Gambling On a Heart (9 page)

“I guess it’s an official appearance, and I promised to bring Mandy. She wanted to see Bobby play.” Zack suddenly found himself tongue-tied. Looking for something else to say, he asked, “Your parents aren’t here?”

“Nope, they decided to take a drive down to Fort Hood for a few days to visit the general in charge. Dad’s friends with him.” She shrugged and a clump of her dark hair fell over her face. She pushed it back and held it there for a few beats as if that would make it stay in place. “I’ll be glad when they get home. Those two furballs they call dogs are driving me nuts. I’m so not looking forward to watching them when they go back to Washington in a couple of weeks.”

Zack laughed and followed the movement of the lock of hair as it fell over the side of her face again. “Dog sitting?”

She nodded and pulled one of those big fabric ponytail things out of her pocket. As she pulled her hair back and secured it with the thing, she said, “Now that I have more room, I’d love to get a dog, but I want a real dog, not a yapper.”

“We have an Austrian herder.” Mandy looked up at Tracy. “Daddy says they are the best dogs alive.”

Tracy smiled and squeezed Mandy’s shoulders in another embrace. “I like them, too. I’d really like to have a Labrador, but convincing my mom might be hard, and she lives at my house, too. She doesn’t like bigger dogs.”

“Really? Why not?” Mandy asked.

Shrugging, Tracy let go of Mandy to fold her arms into her lap. “I’m not really sure. I think she was bitten as a kid and is afraid of them. She wouldn’t have Cinnamon and Ginger if my dad hadn’t gotten them for her before he went away to the war the last time.”

“We should bring Bailey over for your momma to meet. She’s a great dog.”

Tracy glanced at Zack and then returned her attention to Mandy. “Maybe that would work.”

Zack had sensed the tension between Tracy and her parents at the wedding. “That’s going to be a big change for you. Living with your parents, I mean.”

“Yep.”

“I can’t imagine living with mine again either.”

She pulled her knees up and hugged them. When she sucked in her bottom lip between her teeth, he knew she was unsure about something. At last, she said, “You always had your house to come home to. Even when your grandparents were alive, the old house was always earmarked as yours.”

And it could have been yours, if you hadn’t cheated on me.

Mandy’s voice broke through the painful thought. “Which player is Bobby?”

Tracy looked at Mandy, her pride in her son obvious in her smile. “He’s number ten. The quarterback.”

“Wow. He throws the ball, right?” Mandy looked at Zack.

He gently yanked on one of Mandy’s pigtails. “He sure does.”

Just like his father did.

But Tracy’s not with Jake anymore.

“Bobby has to be really good, I guess.” Mandy came up on her knees and fidgeted a few moments as she watched the next play on the field. “He said his daddy is the coach.”

“Yes, he is.” Tracy’s voice had an edge to it.

Everyone in the county knew Jake Parker had been a rising high school football star. He’d earned a football scholarship to Texas A & M his junior year of high school by leading the Mavericks for two straight years to the state championships. He’d been touted as the best quarterback the school had ever seen before and since. But Jake lost the scholarship and the chance to make something out of himself when a riding accident took it all away.

Many people in the county would have loved having Jake coach the high school team if he’d been qualified, meaning if he had a college education. However, there were just as many who didn’t think Jake was fit to coach anyone, especially a group of impressionable young boys who would do anything to please Coach Parker.

Zack looked back at Tracy, but she had her attention on the plays on the field. He wasn’t even sure who had the ball. “I get the impression you aren’t thrilled about the choice of coach?”

When Tracy took a deep breath, the blue and white Junior Cowboy Logo of her t-shirt stretched over her chest. Did she ever go without a bra as she had when they’d dated?

Dear God! He had to get a grip. He forced his eyes to the nine- through twelve-year-olds on the football field and off speculating about Tracy’s underwear. Hell, he was acting like a hormone happy fourteen-year-old!

“Not particularly.” She raised a brow, and he realized she’d probably caught him ogling her chest. “So, Mandy, do you play any sports?”

“Not really.” Mandy shrugged and shook her head. “Daddy’s teaching me to barrel race my pony. He won’t let me try on Holly, my horse–
yet
. He’s being a big stick in the mud. Says I’ll get hurt.” She punctuated the statement with a dramatically exasperated huff.

A corner of Tracy’s lips twitched upward as she looked at Zack. “Really.”

“I want to ride in the rodeo at the fair next summer.”

“Imagine that. I’m sure you’ll do well.”

Zack had to put a stop to where this was going, and fast. “I told you we’ll see about the rodeo.”

Mandy’s eyes turned to his, and she lost some of the cheerfulness. “Just because Momma didn’t like you doing rodeo doesn’t mean she won’t like me to.”

If Tracy noticed his tensing at the mention of his reason for quitting the rodeo, she ignored it. “Your daddy was a really good rodeo cowboy. I still remember the thrill he’d give when I watched him.”

Mandy’s eyes got big as she looked from Tracy to Zack and back again. “You saw Daddy ride broncs?”

“Yeah. Many times.”

Zack couldn’t look away from Tracy’s gray eyes. He knew she’d seen him ride locally, but had she seen him ride professionally? “Miz Tracy and I went to high school together.”

“Wow. That was a really long time ago.”

“Oh, ages ago, for sure.” Tracy chuckled and broke the sudden spell Zack was under by looking at Mandy. “I saw him on TV a few times, too.”

Mandy twisted around, incredulity beaming from her in glowing energy as volatile as a grenade. Tracy had pulled the pin with her words, and he could almost see the energy expanding within Mandy as she bounced up and down until she exploded. “You were on TV!”

Several amused, and not so amused, folks turned and peered at the trio. Tracy laughed, and Zack scowled at her, muttering, “Thank you, oh, so very much.”

But inside he couldn’t contain the flutter of excitement that Tracy had watched him.

“She didn’t know?”

“No.” He’d never told Amanda much about his rodeoing days. He had DVDs of the broadcasts he’d been in, but he’d never shown them to her. It was bad enough she’d conned him into teaching her how to race around barrels. Showing her the DVDs of him riding broncos and winning big silver belt buckles might put it in her little head that she should try it.

“Daddy! You never told me you were on TV!” The aftershock of Mandy the Grenade had him wincing. Several of the onlookers laughed and there were even a few comments that Zack chose to ignore.

“Sorry,” Tracy mouthed and then turned to Mandy. “Well, it’s not like he was on a TV show, Mandy.”

Amanda looked crestfallen and confused all at once. “He wasn’t on a TV show? But you said he was on TV.”

Tracy shook her head. “Have you ever seen rodeo on TV?”

Mandy nodded, her attention rapt.

Zack stared at his daughter. “Where did you see rodeo?”

“Uncle Logan and Uncle Lance were watching it one day when I was over at Uncle Lance and Aunt Audrey’s when you were working,” she said. A local TV station often played broadcasts of some of the Central Texas events, but Zack never let Mandy watch them.

“When was this?”

Mandy shrugged and fidgeted again. “A while ago. I wanted to watch the barrel racers.” She puckered her brow. “I didn’t see much of the riders, though. They’re too fast.”

“That’s how your daddy was on TV. When he competed in the National Finals Rodeo, they showed the events on ESPN. But he wasn’t on very long. Only a blip, really.” Tracy added a snap of her fingers to illustrate her meaning. Tracy smiled at Zack. “It could have been anybody being thrown off the bucking horse.”

Several onlookers snickered. Tracy was lying through her teeth and she knew it. Winning any of the NFR events was a huge deal. The two times he’d won the saddle bronc title, he’d become an instant celebrity–interviewed by EPSN sportscasters, plus many of the Las Vegas and dozens of Texas news programs.

Mandy’s whole body deflated. “Oh,” she muttered. “That’s all?”

As she nodded, Tracy’s smile was the sorriest he’d ever seen. “That’s all.”

Zack wasn’t sure if he wanted to wring Tracy’s neck or kiss her silly.

Kissing her silly had a definite appeal, but not because she made his winning the NFR bronco title seemingly no more significant than being caught on camera crossing the street during a news report of a mass murder.

Before Zack could respond to Tracy’s smirk, Mandy’s friend Kayla and her older sister Malinda ran up to their blanket.

Malinda smiled tentatively. “Hi, Sheriff Cartwright. Kayla and me were wondering if Mandy could come with us.”

“We’re getting corndogs,” Kayla chirped and pointed in the direction of the concession stand. “Our mommy runs the Chow Wagon. There’s cotton candy, too.”

Mandy bounced and turned to him. “Daddy, I’m still hungry. Can I go with them?”

“May I go with them?” Zack corrected automatically, and Mandy rolled her eyes. “Please.”

With another of her increasingly irritating huffs–God help him when she was a teenager–she repeated resignedly, “May I
pretty please
go with Kayla and Malinda?”

“I guess no harm can come of it. Here, get me a corndog, too. And a bottle of water. But stay away from the cotton candy. You don’t need any sugar.”

She rolled her eyes again in response.

Zack shifted onto one hip and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “People are going to start thinking I never feed you, girl.” He glanced at Tracy. Her cocky grin had melted away and her eyes seemed wistful. “Would you like a corndog?”

“No thanks, I’m fine.”

Mandy jumped to her feet, defusing the sudden awkwardness. She plucked the ten-dollar bill from Zack’s outstretched hand and rushed off with her friends. “I’ll be back!”

“You’d better bring back the change!” he called after her.

Tracy’s soft laugh had him focusing on her. “I’d be more worried about her bringing back the corndog and water.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll never see either of those. She’ll forget about even wanting a corndog. Instead, she’ll end up eating cotton candy and will be bouncing off the walls half the night.” Zack returned her chuckle and relaxed. “Heck, she had two bowls of chili before we left the house. She can’t be hungry.”

“You know she’s bound to figure out just how famous you were at one time.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Tracy snorted and covered her mouth.

“What’s so funny?”

Her laugh turned into a mischievous grin. “What will even be funnier is when she finds out about that calendar spread you did.”

“Shit,” he breathed and dropped his chin to his chest. “I forgot all about
that
.”

Tracy laughed again, the sound settling somewhere better left forgotten. “Oh, Zachery James, you should be happy I’m not out to blackmail you. Amanda will be quite surprised at how naughty her daddy was in his younger days.”

He slid a glance at her from under his hat brim. “Have you seen that spread?”

She looked down at her crossed legs and fidgeted slightly. “Who hasn’t seen it?
Ride in the Millennium
was a big deal when it came out in 2000. At least, around here it was.”

Zack couldn’t hold in the groan. “Can you imagine the ribbing I got at basic training over that calendar?”

She laughed so hard she bent over. “Oh, yes, I can! How many times was your underwear stolen?”

“Enough for me to keep a few pairs somewhere no one could get to them.” An overwhelming sense of homecoming settled on him when their eyes met. He lost his smile, but couldn’t look away. “Tell me, did you have one of those calendars?”