Gambling On a Heart (2 page)

Charli tapped the toe of her strappy, ski-high sandal. “I want to be married already.”

* * * *

A massive rental tent set up in the backyard protected the reception from the hot afternoon sun. Fans at either end helped circulate air to further keep the guests cool. Zack performed his duty of toasting the bride and groom with a bit of humor and serious admiration. Caterers served a delicious meal of spit-cooked barbeque, potato salad, baked beans and a dozen other outdoor foods. The atmosphere was a mix of old-fashioned cattle roundup and church picnic.

His six-year-old daughter sat beside him at the head table. He helped Amanda cut the tender beef and buttered her roll. She ate with such grown up tenacity, carefully making sure she didn’t make a mess on her flower girl dress, his heart ached with pride. She was such a little lady.

He glanced over at the other end of the table. Tracy leaned over and whispered into her son’s ear. Bobby sat at the end of the long table with his arms crossed over his white shirt. The kid was missing his vest and bolo tie again, and he’d undone his top pearl snap.

He was definitely Jake Parker’s boy. Zack clenched his hand around his fork at the shot of pain in his heart. He wasn’t ready for the memories.

The August after high school graduation, he’d driven over to her grandfather’s ranch hoping to drive Tracy to their favorite spot at the secluded lake on the CW Ranch. He’d planned everything perfectly, down to the picnic supper, including a bottle of his granddad’s best homemade wine.

The prior weekend in Houston, he’d won the saddle bronco event and had decided to go pro for a while. He and Tracy had already talked about his dream, and she’d seemed so supportive, while he’d encouraged her plan to become a doctor.

At the time, he’d never considered them too young for marriage. The prize money he’d won in the last two rodeos plus a good chunk of his trust fund had bought a three-carat diamond ring he’d planned to give her that evening. Then he’d make love to her half the night under the stars.

Although they hadn’t ever told each other how they felt, he’d thought he’d known her well enough to know she loved him.

He’d never been so wrong. When he’d found her in the barn on Oak Springs Ranch, he’d watched all his dreams die in the arms of his best friend since kindergarten. Jake had Tracy against the back wall of a stall with her arms and legs wrapped around him. There was no mistaking what they were doing.

Zack tried to shake off the rest of the past, but he couldn’t. Staring down at the plate of half-eaten food, the painful memory crashed over him, threatening to drown him.

He punched Jake Parker hard enough to lay him out. Jake played football, and as a result, was muscle-bound, but Zack had the element of surprise and raw rage on his side.

Tracy screamed and fell to Jake’s side as she groped for her clothes, attempting to cover her breasts with the tank top she’d picked up from the straw-covered floor. The fly of her denim shorts lay open to reveal hot pink bikini panties. He looked at Jake, and acid rolled in his stomach when he saw his nakedness where his jeans hung open.

Afraid he’d throw up, he turned around and staggered toward the door.

Tracy ran after him, pulling on her top as she followed, and grabbed his arm. “Zack, please, I’m sorry...I thought you and...”

“Save it,” Zack hissed through clenched teeth.

Sharp pain tightened his chest. Not only had Tracy betrayed him, but Jake had been his best friend. He’d known Zack intended to ask Tracy to marry him.

“I never thought you’d turn out no better than a whore, Tracy.” With his chest constricted, he fought to breathe. “I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. Now I don’t ever want see you again.”

He pushed past her and left the barn.

“Zack! Please, I love you.”

He couldn’t look at her. If he did, the tears burning his eyes would fall. “You have a peculiar way of showing it.”

The next day, he’d left town and joined the rodeo circuit, never looking back.

“Daddy?” Amanda tugged on his sleeve. “Daddy?”

He squeezed his eyes closed and sucked in a breath through burning sinuses. He shoved the memory of the woman he’d once loved into the cobwebs of his brain where it belonged.

When he looked at his daughter, he realized despite the pain Tracy had caused him, he hadn’t been ready for marriage then. Hell, he hadn’t been ready when he’d asked Lisa Foster to marry him four years later.

Forcing a smile at the concerned pucker of Amanda’s brow, he laid a reassuring arm across her small shoulders. “What is it, Mandy?”

“Why aren’t you eating? Don’t you like the food?”

He patted her shoulder, then picked up his fork with his left hand. “I was just thinking.”

“Oh.” Mandy picked at her potato salad and looked at him again. “What about?”

He glanced at Tracy. She met his gaze over the plates of the obliviously happy groom and bride. How many times had he lain awake under his Humvee in Afghanistan or Iraq and wished things had been different with Tracy?

As he met Mandy’s big blue eyes, he sighed. If he had the power to change the past, it would be Lisa’s fate he’d want to change. “I was thinking about your momma.”

Mandy tilted her head to the side. “Was your wedding like this one?”

“No, not exactly. Your momma and I got married by the minister of your grandma’s church in the living room of her house. The only guests were close family.”

“Then you went to the war as a Marine?”

He forked up a bite of barbecued beef. “Yep.”

Two days after marrying Lisa on her parents’ Wyoming ranch, he’d shipped off for boot camp in San Diego. He’d joined the Marines after Nine-Eleven, giving up the rodeo forever.

“Do you still miss Momma?”

He looked into his daughter’s face and his gut twisted. “Yes.”

“Is that why you don’t have a girlfriend?”

Mandy was too young to come up with that on her own. “Who says I need a girlfriend?”

She turned back to her meal and shrugged. “I heard Grandma and Aunt Winnie talking. They said you should get a girlfriend.”

Locating his parents, uncle and aunt among the guest tables, he narrowed his eyes. “Well, maybe I don’t think I need a girlfriend.”

Mandy grew quiet, and he thought the topic had run its course. Despite the solid rock of pain and guilt filling his stomach, he finished his food and sipped his lemonade. There were champagne and beer for those who wanted it, but besides being pregnant, Charli was a recovering alcoholic and Dylan had stopped drinking months ago.

Zack didn’t drink much alcohol these days, and he never drank it when he had to drive. Besides being the county sheriff, he knew firsthand how driving drunk affected a family–even a shattered one.

“Daddy?”

He set his glass down and turned to Mandy. “Yeah, baby girl?”

Her violet eyes met his with guileless innocence. “Momma isn’t ever comin’ home, is she?”

He looked away and swallowed. For the past two years, Mandy had believed her mother would come home from heaven when she missed them enough. He’d sit by every night while Mandy said her prayers and asked God to send her momma home. After all, He didn’t need any more angels. He already had lots.

And every evening Zack would go to his room with his heart shredded all over again.

“No, baby girl, she isn’t,” he said gently and wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. “Heaven isn’t a place you can leave once you go there. But your momma is always watching out for you, don’t you ever believe she isn’t.”

She nodded and sniffed. “Would she mind if we got another momma? You know, someone who could be here for us since she can’t?” Mandy must have seen the surprise register on his face. “Like my friend Kayla’s grandma found her a new grandpa when her real grandpa died. A new momma could fix my hair for school and teach me girl stuff. She could play dolls with me.” She looked down at the roll she was picking apart. “I know you hate it when I ask you to play with me and my Barbies.” She glanced across her shoulder at him. “And a new momma could keep you company, too. Maybe she could give me a baby sister.”

God, he hadn’t known she was that lonely, but he couldn’t give her what she wanted.

She reached for her lemonade with both hands. “Things like that. Kinda like a substitute teacher.”

To her, it was probably that easy. Mandy didn’t understand the complications and disastrous outcomes of adult love, but his heart swelled with love and pride for his little girl. She was making a step in the right direction of accepting her mother was gone. But he wasn’t ready to find a substitute wife.

He swallowed the lump sticking in his throat. “Who says I don’t like playing with you and your dolls?” She gave him a yeah-right-dad look, and he squeezed her shoulders. “Okay, I’ll admit playing with your Barbie dolls isn’t my favorite thing, but we’re doing okay, aren’t we? Just you and me.”

She didn’t look convinced. Before she could spew out the words reflecting what he saw through her eyes, he said, “I think we should get ready for wedding cake, don’t you?”

When he looked up, Tracy watched him, and not for the first time, his body reminded him how the tall, slender brunette had always affected him. She was downright sexy in the short cornflower blue dress that made her gray eyes take on the hue of a bright summer sky. Her long, brown hair curled softly and fell around her bare shoulders.

He may not be ready for a substitute momma for his baby, or the complications of falling in love again, but he’d really like to find a woman who could keep him
company
. He already knew who he’d like that woman to be. She was the last person on Earth he should want. And the last woman on Earth he could have.

* * * *

Tracy watched her brother hold his wife so close they seemed like one person as they moved out on the dance floor to Logan Cartwright’s cover of Alabama’s
Feels so Right
.

As Logan finished the song, she dreaded the next dance. When she looked over her shoulder, Zack peered at her from behind a group of wedding guests. His dark blond brows lowered over his intense blue eyes. He didn’t look too happy about their turn on the makeshift dance floor.

She swallowed and waited for him to walk toward her. Zack’s younger brother announced the next dance, and Zack stepped before her. When she placed her hand in his, heat tingled up her arm. She looked at his face, but if he felt anything, he didn’t feel the same thing she did.

His eyes narrowed into slits. “Let’s get this over with.”

She swallowed hard and nodded.

All eyes were on them. In a community as close-knit as Forest County, Texas–where everyone seemed related in some convoluted way–not many people didn’t know Tracy and Zack’s sordid past. A past she had never lived down.

He didn’t smile. His expression didn’t change from the angry contemplation she’d seen more than once on his face.

They reached the middle of the dance floor, and he dropped her hand and reached for her waist. Heat from his light grasp immediately flowed through her, and she sucked in a breath. She had to get a grip. He was making it clear he wanted nothing to do with her. Didn’t she want as far away from him as she could get, too?

She rested her hands on his broad shoulders. His grip tightened slightly over her hips, and their gazes touched only briefly before she looked away.

Logan sang a cover of John Michael Montgomery’s hit,
I Swear
. Why did Logan pick this song for their dance? She was trapped like a calf with a pack of coyotes nipping at its flanks. She wanted Zack to pull her closer, but on the next shallow breath, she wanted him to push her away. He moved her over the floor with several inches between them.

His heat warmed her, and his muscles flexed under her hands where she touched him. He avoided meeting her eyes, but she caught him looking at her as Logan sang about giving everything and hanging some memories on the wall.

Was Zack thinking about what could have been between them, or was he missing his wife?

He looked over her head. A muscle twitched in his jaw and his movements seemed hurried, like he wanted to get the dance over with. So different from the first time they’d danced together at a cattle roundup two weeks after their senior year of high school had started. A week later, they’d begun dating.