Colter Gamblers: Gambling On A Heart Part 6

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 ill.u.s.trate 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 t.i.tle, he'd become an instant celebrityinterviewed 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 t.i.tle seemingly no more significant than being caught on camera crossing the street during a news report of a ma.s.s 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 huffsG.o.d help him when she was a teenagershe 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 c.o.c.ky 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."

"s.h.i.+t," 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?"

She cleared her throat and looked back onto the field. "I was married then."

"Of course." He looked up and saw that the Cowboys had scored two more touchdowns. Bobby pa.s.sed the ball and the crowd cheered when the intended receiver plucked it out of the air.

"I'll never think of March in quite the same way, however." She looked across her shoulder at him with a wry smile.

That calendar had seemed like such a good idea at the time, coming off the high from winning his first NFR and heading for his second. Only about half of the guys in the spread were even cowboys, the rest were male models. Four of them were straight from New York City and had never touched a live horse before, let alone ridden one.

He remembered the photo to which she referred. The pretty New York photographer had taken many shots, but only one was picked. He still had the picturessomewhere. In the one that became the pinup for March 2000, he was leaning against a corral fence with his Appaloosa stallion, Wild Aces, standing behind him.

He was s.h.i.+rtless and dressed in a pair of custom black cowboy boots, faded jeans, one of his big rodeo silver buckles, and a black Stetson. He grinned at the thought of the jeans he'd worn for the shoot. They were so tight he could hardly get his fingers into the pockets further than to his first knuckles. No way could he have mounted the horse. He'd been hard-pressed to hide the nice response in the jeans as the female photographer posed him against the fence rails, making sure he got an eyeful of her cleavage.

He'd repaid her skill with the camera later that night by inviting her to his hotel room. He'd almost let her talk him into going back to New York with her and try modeling for a while.

He smiled at the thought of what that kind of life would have been like. Zack Cartwright, underwear model and pinup poster boy.

Naw, he couldn't even imagine it.

"Nice sock, by the way."

He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow as her meaning dawned on him. His best slow grinone he hadn't used for a long, long timecurled his lips. When was the last time he'd flirted with a woman? He leaned over and whispered, "I think we both know that is no sock stuffed down my jeans."

The choice of the present tense was very deliberate and Tracy had to know it. Her face turned red, and he couldn't explain the burst of joy it brought him. She elbowed him in the chest and took a deep breath as she squirmed in her shorts. And that action sent his burgeoning hard-on to full mast, especially when he found himself glancing down at the logo on her t-s.h.i.+rt. Two distinct points were slightly visible. So, he was affecting her the same way she was him.

Thank G.o.d his jeans weren't as tight as those in that calendar had been.

Swallowing hard, she blessedly changed the subject. "I registered for cla.s.ses at UT."

"You got in this late?"

She shrugged and nodded. "I'm only taking two cla.s.ses and they're on-line. They start tomorrow."

He laughed and s.h.i.+fted into a more comfortable sitting position. "I'd call that cutting it close."

Tracy laughed and the breathy sound of it settled over him. "Definitely, considering before Monday, I wasn't even thinking about going to school."

"What made you decide to go back?"

"I really don't know." She met his gaze and held it. "I think I realized I settled where my life is concerned. On a lot of things."

He didn't miss the heat in her steady gray eyes.

Amanda came back then, surprising Zack with his change, water and corndog. She immediately scampered off to play on the swings with her friendsbesides Kayla and Malinda, three other little girls trailed behind her.

Once she was gone again, Tracy said, "She's very outgoing."

"Mandy's very much like her mother. We couldn't go anywhere without Lisa knowing someone, even on a new base. I remember being stationed in j.a.pan between my first tour in Afghanistan and deployment to Iraq." Talking about Lisa was like someone dumping a bucket of ice water over him. "We weren't there three days when she'd already befriended all of our neighbors and began volunteering at the hospital on base. h.e.l.l, I hadn't even met my sergeant yet."

"Mandy's a very special little girl." Tracy averted her eyes, and he got the impression she'd have rather hidden the sentiment.

"Yes, she is." Not for the first time in the past year, he sensed a loneliness about her.

But he had to be mistaken. He knew Tracy Parker was never without a man in her life for long. She dated prolifically. There was also the rumor of her living with the man she'd left Jake for in Waco until she bought her hair salon in Colton. He'd never heard what happened with that relations.h.i.+p. Her sadness must stem from a broken heart.

A heart I'd like to fix.

Where the h.e.l.l had that come from? He quickly ate the lard-fried processed meat byproducts and cornmeal on a stick that masqueraded as actual food. The last heart he ever wanted any part of was Tracy Parker's.

Right?

The next series of plays on the football field kept Tracy's attention riveted. Zack's focus was completely on her. Peripherally he was aware of Bobby tossing the ball to another player, who ran it in for a touchdown.

Tracy jumped up, cupped her hands over her mouth, and yelled, "Way to go, Bobby! Yahoo!"

Zack followed her to his feet, but he felt like he was somewhere else and not part of what was happening around him. Only the woman and his unadulterated desire for her mattered.

Tracy glanced at Zack, taken aback by the raw fire in his deep blue eyes. She'd seen desire in his eyes before when they were talking about his photo in the calendar. She'd even surrept.i.tiously noticed how tight his jeans had become. No, Zack didn't need a sock. But what burned in his eyes now was powerful and unguarded, catching her on fire, and would have consumed her if he hadn't looked away.

Searching for some kind of handhold to steady herself, she looked out over the field. With a dark scowl, Jake watched them across the sea of green and spectators. Her ex didn't look like a man winning a football game. Soon after they were married, she'd discovered Jake hated Zack. Why, she hadn't ever found out. Would Jake try to use her friends.h.i.+p with Zack against her in their custody battle?

Friends.h.i.+p. h.e.l.l, she and Zack weren't more than enemies bound by treaty to make nice with each other. It was the Cold War all over again. The accord had been made a year ago in his office when he convinced her he wanted to help with getting Dylan's life back on track. Jake was delusional if he thought there was something going on between them.

But Dylan is fine now. Married to the love of his life. Happy, with twins on the way and a pending adoption of a girl who needs a family.

She looked up at Zack. If he really hadn't wanted to sit with her, he'd have left when Mandy did. Not only was he still here with her, but he was actively flirting with her.

If you're given a second chance, don't screw it up. Her father's words whispered through her mind. Was Zack considering giving her a second chance?

After reclaiming their seats, Zack said, "Bobby's good with the pigskin."

Tracy shrugged, needing to find her center again. "The first toy Jake gave Bobby was a football. The nurses all laughed at him when he wanted them to put it in his nursery crib after he was born."

Zack turned away. He s.h.i.+fted to sit on the heel of his cowboy boot and drank his water. He looked so s.e.xy and capable of anything in the worn jeans, chambray s.h.i.+rt and leather vest, complete with an old tan Stetson. She'd glimpsed the Glock in a shoulder holster under the vest earlier when he'd sat down. He also had his Sheriff's badge clipped to his belt, as he did when he wasn't officially on duty.

He twisted on the top of his bottle. "Jake would have probably played professionally if he hadn't torn his knee to h.e.l.l that summer before our senior year when that horse stumbled. I'm still sorry it happened. Without the football scholars.h.i.+p, he didn't want to go to college. He hated school."

Jake gathered his team around him. When they broke up to execute whatever football magic he had up his sleeve, her ex-husband found her again with a glower. A s.h.i.+ver quaked down her spine, thoroughly cooling the heat Zack had ignited in her only seconds before.

She looked at Zack's profile. "He hated that you were doing so well riding rodeo after his injury ended his chance at playing football in college. You'd gone professional, and he was stuck working for his dad."

Zack looked at her, sharp and penetrating. She probably shouldn't be telling him any of this, but she'd gone too far not to tell him something.

"What do you mean?"

Sighing, she folded her hands in her lap. "Jake saw you as having it all." Including me.