Gambling On A Secret. Sara Walter Ellwood
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 notch. “I’m worried about you. You’re so different now.” She paused and shook her head. “Okay, you don’t want to go to the VA. Maybe you should see if Dad could get you a job with Homeland Security. You’d be good there with all of your experience with the Army. If nothing else, it would get you away from here and memories of Brenda.”
“No.” He turned away and drained most of the Budweiser.
“You’d have veteran’s preference. Mom told me so. Why won’t you even try?”
Shit, now she had their mother involved. “Because I refuse to be under a microscope.” He pinned her with a glare over his shoulder. After the botched mess he’d made of his last mission, it was a miracle he hadn’t been court-martialed, and a goddamned shame Congress pinned a Purple Heart on him. It made him sick to think he got it because he was General Bob Quinn’s son. The last thing he wanted was his father pulling strings with his buddies in the higher echelon of government to get him a cushy job.
“I don’t want to work for the government.”
Tracy bit her bottom lip as he passed her to go into the living room.
“By the way, I’d appreciate it if the next time you set up a job interview for me, you don’t mention Oak Springs Ranch again.” His feet felt heavy as he turned to face her, tripping him up. He grabbed the back of the couch to keep his balance.
Tracy averted her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “I know you don’t like Leon, but your experience working on the ranch was information Miss Monroe needed to know. When I was over at Oak Springs for dinner last night, Leon asked me to tell you to stop by.”
“Hell will freeze over before I set foot on that ranch.” He took a draw on the Budweiser. “So, did you see our step-grandmother off on her next great adventure? Greece this time, right?”
Tracy narrowed her eyes at him and pulled herself to her full height, which put her eye-to-eye and nose-to-nose with his six feet. “Have some respect. Maddie was married to our grandfather longer than our real grandmother was. She really cares about us.”
He snorted and finished the beer. “Yeah, sure she does, as long as Mom was cut out of everything when Granddad died, and her son got it all.”
“Uncle Leon would give you a job and a place to stay.”
“That thief is not our uncle any more than that gold digger is our grandmother.” He bit the words