Wild Cards and Iron Horses by Sheryl Nantus Read Free Book Online Page B

mixed to anoint the leather parts of his brace. Father had insisted on nothing but the most expensive ointments to keep everything in fine working condition.
    Maybe keeping his hand had been the wrong decision. But he hadn’t been able to stand up to his father at the time, demand that he be treated like the other poor bastards lying in the medical tent, screaming for help while the doctors sawed off their hands and legs without any anesthesia. Instead he had been attended to by some officer’s personal physician, taken away from the common soldiers lying and dying and bleeding on the wooden tables.
    Jon shuddered. He hadn’t been able to get the smell of blood and gunpowder out of his nose for weeks, not even after the trip back home and the thick smog of London filled his mouth and throat. While his father had bragged and raved about the brave deeds of the soldiers they had camped with, Jon had remained silent.
    After closing up the container, he put it back into his suitcase. A push with his foot sent it under the bed, out of sight. It only took him a few minutes to slip his arm back into the brace and a few more to tighten the leather strap.

    He studied his right hand. It twisted up into a fist on his command, the little finger hanging off to the side, limp and unresponsive. He stared at it, willing the finger to break free of the enticing metal grasp and rebel. Jon ordered it to curl up with the other fingers and make him a whole man once again, to make the prosthetic the true useless appendage.
    It lay there cradled in the copper and iron, impotent.
    Jon glared at the finger until sweat dotted his forehead. All the finger had to do was move an inch, half an inch, a quarter of an inch, just enough to show some sign of independence.
    Ten minutes later he let out a sigh. He pulled his shirt back on, leaving the buttons undone and the tails flopping onto his lap. Every night he performed the same routine, rotating through all of his fingers to give each digit the chance to rise up and be free. And every night so far he suffered the same result.
    He wasn’t a religious man, but sometimes Jon thought that perhaps there was something in that bit about the sins of the fathers being visited on the sons.
    But mulling over old mental arguments wasn’t about to get the job done here in Prosperity Ridge. Jon shook his head and started his next routine before he began to think too much about the beautiful Samantha Weatherly and her lovely hands, weathered from a lifetime of hard labor, tracing circles over his bare skin.
    If he had to have anyone rub lotion into his aching muscles and chapped skin, it would be her.
    Jon extracted a well-worn deck of cards from his suitcase and pushed the battered luggage back out of sight. He sat at the small desk. He could have stayed at the saloon where the tournament was held, Deadeye’s Dodge. But he’d wanted to stay elsewhere, away from prying eyes and questions about him and his disability.
    The Ridge Rocket Stakes wasn’t the biggest poker tourney he’d been to, but the one he felt he had the best odds of walking away with the entire pot. And, if nothing else, being a professional poker player was all about getting the odds in your favor as much as possible, legally.
    Lifting the slender cards in his left hand, he began to shuffle them single-handed. The well-worn cardboard squares slid together, mixing well without resistance. His right hand lay on the table, waiting palm-up for a command. He tossed down the first five cards and flipped them over.
    King of Clubs. Jack of Hearts. Three of Spades. Four of Hearts. Three of Clubs.
    Jon rolled off the possibilities in his mind. A pair of threes. Two face cards. A possible straight with the jack and king, the three and four. No single set dominated the hand and chances of a flush were very low unless he pulled three clubs or three hearts, which meant he’d have to destroy the pair he already had.
    Not a great hand, but something he could