Gambling On A Dream. Sara Walter Ellwood

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СКАЧАТЬ he was murdered.”

      He turned and headed toward the front of the cabin.

      “Talon?” She hurried after him.

      After a few steps, he spun and bore down on her. The contempt and harsh anger, turning his handsome features into unforgiving stone, had her stepping back. “So what?”

      “Did you see anything?”

      He made a disgusted sound between his teeth. “What you really want to know is if I killed that boy. I read he was probably killed over dope.” Glaring at her, he asked, “Tell me, Sister, do you think I’m a drug dealer?”

      “No, of course not!” She fisted her hands to the point her nails bit into her palms. She hadn’t read the local paper, but she could only imagine what the article contained. “But people do, and I want to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen here that happened in Amarillo. Answer my question. Why were you in town yesterday morning?”

      “I was in town. But the why of it is none of your goddamned business.” He turned and headed up the makeshift steps to the porch.

      “You’re going to force me to bring you in for formal questioning.” She shook her head. “If I don’t follow through--”

      When he looked over his shoulder, she knew she’d destroyed whatever was left of their relationship.

      He finished her sentence with a sneer. “You’ll look like you’re playing favorites like Tom did when he was sheriff.”

      She jerked back at the reference to her father.

      He reached for the rusty, torn screen door. “So much for family trust. Get the hell off my land, Sheriff.”

      Chapter 3

      Dawn sat on her couch and shook the colorful woven blanket over her knees. Her grandmother had made it for her when she’d graduated high school. It always reminded her of the cozy warmth that comforted her when she’d visit Nana in Oklahoma. As she picked up the remote from the end table, Taco, her beagle, waddled over from her doggy bed in the corner by the bookshelf.

      Taco looked up at Dawn and barked, her tail swishing back and forth. She had more white then brown on her muzzle and face, and her old joints were slow with arthritis. Dawn leaned over and helped the aging pup up onto the couch beside her.

      “You’re getting too heavy, ole girl. Doc Evans is going to have a fit the next time I take you for a checkup,” she said, referring to the town’s veterinarian.

      Taco’s response was to lay her head on Dawn’s lap and close her eyes.

      As Dawn flipped through the channels, she stroked over the smooth fur of the dog’s head. With a chuckle and a glance at Taco, Dawn turned up the volume of the TV so she could hear it over the beagle’s snores.

      She paused the clicking long enough to stop at the eleven o’clock news on Channel Ten out of Dallas. Dawn frowned as she stared at the anchor, Vanessa Burk, while she talked about a fatal multiple car pileup on Interstate Twenty. She was a beautiful blonde with gleaming hair, cut in the hottest Hollywood style, with straight white teeth and big green eyes. Dawn turned off the TV and set the controller on the end table.

      She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Wyatt had dated Vanessa for over ten years. They’d met in college and had even lived together for several years, but when she wanted to get married, Wyatt called off the relationship.

      Two months later, Dawn had sex with him after a stakeout, and her life became everything she’d ever wanted. Had things gotten too serious between them? Had he been afraid of getting tied down with a woman? Was that why he’d left Vanessa? Had Wyatt planned to dump her too? Was that why he’d left her after she’d lost their baby?

      She shook her head to dispel the litany of questions she’d asked herself for years and glanced down at the sleeping dog. Had Wyatt ever loved her at all?

      As she took a deep breath, she stood, folded the blanket, and put it in its place over the arm of the couch. Taco woke up, and Dawn helped the dog to the floor. “C’mon, time for bed.”

      Taco lumbered back to her bed in the corner while Dawn headed for the kitchen. She put the dishes from the drying rack away in the overhead cabinet. As she dumped the last of the day’s coffee down the drain, she turned off the coffee maker. After she rinsed out the sink and turned off the kitchen lights in her trailer, she made her way back through the living room to the bedroom at the end of the singlewide.

      Someday she’d have a big house, but for now, the trailer she’d moved onto her third of the ranch was enough.

      She turned on the lamp hanging on the wall by the full-sized bed and changed into the T-shirt and shorts she slept in. Her knees were only inches from the oak dresser when she sat on the end of her bed. She opened the top drawer to take out a pair of socks when the corner of an old photo album she had in the bottom caught her attention.

      With a deep breath, she pulled out the album and laid it on her lap.

      She smoothed her hand over the damask of the cover before opening it to the first page. The picture staring back at her had been taken twenty years ago and was of her, Wyatt, Audrey, Rachel, Talon, the Cartwright kids--Zack, Logan, Lance and his sister Faith, and the Quinns--Dylan and Tracy. The only ones missing were her brother, Hunter, and Wyatt’s brother, Kyle. They’d been toddlers when Zack’s mother had snapped the photo at a church picnic.

      She smiled at the cheesy grin on Wyatt’s face as he, Talon, Lance and Dylan stood behind the younger kids. Back then, they’d all been friends, cousins or siblings. Who would have thought so many of the friends would end up as lovers? She laughed and turned the page as she wiped at a stray tear.

      Several more family photos passed by--Christmases, Easters and the family trips to Oklahoma to visit her mother’s family. Other pictures were of Talon and Wyatt, sometimes with their other friends, and several of them were of her and Zack Cartwright at the various rodeos they’d participated in as teenagers.

      She turned the page to a picture Wyatt’s mother had taken the night of her senior prom. Zack and Rachel talked her into going, despite her not wanting to. She never had a boyfriend, partly because her mother had always discouraged her from dating white boys, and because the boys had been too scared of her brother, Talon, and her father to ask her out.

      Wyatt had learned of her lack of a date and asked her to the prom. That night had been a dream come true for her, and the big bright smile on her eighteen-year-old self positively glowed. She wiped away another tear as she stared at the tall, lanky boy who’d stolen her heart so many years ago.

      She turned to the last page in the album and touched the grainy, black and white sonogram photo. Her baby boy on his last day of life. On the morning she’d been shot in the chest, she’d gone for her checkup and had a sonogram done.

      “Let’s see what’s going on. This might feel a little uncomfortable.” Dr. Rice smiled and rubbed the transducer over Dawn’s lower belly.

      The cold slimy feeling tickled, and the pressure on her full bladder hurt. The static cleared, and the fast beat of a heart echoed through the room. On the monitor, the outline of her baby materialized, and she stopped breathing, forgetting about the discomfort.

      “Oh, СКАЧАТЬ