Gambling on a Secret

by Ellwood, Sara Walter

  The quarter horses, two sorrels, a bay and a black, calmed down. As Luke closed up the back of the trailer, Mayor Paul Cartwright, approached Charli.

  She hopped off the top rail. Her custom snakeskin boots landed in the dirt beside Mayor Cartwright. Despite still looking like she belonged on the cover of a magazine, maybe a cowgirl hid under the designer jeans, after all. Charli beamed at the older man from under the brim of a cream-colored Stetson and held out her hand to the older man.

  “Miss Monroe, my nephew wanted me to tell you it has been a pleasure doing business with you.”

  Luke, Zack’s father, shook her hand. “You have four extremely fine mares here. They’ll throw some nice foals, but they’re also trained to work.”

  Charli smiled at the Cartwright brothers. The late morning sun glittered off the hot pink nail polish at the tips of her fingers as she propped her hands on her hips. So much for the cowgirl image.

  “Cartwright horses are some of the best in this part of Texas. I couldn’t go wrong, now could I? Besides, I believe in helping out my neighbors.”

  One of the sorrels ventured over. Charli held out her hand, letting the horse tentatively nuzzle it. Starting at the white star between the mare’s eyes, she ran her hand over the horse’s long face. “I think I’ll call you Aurora for the Roman goddess of dawn.”

  The men laughed, and Luke said, “Just like a woman to come up with a name like that. You aren’t into that New Age stuff, are ya? Tarot cards and crystals?”

  She smiled. “No, I just like Greek and Roman mythology.”

  Dylan raised his brow. “You aren’t going to name the others some kooky name, are you?”

  She rewarded him with one of her fiery glowers.

  “You are. Let me guess, you plan to name the calves, too.”

  She turned back to stroke the nervous horse. “Of course, I won’t name the calves.”

  The other three horses came closer. He rubbed along the neck of the gorgeous black mare stopping next to him. The horse stomped her foot and let out a loud snort as she tossed her head from side to side a few times. As he stroked her neck and shoulder, she relaxed.

  Luke ran a hand over the black’s face. “Zack wanted me to remind you about speaking at his banquet on Memorial Day. He really would like you to join him. Many of the older veterans want to hear about your experiences over there in the desert. I know you boys had it a lot different than we did in Nam. I’m sure Miss Monroe could spare you for one day.”

  He saw the tactic a mile away. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Zack. No. Not interested.”

  “Why not?” Charli jumped right on in. “I think it’s a great idea.”

  Of course, she would think it was a great idea.

  “I don’t like talking in front of people.” He gave her a look hard enough to let her know to drop the topic, though she wouldn’t. He’d learned that pretty quick with her. “Maybe sometime you could bring Jackie by. Charli’s mama was a huge fan when she sang with her sisters.”

  Pink tinged her cheeks. “Dylan! I can’t believe...”

  The wrinkles in Luke’s weathered face bunched on either side of his mouth, and his blue eyes twinkled. He grinned and tipped his hat at him. Tit for tat. Luke, an old rodeo cowboy and all around country boy, hated to be reminded his wife had been a rock star hippie.

  Luke turned to Charli. “I’ll see what I can do. Most younger folks don’t even know she was famous back in a day. Our youngest boy, Logan, is more of a celebrity ’round here than she is.”

  The sorrel mare moved away. Charli rubbed her hands on her jeans. “I’d love to meet your wife, and I have to make it a priority to catch one of Logan’s shows. I’ve heard he’s really good, from the girls at Pratt’s.”

  Luke smiled with all pride and good will. “He is. Dylan, think about the banquet. We’d better get going.” He picked his hat off his head of nearly white hair and nodded like an old cowboy at Charli. As he glanced at Dylan, he stepped away.

  Paul cleared his throat and shifted his feet. “Miz Monroe, I don’t mean to pry, but before we go, I have to tell you my wife shared something with me that just, well, sort of amazed me.”

  “What have you heard?” A tremor sounded in Charli’s voice.

  “That you were a runaway.”

  Winnie Cartwright could have told Paul anything, but Dylan never expected that–

  The older men looked at her with a mix of curiosity and admiration. The color drained from Charli’s face; even her freckles washed out. Paul must have noticed her response and quickly back-pedaled. “I’m sorry if I brought up a bad memory...I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  She backed against the railing of the fence. Dylan stepped behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder, offering comfort for something obviously upsetting.

  Her back immediately stiffened. “How do you know about my running away from home?”

  Paul took his hat off and wiped his brow with the back of his gloved hand. “I’m sorry if I brought up something I shouldn’t have. Winnie said she heard it from one of her friends. Where she got the information, I don’t know.”

  “It’s not something I talk about. Thank you for delivering the horses. Good day, gentlemen.” Charli stiffly nodded and strode across the corral to the gate.

  Paul sniffed and watched her retreat across the driveway. “I just wanted to tell her I’m amazed she’s turned out so well. I’ve seen her grades at a board meeting at the college. She’s an excellent student and obviously knows what she’s doing here with the ranch. I wanted to let her know I’m...” Shaking his head, Paul moved away, patted his astonished older brother on the shoulder. At the pickup, Paul turned back to Dylan. “Tell her I’m sorry.”

  He glanced at him and absently nodded. Charli kept her back ramrod straight and hugged herself as she headed up the walkway to the back porch. Ignoring the brothers, he followed her.

  She stopped on the porch and stared at the old screen door.

  “Charli?”

  With eyes filled with pain, she turned to him. “I was almost sixteen when I left. The rodeo was in town, and I talked this guy I met into taking me with him.” She looked down at the peeling paint of the floorboards.

  The reasons a man would take a fifteen-year-old girl away from her home sent a shudder down his spine. No doubt, she was lucky to be alive.

  “That’s how you ended up in Las Vegas.”

  Charli nodded, then looked at him after a moment of tense silence. He followed her into the kitchen, but assumed she’d clam up and didn’t blame her. He didn’t like discussing his past either.

  She stood before the sink and stared out the window above. Not expecting her to say anything, he didn’t know how to fill the void.

  “I thought I was in love with the cowboy. We ended up in Vegas a few days later, where he dumped me after hearing an Amber Alert was posted for me.” More of her mysterious past. “Apparently, someone saw me leave Arapaho Crossings with him.”

  “How old was this creep?”

  “Old enough to know if they found me with him, he was going to prison. Especially since his payment was my dead grandma’s diamond ring and...and me.”

  Charli licked her lips, and he looked away. The fiercely primal need to protect her slithered around his gut and twisted his heart, like a mother bear with her cubs.

  “You stayed in Vegas?” His voice came out as a low growl.

  “Yeah.” The haunted look in her eyes made him want to pull her to him, but with nothing but more pain to offer her, he could never follow through with the desire. “I was eventually found, but I don’t talk about what happened in Vegas. You know what they say...” The idea of her in the unimaginable situation of being a runaway in Sin City made him sick. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

  What could he tell her to take away her pain?

  He busied himself with pouring them both a cup of the dregs from the coffee pot.

  She turned to him and let her arms fall to he
r side, but quickly brought them back up to hug herself again. “Now you know my deep dark secrets. What happened to you in Afghanistan?”

  Sharing his past wasn’t something he volunteered to do, but before he knew what he was doing, he took a deep breath and sat her mug on the counter beside her and spilled his guts. “I was the commander for a mission that was supposed to flush out a group of Bin Laden supporters in the countryside around Kandahar. Most of the mission is still top secret. I can say this, I should have suspected the woman giving us information seemed a bit too willing to help us, but I didn’t have my mind in the game the way I should have.”

  He didn’t tell her the reason he couldn’t concentrate on his responsibilities. She’d only asked him what had happened in the cesspool, not about his failed marriage and the letter he’d received two days before the mission. “I ignored my warrant officer and first sergeant’s warnings.”

  She waited for him to go on, but there was understanding in her eyes if he chose not to. Although he rarely talked about one of his biggest failures, he wanted to share something of himself with her.

  With the memory of the four men who’d died that day weighing heavy on his heart, he tightened his hand around the mug and looked down into the black brew. “I should have listened to them. Hell, I should have seen it for myself. We walked into a trap.”

  “The bombing.”

  He met her gaze and nodded.

  “That’s why you drink so much. You blame yourself for what happened.”

  He sipped the old coffee. The bitterness in his throat may have been from the brew or the grief, he couldn’t tell. For the first time in days, he craved a shot of whiskey. “Four of my men died that day. How can I not blame myself?”

  “Oh, Dylan, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, laying a hand on his cheek.

  The soft touch served to remind him how much he wished he could be the man he’d been before his life went to hell. He stood very still and peered down into her eyes. He’d wanted to provide comfort to her, yet she’d ended up comforting him.

  “What do you have to be sorry about?” He forced out over the lump in his throat.

  Swallowing hard so her delicate throat moved up and down, Charli rested her hand over his rapid heart. “I’m sorry you had to fight. I’m sorry you got hurt. I’m sorry I can’t take away the pain.”

  He stepped away from her and toward the door. “I better go take care of those horses.”

  He couldn’t bear to look at her and the watery pity he’d surely see in her eyes as he let the rusty old screen door slap closed behind him.

  * * * *

  A week later, Charli swung the kitchen door open before he had a chance to knock. She had a frustrated twist to her lips and a frantic gleam in her eyes. “I’m glad you’re finally here.”

  After Monday’s confessions, they’d spent the following days quietly working together in the storage barn, neither of them mentioning the past again.

  Her skimpy satin shorts and tank sent him into a tailspin. “I’m glad you’re glad. What’s going on?”

  “I had to turn the water off.” She moved away from the door. “The damned faucet broke off the sink last night.”

  Soggy towels of every size and color were scattered over the worn linoleum in front of the kitchen sink.

  He put his hat on the hook beside the screen door. “I guess we start with the sink today.”

  While she dressed, he ran to town to get the supplies he needed to fix the plumbing. After he returned, they had a quick breakfast of toaster pastries and milk, and then got to work. Dylan hated plumbing, but he could do it, especially when she offered a great distraction leaning over the counter beside him. When he asked her to hand him a wrench, she retrieved it from the toolbox on the floor.

  She rested her elbows on the counter and her chin in her hands. “I really didn’t need this. I have a statistics test tomorrow, the last one before the final.”

  He turned the wrench a few times on the pipe fitting connecting the base for a new faucet and glanced at her. “When do you do your homework? I never see you with your nose in a book.”

  “I do it before I go to bed.”

  “When’s that? Sometimes I don’t leave here much before nine. And then Leon always seems to pop in.” He jerked his chin toward the table. “I see he brought you another batch of flowers.”

  Charli glared. “So? He’s my friend. He actually helped me understand one of my statistics problems.”

  He frowned. She never asked him for help. “He helps you with your homework?”

  “Only this one time. I was studying when he came over.”

  “You could’ve asked me to help you.”

  She couldn’t hide her disbelief. “You know statistics?”

  He went back to twisting a wrench around the faucet base. “I’m sure I could’ve figured it out.”

  Laughing, she leaned farther over the counter on her arms. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous of Leon.”

  He concentrated on the stubborn plumbing and tried hard not to look at the fantastic view the crescent of her blue camouflage tank top provided of her freckled cleavage. “There’s nothing that bast–he has I want.” He looked at her. “I just know what he wants, and I’d hate to see you get hurt.”

  “I won’t.” She pointed at the faucet. “Looks like we’re done.”

  He removed the wrench and took her cue to drop the subject. He didn’t like how his skin prickled every time he thought of Leon visiting her at night. “Yep. When did this break?”

  She started to gather up the tools and put them back in the box. “About midnight when I decided to make a cup of tea. I was getting ready to finish some sociology reading I had to do for tomorrow.”

  “What time do you go to bed, if you’re still studying at midnight?”

  “I usually go to bed between one and two. That’s why I’m such a bitch in the morning.” She dropped the last tool into the box and wiped her hands on the back of her short denim shorts. Her smile meant to be apologetic, but her eyes twinkled with mischief. “Sorry you see me at my best.”

  “Is not getting enough sleep the reason you answer the door half dressed?” The question slipped out of his mouth before he’d thought it through. His brain was stuck on the way she looked with her hands in her back pockets. His childhood fantasy girl, Daisy Duke, had nothing on Charli in short shorts.

  The lilt of her laugh sent a sliver of anticipation through him. “I’m not ashamed of my body, Dylan. I’m sorry if the way I dress bothers you.”

  Shrugging, he leaned against the counter. “Not at all. I’m an open-minded kinda guy.”

  “Good. Because getting up before seven is a real killer for me. Now, go turn on the water. I want some coffee, and I’ll make us a real breakfast.”

  * * * *

  Dylan sat beside Charli at the large table of his friend’s cabinetry store in Killeen on the third Monday of April. Her calves had been delivered last Wednesday. They were settled, and he didn’t expect any problems. Before he began the remodel of her bathroom, he’d called his cabinetmaking friend and set up an appointment.

  Charli pointed to a glossy photo of a custom-made kitchen. “I like this style.”

  The father and son team had made cabinets for a combined total of fifty years, and Dylan had hired them to build the kitchen and baths in his house. Normally, he stayed away from things reminding him of his ex-wife, but this kind of craftsmanship was hard to find.

  After studying the picture, he couldn’t argue the washed-out white oak in the farmhouse styling would be perfect in her kitchen.

  The cabinetmakers scheduled a time to come to the house to get measurements and finalize the deal.

  They left the shop and headed to a German pub he had frequented while stationed at Fort Hood. Over their meals of Bratwurst sandwiches and sauerkraut, he couldn’t hold back voicing what had bothered him ever since his cousin started working on the ranch. “Kyle seems interested in you
.”

  Charli set her sandwich on the plate and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. The action drew him in like a fly to honey. What wouldn’t he do to feel those lips under his? The possibility sent a jolt straight through him.

  “I would never date a man like Kyle McPherson.”

  He raised a brow. “Why not? As far as I know, he’s not gay, and the girls in town seem to think he’s good-looking.”

  She shrugged and sipped her sweet tea. “I don’t like men my own age.”

  A terrible wicked hope burned into his heart. Hell, he was only thirty-six, and that wasn’t ancient. “Okay” was the only response he could muster.

  Grinning, she gazed at him with eyes so blue-green they were like the ocean, forbidding and inviting at the same time. “I like older men. I find guys my own age to be complete immature idiots.”

  She looked away, leaving him hanging somewhere between drowning in the pools of her eyes and floundering in midair.

  He crashed down when he realized he wasn’t the only older man in her life. Leon might be forty-two to her twenty-four, but morals didn’t matter to him. Moreover, the lack of financial security and fear of a broken heart didn’t hold that old bastard back. “What about Leon?”

  “I appreciate everything he’s done for me.” Charli picked at the sauerkraut on her plate. “I just wish he’d stop bringing me gifts every time he visits. I love the flowers, but I never have anything to repay him with.”

  The instant fire climbing his neck had him breathing hard and his gut turning cold. He growled at the image of her and Leon together. “I can tell you what he wants.”

  She put her fork on the plate and narrowed her cat-like eyes at him. “You aren’t going to insist he wants my land again, are you?”

  He shook his head and unlocked his jaw. Picking up his glass of cola to keep from fisting his hand, he kept his tone as blase as he could. “Not at all. I’d say first he wants you in the sack as naked as the day you were born.”

  Her mouth fell open and she spread her hands over the tabletop. “That is the most vulgar thing you’ve ever said to me. Whatever happened to the officer and a gentleman attitude among you military types? Because no Texas gentleman would ever speak to a woman that way.”