Gambling on a Dream Read Online Free Page A

time, Wyatt had been a big city vice cop, and his younger brother was about as responsible as a horsefly. While his sister Audrey already lived on a twenty-thousand-acre ranch with her fancy divorce lawyer husband, and his other sister had been working her way up the ranks in the United States Army and rarely came home.
    Besides, his grandfather figured the money from the sale would be a wonderful chunk of change for all of them. Having a few million in the bank was nice, but damn, Wyatt missed the ranch.
    He got out of the SUV and headed up the front porch steps to enter the home he grew up in. His parents had built the ranch-style house after their wedding. His grandparents had lived about a quarter mile down the road. Now, a bank sat where the house had been, his grandmother moved to Phoenix with her best friend, and his grandfather resided in the Ferguson family plot in the Colton cemetery.
    Goddamn, he hated change.
    He wanted his life the way it had been before things were all fucked up because he failed to protect what was important.
    Thinking about Dawn was as crazy as remembering his life on the ranch way back when. Neither one could be changed.
    Inside the foyer, Crystal Gayle’s Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue drifted to him from the direction of the kitchen. His mother was frying chicken and baking homemade bread and maybe apple pie, if his nose could be trusted. He hung his hat on the rack in the corner by the door and followed the smells into the kitchen.
    Jeannie Burton McPherson looked up from the electric frying pan she only used to fry chicken. A cheerful smile brightened her still-pretty face. From the tight curls her graying red hair was wound into, she’d visited their cousin’s beauty salon earlier that day and gotten a perm.
    He rounded the counter and bent to kiss her on the cheek, the odor of the perming solution lingering in her hair, and the delicious aroma of the foods wrinkled his nose as they mixed. He pulled away and smiled. “Ma, Dad’s gonna have to keep an eye on you. You keep getting prettier. I like your hair.”
    She laughed and swatted at his shoulder, but he didn’t miss the slight blush. “You’re such a charmer.”
    With a grin, he looked into the frying pan at the batter dipped chicken pieces frying in what was undoubtedly lard and butter. “You’re gonna make me as big as a linebacker if you keep up all this cooking.”
    She flipped a crispy drumstick. “You could use some more meat on your bones. You always look half-starved when you come home. I swear you don’t eat when you’re living on your own. I remember that time before you quit the police in Dallas, when you were so skinny, I could almost see through you.”
    He didn’t want to think about that time in his life. After Dawn took a bullet meant for him, he stopped caring about much except going after the thugs who had almost killed the only woman he’d ever loved. But it went deeper than that, she hadn’t only put her own life in jeopardy, she sacrificed the child he hadn’t known she’d carried.
    His son.
    Goddamn, now wasn’t the time to take a trip down that particular rocky memory lane.
    The last thing he wanted was his mother noticing the searing pain he was sure reflected in his face. He picked up a lid on one of the pots to find boiling potatoes. “I eat. I just take after the Ferguson side of the family. I’m tall and lean, but I’ve never been skinny.”
    He carried the hundred-ninety pounds of hard muscle on his six-foot, two-inch frame to prove it.
    A timer went off, and she opened the oven door to pull out a golden brown apple pie. She set it on a cooling rack. The rich apple and cinnamon scents filling the kitchen made his belly grumble with hunger.
    “We’ll be eating in a few minutes. Why don’t you go get your sister? She hasn’t been out of her room all day.” He didn’t miss the sadness in her voice or the pleading in her faded denim eyes. “You’ve always been good with