A Winning Hand

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue: One year later

  A Winning Hand

  Published by M. Lake Books

  New York, NY

  A Winning Hand copyright © 2017 Maria Lake

  The individuals, objects, or places pictured on the cover are models and are used for illustrative purposes only.

  Cover photos used under license from Deposit Photos.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  All characters are in this book are adults over the age of 18.

  Disclaimer: The following story is a safe, standalone historical western romance with a guaranteed HEA that includes marital relations.

  Please be advised that the hero has a firm hand. If you object to a story where the hero disciplines the heroine, then please do not continue reading this story.

  Chapter 1

  Carefully, Josie Lanshaw worked at her knots. It was a lot easier at home than here in the ladies' powder room at Burke's Hotel. But there had been no avoiding it-- she'd needed something to keep her bosom from hurting while riding her Palomino, and her jerry-rigged use of strips of old bedsheets was the only thing she had been able to come up with. But still, the knots. The longer it took, the more nervous Josie felt.

  Daddy'd gone out for an all-day business meeting, and their foreman Sam Everett was supposed to be riding over to Grove. She'd told their cook Mrs. Martin that she'd be gone most of the day visiting over at the Appleton Ranch. She wasn't allowed to ride much on her own, but Daddy was okay with her visits to Annie Appleton and her family- they were only a few miles off, and Mrs. Martin could watch her through the kitchen window for most of the ride. The only part where Josie was briefly out of sight from her home lasted for a few minutes, and then she was easily within sight from Appleton Ranch.

  What Josie most definitely wasn't allowed to do was ride to the town of Waring Springs by herself, but she was nearly nineteen now and she had some early birthday money from family back east that she was eager to spend. The idea of buying herself some fancy fripperies with the money was exciting-- her friend Annie Appleton always had such pretty things, and she had to admit that she was a bit jealous. Josie was pretty sure that her Daddy had more in the bank than Mr. Appleton, but he sure didn't use it to buy her fancy things. Notwithstanding his limits on where she could go on her own, her Daddy'd basically been raising her like a boy, teaching her to ride, and fish and shoot. The Appleton girls got ponies, dance lessons, singing lessons and silk dresses, but it was only the Appleton boys who did the things she did.

  Almost nineteen. Josie felt she was certainly looking like a woman, and it was time she got to dress more like one. Annie Appleton had plenty of gentlemen come courting her, but no one dared come to the Lanshaw Ranch to woo Josie. Not only did she have a reputation as a tomboy, her Daddy had a reputation as a crack shot. And their foreman Sam was supposed to be even better. So even if someone did somehow find her pretty, there'd still be Daddy and Sam to contend with. Not that she really needed as many suitors as Annie, one would be perfectly fine, as long as he was the right gentleman.

  But how could she find the right gentleman if she was wearing old trousers or buckskins? Sure, she had some dresses, but Daddy always insisted that Mrs. Martin supervise how she cut them, and Mrs. Martin was far too old fashioned for Josie's tastes. They had often argued over whether the pattern that Josie was tracing would be too snug or too revealing of her growing bust.

  Josie had shuddered at the thought of shopping in a plain conservatively cut dress-- she wanted to look like she belonged in town, that's why she had carefully planned her trip in advance-- putting in quite a bit of work to secretly make over one of her dresses on her own. Her yellow cotton summer dress sure didn't look anything like the chambrays and calicoes that she usually wore at home. It was now a town dress, pure and simple, and it was the one she had brought to change into.

  She knew she was doing wrong by sneaking off to go shopping, but surely she had a good excuse for it. Poor old Daddy just didn't understand what it meant to be female.

  Josie breathed a sigh of relief as she undid the last knot. Her bosom invention would have looked all wrong under her yellow dress. It was a thin cotton, and would have shown every lump of every knot. Quickly she stripped off the trousers she had worn for riding, and just as rapidly pulled her dress over her head. Fortunately, it was the kind with buttons down the front, or she would have been out of luck dressing herself. It was only after she was clothed that she realized she had forgotten to pack a chemise to wear underneath, but it was such a warm day, perhaps that wasn't needed after all.

  Josie tied her old clothes into a bundle and shoved them into her carpet bag. It would be inconvenient to carry them around town, but she didn't know what else she could do. If she left her bundled clothes in the powder room, they might be thrown away. If she left them with her horse, they might get taken.

  Carefully, Josie worked her hands through her hair, trying to tidy herself as best as possible. She washed her face and gave her cheeks a little pinch, although she knew she had probably gotten a bit of color on her ride. She looked with some dismay at her reflection, noting the front of her dress. Certainly this style was meant to be worn with a corset, but all that she had holding herself in place was a wide ribbon and good, tight stitching. Well, there was nothing she could do about that-- unless she were to purchase a corset while she was in town.

  Mrs. Martin had said she certainly needed a corset, had even gone so far to complain to Daddy, but Daddy had been aghast at the idea. A widower of fifteen years, he couldn't recollect what undergarments his late wife had worn, but as best as Josie could tell from listening at doors, Daddy claimed that corsets were something worn by dance hall girls and worse, and that no daughter of his was going to go about wearing something garish that presented herself up to the eyes of some dirty men. Mrs. Martin had said some strong words to him about how he'd gotten such notions about dance halls girls and the like, but all he'd said in response was that he was a widower and whatever he did in town was his own business.

  Still, Josie couldn't help but think Mrs. Martin had the right of it-- it had been some years now since she'd gone from a bean pole to something far more fleshed out, and she felt she ought to do her best to try to keep herself more contained. Yes, she would have to add a corset to her shopping list.

  Josie looked down at the money in her purse-- she hoped she had enough to buy everything she wanted today, for surely she might not have such an opportunity again for a long time. It was unusual for Daddy and Sam to both be away from the
ranch for the day, and neither one of them would ever have let her get away with this unchaperoned trip.

  She felt a slight flutter at the thought of Sam. Tall, dark and rugged, he'd been helping Daddy run the ranch for the past year, ever since Daddy'd had that bad fall. From the moment she set eyes on him she was smitten, but he treated her more as a burden than a woman. What she had seen as her brazen attempts at flirting, he seemed to view as annoying attempts to distract him from his work. Nothing in his attitude toward her indicated any interest in reciprocating her interest in him. Nothing in his attitude toward her indicated that he had any awareness of how womanly she had become.

  As much as she usually went out of her way to get Sam's attention, she was quite glad that she wasn't going to see him in town. She knew very well that his ideas about female behavior and modesty were even stricter than Daddy's, and she didn't need his stern look of disapproval at finding that she had deliberately broken the rules by going to town on her own. And in a dress that he surely would not approve of, as it did little to hide the fleshy swell of her bosom.

  Chapter 2

  Sam dismounted easily, and tied Stormy to the post. He'd intended to ride over to Grove today, but a letter he'd received yesterday from Oren Trask had called him into town. He hadn't gotten around to reading it until he had gone back to his cabin for the night, and Mr. Lanshaw had ridden off too early to tell him about his change in plans. Well, he already had the day off anyhow, so Sam supposed it didn't matter.

  Oren Trask had heard that the Balt property right across from the station might be up for sale, and wanted to gauge his interest. The building fronted on Station Street, and backed onto Pointer Lane, which was getting to be quite the thoroughfare in its own right, due to the notoriety of Buck Miller's infamous Holiday Saloon. Trask mentioned the possibility of splitting the main floor front and back in order to rent the space to two different businesses, one main one facing the station, the smaller one with its entrance on Pointer Lane. He wasn't too keen about that, feeling that no decent business should want to have anything to do with Pointer Lane. Trask claimed that things were cleaned up on Pointer though, and it had been quite some time since Sam had ventured down that street, so maybe Trask was right. Still, Sam needed to take a look himself, just to be sure.

  Sam shook his head as he looked down the street, waiting for Trask. He never ceased to be amazed at all the changes that could happen in only a matter of weeks. It was hard to believe that it had only been around five years since Waring Springs went from a one horse town to a bustling depot. And all because of the railroad.

  And the generosity of his old Uncle Ezra. It was good of old Ezra to think of him before he passed, and he'd come into a little bit of money under Ezra's will. It certainly hadn't been enough to buy a ranch of his own, but he always liked the idea of land, and used his inheritance to buy some land in town. And then he started using his earnings from various ranch jobs to buy more.

  And the day the railroad came through, well, that changed everything. As one of the biggest property owners in town, Sam suddenly was worth more than enough to buy several ranches outright, without any help from any bank.

  Not that he planned on buying a ranch anytime soon. Sure, he'd love a ranch of his own someday, but he couldn't desert Lanshaw. He really needed him to run the place and keep the ranch hands in line. And with that Josie Lanshaw batting her eyes, there was more work keeping order than usual. Certainly more difficult than when he ran the Appleton place, and Appleton had six daughters! And all the Appleton girls were reckoned to be uncommonly pretty. But the Lanshaw gal knew how to get under a man's skin in ways the Appleton girls could never dream of. There were more than a few ranch hands that he had to let go after he'd heard them talking about Miss Josie in the crudest of possible terms. He wasn't sorry to say that he'd crunched a few bones when he'd heard one of the men describe in extremely vulgar terms what he'd like to do to Miss Josie if he ever got her alone. Sam knew it was true that she had a noticeable bounciness to her, but the gentlemanly thing to do was to pretend otherwise.

  If Lanshaw had sons or brothers to help run the place then he might not need him so badly, but an old man wasn't going to be much of a match if his workers wanted at his daughter, crack shot or not. His job might have been foreman, but sometimes it seemed like he spent more time having to protect Miss Josie's virtue than dealing with the herd. At least she'd be spending the day at the Appleton's-- she'd be safer over there while he was away from the Lanshaw Ranch.

  That worry out of his mind, Sam waved to Trask, who was running up, almost out of breath.

  “Nice building, ain't she?” Trask asked, looking up at the two-story. “Only three years old, and well constructed. Couldn't have asked for a better location for the price.”

  “Looks good from here,” Sam said. “But how're things on Pointer these days?”

  “Oh, thriving, bustling. Lots of folks won't even think of coming to Waring Springs without a visit to Pointer Lane.”

  “Because of the shops, or because of the Saloon?”

  Trask shrugged. “Does it matter as long as the money is coming in?”

  “It matters,” Sam said tersely. “There's some businesses I don’t see any reason to associate with. The Saloon's nothing but bad news. Sure, there might be plenty of men coming down that street, but he didn't want to do business with the Saloon's customers.

  Chapter 3

  Josie left the Emporium feeling decidedly dejected. Who knew that the sorts of things the Appleton girls had were so expensive? The amount of silk that it would take to make herself a birthday dress cost far more than she had. Even if she settled on a plainer, cheaper fabric, her birthday money wasn't nearly enough to purchase the sorts of things she had wanted to buy.

  It looked like her grand day out was going to be mostly window shopping. Still, Josie kept her head held high as she walked along the Main Street, not wanting anyone to notice her plight. Her resolve seemed to work. She even seemed to pick up some gentleman admirers, noticing that more than a few were giving her broad smiles or the tip of their hat. One or two even seemed to be trailing behind in worshipful silence.

  She wondered if she should try to stop and flirt with them? Annie Appleton had told her some of her tricks- lots of eyelash batting, and blushing and encouraging smiles. Certainly it couldn't do any harm to practice these skills? Sam never gave her much chance to try them out.

  But when she'd turned around, prepared to flirt with the gentleman in a dark hat who was walking near her, he responded by giving her a filthy looking leer, his eyes raking over the exposed portion of her bosom. If that wasn't awful enough, he licked his lips and made a hooting whistle at her. It was enough to cause her to wrap her arms around herself as she ran inside the nearest shop.

  “Anything I can do?” The shop-keep asked, noticing that she was shaking.

  “That m-man, h-he... h-he hooted at me!”

  “Plenty of wolves in this town, didn't your Mama teach you that?” The shop-keep asked. “Then again, maybe she didn't-- what was she thinking letting you of of the house in a low-cut get-up like you're wearing?” The shop-keep shook his head at her a few times before getting back to his business of arranging the display in the window.

  But Josie was dumbfounded. No one had ever told her that there were men out there who would dare address her like that! She wasn't sure if she was more horrified by the rudeness of the man in the street or the shopkeeper.

  After waiting for the awful man to pass by the shop, Josie decided it was safe to go back outside. She could not let some bad apples ruin her special shopping day.

  The further along that Josie walked, the less expensive the shops. It was beginning to look like she might be able to purchase a new bonnet after all, but she did not want to rush into making a decision yet- there was a real excitement to being able to weigh her different choices.

  Josie had just walked out of her third hat shop when she noticed that the street leading to the lef
t was the home to that infamous place- the Holiday Saloon. With Mrs. Martin and herself being the only females on the Lanshaw Ranch, she'd overheard plenty of man-talk over the years, and they had often involved stories about the Holiday Saloon. Even her own Daddy was no stranger to the place, although he swore up and down to Mrs. Martin that all he ever stopped in for was a drink and some conversation. Mrs. Martin had mumbled something about "conversation" being an interesting word for it.

  Interesting was right- from the bits and pieces of the men's stories, it seemed like there were always all sorts of strange goings on there, from a dance show where the ladies lifted their dresses, to ones where they claimed the ladies took them completely off. And then there were the balcony rooms, but everyone always hushed up about those if they noticed her near. She never had been able to find out what went on up there. But the thing that she remembered most was the talk about the poker games. Adam Turner was legendary for winning $200 one night. She had to laugh at that- when she was still a school girl she could've beaten Adam Turner at cards. Imagine the kind of money she could get if she was dealt into one of their games. Or, maybe she didn't have to imagine- maybe she could really win a few hands herself!

  Carefully, she looked both ways to see if she recognized anyone. Daddy'd always been more bluster than anything else, but she couldn't imagine he'd be in a kindly mood if anyone told him she'd been seen in the Holiday Saloon. Seeing as how she was in the clear, she quickly turned on to the next street- Pointer Lane.

  Josie thought about the man who had hooted at her and shivered. Surely the Saloon would be filled with men like him. But, she thought looking down at herself, as womanly as she had become, she didn't think she would hold a candle to the sort of females that danced in the Saloon. Maybe her dress dipped a little low for walking along Main street, but if the men were paying money to see those women decked out in feathers and whatnot, then surely such as herself would be considered quite dull in comparison.