Make Me Stay
Arizona Heat 2
Katie Douglas
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Thank you
Also by Katie Douglas
Chapter 1
“I’m as free as a bird now. And this bird you cannot change.” — Lynyrd Skynyrd, Free Bird.
Harper
I crept out of his apartment at midnight. It was the best time to avoid complications. In my experience, men were at their most unwakeable straight after falling asleep, and I really didn’t want the “please stay, you’ll be happy here” conversation. Heard it too many times.
There was no quiet way to close the doors to a 1969 VW T2—that’s an Early Bay, if you care about such things—so I got my purse lined up on the passenger seat, changed the CD in my walkman—the sound quality is better than MP3, if you have an ear for it and good headphones, and anyway, I’ve never quite trusted digital music after my Amazon Cloud Player account got hacked a few years ago and some bastard deleted all my Taylor Swift—and I fired up the engine, which sputtered and rattled. God, but I loved the sound of that ancient air-cooled engine when it began to turn. It was the sound of freedom.
My foot hit the clutch and I put the van into first gear smoothly. I’d had men almost cum in their pants from watching the way I drive stick. I have three skills in life: Sex, driving, and finding good diner food. Most people probably think that makes me a screw-up but I like to think I have all the most important aspects of life covered.
I turned on my headlights and was ready to pull out of the spot before I finally slammed the door closed and pushed the latch down. By the time I pulled away, the intro to Free Bird was playing, and I was remembering that time some guy in Alabama took me to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. Ironically, he hadn’t dealt with my need to keep moving any better than anyone else did.
“...I must be traveling on, noooow; ‘cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see...” I sang, once I was accelerating down the street in the direction of the highway. Lynyrd Skynyrd understood me like no one else on the planet ever could. Shame most of the band had died a long time ago.
As I headed toward the freeway, I had a late night waver of which fucking state am I in right now? It wasn’t resolved by the signpost pointing to Springfield. I mean, come on. I understood why pretty much every state had a Washington and a Lincoln. Important presidents. But Springfield? It was like someone in the distant past had caught no-imagination diarrhea and shat it all over a map. Oh, yeah, there was the jaded and overly-harsh side of me that came out when I was driving after midnight. No one else seemed to see this facet of my personality, especially when they were begging me to chain myself to them forever.
Screw being tied down.
I had gas in my tank, food in my belly and batteries in my CD player. I didn’t need anything else. Anyway, after I’d slept with someone, what else was there to do with them? People talked about going on dates to restaurants or walking along the beach but I did all that stuff by myself. Hell, if the sex wasn’t good, I did that by myself too. BOB, my Battery Operated Boyfriend, was the only penis I’d even let ride with me for more than a few hours. I didn’t like complications or messy drama.
I was too much like a guy. And guys had other guy friends for that. Guys who stayed around for Halo matches and to shoot some pool.
I pulled into Denny’s and parked. Late-night was the best time for diner food because it was easy to park the van and no one tried to talk to me. I ordered as soon as I walked in. By now, I knew the menu by heart and I knew exactly what I wanted.
Story of my life.
“That your van?” An older guy leaned over and asked.
“No, I stole it,” I replied. I couldn’t help it. Stupid questions were my least favorite. Especially from chatty guys I didn’t want to talk to. There was only one reason a man talked to a young single woman at this time of night.
“How long you been on the road?”
C’mon, waitress, bring the food already.
I shook my head and pulled out my phone. Truthfully, I didn’t remember.
“Miss? You ever get lonely?”
I turned on my phone and pretended to be busy. In reality, I was just scrolling through settings menus looking at nothing. Nobody messaged me.
“You know why you’re alone? You’re a cold-hearted bitch. Just like my wife... wife... ex-wife...” he began sobbing at the table and the waitress came out.
“John? You been drinkin’ again? You better get yourself home.”
Ugh. Drama. The chances of me getting my food anytime soon were slipping away and I wondered how bad it would be if I left and went to the Wendy’s on the other side of the road.
I’d not come across nonsense like this since I left the east coast and got south of the Mason-Dixon line. I guessed while it was more prevalent up where there were more people, it was inevitable that somewhere out here there was going to be a random drunk guy bugging me.
I sat politely and waited for the waitress to finish wrangling the drunk guy and bring my food. When she sat down opposite him and my food appeared on the counter, I got up and fetched it myself. I’d worked in enough food joints to know my way around them, and I found my own cutlery, too.
When I finished, the two of them were still talking. I left the money by the empty plate—minus the coffee that never showed up, and the service, since she never actually served me—and left. Across the street, I picked up a coffee and I was on the road again.
Some people called these the flyover states, like there was nothing worth seeing out here. Maybe they were right, but I’d found something good in every place I’d been. Even the ones I booked it back out of as fast as possible.
I was almost at the west coast, and I was hoping I’d find whatever I was looking for when I got there. I’d been searching for something for years and I still didn’t know what it was.
I met another traveler once. We both had vans. The time we had spent together was a disaster. I guessed we were both too different from each other and from the rest of the world to ever get along. He’d wanted to get stoned all the time. Or drunk.
I preferred to drive with a clear head and I honestly couldn’t give a crap if The Wizard of Oz synchronized with The Dark Side of the Moon when you played one or other of them backwards. I just wanted to see everything. Move. Live. Feel. I was trying to break away from the static world I’d grown up in, where every day was the same, forever.
He was stagnant in his own head and the longer I knew him, the more I realized there was something a bit off about him. Obsessive over things. Taking things the wrong way. When he started trying to tell me what to do, I left him at a gas station when he went to the bathroom and I never looked back. He’d driven there in his own van, it wasn’t like I’d left him stranded. I’d changed routes and gone south after that, so we didn’t bump into each other again, and it turned out the south was just what I needed. Pathetically, that was the closest I’d gotten to a relationship in my entire adult life.
My eyes started to get that special kind of tired that only happened late at night on days that had been too long. The road started to do strange things and oncoming headlights all seemed a little too bright. Were they on the correct side of the road? It seemed like they were straight in front of me and I flinched as they came so close I thought we’d collide. They didn’t. They�
��d never been in my lane. My imagination was worrying about nothing. I squinted at the line down the middle of the road and I knew I needed to stop right away.
There was a farm lane with a cute sign. Two lemons painted on a hunk of wood beside the words “Lemon Tree Ranch” in some pale color that could be anything in this light.
I found what looked in the darkness like a pull off or passing place for the dirt road I was driving along. I pulled up the handbrake, put the stick into neutral, turned off my engine and climbed into the back, where I threw off most of my clothes and slipped into my sleeping bag. By the time I realized I hadn’t set my phone alarm to wake me up in a few hours, I was already too asleep to move.
Chapter 2
“I’ve been everywhere, man, I’ve been everywhere.” — Johnny Cash, I’ve Been Everywhere.
Barrett
There had been quite a lot of rain last night, which was unusual but not unheard of for this part of Arizona in November. I got up at five, checked on the steers, then headed out to check the land. I’d been about to turn right into the southeast field when I had to hit the brakes. Some damn hippie had parked over the entrance to the land with one of those VW campervans.
Irritated, I decided to inconvenience them as much as they’d inconvenienced me. I double parked the VW with my truck, got out, locked the doors and headed toward the stables. Jake wasn’t up yet, so I saddled up Foghorn, one of the horses, and headed off to do my checks on horseback.
Most cowboy work was done in trucks like my Ford, these days, but I had a job to do and it wasn’t the first time I’d had to do it on horseback.
The land was looking mostly fine, no flash floods, except around the edges of the fences, where water tended to accumulate at this time of year. I made it full circle back to the van in about an hour. Whoever was inside was still asleep.
I decided if they wanted me to let the van go on its way, they were going to do some work on the ranch, to make up for the trouble they’d caused. I could use another man today, because I had to take the horns off twelve new young bulls.
“Hey! You get up right now, you hear?” I tapped on the glass in exactly the way they tell you not to at the zoo.
The drifter sat up and my jaw fell open. She was a she. And when she sat up and reached across to lower the window a little, her sleeping bag fell away, showing her innocent white bra, and her huge, round breasts. One nipple had popped out of the cup in the night and it sat pert above the white, soft fabric, like a little bunny nose poking out of its burrow to explore.
My eyes moved lower to her flat belly and the cute piercing with a sparkling blue rhinestone.
Oh, jeez. Was she a hooker?
I forced my eyes upwards, taking in her tousled hair, bleached light blonde like Bebe Rexha, with dark brows and the slightest almost-black roots showing at the top of her parting. For some reason, I’d always found that kind of hair sexier than natural blonde on a woman.
“You done?” she asked, and when I finally reached her eyes I saw they were narrowed at me angrily. They were also the prettiest shade of dark green I ever saw.
I fought against the hardness trying to fill my cock, and pulled my mind back to the fact this cute little thing had messed up my day by illegally trespassing and parking on Lemon Tree Ranch land.
“You parked on a farm entry.”
“I’ll move. Yeesh, what time even is it?” She crawled across the van, apparently oblivious to the reason I’d been staring, and her pert, heart-shaped butt was revealed, in pink panties that didn’t match her bra. They were those boy shorts that revealed just enough to make a man like me itch to spank an ass like hers.
This girl might have traces of last night’s makeup under her eyes, but she wasn’t no road whore, that was for certain.
“Six a.m.? Shit. I got three hours’ sleep and I forgot to set my alarm. I’m sorry. I’ll get going.” Three hours’ sleep? Didn’t seem like she was looking after herself so good.
“Missy, you ain’t going nowhere until I say so.” I don’t know why I decided to push my point, but I guess I was still sore about the fact she’d been so inconsiderate.
“What d’you mean? Move the truck and I’ll get out of your way.” She dragged a T-shirt over her head and as her breasts disappeared, I felt like someone had turned out the light that had been illuminating my mood. My mouth became a hard line.
“You’re going to spend the day working on the ranch, to make up for the nuisance you caused.”
“Oh, hell no.” She dragged her jeans on and started the engine. Looked like she was going to ram my truck and all I could do was sit on my horse and watch. Instead, she steered to drive through the slight hill of sand between where she was and where the dirt track and fence were separated.
“Don’t!” I yelled, but she didn’t seem to understand. The sand wasn’t stable. When the heavy tires chewed up the slight bank, it collapsed. The van got stuck. The front bumper was suddenly buried under sand and the girl swore loudly.
“I hope you don’t speak to your grandma with that mouth,” I scolded. “Now stop being silly and get out of the van.”
She just sat there, as if she didn’t know what to do next, so I dismounted, walked around to the driver door and pulled it open before her hand could hit the latch to lock herself in.
“Driving without a safety belt,” I remarked. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her out of the van, hoisting her over my shoulder. I slammed the door, locked it and pocketed her keys, then I deposited her over the horse, mounting behind her before riding back to the stables.
She was swearing at me the whole way, but she didn’t dare kick the horse. At least she was considerate of animals, even if she didn’t seem to be so good with humans. Can’t say I was much better, in that regard, but at least I tried not to inconvenience people. Except her. Her day was mine, and she was going to think twice before she ever blocked someone’s land access again.
At the stables, Jake had just gotten his day going. I gave him the horse to sort out, and I hoisted the girl over my shoulder again.
“You got a mail order bride?” Jake teased.
“No. The Czech’s in the mail still,” I bantered back. “This li’l thing parked over the access point, and now she’s spending the day helping me out to make up for it.”
“Fuck off!” she growled.
I’d just about had enough of her mouth at this point so I swatted her butt as hard as my palm was itching. It was a satisfyingly firm ass and if she kept pushing me, I was going to enjoy putting her over my knee.
“How dare you?” she demanded. At least, I think she meant it as a question. I decided not to answer, anyway.
“Have fun,” Jake chuckled, shaking his head as I walked out of the stables with the girl still over my shoulder. I carried her across the yard to my small but perfect house, a converted outbuilding left over from the original construction back when the owners’ parents had built this whole place. Clay and Lawson, the current owners, would still be in bed a little while longer.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded. “If you think I’ll fuck you to ‘work off my debt’ or whatever, you can think again!”
“Thought didn’t cross my mind,” I replied patiently. I carried her into my kitchen and set her down on a dining chair. “But it’s breakfast time. Usually I’d have eaten it by now, after I came back from my early-morning jobs, but I just had to check the property on horseback because of you, so I’m running late today.”
“Breakfast?”
“Sure. Bacon. Eggs. Beans. Toast. You ain’t one of those vegans, are you?”
“I eat anything,” she replied, and her tone was a little mellower than before. I nodded with the first approval I’d felt since she’d put her clothes back on.
“Good.” I got up to go cook, hoping the smell of bacon would bring my senses back, because I was still fighting the urge to put her over my knee and she wasn’t even doing anything to provoke it.
Was this
day of work going to be harder for me or her? I didn’t know.
Harper
When I’d first awoken, I’d been so ready to apologize but this guy was just making my day miserable for no good reason and that made me feel less inclined to feel guilty. He was thoroughly pissing me off after the fact he’d swatted my ass. For swearing. Like I was twelve or something.
But he was easy on the eye, and that tempered me a little, along with the way the kitchen was slowly filling with the mouthwatering scent of frying bacon, eggs, and toasted fresh bread. The knowledge he was about to give me bacon was helping me cool off. I couldn’t ever truly be furious at a hot man who cooked me breakfast when I hadn’t even slept with him.
I wondered what sort of work I was going to have to do. While I’d had a lot of jobs, I’d never actually worked on a ranch before and I only had a vague understanding of how they operated. Everything I knew about farming came from a video we had to watch in elementary school about how “beef animals” went from being calves to being a double quarter pounder with cheese.
I think it came with one of those badly-photocopied worksheets we colored with crayons.
“Where you from?” he asked, as he put empty plates on the table. The food in the frying pan sizzled in the background and my stomach got that growly feeling that often precedes a good meal.
“You never heard of it,” I replied. My tone wasn’t harsh. It was the truth.
“Try me.”
“Lincoln, New Hampshire.” Like I said before, there’s towns called Washington and Lincoln everywhere.
“Nope. Never heard of it.”
“I know.”
“New Hampshire... isn’t that up on the east coast? What you doing down here?”
Make Me Stay (Arizona Heat Book 2) Page 1