Gambling on a Secret (2 page)

“Affirmative.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but when he didn’t, she frowned. “Do you have any references?”

“I expected you to ask. Everything you need to know should be in here.”

She moved closer and took the folded sheet of paper he held out the window. After glancing at it, she wasn’t surprised it was a resume, but his listed experience had her heart beating a little faster. She looked up at him. “You have a degree in agricultural business from Texas A & M, started up your own ranch and served in the Army?”

He looked off in the distance. “I was in the service for thirteen years, three years in the Corps of Engineers, four in Airborne and the last six in Special Forces.” His jaw clenched, making his face the chiseled block of cold stone again. “And I know something about building. When I wasn’t deployed, I built the house and barn on my two-hundred acre ranch.”

“You don’t own the ranch now?”

“No. My ex-wife got it in our divorce settlement. I planned to get out of the Army after my last tour in Afghanistan and raise cattle. But things never happen the way we want them to.”

The bitterness of his tone had her stepping away. She shivered again and busied herself with looking at the resume. Whatever his ex-wife had done to him, it wasn’t good. “Your reference list is pretty skimpy.”

“The first name is my old commander, but I just got word he’s shipped out on a secret mission.”

Something wasn’t adding up. Either he was hiding something or his sister had lied about his experience. “Your sister said you worked on Oak Springs Ranch while in high school, but it’s not listed on your resume. Are you related to the owner, Leon Ferguson? You said your mother grew up there.”

His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned into a tight line. “Leon is my mother’s stepbrother. While my grandfather was still alive and ran the ranch, I worked there until I joined the Army after he died. I chose not to mention it.”

But why? She didn’t press the matter. She wasn’t seriously considering him for the job anyway, was she?

“My landlady said Mr. Ferguson might be willing to contract me the men and equipment I need to get the mesquite cleaned out of my pastures and the fields ready for planting.” She shifted her feet. She had no idea what his gripe with the richest man in the county was, and maybe for that reason, she needed his opinion. Dylan Quinn was the first person she’d met who seemed to dislike the tycoon. “I’d like to get some alfalfa and grasses in for hay. It’s getting late in the season. Do you think he’d help me out?”

He rubbed his stubble-shadowed jaw. What kind of man went to a job interview and didn’t even bother shaving off the scruff? “This might not be any of my business, but since you asked my opinion, let me warn you. The last thing you want to do is to get tangled up with Leon Ferguson. You’ll be sorry. He’s wanted this land for a long time, and he’ll do anything to get it.”

“You’re right. It isn’t any of your business.” Why would he think such a thing? After all, someone as rich as Ferguson could have bought the place before she put her bid in. Dylan obviously had a personal problem with Ferguson. Everyone else had nothing but good to say about Leon Ferguson. He was on the board of directors for the college she was attending, the hospital, and had donated a large sum of money to the county schools and other local charities. At least according to her landlady, Aida Mae Pratt.

“Suit yourself. But you did ask for my opinion.”

Which had been a big mistake.

She studied the resume again. “Brenda Dailey. Is this person off-limits, too? Or can I speak with her?”

“My ex-wife. I’d appreciate it if you don’t involve her. I put her on there because of the ranch.”

She looked up at him. “The divorce that bad, huh?”

Dylan shrugged and looked away. He gripped the top of the steering wheel hard enough to whiten his knuckles. “Suppose it’s no secret. Our divorce has only been final four months, and she married her baby-daddy the day after it became official. You figure it out.”

“Ouch. Okay, I won’t call your ex. Nevertheless, I’d like to see your house. Your sister mentioned you were a carpenter.” She glanced at the address of his former ranch. “Killeen’s south of here?”

He nodded. “It’s your two hours and tank of gas.”

“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 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 out between clenched teeth and took an unsteady step toward her.