Gambling On a Heart (41 page)

Thank God he was here. The phone–calls from concerned neighbors, friends, far-flung family and the media–hadn’t stopped ringing since the Amber Alert had been posted.

She caught her lip between her teeth as the Tahoe came to a stop in front of the house. Her heart raced like a captured bird beating its wings against its cage. Zack had called, and she knew her baby was alright, but she had to see him. She wouldn’t believe it until she held him to her.

By the time she reached the side of the SUV, Bobby scampered out with Zack and Wyatt right behind him.

“Momma!” Bobby lurched himself into her arms as she fell to her knees on the pavement.

“Oh, my baby,” Tracy sobbed and clung to him. She placed kisses all over his face, and he even kissed her back. She dried his tears with her lips.

“Momma, I was so afraid. I thought I’d never see you again.” He buried his face into the side of her neck. His body shook with the force of his sobbing relief.

Tracy looked up and met Zack’s gaze. With Mandy in his arms, he smiled and kneeled beside her and Bobby. She tried to swallow past her swollen throat and whispered, “Thank you.”

Mandy let go of her dad to hug Bobby while Zack encircled all of them within his arms and held on with a force that set the caged bird in her chest free.

* * * *

Two days after Bobby’s return, Zack decided it was time to get on with the rest of his life. He stood before the mantle and stared at the photos of Lisa. He’d pack them away soon, to give to Mandy when she got older.

He picked up the middle picture of his dead wife and rubbed his thumb over her lips. “I’m sorry, Lisa. I’m sorry I never was able to give you my whole heart. You deserved so much more than I could give, but I can’t go on living in the past or blaming myself for what happened.” He leaned over and placed a soft kiss on the lips of the photograph. When he replaced the frame, he laid it upside down and turned away.

The horses were saddled and the picnic supper of fried chicken and peach cobbler packed in a saddlebag. He’d changed one of the items from that first time he’d packed a picnic lunch for today’s purpose. Instead of a bottle of homemade wine from his grandfather’s cellar, he sprang for a bottle of Dom Perignon. Now, all he needed was to get Tracy.

He’d called ahead, and she waited on the porch. She jumped into his truck and smiled. “Where’re we going?”

Zack shrugged and put the Dodge into gear. “I thought we’d go riding out to our special spot and go camping. I’ve already talked to your Mom and Dad. They’ll take care of Bobby.

“I hate leaving him alone.” She fidgeted with her seatbelt. “He’s still afraid his dad’s going to come and take him away.”

“Understandable, but this can’t wait any longer.” He pointed the truck up the driveway. “I talked to Bobby. He’s okay with us going camping.”

“Well, then what are we waiting for?”

Twenty minutes later, they’d mounted their horses and headed toward the interior of the CW. He rode his stallion, Wild Aces, while Tracy sat upon an Appaloosa mare he’d recently purchased from a business associate.

They dismounted in the grove of trees next to the lake. She loosened the cinch on the saddle and slid it from the mare’s back. “She’s a beautiful horse. You never told me her name.”

He set his saddle under one of the live oaks and turned to remove the bridle. “She is a fine horse. I haven’t given her a barn name yet. I figured since she’s yours, you’d like to do the honors.”

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.