Gambling On A Secret. Sara Walter Ellwood

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      “Thank you for stopping by. Your number’s on here. I’ll call you.”

      “Thanks for your time, Miss Monroe. Good luck with this place.” He looked around at the buildings and over her before he turned the key in the ignition. The rusted bucket of bolts sputtered and the starter groaned before the engine turned over.

      As he pulled away, she looked at the piece of paper in her shaky hand and studied his name at the top.

      Damn, she’d hoped he was the one.

      She crumpled the paper, and the memory of his weathered eyes, as dull and gray as her ranch buildings, came to her. What ghosts did he see when he closed them?

      She opened her palm and stared at the wad of paper. Feeling haunted by the past was something she understood very well.

      * * * *

      Dylan pulled into the space between the Dumpster and his sister’s Taurus and cut the engine. He lifted a half-empty flask of Jim Beam to his lips and swallowed a swig. The bourbon warmed him while he looked out at the back of the small redbrick house.

      He lived with Tracy and her son in the shoebox-sized apartment above her beauty salon. Where would he go if Tracy followed through with her threat and tossed his ass out like yesterday’s trash? He didn’t want a job. He didn’t know what he wanted, but everything that mattered had died with his wife’s Dear John letter and his men in Kandahar a year ago.

      He’d long ago stopped feeling the burn of bourbon he poured down his throat. What had possessed him to show up at this interview and not blow it off like all the others Tracy set up?

      An image of Miss Charlotte Monroe popped into his mind as he lowered the bottle from his lips. Damn, what was a woman like her doing owning the Blackwell place? He lifted his flask in a toast. “Whatever your reasons, I’m impressed. Not many people get away with taking something that bastard Ferguson wants out from under his nose.”

      He’d never hear from Miss Charlotte Monroe again. He turned the flask up again to his lips. Through the Colton Grapevine down at the Longhorn Saloon, he’d heard she was something to see, but they hadn’t done her justice.

      She’d been one hot number standing there with orange-painted toenails shoved into the craziest sky-high heels he’d ever seen. With the way the brown miniskirt showed off legs going on forever and the fantastic view of her full breasts the tight blue-green sweater gave him, she should have been on a magazine cover, not standing in knee-high weeds.

      She was a freaking college kid. What the hell was she doing owning a ranch? She wanted to raise beef? He snorted and took another pull on the flask. Hell, she was more likely to end up making pets out of the calves, and whine when she broke a fingernail.

      Shaking his head to dispel all thought of the aquamarine-eyed redhead, he leaned back against the worn leather seat.

      Was he really this much of a coward to face his baby sister? He’d faced Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents. What happened to the guy who’d killed a drug lord with his bare hands in the jungles of South America?

      He cursed under his breath, drained the flask dry and prayed Tracy would be too busy to notice him sneaking in the back door of the salon. He needed another drink.

      When he opened the back door, a whiff of perm solution and hair dye burned his eyes, and the whiskey in his belly churned. Holding his breath against the stink and the urge to puke, he attempted to sneak by Tracy’s office door to the stairs.

      “How’d it go?” his sister called out.

      Damn his fucked-up luck.

      He stopped, drew in a deep breath, and wished he hadn’t when his gut spasmed. He peeked around the doorframe into the small office. As usual, everything in the room was organized and neatly arranged. He shrugged and mumbled, “Don’t know. Okay, I guess. Her hands are full with that dump.”

      Tracy pulled off her reading glasses and looked up at him. “So, what’s she like?”

      Prickly as a cactus. Why was Charli Monroe getting under his skin? She seemed insecure in the way she’d hugged herself and kept her distance. Although she’d tried hard not to show her fear of him, he’d seen a similar reaction before in the abused young women he and his team had liberated in a mountainous camp in Afghanistan.

      He shoved those observations to the back of his mind as he raked his fingers through his hair. “Charlotte Monroe is young. The place cost a small fortune, so she obviously has more money than brains. No one in their right mind would have paid the asking price.”

      Tracy leaned back in her office chair. “I heard today she’d only lived with her grandfather for the last couple of years before he died. Supposedly, she was in Las Vegas before moving to Oklahoma.” She shook her head. “Can’t imagine that, though. Mrs. Cartwright says she’s only twenty-four, but I guess living in Vegas would explain her expensive city-slicker duds.”

      “Who cares?” He sure as hell didn’t, so he turned away. “I’m going upstairs.”

      “Did you get the job?” Tracy asked just as coolly, before he could limp to the stairs.

      “Monroe said she’ll call if she’s interested.” He wouldn’t lose any sleep waiting up for the phone call.

      “You showed up, didn’t you? I know you ditched the last three interviews I set up for you.”

      He mumbled a vile curse he’d learned as a teen living in Germany and climbed the stairs to the apartment.

      Tracy followed him into the galley kitchen. “Dylan, I can’t take this anymore. You need to get a job and your own place.”

      He pulled a beer from the refrigerator. “I’m trying, sis.”

      “It’s been a year since you were injured,” Tracy said from the doorway. “You need to do something.”

      “I help with the bills.” It wasn’t his fault his disability payments were a pittance, or that Brenda had blown all of his savings before dumping him.

      “I don’t care about the money. I hate seeing you like this, and I don’t like Bobby being around you when you’re drunk. You need help. Zack Cartwright told me today about a group meeting–you know like Alcoholics Anonymous but for vets with posttraumatic stress disorder–over at the VA hospital in Waco. Zack said meetings like those helped him after he got back.”

      He peered at Tracy. The wateriness of her gray eyes should have bothered him, but it didn’t. “Good for Sheriff Cartwright. But I’m not going to any damned meetings where everyone cries on each other’s shoulder.”

      “Why don’t you make an appointment–”

      “I’m not going back to the fucking shrink. I’m not crazy.”

      Tracy thrust out an exasperated breath. “Okay. But sitting here all day drinking yourself senseless won’t help you get your life back.”

      “I told you I’ll find work and a place of my own.” Someday.

      Setting her jaw, she lifted her chin a СКАЧАТЬ