Deal Me In. Cynthia Thomason

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СКАЧАТЬ it would take at least ten minutes for his heart to stop jumping into his throat.

      “I’ll find Al, pay our bill and make arrangements to pick up the horse,” Marshall said, heading back to the show ring. He stopped and called over his shoulder. “I’m starved. Where’d you say that restaurant is you always go to, Dobbs?”

      “Only a couple of miles down the road in Prairie Bend,” the Irishman said. “Cliff’s Diner. Best food in Texas.”

      “Meet you boys back here at the truck,” Marshall said. “I’m hungry enough to eat a…” He stopped, chuckled. “Guess I won’t say it.”

      Brady drained the rest of his beer. “I’ll meet you at the truck, too, Dobbs. I’ve got to have one more look at Amber Mac.”

      The trainer rested his arm on a fence post and smiled. “I thought you might.”

      CLIFF’S DINER was like a hundred others surviving in Texas prairie towns. It looked like an Airstream travel trailer on steroids, all silvery chrome on the outside and red, black and white on the inside. Brady waited for his father to slide into the vinyl booth then sat beside him. Dobbs settled across from them and opened one of the three menus the hostess had set on the table.

      Marshall pushed his reading glasses to the end of his nose. “What’s good?”

      “The burgers,” Dobbs said. “Half a pound each and brimming with juice ’long as you don’t order them well done.”

      What the heck. Brady figured his arteries could stand a wake-up call. Besides, they were celebrating, and for a born-and-bred Texan, any celebration included beef. “So that’s why you come here, to have a hamburger?”

      “And the lemonade,” Dobbs said. He leaned across the table. “Not to mention the best part…” A smile split the weathered creases of his face. “And there she is.”

      A cute, dark-haired waitress stopped at their table, an order pad open in her hand. “Hey, Dobbs,” she said. “I haven’t seen you around in a few months. No interesting horses over at the Blue Bonnet?”

      “I don’t come all the way up here from River Bluff just to buy horses, darlin’. I come to see the prettiest waitress in Prairie Bend, maybe all of Texas. And if I’d known you were getting better looking every day, I’d have made the trip more often.”

      Brady stared at the trainer. Nearly all traces of Dobbs’s Irish ancestry had vanished from his speech, though he still had the gift of the gab. The waitress was young enough to be his granddaughter. But Dobbs was about as faithful to his wife, Serafina, as any man could be.

      The girl must have known it, as well, because she rolled her eyes. “Do you want lemonade with that blarney, Dobbs?”

      He laughed. “Sure. But first I want you to meet my boss.” He nodded toward Marshall. “This is the owner of Cross Fox Ranch, Marshall Carrick.”

      She stared at Marshall a moment before offering her hand across the table. “Nice to meet you.”

      “And this fella is his son, Brady,” Dobbs said.

      Brady glanced at the name tag on her red dress. “Hello, Molly.”

      She took a step back from the table. Her eyes widened as she appraised Brady overtly before grabbing her pen from her pocket and positioning it over the order pad. “Hi. So what’ll you have?”

      After taking down the orders, she headed toward the kitchen. Dobbs leaned back and smiled at Brady. “You’ve still got it, don’t you?”

      Brady stopped fiddling with a plastic carnation in the center of the table. “What are you talking about?”

      “Didn’t you see the way Molly looked at you? I can’t tell you the last time a pretty young thing gave me the once-over. It’s obvious Molly is a Cowboys fan.”

      Brady was used to curious, even adoring gazes from women. He hadn’t had many in the past few years, but when he played with the Dallas Cowboys he’d gotten lots, even when he was married and had Daphne on his arm. But he’d swear the look he’d just gotten from Molly wasn’t like that. In fact, she’d made him feel uncomfortable, as if she’d noticed he had something stuck between his teeth. He shook his head. “I didn’t get the same impression, Dobbs.”

      “Then you weren’t paying attention. I bet you’ve got a double-decker burger coming with the extra patty on the house.” A busboy set three large glasses of lemonade on the table, and Dobbs took a swallow, while Marshall pulled out Amber Mac’s sales receipt and ignored them. “Molly’s cute, isn’t she?” Dobbs said.

      Looking over his shoulder, Brady watched her fill the coffee cup of a cowboy at the counter. She smiled at the guy, a warm natural expression unlike the reserved greeting she’d given Brady. She curled her fingers over her shapely hip and laughed, then excused herself with a flippant wave of her hand. Her wavy hair, bound in a ponytail, flirted with her nape as she walked away. “Yeah, she’s cute,” Brady agreed. “How long have you known her?”

      “A while,” Dobbs said. “She was working at this diner when I started coming here almost ten years ago. Back then I seem to remember she was married. Then she was gone for a few years. And one day she was back and no ring on her finger.”

      Dobbs looked at the artificial plants hanging from the ceiling. A pitiful strand of tinsel drooped from one of them, overlooked when the Christmas decorations had been packed up. “I asked her why she hadn’t hooked up with someone again,” he added.

      Oddly curious about the answer, Brady said, “What’d she say?”

      “She’s a wisecracker. She went on about how any girl would be happy to have a permanent spot at Cliff’s Diner and that she’d probably be serving up lemonade when her hair turned gray.” He shook his head. “I hope that’s not true.”

      “Hush now,” Marshall said, looking up. “Here she comes with our food.”

      Molly set plates in front of the men, asked if they needed anything else and walked away.

      “Eat up,” Marshall said. “We’ve got a horse to take home this afternoon.”

      As they ate, each man expounded on the virtues of Amber Mac and the possibility of the thoroughbred becoming the newest horse-racing sensation.

      Brady washed down a bite of hamburger with some lemonade. No time like the present to state his case. “Let me train him, Dad.”

      Marshall put his burger down. “Whoa, son. That’s a powerful ambition from a guy who, until just recently, had no interest in the business.”

      “I never said that. Anyway, I’ve been involved since I returned from Vegas—”

      “As a front-office man,” Marshall said. “You have a lot to learn about training a racehorse.”

      Brady frowned. “Right. And I won’t get much experience as long as you use me to meet with track execs and state gaming officials.”

      “You’ll get your chance,” Marshall said. “A face man is what we need now. You’ve done a lot for the Cross Fox image since you’ve been back. People like you. They’re СКАЧАТЬ