Gambling On a Heart (20 page)

For weeks, she’d practiced writing her name, Mrs. Derrick Marino, over and over along with little hearts in her notebooks. She’d imagined their wedding and their babies. He’d become an engineer, she’d be a doctor, and they’d live happily ever after.

The happily-ever-after had ended one very painful night at the drive-in.

“I’ve been meaning to ask.” His voice cracked the way it did when he was nervous.

She smiled and nestled closer. Here it comes, she pathetically thought,
he’s going to ask me to wear his class ring
. “Yeah?”

“Why don’t you get a boob job?”

“
What
?” She pulled away to stare at him.

“You know what I mean. All the actresses are getting them nowadays. You could get one. Your family’s rich enough.”

Tracy bit her lip so hard she tasted blood as the memory played out to its terrible end. That had been the last date with Derrick. He’d called several times over the next few days, but she’d refused to talk to him. He’d tried to explain that he was sorry.

Yeah, right.

She was glad that he was balding, had gained a paunch, and at last report, had just divorced his second wife. But he’d become a petroleum engineer. He worked in Dallas and lived in the swanky suburbs, while she’d gained a reputation of being a cheater and gone nowhere in Colton.

She’d thought about having her breasts enlarged, but never had the money to go through with the surgery. Now, maybe she should think about it. Then she thought about some of the women she’d known who had boob jobs. Did she honestly want to look like them? No, she couldn’t say she did. Besides, if she did have her breasts augmented, her already shaky reputation would be shot to hell and back.

She’d dated men since leaving Jake, but not seriously. In fact, most of them were nothing more than friends she’d meet up with when she’d go honky-tonk hopping. Of all the men she’d known over the years, only a handful had suggested more than a good time on the dance floor, but she’d always refused them.

Partly, because she wasn’t that kind of girl, despite her earlier mistakes, and in part, out of fear of rejection once they saw her without her clothes and padded pushup bra.

A knock on her bedroom door startled her. “Mom?” Bobby’s voice sounded from the other side. “Are you ready? We’re waiting on you.”

She swallowed down the bitterness caused by the years of feeling inadequate and ugly. “In a minute,” she choked out and wiped at the moisture on her cheeks. “Go ahead and get in with Zack.”

Turning away from the mirror, she glanced one last time at the image of her unremarkable body in the black one-piece. Suddenly, a different memory snuck up on her. Zack laid her down on an old quilt over the soft grass on a starry, warm, mid-September evening.

The golden-haired boy over her had promised not to hurt her as he slowly undressed her. He’d seemed to worship every uncovered area of skin, causing a plethora of new and exciting sensations with his hands and lips. When the time had come for him to enter her, he’d whispered in her ear,
“I’ll never hurt you.”

And as he’d gently taken her to a place she’d never known existed, she’d almost believed he thought she was pretty.

“He loved you, Tracy! He wanted to marry you!”
Logan’s voice echoed in her mind from the day he’d come to her door with evidence of how much Zack had, indeed, loved her.

“No!” she said and held her baby boy against her breast. “If he loved me, he’d have told me. He wouldn’t have cheated on me!”

“Cheated on
you
?”

“Jake caught him with Dawn Madison.”

“Tracy, Dawn Madison is only a friend. Zack has no interest in her. Jake lied to you. Zack came over to the ranch to give you this, that day he caught you and Jake together.” Logan pulled the most beautiful diamond ring from his pocket. “My brother loved you. But you threw him away for a no-good grease monkey who publicly criticizes you and has done nothing but held you back.”

Taking a deep breath, she turned her back on the mirror and the ghosts it conjured. But two questions still rattled around in her mind like the chains of a phantom in a corny old movie.

What did Zack see in me to make him fall so deeply in love?

Can he still see it?

* * * *

Although he was thoroughly in the middle of the splashing, the dunking, and other pool antics with the kids, Zack somehow managed to take a long, hard look at his hostess. She walked from the French doors to the edge of the pool and slowly dropped the cover-up onto a chaise lounge.

The plain suit she wore would never be featured in
Sports Illustrated
. But there was something about the fluid motion of her willowy body slipping into the water and the swan-like grace of her strokes as she swam out to them that had Zack thinking about her without the suit.

Don’t go there.

She stopped and straightened several feet from him. Water sluiced off her, and she wiped a hand over her face. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and water glistened on her high cheeks and dripped off the point of her chin. She gave him a slight smile, then looked over at the kids.

“What are we going to do?”

“Let’s play volleyball!” Bobby yipped and swam to the edge to grab the net setup.

Tracy smiled and looked at Mandy, who was treading water with the help of a Styrofoam noodle tucked under her arms. “Is that what you’d like to play?”

“Yeah. Can I be on your side, Tracy?”

“I’d love it if you were.” Tracy gave his daughter a winning smile. “We girls gotta stick together.”

“I can’t get it.” Bobby struggled with the end of the net. Zack swam over to the edge, and within moments, had it attached to the other end.

“Looks like it’s you and me, buddy.” Zack smiled at Bobby. He’d gotten the impression all evening the boy was less than happy at having him here.

“Okay.” Bobby looked up at him. As Tracy retrieved a big beach ball from the diving end of the pool, he asked, “Did you really ride rodeo?”

“Yep. I’ve been riding horses since I was two years old.”

“Not by yourself?” His hazel eyes–Jake’s eyes–grew wide.

“I had a little pony that wasn’t much bigger than a shepherd dog. My dad would lead me around on him. By the time I was four, I was riding on my own horse.”

Tracy was back and spoke with Mandy, but her gaze surreptitiously met his.

“When I was about your age, I started riding broncos. About the same time, I started working for my dad and granddad, learning how to saddle train horses.”

Bobby’s brow pinched together as if he was deep in thought.

Zack said loud enough to ensure Tracy heard, “Maybe you could come over to the ranch sometime. You and your mom. We could go riding.”

Bobby shook his head, looked at the surface of the water, and mumbled, “I don’t know how to ride.”

Zack glanced at Tracy, who was biting her lower lip. “That’s okay. I could teach you. It’s not hard.”

Bobby met his grin with a wobbly smile. “I don’t know.”

“I think we’ll need to think about it,” Tracy chimed in and looked from Bobby to Zack. “Thank you for the offer, Zack.”

“No problem.” Zack shrugged. What the hell? Bobby didn’t know how to ride? Tracy was an accomplished rider, and she’d always had access to the Ferguson horses even when Leon owned the place.

“Let’s play!” Mandy chirped. “We girls are gonna beat the pants off y’all!”

Zack and Tracy both laughed, and Bobby teased, “No way, little girl.”

Then Tracy served ball and the game began.

* * * *

After the very cutthroat volleyball game, which the girls won by one point, Tracy suggested the kids play Marco Polo. She and Zack got out. She made coffee and carried out two mugs to the wicker chair, where Zack settled in to watch their children frolic in the water.

Amanda’s swimming ability had surprised her during the volleyball game. When she jumped into the deep end and swam across the pool chasing Bobby, Tracy commented, “Wow. She’s quite a swimmer.”

Zack sipped from his mug and nodded. “Yeah, she’s part fish, I think.” He sat the mug down on the small table between their chairs. “I’m glad Lance has a pool, or she’d be bugging me to put one in. Lisa had taken her to swimming lessons since she was a baby.”

“I did that with Bobby, too.” Tracy hugged her hands around the hot cup she held. Lisa...she always seemed to come up. Tracy knew Zack still missed his wife, but she wanted to know if he still loved her. Accepting that he wanted her only for sex was one thing, but if he was still in love with another woman, even a dead one, she’d never have a chance. “What was she like?”

He pulled his gaze from the kids and studied her. “Who?”

“Lisa.”

“She was outgoing,” he said in a low tone and looked back out at his daughter. “She was a nurse and a fantastic mother. She had to be–I was gone most of the time. I wasn’t even there for Amanda’s birth or the time she got her appendix out.”

“That was when you were wounded, wasn’t it?” She’d spent all evening trying not to let her gaze settle on the silvery puckered scar on his mid-abdomen where he’d been shot.

He looked at her again and nodded. “Yeah, Lisa had called me and told me she was taking Mandy to the hospital because she was afraid her appendix had burst. Mandy had woken up screaming her belly hurt.” He paused and looked down at his hands in his lap. Tracy watched as he fisted one of them. “I wanted to be there so badly, if it had been possible, I would’ve gone AWOL. I’d already missed so much of her life. I hadn’t been there for her birth because I was on a training mission. I missed her first words and steps because I was deployed to Iraq. Now, she was sick, and instead of being home, I was watching supply trucks roll through the checkpoint at Peshawar on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

“Finally, one rolled in and exploded. Guerrilla soldiers swarmed us, and I was shot in the gut. Dennis, one of my fellow Marines, pulled me to the safety of a rock. But we had been followed, and that Taliban bastard shot Dennis in the chest. The only good thing out of it was Dennis got a shot off, too.” Zack paused and took a long draw on his coffee cup. She flinched at the haunted shadows in his blue eyes. “If he hadn’t risked his life, I’d be dead.”

Zack looked out at Mandy again playing in the pool and murmured, “I wish I could turn back time. I’ll never...”

She wished she could give all those early experiences with Amanda back to him. She understood, because her father hadn’t been around for so many of her milestones. “Zack, you’re here now for her when she really needs you.”

“I know.” He shook his head. “I should never have re-enlisted after my four years were up. I wouldn’t have been there. Dennis wouldn’t be dead, and... Well...” His smile looked pasted on. “Nothing will change the past.”

No wonder Zack understood Dylan’s post-traumatic stress so well. “True.”

He looked away and murmured, “I just wish I’d realized that years ago.”

As she watched the way his jaw clenched, something else he’d said to her from a meeting a year ago in his office when she’d gone to pick up Dylan came to mind.

“For me it was an IED packed in a supply truck. I blamed myself when I came home for not checking out the truck better. Then an argument over stupid stuff from the past and a drunk driver crossing a double yellow line killed my wife. I can imagine what Dylan is going through. I was wounded and came back only to have my wife killed six months later, leaving me a single father of a four-year-old baby girl. I blamed everyone and anyone while I tried to crawl into a bottle of whiskey, but I could never bring Lisa back.”

Tracy looked out at the pool. Bobby tagged Mandy in their Marco Polo game. The floodlights had long ago come on, with a mass of moths and gnats swarming around the bright bulbs.

She turned back to Zack and found him staring down at his fisted hands. Although she wanted him to open up, she knew now wasn’t the time, nor was he ready. “That was really nice of you to invite Bobby out to the ranch.”

He seemed to pull himself from some dark place and looked at her. “The invitation was for you, too. I’m hoping you’ll let me reciprocate the time we had tonight. I don’t have a pool, but I think Bobby would have fun. I can’t believe he doesn’t know how to ride. I could teach him. I still have old Grasshopper. He’s the gentlest horse in Texas.”