Second Chances

by Denise Belinda McDonald

  Damn, he had heard. Too late now to do anything about it. “I don’t welsh. BUT, I also don’t plan on losing.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He laughed, his tone disbelieving and a bit mocking.

  Zan stared at him a long moment to let her irritation smooth out her nerves, to set her focus on him instead of the throngs of people surrounding her.

  “Just watch,” she said. She repeated her ritual warm up and pulled back her arm. With a deep breath, she hurled the ball with minute accuracy that would make Nolan Ryan proud.

  Dale went into the water with shock hung on his face. The crowd erupted with cheers and Hank Calhoun patted her on the back so hard she almost fell over.

  Jacob stared, first at her, and then at Dale cursing up a wintery storm deep in the water. Mothers standing near the tank covered their young ones’ ears and hurried away.

  “Double or nothing you can’t do that again,” Dale’s crony Dwayne said with laughter in his voice as he reached for his wallet.

  “Hell no,” Dale yelled from in the tank. Several people laughed and a round of applause broke out.

  “Damn, Zan. How’d you do that?” Jacob stood, mouth agape, staring at the soaked mess of rags that climbed from the tank.

  “Did I forget to mention my two older brothers played pro ball? Trevor made the all-star team three years in a row.”

  “Trevor Walters? From the Texas Rangers, Trevor Walters? He’s your older brother?” Jacob’s mouth hung open for a moment. Clear admiration lit his face. “.290 career batting average, Trevor Walters?” Jacob asked in disbelief.

  “Actually it was .295. And yes, he is.”

  “And that means Jeffery Walters, from the San Diego Padres, is your other brother.”

  “Yep. You follow baseball, huh?” She tried to hide the smile as she watched Dale slosh across the grounds toward the exit. Her smile froze when he turned and mouthed a not-so-subtle warning that she was in for BIG trouble. The chill returned and swept through her yet again. She wanted to believe it was from the cool evening wind on her wetsuit, but she had opened a new can of worms taunting, and now humiliating, Dale Holstrom to the nth degree.

  Jacob wrapped a towel around her shoulders then turned her toward him. “I thought you said both your brothers were investment bankers.” Jacob stood with his hands on his hips.

  “They are. They retired from baseball a long time ago. They’re old men now, but I’ll deny saying that if you ever tell them I did.” She smiled at him.

  Finally, the corners of his mouth crooked up until he had a full-fledged smile. “Suzanne Walters, you are too much.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Come back to the ranch with me tonight. We’ll go on a midnight ride,” Jacob offered with a playful smile.

  “Now?” People had come in small groups to congratulate Zan. Finally, after twenty minutes, the crowd thinned and everyone went back to the festival and its wares and she and Jacob were left to stand alone near the empty dunking booth. She glanced at the clock on the front of city hall at the end of the street. “It’s not even nine o’clock yet.”

  “So we’ll fudge it a little.”

  He took her hand in his and the warmth spread up her arm and shimmied all the way down to her toes.

  “Let’s go riding.”

  “Really?” Her smile broadened then disappeared by degrees. “But you just got back from two weeks on horseback isn’t your…” She wanted to say “butt tired”, but that conjured up a wholly too-pleasant image that she wasn’t quite ready to grapple with. “Aren’t you too tired?”

  “Not if I get to spend time with you.”

  Her cheeks heated despite the cool night air. She wanted to melt then and there. “O…okay. But I have to go home first and change clothes.” She raised her free hand and motioned to the wet suit. She did have clothes back in the changing room, but the corduroy pants and tan sweater didn’t mix well with horseback riding.

  “All right. Let’s say we meet at my place in an hour. Will that give you time to go home and change?”

  She gauged the time. She needed to talk to Reese about her earlier run-in with Dale.

  “Yep, plenty.” She stood there for a moment not wanting to break the connection. She needed to get moving if she was going to file charges and go horseback riding with him. She squeezed his fingers then released his hand. “See you in an hour.”

  He smiled at her then turned and headed to the parking lot. She let her gaze linger on his backside for a moment. Again, heat crawled up her cheeks. She released a deep breath with a low whistle. That man had the best set of buns she’d ever seen.

  “Get a grip, Zan,” she said to her herself. “And get moving.”

  Nodding and waving at the few people she passed, Zan hurried to the makeshift dressing room. The site of the changing area reminded her of Dale. She hurried, changed and found Sheriff Reese at the caramel apple booth.

  “Sheriff.”

  “Evening, Miss Walters. Mighty fine pitching arm you got there.”

  A smile tilted the corner of her mouth. “Thanks. My brothers would be so proud.”

  “Was there something I can help you with?”

  The smile slid from her mouth. “Um, yes.” She detailed what had happened earlier in the dressing room. “I’d like to press charges.”

  “She’s lying.”

  Zan and the sheriff glanced at the man standing at the corner of the booth. Dale’s number one crony, Dwayne, took a huge bite from the apple on a stick. “He was with me all night long.” A bit of apple fell from his mouth and landed on his shirt. “He didn’t go nowhere near that bitch.”

  “You’re the liar.” Zan took a step toward Dwayne but was stopped by the sheriff’s large hand on her arm. “That’s not true, Sheriff, ask Missy. She was there. Dale came in and…”

  “Missy’ll say what ever she tells her to.” He pointed at Zan with his snack.

  “Are you kidding me?” Zan pulled her arm free but didn’t go after Dwayne like she wanted to. She narrowed her gaze at the man as she spoke to the sheriff. “I want to press charges,” she said again.

  Zan told Reese what Dale said and did in the small room.

  “And then you challenged him at the dunk tank?”

  Her cheeks heated. “It wasn’t like that.” She glanced at her watch and ran a hand through her hair. “I wanted him to leave me alone. I knew I could best him. Hell, my brothers would have my hide if I had missed that easy shot. And I thought if he saw he can’t intimidate me, push me around…”

  Reese held up his hands to stop her. “I wasn’t saying anything. Just getting the facts down.”

  “I’m telling you he wasn’t there.” Dwayne shoved the rest of the fruit in his mouth.

  “Duly noted.” Reese scribbled in his little note pad.

  “You believe me, right?” Zan’s stomach clenched. For the first time, she wasn’t so sure her aunt’s warning to run to the other side of the street when she saw Dale hadn’t been the best damn advice she’d ever gotten.

  Reese glanced from Dwayne back to her and lowered his voice. “I do. But if Dwayne swears Dale…”

  “I get it. It comes down to his word against mine. Do you need anything else from me?”

  “No, ma’am.” Reese tucked the notepad in his pocket.

  Zan headed for the clinic. She glanced over her shoulder once to see Dwayne headed in the opposite direction.

  Thank goodness for small favors.

  The evening assistant had the night off since there were no animals being held over so she made a quick check to ensure all the doors were locked before she headed home to change.

  An eerie sensation crept up her neck as she crossed the mostly empty parking lot behind the building. Even her hands shook as she stuck the key in the ignition. She chocked it up to nerves at seeing Jacob again. She had only been on one date with him. That was before she fell for him—hard. Her unease had to do with that and only that, she told herself.

  And if she repeate
d it enough she might actually start believing it.

  Besides, she’d taken care of the problem with Dale. Now she could focus on the man who had haunted her dreams for the past two weeks.

  Pushing the unwanted feelings from her mind, she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face as she pulled out of the parking lot. Zan had never been this excited to see Charles in the entire time they were together. Why would Jacob be so different? As soon as the thought popped into her head, she forced it out. She wasn’t going to over-think it, but instead let come what may.

  At home, she took the quickest shower ever and pulled on her favorite pair of faded blue jeans and a white T-shirt. After slipping her feet into her well-worn, tan Justin’s, she grabbed the old flannel shirt she had bought Trevor for Christmas when she was fifteen. Liking the red and green tartan plaid, she had kept the shirt for herself. She’d worn the shirt over to his house Christmas morning and when he admired it, she broke down and admitted what she had done. Being a wonderful big brother, he told her it looked better on her. The next year for Christmas, he’d bought her two more just like it.

  Warm with the memory, her smile still held firm to her face as she walked to her car. The smile fell when the hairs on her arms stood. She shivered and slipped the flannel shirt on. The chill lingered and the pit of her stomach wobbled. A twinge of unease raced down her spine. Like earlier in the parking lot, something was off, but she couldn’t tell what exactly. She looked around at the darkened neighboring houses. Everyone was probably still at the festival. Nowhere did she see anyone milling about. She fought back the urge to run, but stepping up her pace a little, she hurried to her car. She just excused it as anxious nerves again.

  Back on the road between her house and Jacob’s, she fiddled with the radio until she found a song she liked. In the darkness of the car, she sang along with Rascal Flatts’, “Me and My Gang”.

  As she got to the first chorus, she noticed she wasn’t alone on the narrow stretch of road. Two bright headlights closed in on her.

  “They must be in a hurry,” she said aloud.

  The twin beams of light ate up the stretch of highway until they shone so bright in her rearview mirror she had to tilt it away.

  “I’m moving.” Zan pulled her car closer to the shoulder, the country way to say “pass me”. She tried not to move too far over, the drop-off past the shoulder fell away several feet.

  The vehicle behind her didn’t pass, but instead its bright lights turned on.

  Zan righted the car back into the center of her lane and pressed lightly on the brakes. If he was going to tailgate her, she would make him sorry. She slowed her speed from the posted fifty-five to forty. In that instant, the vehicle—that she could now tell was a truck by the large grill in her mirror—hit the back end of her car.

  A scream filled the car, deafening her. It took her a moment to realize she had screamed as panic tightened her chest.

  The truck eased back some. She slowed another ten miles an hour thinking maybe she had just hit a really big bump in the road—a mostly flat and level road. Maybe it was an accident. Surely no one would hit her on purpose.

  But then it hit her again.

  She held on to the steering wheel, trying to keep the car pointed in the right direction. She wanted to put her hand on her chest to hold in the heart that wanted to explode from behind her ribs.

  Again, she could see the headlights closing in on her. As they disappeared from the mirror because they were so close, the truck rammed her a third time. The curve in the road was unforgiving to the weight of the truck’s force. Unable to control the car and follow the curve to the left, her tires slid past the shoulder and down the embankment.

  Tall weeds whipped past her headlights like the thoughts whirling through her head. With an abrupt jerk the car stopped. Zan smashed her forehead on the steering wheel. She literally saw stars dancing before her eyes for a brief moment before her eyes cleared to show an abundance of light. Then the headlights shined on the grassy ditch. Both the headlights and dash lights flickered before they went out completely plunging the area into darkness.

  ———

  Jacob glanced at the clock on the stove again. Zan should have been at his house two hours ago. Calling her house every fifteen minutes for the last two hours had netted him nothing but her cheery answering machine message. He debated calling the sheriff, but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it in case she had had an emergency out at the clinic or from back home in Texas.

  Or maybe had just plain changed her mind.

  But deep down he knew she wouldn’t have left him hanging. She would have called. His stomach knotted again. He gathered his keys and headed to her house. Maybe she had car trouble. That Plymouth was an old car.

  The twenty-mile section of road between her house and his could leave a person walking for an eternity before someone came along to offer assistance. The cloudless sky, bright with stars, did little to ease his worries. He could see no one on the side of the road. Long, straight stretches of road lay empty before him.

  Three quarters of the way to her house his hope for car trouble diminished. How morbid to hope that she’d run out of gas on an empty highway in the middle of the night, but the alternative to her tardiness was too…unbearable to consider.

  Rounding the last curve before getting within the town limits, a flash of reflective plastic in the ditch alongside the road caught his eye. Jacob peered down the shoulder as he passed. The darkness of the night yielded little help. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the shape of a car.

  Slamming on the breaks, his tires skidded on the gravel road. He threw the pickup in reverse. Stopped in the middle of the road, unconcerned with his running truck blocking the lane, he grabbed a large-handled flashlight and rushed to the spot where he saw the car.

  Shining his light, his stomach fell when he spotted the Texas plates on the back end of the old Plymouth.

  “Zan.” His boots slid down the grassy ditch. The car was nose down, wedged into the dry gully. The driver’s side lay at an angle, pinning the doors shut. The passenger side tires rested on the other wall of grass and dirt. Jacob had to crawl across the roof of the car to reach the front end.

  Again shining his light, he looked through the windshield and froze. Zan sat rigid, listing to the left. Staring straight ahead, her heavy-lidded eyes were unmoving, mouth slightly open. Blood trickled down her forehead and over the end of her nose from a two-inch gash just at the hairline. It wasn’t until he saw the rise and fall of her chest that he relaxed, if only an iota. She was alive.

  He released a pent-up breath.

  “Zan? It’s Jacob. Can you hear me?” She didn’t so much as flinch. Jacob flashed the light in her eyes. At first, she didn’t move, but finally her eyes twitched, and then she blinked.

  “Thank you, God,” he said aloud. “I’m going to get you out of there. I promise.”

  She didn’t speak, but her eyes shifted to his and she took a deep, shuddering breath.

  Half crawling and half climbing, he hoisted himself to the passenger side of the car and tried to open the door, but the lock was engaged. He would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so dire.

  Jacob debated smashing the window, but feared Zan might be hurt from the falling glass. The rear window would be a better point of entry. It was large enough for either of them to fit through and far enough away to protect her from flying debris. He hurried to the back end of the car and raising the flashlight like a hammer, he swung and hit the glass. The plastic head of the flashlight shattered, extinguishing the only ray of light.

  “Shit!” He dropped what was left of the plastic light and ran his hands over his face. He moaned and kicked the tire with his boot-clad foot then fell to his butt beside the car.

  Zan sat frozen in the front seat and he couldn’t get to her. What could he do? His heart raced, screaming at him to hurry, but his head told him to think. He needed to use his brain.

 
Scrambling onto the trunk, he used the heel of his boot and kicked at the glass. He managed to release some of his pent up frustration while he cracked the window. Blow after blow, the crack widened until the glass finally shattered, gaining him entry.

  The heavy pounding of his heart shook his hands, nerves raw and strung.

  “Zan, honey, are you hurting anywhere?” he asked, climbing over the seats to sit next to her.

  She lifted one shoulder, but still made no noise. Her tongue darted out and wet her parted lips as she turned a little to look at him.

  The slant of the car pulled him almost on top of her and he had to hold onto the door to keep from squashing her. With his free hand, he tried to release the seatbelt from her waist. It didn’t budge. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and then remembered his ever present jackknife. He fumbled in his pocket—tight and uncomfortable in his cramped position—until he pulled it free. After a few minutes of sawing through the nylon belt, it tore free.

  Without the support of the belt, she slumped to the door. A moan—the sweetest sound he might ever hear—followed.

  “Zan. Are you okay?”

  He watched her hands move under her to support herself off the door, and then she nodded with the barest of movement.

  “Try not to move too much.”

  Cursing the bench seat, he used the steering column to hoist himself up. Throwing his weight, he shoved at the heavy door to open it. Unfortunately, because of the position of the car and the heaviness of the door, he couldn’t prop it open.

  Frustration tightened his gut, churning the acid inside. He should go for help, but he’d be damned if he would leave Zan alone one second longer.

  “The back window is out. Do you think you can climb over the seats and crawl out?”

  “I…I think so,” she whispered in a hoarse voice.

  “Okay. Hold still just a second and I’ll help you.” Jacob carefully settled one foot beside her on the driver’s door and the other again on the steering column, his head banged on the roof of the car but he barely registered the pain. He slid his hands around her back, checking for any noticeable injuries, then grabbed under her arms and lifted.