Tracy turned on him and gasped. “Mine? I can’t–”
“You said so yourself you didn’t have a horse of your own. Well, now you do. There’s only one thing I’d like in return.”
“Anything?”
Zack smiled and raised a brow. “You let me mate her with Wild Aces here.” He petted the stallion’s long black and white splotched face.
Tracy stared at him with her mouth slightly open before closing it and nodding. “Okay. I’ll have to think of a name I guess.”
“Yep. C’mon.” He set her saddle beside his and picked up the saddlebags. She retrieved the sleeping bag and the quilt she’d untied from behind her saddle and followed him to the water’s edge.
Zack spread the patchwork quilt over the ground and then went about setting out the picnic supper. As they ate the chicken and salad, he kept the conversation light and focused on their kids, although he was aware of the questions in Tracy’s eyes. They hadn’t had a chance to have the talk he’d promised her Sunday night. She was more than ready now.
They finished their supper, he opened the champagne, and gave her one of the plastic cups.
She smiled. “What’s the occasion?”
“I think it’s time we consider where we go from here.”
“Oh.”
“But before we get too serious, I thought we’d have a toast.” He held his cup up and she followed suit.
“What are we toasting?”
“Love. And forgiveness.”
She smiled and tapped her cup on his. “To love and forgiveness. I love you, Zack.”
After taking a gulp of the fizzy wine, he set his cup down and took her hand. She set her champagne aside, settled herself next to him and waited for him to speak.
He cleared his throat and squeezed her hand. “Tracy, I love you. I told you the other night I had my own confessions.” He looked over the calm water of the lake. Cattails and other water-loving plants competed for what sunlight the trees allowed filter through along the water’s edge.
He met her soft gray eyes again and swallowed so hard it hurt. “Here it goes. I don’t deserve you. I never have, but I can’t live without you anymore. I’ve never stopped loving you. Lisa and I...”
She sighed and reached up to lay her hand over his cheek. “Oh, Zack, I don’t have to hear this if it hurts you this much to say it.”
He nodded and covered her hand with his free one. “Yeah, you do, and I need to get it out. When I heard you had a baby with Jake, something died in me. I had hoped that after you lost the first pregnancy you’d leave him, but only a year later you got pregnant again.”
“I should have left him after I lost the baby, but he kept telling me how much he loved me, and that he wanted a family with me.” She shook her head and looked down at their clasped hands. “I was such a fool.”
He tightened his hold on her hand, and she looked up again. “No, you weren’t.”
“I broke up with Jake after you–you found us in the barn. And when I started school, I had every intention of transferring that spring to University of Texas. But Jake started coming around. He’d meet me after classes, and we started going out again. I hadn’t known then it was all a plan to keep me away from you. I learned later that he was afraid I’d go off to find you. So, he started up his lies. He swept me off my feet–again–with words of love and how much he couldn’t live without me.” She made a sound of disgust in her throat and shook her head. “I’d stopped taking the Pill when I started school.” She smiled ruefully. “I had no reason to continue taking it–I wasn’t dating anyone. And I started getting headaches and my doctor thought it was from the birth control pills. Instead of switching brands, I stopped taking them. Then Jake seduced me. I still don’t know how exactly I got pregnant. We always used condoms.” She shrugged. “But I did. I’ve often wondered after I learned the truth if he’d done something to make it happen.” Again she shrugged and looked away. “The rest is sad history.”
He sighed, pulled her into his lap, and held her against him. “I met Lisa and it was instant lust. I know this is probably hard for you to hear, but I think you should know.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “Zack, I know you loved her.”
“No, Tracy, I never loved Lisa–not enough anyway. I never loved her as I’ve always loved you.”
She turned in his embrace. “What?”
“I was in lust with her. I was jealous of you.” He couldn’t meet her gaze. “I took her virginity, and she told me she loved me the third time we were together. Despite her title as a pageant queen, she was so naive. I asked her to marry me just two weeks after meeting her. I liked her and we–” He cut himself off, Tracy didn’t need to know their sex was great. “When I was with her, I could forget you. At least, for a little while. I hoped I’d learn to love her.” He snorted. “You know the history of our families as well as I do. Everyone knows the first Cole Cartwright didn’t love his wife when they married, but he grew to love her. I figured if it worked for my great-great-great granddad, it would work for me. Maybe if I hadn’t spent so much time away from her, I would have. But each time I’d come home from a deployment, I’d find something else I just didn’t like. Her laugh started to annoy me. Her nagging about me not going places with her. Her bossiness. I began regretting letting her talk me out of my rodeo career. I hated the way she’d talk for me when we visited her friends or people we’d just met, as if I was some bumpkin because I didn’t have a college education.”
The warm September breeze fluttered through her hair and he smoothed the silk back behind her ear. “If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, I seriously considered asking for a divorce. Then she had Amanda and I couldn’t leave her, so I reenlisted, although it made her furious. I was almost relieved when I was sent off to Afghanistan that last time.”
Her eyes widened and she opened her lips as if to speak. He smiled and caressed her bottom lip with his thumb, stilling whatever she had to say.
“When I woke up from the coma, I called your name, Tracy. Lisa had realized years before I was still in love with you. When we came back to Cheyenne, she and I fought all the time. Not all of it was a result of my PTSD. I felt I was being suffocated. I had no drive to be a big city cop. All I ever wanted to do was raise cattle here. When I’d heard you divorced Jake, I started wondering what it would be like if–”
He cut himself off and swallowed. “She was leaving me the night she died, and I was glad it was finally over.”
“You blame yourself for her death.”
“I think I always will. But punishing myself isn’t bringing her back or necessarily good for my daughter–or for me. Mandy loves you. I love you–and I love Bobby.”
“Zack, I love you with all my heart.” She swallowed, and her pewter eyes shimmered. “And Mandy, too. She’s a wonderful little girl, and I’m thankful you had her with Lisa. The world would be a darker place without her.”
“I’ve always had this dream that you and I would have a bunch of kids and fill that big house my great-great-great grandfather built. We’d live here and bring the Cartwright legacy full circle. We’d raise cattle and kids and dogs and horses and live happily ever after.”
She blushed. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “Me, too. I love Oak Springs, but it’s not my house, not my home. I’ve always dreamed of living here and having a family with you.”
Zack smiled. “I’m not running for reelection. In fact, I’m resigning as sheriff. Dawn can take over until the election in November. She’ll make a fantastic sheriff. I’m a cowboy, not a cop. What about you?”
“I want to finish my degree, but I’m thinking that becoming a physician’s assistant might be more realistic. I’ll still be able to treat people and work as a medical provider.”
“If that’s what you want, you know I’ll support you the whole way.”
“Who knows if I’d be a good doctor?”
He chuckled and laid her down on the old quilt. “Bullshit. You are one of the
kindest, most compassionate people I’ve ever met.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “You know what my ultimate dream is?”
He ran his hand down her side. Her breathing kicked up a notch. “Nope.”
“I’d much rather be a cowboy’s wife someday.”
His body fit perfectly in the cradle of hers. She lifted his Stetson off his head. After tossing it to the side, she threaded her fingers through his hair. He kissed her, but with a gentle teasing of lips brushing lips. When his erection pressed against her, she licked along the seam of his mouth, and he let her explore his mouth.
The heat built and passion caught fire. He took over the kiss and plunged into her mouth in direct imitation of what he wanted to do with her. She moaned and found the buttons of his shirt. When her hands pushed the open halves away, brushing his chest, he shrugged out of the shirt without breaking the kiss. Her hands touched him everywhere, and he eased out of the kiss as he lifted away her t-shirt.
She’d forgone a bra, and her nipples stood taut. He took one of them into his mouth and suckled until she clutched at his back, her nails biting deliciously into his skin. She arched into him as he moved to the other one, while his fingers teased and plucked at the moist pebbly nipple he’d left, alternating between sucking, nibbling and caressing. Her breathing quickened and her moans became more insistent. She wrapped her legs around his waist. The torture of her thrusting and rubbing herself against his hard-on nearly had him giving up and finish undressing both of them and burying himself inside her. However, he was determined to have this, to give her this.
“Zack...Oh...I’m...” The words were lost as she shattered beneath him.
When she opened eyes full of wonder, he smiled down into her face. “I knew I could make you come by playing with your breasts.”
She laughed and shifted against him, eliciting a groan from him. “I think it’s time we get naked, don’t you?”
“In a second. But first...” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the engagement ring. “I think this belongs to you.”
She furrowed her brow, and he kissed her nose. When he pulled back, he held the ring before her face.
She gasped. “My ring.” Then her face flushed a deeper red. This time from embarrassment, not passion. “I mean. The ring you–”
He knew Logan had shown the ring to her, but he hadn’t known she’d always considered it hers. “What do you say we change your last name?”
“I just got my last name back.” She laid her left hand on his cheek and grinned. “I could opt to keep it.”
“True.”
He took her hand from his face and slid the diamond ring he’d bought for her fourteen years ago onto her finger. As he peered into her luminous eyes swimming in unshed tears of joy, he huskily asked, “Tracy Caroline Quinn, will you marry me? Become this cowboy’s wife?”
“Yes,” she breathed and pulled him to her and kissed him so deeply it took his breath away. When she finally pulled away, she rasped, “I think we’re both a little overdressed.”
He toed off his boots and shucked his jeans, and then helped pull off her boots and jeans. After he sheathed himself with a condom, she lay back pulling him over her again. As he kissed her, he pressed into her one inch at a time. She moaned and then broke the kiss. Her eyes opened and she gasped as he seated himself completely inside her.
“Oh, God. Zack...” She met him thrust for passionate thrust, and he couldn’t remember anything except that he loved this woman.
Always had. Always would.
Sara Walter Ellwood
Although Sara Walter Ellwood has long ago left the farm for the glamour of the big town, she draws on her experiences growing up on a small hobby farm in West Central Pennsylvania to write her stories. She’s been married to her college sweetheart for nearly 20 years, and they have two teenagers and one very spoiled rescue cat named Penny. She longs to visit the places she writes about and jokes she’s a cowgirl at heart stuck in Pennsylvania suburbia.
She also writes paranormal romantic suspense under the pen name of Cera duBois.
Heartstrings
Colton Gamblers Series
Gambling On A Secret
Gambling On A Heart
Lyrical Press books are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2013 Sara Walter Ellwood
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.
First Electronic Edition: July 2013
ISBN-13: 978-1-61650-482-3
Table of Contents
Gambling On A Heart
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Meet the Author
Other books by Sara Walter Ellwood
Copyright
Gambling On a Heart Page 29