 978-1-61650-735-0
eISBN-10: : 1-61650-735-7
First Print Edition: June 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1-61650-736-7
ISBN-10: 1-61650-736-5
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For all of my co-workers, who have encouraged and believed in me through the years of my journey to becoming a published author. You all truly are like family.
Author’s Foreword
The Colton Gamblers
In 1865, three disillusioned first cousins return from the battlefields of the defeated South to find their home in East Texas a shambles. Determined to make a new start, they head west. In the cowboy town of Dallas, Texas, they decide to pool the few silver dollars they have between them and enter into a poker game. With their gamble, they win over 100,000 acres of good grassland in Central Texas. Over the next century and a half, their descendents build a fortune in cattle and oil, but as time goes by, greed erodes their family bond.
These are the stories of the eighth generation gambling on love and bringing back the bond of family…
Chapter 1
“What the hell’s going on?”
Interim Sheriff Dawn Madison closed her eyes and swallowed as she rested her hand over her lower abdomen. How would she tell him his son was dead?
She stood from where she crouched by the body of the seventeen-year-old boy, lying on the litter-strewn gravel next to the Dumpster reeking of day-old beer bottles and spilled whiskey. The rusty chain link fence trapped the body like the dirty newspapers stuck against it. She wasn’t sure if the dark stain under the boy was from his blood or years of grease and liquor spilling out of the trash.
“Where’s Chris?” Julie Larson’s footfalls on the wood stairs from her second floor apartment to the back porch of the Longhorn Saloon she co-owned with her brother hammered through Dawn. “What’s goin’ on, Sam?”
“Don’t know.” Sam stopped to wait for his younger sister, but he never took his gaze from Dawn and her deputies. “I just got here and saw all the commotion. I can’t find Chris nowhere. He ain’t answering his damned phone. I started wonderin’ where he is and came looking for him. He’s supposed to be cleaning the bathrooms, but he ain’t there. Doesn’t look like he did a damned thing since closin’.”
A group of curious bystanders was gathering on the side of the weathered clapboard bar near the customer parking lot. Dawn walked over to her lieutenant as he finished zipping up the body bag. She pushed down the fear and pain of telling a father he’d lost his child and pointed toward the growing crowd. “Tilly, get those peepers out of here. I don’t need the grapevine going crazy over this.”
With a grunt, he stood and adjusted his tan Stetson. “On it. What you gonna tell Sam and Julie?”
Wishing she could tell them anything but what happened, she glanced at the brother and sister coming closer over the weedy gravel parking lot. She fisted her hand over her lower belly, her baby hadn’t been born yet when a drug dealer took him from her, and she still woke up at night from the grief. The thought of what she’d have felt if he’d been seventeen when she’d lost him made her sick. “The truth. Well, enough of it, anyway.”
“Wouldn’t want your job, Sheriff.” Tillman “Tilly” Kennedy jacked up his gun belt and headed to do her bidding with the bystanders.
She glanced at Deputies Chet Hendricks and Doug Grant. They searched for evidence in the dry weeds, struggling for life in the greasy gravel surrounding Christopher Larson’s black shrouded body.
Why did she do this to herself? Why was being sheriff of this town so important? She’d been appointed interim sheriff after Zack Cartwright hung up his shiny tin star for a branding iron last month. She was in charge, but not uncontested for the election next month in November that would decide whether the county wanted her or Chet Hendricks as sheriff. Anger twisted with grief as she looked upon the black heap of a teenager’s brutally murdered body. Whether she won the election or not, she had to find the killer.
She turned away and intercepted the Larsons before they could get any closer. At least the man couldn’t see what had happened to his son. The coroner was on the scene, and Lucinda Hudson, a local photographer who worked part-time for the county, had already taken pictures. Sam stared over her shoulder, not a difficult task since he towered over her five-foot, six-inch frame.
When he swung his gaze down to meet hers, she couldn’t miss the fear within the brown depths. “What’s goin’