Desire at Roosevelt Ranch

by Faber, Elise

  Desire at Roosevelt Ranch

  Roosevelt Ranch Book 5

  Elise Faber

  DESIRE AT ROOSEVELT RANCH

  BY ELISE FABER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  DESIRE AT ROOSEVELT RANCH

  Copyright © 2019 Elise Faber

  Print ISBN-13: 1-946140-38-8

  E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-946140-37-1

  Cover Art by Jena Brignola

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Roosevelt Ranch Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Roosevelt Ranch Series

  Untitled

  Also by Elise Faber

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you my dear readers for following this series from beginning to end! I’m sad that the stories of Darlington and Roosevelt Ranch are coming to a conclusion, but so excited for the new series and projects I’m working on in the meantime. Sign up for my newsletter (http://eepurl.com/bdnmEj) to be kept apprised of all the new and exciting things coming your way.

  The Roosevelt Ranch books have been close to my heart for many years now and I hope you’ve enjoyed the stories of second chances, of mistakes, and of finding your way in the end.

  A special thanks to all of my editors, my fabulous fan group, The Fabinators, my family, and most of all, to you.

  —XOXO, Elise

  Roosevelt Ranch Series

  Disaster at Roosevelt Ranch

  Heartbreak at Roosevelt Ranch

  Collision at Roosevelt Ranch

  Regret at Roosevelt Ranch

  Desire at Roosevelt Ranch

  One

  Rex

  He drove down the dark road, trying to figure out why he was still in Darlington, Utah, almost two months after he’d deposited Bella back with her one true love, Henry.

  Barf.

  Love was for idiots.

  Or pussies.

  Or people who were insanely, sickeningly happy.

  Ugh.

  Rex was jealous. He knew it. He embraced it.

  But that didn’t change the fact he wasn’t the kind of person who fell in love. Or rather, he didn’t allow himself to fall in love. He’d seen the way his father had loved his mother—a touching Hollywood scene if there ever was one, filled with so much devotion and affection that when she’d died, his father had changed.

  Part of him had died, too.

  And so, Rex and Justin had lost both parents.

  That was the troubling part of so-called happily ever afters.

  They never lasted.

  Rex sighed because the real casualties in those failed or aborted happy endings were the kids. They suffered. They lost it all. They—

  “Fuck!” he said and swerved, almost clipping the car barely pulled over on the shoulder.

  No hazard lights flashing. No flares. Nothing but a dark shape silhouetted against the moonlight. Were they trying to get themselves killed?

  He slowed and turned around, heading back to the parked car.

  His tirade about responsibility was on the tip of his tongue and—ha!—if anyone even knew that he’d thought the word responsibility, they would have keeled over and dropped dead.

  Responsibility and Rex Roosevelt did not belong in the same sentence.

  He was the screw-up.

  He was the bad guy.

  He was pulling over behind the car.

  Rex parked behind it and turned on his hazard lights before getting out. He’d extended a hand to knock when he saw the woman inside. Spot-lit by his car’s headlights, she looked like an angel with pale blond hair and delicate features.

  Or at least from the glimpse he caught, they seemed delicate.

  He only caught hints of a pert nose, plump lips, and a slender jaw because she was spending a lot of time banging her face against the steering wheel.

  Rex hesitated and almost turned away, leaving her to whatever sort of mental breakdown she was determined to have, but just as he’d taken a step back toward his car, his conscience pinged.

  The annoying bastard had been all too busy lately.

  He sighed but knew he couldn’t leave her, and so he blew out a breath, raised his hand, and knocked on the window.

  The woman inside jumped.

  Her gaze shot to his for one long moment before her eyes slid closed, head dropping down to the steering wheel.

  But Rex barely noticed.

  Because one look from her, and he’d felt like he’d been struck over the head by a two-by-four.

  Or maybe hit in the ass by Cupid’s arrow.

  She was . . . different . . . wonderful . . .

  And he wanted her.

  Two

  Tilly

  “Go away, y-you . . . you!” she shouted through the closed window of her car.

  It was late. It was dark.

  Her car had decided it was Satan’s spawn again.

  And so, no, she wasn’t firing on all cylinders when it came to her insult game. Not that her insult game was ever that strong, but circling back to the late, dark, stuck on the side of the road thing—and having watched way too many murder documentaries on Netflix lately—Tilly wasn’t about to greet the shadow outside her car with any familiarity.

  Especially when all she could discern was that the person crouching to peer into the window of her little sedan was big, with broad shoulders. She grabbed her phone and flicked on the flashlight, shining it in the murderer’s—Good Samaritan’s—face.

  Then almost dropped it in her haste to turn it off.

  “Justin?” she asked, identifying her former coworker’s husband. Kelly and Justin had been married for a few years, and he was decidedly a good guy.

  Think Goody Two Shoes as an alternative to the leading man in a horror flick.

  She pressed the button to unlock the car door then popped the handle.

  “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t know it was you, and I stayed up way too late last night watching this movie, and now it’s dark and my car just up and died and—”

  Her words cut off.

  Because in her haste to exit the car, she’d left the door open and that open door meant that the overhead light was shining, illuminating the space around them.

  Illuminating Justin’s face.

  “I thought your eyes were green,” she murmured.

  Justin blinked, and it was as though someone had wiped his face clean with a towel, but instead of scrubbing away dirt and grime, her words had rubbed away all traces of emotion.

  His expression went blank, blue eyes hardening. “Nope,” he said, mouth pressing flat. “In fact, I was born with this pair.”

  The cadence with which he spoke—arrogant, cool—told Tilly all she needed t
o know.

  “You’re not Justin.”

  “Ding. Ding. Ding.” He stepped toward her.

  She backed away . . . into the door.

  The man didn’t stop, just kept moving forward, but just when his chest would have brushed hers, the moment she’d sucked in a huge gulp of air, readying herself to scream, he shifted, nudging her out of the way and dropping down into the driver’s seat.

  Was he trying to steal her car?

  “No,” he said with a smirk, nodding in the direction of the sleek sedan that was parked behind her as her cheeks went red-hot with embarrassment at having said that aloud. “I have a working vehicle.”

  What would he want with a dumpy Mazda like hers anyway? It was on the leeward side of two hundred thousand miles, the front seat had a spring that was bent and always poked her as she drove, the radio rarely worked, and . . . well, based on the fact that it was stopped on the side of the road for the umpteenth time in the last few months, it was seriously lacking in the one quality that most people valued in a car this old.

  Reliability.

  Click.

  She jumped, mental diatribe about her vehicle halting. “I tried that—” she said, or rather started to say because the not-Justin reached down and tugged on the lever to pop her hood—er, the car’s hood—then pushed out of the driver’s seat. Tilly caught a whiff of his cologne as he went, spice mixed with something earthy.

  Her kryptonite.

  Sandalwood.

  The little je ne sais quoi that was the basis for so many scents, both male and female. It rounded out the notes, added depth to something like cinnamon or bergamot, paired well with vanilla and warm black pepper.

  A loud banging pulled her out of her mental soliloquy to all things nose-related.

  She was Tilly Conner, of the long line of Conners from Darlington, Utah. Who stayed in Darlington, who met their husbands in Darlington, who had tiny humans that grew up in Darlington. Her future was waitressing in Henry’s Diner until she met someone she didn’t hate—and maybe sort of, even liked—they’d date for the prerequisite one-point-five years, get engaged, get married, pop out some of those tiny humans, then go their separate ways . . . at least in her branch of the family.

  And now she was the last of her side.

  But regardless of lineage, what Conners from Darlington did not do was dream and wish and hope for a different life—especially not one that had her starring as the creator of a line of perfumes and colognes.

  Then expanding into hair products. And makeup. And candles.

  Nope.

  That was exactly what she shouldn’t be thinking about.

  She could go.

  But she wouldn’t.

  “Thinking isn’t the problem,” she muttered. “It’s the hoping that does it—”

  A banging noise drove out all imaginings of a different life, in a different place, with different opportunities. She gasped and jumped, clutching the top of the door for balance, shoving all thoughts away, forcing herself to stop acting like a daydreaming child and to focus on the present.

  On what was important.

  Namely, the fact that she was on the side of the road with a non-Justin, who seemed to be getting very angry with her engine.

  “Um,” she called over the sound. “What are you—”

  “Try it now,” the man called, his voice dripping down her spine like honey.

  Thighs clenching, fingers still gripping the door, she frowned. “Try what?”

  A sigh. Footsteps crunching the dirt and rocks as he rounded the front of the car, slipped around her, and reached over to turn the key in the ignition.

  Her engine started up.

  And not just the one in her pants, because sweet baby Jesus, his ass in those slacks, the cotton cupping the mounds lovingly, making her fingers ache to touch—

  Whoa, girl.

  Yes, she’d calmed herself like one of Kelly’s horses.

  But she’d never been attracted to Kelly’s husband. Hell, she’d barely been attracted to anyone for the last few years. It was why she hadn’t made tiny humans, why she was frighteningly single, why—

  “Get in the car.”

  Tilly blinked. “What?”

  The man sighed. “I’ll follow you home, make sure you get there.” When she didn’t immediately move, he nudged her again, and this time his fingers brushed the bare skin of her arm.

  Sparks.

  As in, she felt actual sparks.

  Except that was insane.

  She was delusional, wrapped up in her bergamot, sandalwood, vanilla haze. She was—

  Plunked into the driver’s seat, the man’s lovely bergamot, sandalwood, and light vanilla scent filling the air around her. He stretched over her, clipped her seat belt in place, put her hands on the steering wheel, then spoke to her like she was the biggest idiot on the planet. “You. Drive. Me. Follow.”

  Tilly shook her head. “I don’t understand how you fixed my car.”

  A flash of white teeth that threatened to make her stupid. “It’s not fixed. It’s running. For now.” He leaned back, started to close the door. “But you need a new battery and starter.”

  “Thank—”

  The door shut, cutting off her words.

  She sighed, used the manual handle to roll down the window. “Thank you for fixing—getting my car started, but I don’t need an escort.”

  He paused, glanced back at her, then shrugged before continuing back to his car.

  “What’s your name, anyway?” she called as he opened his driver’s side and started to climb in.

  “Rex,” he said, that dripping honey voice now sliding lower. “Rex Roosevelt.”

  Then, as she was reeling from the confirmation of the truth she’d known deep inside the moment she’d realized he wasn’t Justin, Rex started up his car—it purred to life with no protest—and drove away.

  The cloud of dust in his wake, the only sign he’d been there at all.

  Three

  Rex

  “Stupid,” he muttered. “Stupid fucking idiot.”

  What had he expected? For her to jump into his arms and declare her eternal love all because he’d banged on her starter?

  He snorted.

  Yeah, no. Women didn’t work that way.

  They were transactional, and it was better for all involved if both sides’ terms were hammered out in the beginning.

  Rex sighed, shifting slightly in his seat because thinking about hammering and banging the beautiful blonde was not good for his self-imposed celibacy. And why was he doing that to himself again?

  What did it matter if he fucked his way around the globe?

  Oh, yeah. Because he felt like shit afterward.

  It had been nice while it lasted, that pussy fog, the bleak numbness that had enveloped him, not caring about anyone other than himself.

  And then Kelly.

  And feelings.

  And a dick that didn’t work.

  Or didn’t want to work for anyone except for Kelly.

  But he’d gone and screwed things up between him and Kelly way too fucking long ago. She and his twin Justin had found each other in the wreckage Rex had wrought, and they were happy.

  His newest curse word.

  Because everyone was fucking happy.

  Except him.

  “Stop being so sensitive,” he muttered, repeating the words his father had told him way too many times growing up—along with “Be a man,” and “Feelings are for pussies,” and “Women will only destroy you.”

  So, yup, baggage, for the win.

  He was driving at a snail’s pace, not breathing until he saw the headlights pull out onto the road behind him, the silhouette of the pretty blonde barely visible in his rearview. She caught up with him pretty quickly, and he continued driving out of town, trying to watch to see where she’d turn off, to make sure she’d make it home safely.

  A few months before, he’d have lied to himself, made up an excuse for wanting to
know that fact.

  Tonight, he didn’t bother lying.

  He knew he wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep unless he saw her home.

  Darlington was a small town, but he hadn’t seen the blonde around, didn’t know her name, wasn’t on good enough terms with anyone to find out, but just as he was thinking again that he needed to leave and start fresh, the car behind him turned off.

  He braked, waiting to see she’d made it up the winding driveway, the headlights drifting orbs of light as they weaved their way up the hill until, eventually, they parked in front of a mostly dark house.

  The porch light flicked on—via a motion sensor or someone waiting inside for her—and she bounded up the steps.

  Then stopped.

  And turned to face the street.

  To face his car on the road.

  She waved, turned for the door, and disappeared inside.

  Gone, just that easily.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, driving forward again. “That’s a familiar feeling.”

  He was being a pest.

  But that was Rex Roosevelt’s specialty—annoying, pestering, infuriating everyone around him. Luckily, despite the glare his brother was lobbing his way, his rescue of Bella had gone a long way toward thawing the ice Kelly had in her heart where he was concerned.

  Well, that and the fact that he’d made it a point to have Abigail and the twins refer to him as Uncle Rex—the twins because he was truly their uncle, and Abigail because while he might have provided one half of her DNA, Rex had never been anything like a father to her.