The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1)

The Lady Takes A Gunslinger

Wild Western Rogues Series

Book Number One

by

Barbara Ankrum

Bestselling Author

THE LADY TAKES A GUNSLINGER

Reviews & Accolades

"A vividly written and colorful adventure... everything a romance should be—funny, tender and charming."

~Jill Barnett, NYT Bestselling Author

"I really loved this book!"

~Kat Martin, NYT Bestselling Author

Previously published as
: ALMOST PARADISE

Published by
ePublishing Works!

www.epublishingworks.com

ISBN: 978-1-61417-777-7

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Please Note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 2015 Barbara Ankrum. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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Dedication

To my sweet daughter, Challee, who, like Grace, inspires all those around her to be better and can always make me laugh. And to my dear son, Brian, who, like Reese, is a man of few words, but whose waters run deep. Thanks for a very special year. I adore you both. And as always, to David, whose optimism, love and support are always cherished.

With special thanks to Bob Vezzetti, of the Brownsville Historical Association, who gave so generously of his time and knowledge of post-Civil War Texas and the gulf area, who knew that Bagdad wasn't just a city in Iraq.

Action from principle, the performance of right changes things and relations. It is essentially revolutionary and does not consist wholly of anything which was.

—Henry David Thoreau

Chapter 1

Pair-a-Dice, Texas April 1867

They'd warned her that Reese Donovan was a drunkard. An indolent shadow of the man who'd once made a name for himself on the Texas prairie with a fast gun and a fearless heart. Some had advised her not to waste her time with him, for he would only turn her down. A man like that wasn't likely to risk his life on any venture more perilous than a slow hand of poker or an easy woman. Those who knew him avoided him. Those who didn't, preferred to keep it that way.

Yet one man—a grizzled old fellow named Houston who claimed to be his friend—had said that drunk or sober, Reese Donovan could still outdraw any leather-slapper north or south of the Pecos and could outwit the rest.

Now, searching for him through the dusty louvers that bisected the doorway of the ramshackle cantina, Grace Turner wondered if all the things she'd heard about him were true. Her heart tripped faster at the prospect of finding out. Brewster would have a conniption if he knew she'd come here alone, but she'd left him resting at the hotel. He was in no condition to stop her. And she was of no mind to be stopped. They'd run up against too many dead ends in the last three weeks to lose nerve now.

A bead of perspiration trickled down beneath the buttoned bodice of her best blue-sprigged calico gown in the sultry Texas heat. With a flick of her wrist, Grace snapped open her fan. The iridescent butterflies painted on the Chinese silk flitted back and forth as she enticed a breath of air toward her face.

From within, came the plinking, off-key sounds of a guitar and laughter, along with the odious smell of cheap whiskey and men who had been too long on the run. After a scorchingly hot day, the cool interior of the adobe cantina had drawn customers to the little border town watering hole like snakes from their hiding places. Pair-a-Dice, Texas, she'd discovered, was a haven for society's dispossessed: desperados, lowlifes, men with nowhere to go and no one waiting for them when they got there. Mexicans and Anglo
tejanos,
or Texans, these were the type of men who would make an old peahen like Miss Eustasia Beauregard, of Beauregard's Finishing Acadamie for Young Ladies, curl up in horror and, conversely, set Grace's vivid imagination soaring.

A large, rather meek-looking pet bear was tied to the brass footrail of the bar with a questionable length of chain. The huge animal stood on its hind legs and begged for peanuts.

Occasionally, a patron would fling one at it and the bear would grunt in appreciation as it gulped the legume, shell and all.

Grace wrinkled her nose and frowned, wondering if it was the bear or the men that gave the place its distinctive odor.

The whole cantina lived up to the gritty reputation it had earned in the dime novels she'd read and reread, though, except for the bear, it seemed sadly lacking in the romance with which auteurs such as Jack Leland and the vivid Ned Buntline typically infused it.

Squinting, she pressed her lace hanky to her nose as she scanned the smoke-filled room in search of the man she'd come to see. At last, she located the only one who fit Donovan's description at the far end of the cantina, just beyond a table full of drunken gamblers.