Taking a deep breath, Tracy stared at the aces. “I’m betting one heart and my dignity. What will you raise me, Zack?”
She parked her car next to the garage, added since Zack owned the house. A porch ran the length of the sprawling ranch house. Several rocking chairs sat in the shade, along with a jumble of large toys, including a bright pink battery operated toy car. In the side yard, under a large oak tree was a wooden swing set, complete with tower and slide. A sandbox nestled under the floor of the loft.
Tracy imagined Zack sitting on the porch watching Mandy play in the yard. She wasn’t prepared for the longing to be there beside him watching their kids playing.
Rather than give into the hopelessness, she found courage and opened her car door. She fished the key Zack had given her out of her slacks pocket and opened the first door she came to. As promised, it opened into a mudroom. To the left of the kitchen, a huge dining room opened through an impressive timber arch. She turned away from the exhilarating view of the pastures provided by the wall of windows and looked around the kitchen as she thrust out a sigh.
“Make yourself at home. Right.”
She set her hobo purse and the key on the top of the black marble counter of the island, over which hung an assortment of copper-bottomed pots and pans. The appliances were state-of-the-art and stainless steel. This kitchen belonged to someone who knew how to cook. Her heels sounded hollow on the stone floor, reminding her of a big empty castle. A stone fireplace divided the kitchen and the parlor. A long, heavy trestle table with a bench on either side took up the space before the cold hearth. On either end were antique high-backed Spanish chairs.
She turned toward the mudroom door, thinking it might be a good idea to just leave while she could. She caught sight of the counter closest to the door. It was a muddle of newspapers, magazines and a few toys. The tiny naked arm and a head with badly cut blonde hair poking out from among the daily news made her laugh. Most of the time, she felt as if she was drowning in the bad news of the world, too, just like Barbie.
The allusion helped her relax enough to continue exploring. She felt the pulse of history in the home, much as she did at the house at Oak Springs. However, unlike her mother’s childhood home, here she didn’t feel so overwhelmed by the formality.
As she wandered around the large dark wood table in the dining room, gently running her fingertips over the dusty surface, she remembered the time Zack had brought her over to this house the Christmas Eve they’d stayed here while his grandparents were away. Zack and she had attended the family gathering at his Uncle Paul’s, then instead of taking her home, Zack had brought her back here. She smiled at the bittersweet memory.
“This house will be mine someday.” Zack showed her around. “Do you like it?”
“Yes.” She looked around at the table and hutch full of old dishes. “It’s a really neat place.”
“It is. Some of this stuff has been in my family for well over a hundred years.” After taking her into his arms, he said, “C’mon, there’s something I want to show you.”
He led her to the bedroom at the end of the long corridor. The master suite was as massive as the rest of the house and as primitive, although it had been added recently. Zack left her long enough to light the candles he’d placed around the room. “You aren’t really thinking of doing what I think you are. Not here. In your grandparents’ bed!”
He laughed and kissed her on the nose after wrapping her up into his arms again. “I changed the sheets and even laundered the comforter. Besides, they don’t sleep in here anymore. Granny sleeps in one of the other rooms in a special bed. And Granddad sleeps in a twin bed beside hers. He didn’t like being in here without her. Claims the bed’s too damned big.”
He’d made love to her most of the night. At the memory of his touch, anticipation sizzled through her.
As if a ghost whispered in her ear, she heard his words as they’d lain together, wrapped up in a glorious afterglow. “I want to ride rodeo after graduation, while you go to school. I’ll take some ag-business classes between rodeos, and by the time you’re done with med school, I should be done with what I need to know to run this place. Then we can move in...”
Tracy gasped as the meaning of his words burned through her brain like a rocket. She’d been too tired to listen to the rest of his words and fallen to sleep.
“He was talking about our future.” The pain of the realization rocketed through her. She had to make Zack fall in love with her again.
With renewed determination, she decided to look around the rest of the house.
She made her way to the living room, again taken aback by the mix of modern and antique furniture, the amazing view from a wall of windows and the clutter of toys mixed with Zack’s magazines and books. It was such an intimate view into his life. She could see him relaxing in the big leather chair reading his magazines or watching the big screen TV hanging on the wall, while Mandy sat on the floor playing with her Barbies in the giant pink dollhouse in the corner.
Suddenly, a chill tickled down her spine, and she hugged herself against the shiver. She didn’t believe in ghosts. But she figured with the history this place had, if they did exist, there had to be a ghost or two wandering aimlessly around the wide halls and big rooms.
Tracy looked toward the fireplace separating the living room from the formal dining room, and her heart stuttered over a few beats when she saw the photographs lovingly displayed. No, the ghost she felt wasn’t Cole Cartwright coming back to check up on his poker winnings. This ghost was far more real, and a lot harder to exorcise.
“You must be Lisa,” she whispered, but her voice echoed in her mind as if she’d screamed the words.
The stunning woman stared back at Tracy with her full lips frozen forever in a bright smile. She’d been a beauty queen and she looked the part. Long black hair framed a heart-shaped face. Her intelligent, brown eyes were set wide with a pert nose between. Amanda, indeed, looked a great deal like her mother.
Tracy turned her attention away from the woman who’d taken the heart she’d so carelessly broken and made it her own, to the other photos. The next photograph was of Zach in full dress uniform before the flag. The insignia on his uniform was that of a private first class. He looked so young in the picture. She’d seen it before; his aunt had shown it to her years ago. Carefully, she picked up the frame and gazed down at the stranger in the picture chronicling a chapter in Zack’s life she knew very little about.
“That was taken before I went to Afghanistan the first time.”
She almost dropped the frame when she spun to look into the somber face of the live, older version of the man in the picture. The uniform was different, but he resembled the soldier more than the scruffy-haired cowboy she’d fallen for in high school.
Staring into his blue eyes, she saw an unfamiliar shadow. Maybe Zack was more a stranger than she liked to admit. How much of the cowboy she’d hopelessly loved was still in there? Or had his beautiful wife and the life of a Marine fighting in the war completely changed him?
She was ready to find out.
Tracy returned the frame to its place on the mantle and forced herself to look at the pictures of Zack’s life. There were several of Lisa and Amanda as she went from infant to toddler, and a few of Zack with his family. But the one that stopped her cold was obviously a wedding picture. He had Lisa tucked under his arm. Lisa had been the complete opposite from Tracy–average height, busty and curvy. Zack was dressed in a suit and Lisa wore a simple white dress. Lisa practically glowed, and Tracy wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Zack look so happy.
She turned away from the depiction of the life that could have been hers. “Lisa was so beautiful.” Her voice sounded as if she’d dragged it out of her over sandpaper. She hated herself for reminding him of how much she would never measure up to his dead wife.
“Yes, she was.” He held her gaze as if looking for the secrets of the universe.
“Zack...”
S
he gasped when he pulled her to him. “And so are you,” he whispered against her lips and swallowed her will to disbelieve with his blazing kiss.
Much as he had on that Christmas Eve a lifetime ago, Zack led her down the hall to the open heavy wooden double doors of bedroom at the end. They stopped by the bed, and he deposited a small plastic bag holding a box of condoms on the bedside table.
Anxiousness like nothing she’d ever felt before smacked into her like a tornado when she looked at the king-sized bed. The bed wasn’t made, but the dark green and tan comforter and plain white sheet were pulled up to the pillows.
“Sorry about the mess.” He reached for the buckle of his service belt. “I never entertain company in here.”
She bit her lip as he removed the belt holding various gear, including a holstered Glock, and gently laid it on the couch in front of a red brick fireplace. He didn’t date and probably hadn’t had sex since his wife’s death. The prospect of being the first since Lisa both thrilled and scared her to her core.
When he stood before her again, she met his gaze. “Shouldn’t you lock that up? Because of the gun?”
The grin tugging on his lips had invisible tentacles attached to the pit in her lower belly where she felt its pull. With his hands on the buttons of his shirt, he said, “Are you afraid of my gun?” He opened more buttons, revealing his chest was bare underneath.
As with the night they’d played in the pool, she found it hard not to stare at the muscles moving under the tanned skin and the scar marking the wound that had nearly killed him.
He shrugged out of the shirt. “I wasn’t planning on shooting off that particular gun.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and unlaced his boots, pulled them off, then his socks. Such a simple act, but the exhaled breath caught behind her heart somewhere in her throat. He stood, held out his hand to her. “Come here.”
And despite every warning bell in her going off, she took his hand and let him pull her to him. He wrapped her up in his arms.
“This is crazy. It’s the middle of the afternoon. You should be at work trying to figure out who stole your horses. Or sleeping. You said you worked all night.”
A grin lifted the corner of his lips. He hadn’t shaved, and the day’s growth of beard darkened the angle of his jaw and planes of his cheeks. A troublesome lock of hair fell over his forehead. He looked just like the picture of the bad-assed rodeo cowboy she’d ripped from a friend’s calendar and kept folded up in her underwear drawer.
“Yeah, we probably are crazy, but I don’t care.” A hairsbreadth above her lips, he murmured, “Tell me now if you don’t want to do this, Tracy.”
He gave her an out. She should walk away now, before she completely lost her heart, but her body had other ideas. She pressed her lips to his and licked the full upper lip. When he pressed her pelvis into his, she felt the hard, long steel of his erection. Parting his lips, he let her tentatively explore his hot mouth. He tasted so good, sweet and spicy. His tongue stroked against hers, and her hands, caught between their bodies, splayed over his hard six-pack and inched their way upward. Only a sparse dusting of hair tickled her fingers in their blind exploration. As she stroked over the points of his masculine nipples, he sucked in a heavy breath and caressed his tongue against hers and turned up the passion of the kiss to toe-curling.
He slipped his hands under her top, and she shuddered as he caressed up her spine, pushing the thin material up, breaking the kiss to remove her t-shirt. After tossing it on top of his uniform shirt, he reached for the belt of her pants. Before any semblance of sanity returned, she was stepping out of her sandals and kicking off the slacks pooled around her ankles.
She couldn’t meet his gaze. Tracy knew he was peering at her, dressed in her plain white bra and panties. She didn’t want to see what she’d find in his eyes.
“Tracy.” His voice was low and gentle. Using his finger and thumb, he lifted her chin to bring her eyes to his. He smiled and ran the backs of his fingers over her cheek, down her neck to the small rise above her padded push-up bra.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see in the midnight pools, but an inferno wasn’t it. He curled his other hand around her hipbone, and he turned her to lay her on the bed. He stretched out beside her, and his lips followed the blazing trail his fingers had made only moments before.
For several moments, he teased the flesh above the edge of her bra. His hand splayed over her belly; the heat warming, tantalizing, making her want so much more. Now that she was committed to going through with making love with him, she ached for him. She squirmed under him, and he rewarded her by flicking open the front closure of her bra and uncovering her breasts.
The cool air on the puckered nipples sobered her a little, made her uncomfortable with being so exposed to him. She opened her eyes to him smiling at her. He leaned over and kissed her, while he covered her entire breast with a hand, gently kneading, caressing the tender skin and supersensitive nipple with a work-roughed palm. When she gasped and arched into the sensations, he moved his lips to her ear and huskily whispered, “I’ve always loved your perky little breasts, Tracy. Let me show you how much.”
His words excited her more than she could explain. She fisted her hands in his hair while he moved his mouth to the nipple he’d been teasing with his hand. With the kind of attention only he’d ever shown her, he encircled the areolas, of first one breast, then the other. Then he sucked, nibbled, and teased the nipples with his fingers. She writhed under his ministrations while fire burned through her veins, sending a shudder through her that could have been the first quakes of orgasm. By the time he moved his fingers down to her heaving belly, she was a trembling mess, so close to exploding, desperate for his touch.
When he reached her panties, he cupped her and lightly caressed her through the cotton. She arched against him, reaching for more, wanting him. She touched every inch of his shoulders, back and arms she could reach, but it wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t do more than lightly touch her. She groaned in as much delicious frustration as in pleasure.
He nipped the flesh above the edge of her panties. She moaned and pressed her pubic bone into his touch. He pulled his hand back, not letting her find the pressure she so frantically wanted. She whimpered, begged, “Zack...please...”
He again rewarded her with a little more, but not enough. He slipped his thumbs under the edge of her cotton panties, slid them over her hips, down to her feet. He caressed up her legs to the apex, burrowed his fingers into the nest of curls, and caressed the hungry bundle of nerves hidden within. She gasped his name again and clawed at the bedding when his fingers encircled her clitoris, around and around, but never quite close enough.
Then his mouth and tongue replaced his fingers. The fire turned her insides to lava, building, bubbling. She rolled her hips into his touch. When he suckled her and pressed a finger into her, she blew apart, erupting into a million flaming pieces.
Once the splinters burned out and the ashes cooled, congealing back into place, she opened her eyes to him leaning over her. He kissed her, then stood beside the bed and undid the fly of his pants. He gave her a sexy grin and pushed the trousers down his muscular legs. He was as magnificent as he’d been all those years ago, but maturity had been generous. Slowly she moved her gaze up his body and met his. The hunger there was unmistakable and the pressure in the pit of her belly built again.
He kneeled between her legs and unfurled a condom over his erection. Her eyes drifted closed, waiting for him to thrust into her and find his own pleasure. Instead, he leaned over her, his breathing rapid, his voice smoky in her ear. “Look at me, Tracy. Watch me love you.”
Despite knowing what he meant, his reference to love caused her heart to jump into her throat. He used his knees to spread her legs farther to accommodate him. He kissed her thoroughly and lightly touched, probed, but didn’t enter her deeper than his tip. Although she tried to impale herself on him by wrapping her arms and legs around him, he held
steady, while she undulated lustfully under him. When he broke the kiss, leaving her breathless and shaking, he slipped his hands under her hips, thrusting forward, claiming her with one swift move.
He moved within her in slow, powerful strokes meant to fan the flames into raging blazes within both of them. The brows over his passion-darkened eyes lowered, and the lock of golden hair hung over his moist forehead. She pushed it back, held it there as he kissed her in a soulful kiss.
She felt a sensation of being lifted, but hadn’t realized what he’d done until he broke the kiss and was kneeling with her wrapped around him and his hands grasping her hips. Her head lolled back when he increased the pace by guiding her over his shaft. He kissed her neck, the stubble of his beard adding tantalizing tingles over her sweat-slickened skin. Their bodies entwined as one, moving in perfect rhythm like a well-oiled machine. He caught one of her nipples in his mouth and suckled. Seismic waves of pleasure danced over her sensitive nerves, turning up the heat on the pool in the center of her being.
“Oh, God, Zack,” she may have said, or merely thought. He was so deep, and the friction so sweet. “I’m...”
The rest was lost on a long, breathy exaltation as the climax shattered her. She clung to him as he slowly moved her over him, dragging out the ecstasy. Then he laid her down onto her back again, never breaking contact. He lifted her hips off the bed and pulled almost out to plunge into her with fast, deep strokes.
She had to be spent, but to her fuzzy astonishment, the bubbling heat was back, quickly building in pressure and energy with each hungry thrust.
“Tracy.” He groaned and took her with him when he found release.
Chapter 12
“What’s going on?” Zack asked Dawn after she picked up on her end. He had no idea what he’d tell her if she questioned him for the reason his cell was off. He’d told her to call him if they found anything, after all. Figures that during the one time he’d turned his cell off, she’d try to call him. She never called.
Gambling On a Heart Page 17