Gambling on a Secret (33 page)

Annie shifted in her seat and looked away with a sneer. “Why the hell do you care? I know who you are. You’re the heiress who the whole damned town’s talkin’ about just because you bought some stupid ranch.”

She had to be honest with the girl or nothing she said or did would make a difference. She took another sip of the iced tea. “I care because I was where you are when I was fifteen.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I grew up in Tulsa. When I was fifteen, my mother died in a car accident. My grandfather, whom I’d never met, took me back to his ranch in western Oklahoma. I hated him, and I was angry my mother died leaving me alone. I got involved with one of the ranch hands on the ranch. Danny. He was only four years older than me, but I thought he hung the world.”

Pausing to drink more tea, she prayed she wasn’t making a mistake by telling this girl one of her deepest, darkest secrets. But she knew it was now or never to save Annie from making the same painful mistakes.

“What does that have to do with anything? So, what? You lost your virginity, and he didn’t love you.” Annie scooted across the seat to get out of the booth.

“Yes, I lost my virginity to him.” Her quiet words stopped Annie. “I also stole from my grandfather for him, and in return, Danny introduced me to drugs. First, marijuana, and then I graduated to coke.”

“You did drugs?”

She squeezed her shaky hands into fists under the table. “Yes.”

Annie stared at her for a few heart-stopping moments. She half expected her to run and announce to every gossipmonger in town she’d been a drug addict. Instead, Annie leaned in over the table. “You said your mom died. Why didn’t you live with your dad?”

How personal did she want to get? Somehow, knowledge about her being a runaway and living in Vegas had become common. She’d just admitted to drug use, but only Dylan knew about her mother or that she was illegitimate.

“I never knew my father.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t know about me.”

“Why did you do drugs?”

She leaned over her arms and peered into Annie’s dark eyes. If she’d read her correctly, she should hit a chord with her next statement. “I wanted to escape the pain and anger of losing my mother. I felt alone, and I didn’t understand why she was taken away from me. I ran away from home two months before my sixteenth birthday and ended up on the streets of Las Vegas. I was furious with my grandfather and blamed him for my mother’s death. She’d moved to Tulsa because he disowned her after she got pregnant with me. In my messed up thinking, I figured, if we had stayed at the Long Arrow, Momma wouldn’t have been going to work in Tulsa that morning.”

She took a breath and looked down at the fake red and white marble of the table. “We had nothing for years. Momma worked in a bank and lived partially on welfare, but she still barely had enough to cover the rent. She’d go without lunch for months before Christmas just so I’d get whatever overpriced, foolish toy I wanted that year from Santa Claus. It hadn’t been until about two years before her death things started looking up for us because she’d gotten a management position at the bank. Then she died.”

She paused and swallowed back a ton of old hurts and pain she’d long ago thought were resolved.

Deep inside, she still wanted Hank to take it all back. “I’ll never forget the day I saw the sprawling ranch house. Twenty-five thousand acres of land, cattle everywhere. The foyer of the house was bigger than the condo my mother had scraped and starved to pay for. Then I found out just how rich my grandfather was. I hated him.”

After a moment of fighting back the pain from the old memories, she cleared her throat and met Annie’s gaze. “Annie, I know you’re hurting, too.”

“Nothing’s hurting me. You don’t know me. You tell me some sad sob story. Boohoo.” On the defensive, Annie shifted to get out of the booth again.

“I know your father and mother are divorced, and since then, he won’t so much as talk to you. I’d bet you blame your mother and can’t understand what happened.”

Annie narrowed her eyes on her, the tension as thick as Ella’s famous biscuit gravy. “Every nosy old biddy in this hick town knows that. My dear old dad wanted a son but got me instead.” She shrugged and looked down at the table. “He decided he’d wasted enough time on waiting for me to grow a dick.”

She had done some research on Jeremy Greenberg. “He works as a cowboy on the CW and trains their horses.”

Annie looked up. “Yeah. So what?”

“Can you ride?”

“Depends on how cute he is.” Annie’s lips twitched.

“Did your dad teach you how to ride a horse?”

“Yeah. Dad taught me.” Annie lost some of the hostility and her shoulders sagged a little. She was looking for something more than she had right now. “I learned how to train horses, too. I wanted to work on the CW someday.”

She swallowed her heart, which was stuck in her throat. Jeremy Greenberg had no right hurting this girl whether he was Annie’s biological father or not. “I hope you and I can be friends.”

“Why?”

“Because I think we have a lot in common.”

“My mom won’t let me talk to any of my real friends, and I don’t want to be friends with you.”

“Are these ‘real friends’ the ones supplying you with drugs?”

Annie shrugged and narrowed her eyes.

She should talk to Ella first, but she’d made progress and what she was offering was harmless enough. She wanted to save Annie. “I’ll have to discuss it with your mom, but if she says it’s okay, I’d like you to come out to the ranch and ride with me. In fact, I want to buy some more horses, and who knows, I may need a trainer someday.”

Annie’s shrug was meant to look indifferent and bored, but the sudden gleam in her big brown eyes betrayed her very real interest in her offer.

Charli stood and smiled. “You think about it.”

* * * *

Two weeks later, Dylan drove out to the CW Ranch to purchase at least five more horses, which he intended to give real horse names–like Traveler and Trigger and Geronimo.

When he drove up to the main corral at the old homestead, Zack Cartwright, dressed in the tan uniform of the county sheriff, stood by the railing. He had a boot resting on the bottom rail and leaned over his arms on the top one. Zack turned his official Stetson-covered head to watch him exit his truck.

Once he headed toward him, Cartwright said, “Captain.”

He bristled, but let the nickname slide. “You told me I’d be meeting with either Luke, Paul or your cousin Lance because you were too busy playing lawman.”

Zack pushed back his hat and stepped away from the railing. “Lance has a meeting in Dallas, Uncle Paul has a meeting at the Mayor’s office and Dad refused to meet with you. He reminded me in not too many uncertain terms he’s retired and these horses are mine.” He pasted on a shitty grin. “I think it was their back-handed way of reminding me I own the ranch, despite the fact I should be sitting out on Highway 6 trying to catch today’s crop of speeders. I have a budget to meet.”

Maybe it was another incredible night spent in bed with the most amazing woman he’d ever known, or perhaps he just found the comment funny; whatever the reason, he laughed. “Are you still resisting the inevitable?”

Zack shrugged and looked out over the corral full of some mighty good-looking horseflesh.

“I suppose old habits really do die hard.”

Zack Cartwright had been a hell raiser who wanted nothing to do with his half of the ranch.

“You know…” Dylan leaned against the railing. “I never quite understood why the hell you never wanted to run this place.” He looked across his shoulder at the slightly taller man. “First, you were a damned rodeo champion, even back in high school. Second, it’s in your blood.”

Zack shook his head and peered out into the distance above the horses. “I suppose I’m a lot like you.”

“Me?”

Zack met his eyes. “The military’s in your blood. Your father’s a general, but you came to Texas a spoiled Army brat and decided you wanted to be a rancher. I’m a hayseed ranch kid who decided he didn’t want the ranch anymore.”

“Why’d you join the Marines? You were getting rich rodeoing. Even had your mug in one of those stupid girlie calendars.”

Zack let out a long sigh and leaned over the rail again, mimicking Dylan’s relaxed pose, but he had a feeling Zack was no more relaxed than he was. “Nine-Eleven happened.”

“So? Most people tied yellow ribbons on their trees and stuck bumper stickers on their cars. They didn’t join the Marines.”

Zack smiled and glanced at him. “I was in Cheyenne and met Lisa. Her dad was a veteran of Vietnam and her brother is a Marine.”

“Don’t tell me you signed up to impress a girl?”

“Yep.” He laughed, but it didn’t hold much humor. “I guess I did. She’d only marry me if I gave up the rodeo. No way in hell would I have stayed on her daddy’s ranch. And I sure as hell wasn’t coming back here. I needed a job and the Marines seemed like a good choice. I bought the whole spiel–hook, line and sinker.”

Zack’s sad smile told him everything. “I suppose it did set me on a career path. I wouldn’t have gotten my job if I hadn’t been a MP.” He shrugged. “What can I say? I felt compelled to do my patriotic duty.”

“And you got the girl.”

“We got married two days before I headed for boot camp. Next stop, Afghanistan.” He grew reflective. Dylan knew the rest of the story. Eerily similar to his or, more likely, the damned terrorists had no originality. “My unit was ambushed by a group of Taliban supporters. The next thing I knew everything went to hell.” Zack met his eyes. “Kinda like what happened to you.”

“Not quite.” He broke eye contact and looked back at the horses, prepared to say no more about the subject.

“Dammit, Quinn. Don’t you think we know your story? All about the nasty divorce and the bombing and the way things went down? Come on, this is Colton! The damned walls talk. Yet, we still respect you. We still care about your sacrifice. I think it’s time you start thinking about all the times you
weren’t
wrong. Start thinking about how many times your team, under your leadership, saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives. Who knows, maybe your sacrifice helped SEAL Team Six get that bastard.”

He jerked back.
Just walk away and take the business elsewhere
. There were plenty of horses in Texas. The Cartwrights didn’t own them all.

Zack heaved a breath that raised and lowered his shoulders. “I know you blame yourself for those men’s deaths, but not talking about it isn’t doing anyone any good.”

He scowled at Zack and balled his fists at his side. “You’re right. Talking about it isn’t helping anyone. It sure as hell won’t bring those four good men back or reattach legs and arms.”

As he turned away, Zack grabbed his arm and stared down at him. With the dual bearing of one of the Marine Corps and the big ego of a Texas cowboy lawman, Zack Cartwright probably intimidated more than his share of lesser men. Dylan wasn’t a lesser man. He balled his hand up to punch the sheriff.

Charli’s quiet words whispered in his mind,
De oppresso liber...

To free from oppression.

You really lived by that motto, didn’t you?

I tried to.

He
had
lived by the motto. A memory flickered of the girls his team rescued from the mountain cave in Afghanistan early in the war–on yet another hunt for the devil who’d started it all. Those half-starved, battered women would have surely died in that stinking hellhole if it hadn’t been for him following a hunch.

His hunches had usually panned out.

Until the day when they’d walked into a trap.

He took a long breath, let it out slowly and lowered his fist.

Zack dropped his hand from his arm. “Tracy told me about the woman who gave you the intel.”

He peered out over the horses. “I should have picked up on the trap. I fell for everything that damned woman told me. I should have told my commander I wasn’t fit to lead the team.”

“So, why didn’t you back out of the mission?”

He snapped his attention to Zack and stared at the hotshot’s stony certainty for a long time. “Because I was trained not to let personal stuff get in the way of the job.”

A corner of Zack’s lips curled up. “Exactly.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Zack shrugged in a whatever-you-want-it-to-mean way. “You thought you had your head in the game. We all do that, Dylan. The night before the battle that ended my illustrious career in the Marines, Lisa had rushed Amanda to the hospital because her appendix was about to burst.” He leaned on the top railing and looked out over the horses again. “I wanted to be there so damned bad, if I could have, I would’ve gone AWOL to be there. Moments before the truck exploded, I was mad as hell because I was sitting on a rock holding an M-16 instead of my wife while our baby was in surgery.”

Zack looked over his shoulder at him. “But the moment that truck came into the checkpoint, I shoved thoughts of home and Amanda to the back of my mind and became a soldier. I did what I was trained to do, and so did you when you took your team and led them.”