Free Gambling on a Secret by Sara Walter Ellwood Page B

neighbor.”
    Realizing she probably looked like a fish the way her lips gapped, she promptly closed her mouth. “No way!”
    He nodded and glanced at her. “She’s married to Luke Cartwright and lives on the CW Ranch.”
    “The mayor’s brother?”
    Dylan looked back to the road. “Yep, one and the same. She’s completely embraced the life of a Texas lady. Wouldn’t even know she’s from California. Their son Zack runs his father’s half of the CW Ranch. Their younger son Logan is a lawyer, but is locally famous for his band, Texas Justice. Not a bad singer. ” He wrinkled his nose. “But Logan insists on singing those crappy honky-tonk songs.”
    She laughed. “Here in the heart of Texas that’s not unusual. Cowboys normally–”
    “Ah.” He clucked and shook his pointer finger at her. “I told you not to go stereotyping.”
    “In my experience, you’re a rarity and that was even before I found myself on my grandfather’s ranch.” She turned on the radio, and a loud screech of an electric guitar blasted from the speakers. With a wince, she lowered the volume from ear splitting to tolerable. “Do you have any hearing left?”
    “Can’t listen to eighties rock without turning it up.”
    On the radio, Axl Rose squealed about his sweet child.
    “I guess, but keeping your hearing is pretty darn important.”
    She leaned back in the seat, pulled her knees up, and wrapped her arms around her legs. The next song was slower, and she sang along with the guys from Warrant as they got a little closer to heaven.
    At the song’s end, she opened her eyes and glanced at him. The intensity he peered at her with heated her cheeks. “Sorry. I happen to like that song.”
    “That’s okay. You’re a good singer.”
    “Thanks. But I know to never pack my bags and head off to Nashville.” Even if she could be as famous as her half-brother, she didn’t want the attention.
    Dylan turned his eyes to the road and cleared his throat. “Tracy mentioned you lived in Vegas. Did you grow up there?”
    For a few heartbeats, the familiar need to protect herself rushed over her. How had anyone learned about Las Vegas? She let go of her legs, giving in to the urge to hug herself. As she concentrated on the heat devils floating in the distance on the flat, lonely road, she decided she had to trust him. If she wanted him to open up to her so she could help him deal with his depression, she had to answer his otherwise harmless questions about her own past.
    Some of his questions, anyway. She would never be able to open her home to teens if anyone learned about what she’d done in Vegas. “No. I grew up in Tulsa. I only lived briefly in Vegas. I was fifteen when I moved to the Long Arrow, my grandfather’s ranch.” Fighting a tremor in her voice, she asked, “Who told Tracy I lived in Vegas?”
    “I don’t know who told her.” He flashed her one of those fleeting, rusty grins that did funny things to her belly. “I pegged you for a city gal.”
    “I was.” Although knowing someone out there knew about her living in Vegas bothered her, she relaxed a little with his teasing. He didn’t know anything other than she’d lived there. How did he put her at ease so effortlessly? “The first time I tried to ride a horse, I fell off.”
    “Everyone does one time or another. I was about four the first time I rode by myself. Before then, my mother rode with me or I rode a pony. Scared her half to death when I took a tumble right out of the saddle. After the cast came off my arm, the first thing I wanted to do was get right back up in that saddle.”
    “I was fifteen, too old to ride with someone, too big for a pony, and I climbed up on the damned thing backward.”
    His full-blown laugh surprised her. The deep rumble sent all sorts of tingles through her. He looked at her with amusement shining in his silvery eyes from under his brown cowboy hat. The small crinkles at the corners of eyes and the dimple in his left cheek