Smuggled Wonder

by Knight, Belle

  Smuggled Wonder

  A Smuggled Wild Series Standalone

  Belle Knight

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Belle Knight

  Cover Art by Igneous Books

  All rights reserved. For information please write: Igneous Books, PO Box 159, Roseville, CA 95678.

  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

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Bonus Scene

  The Smuggled Wild Series

  Chapter 1

  Ashley stared down the new ram from between the bars of the crate.

  King’s head put him almost to her own head. His two horns curved in wicked spirals. His partner stood almost as high. They both approached the crate wall as if expecting her to feed or scratch them—or head butt her.

  Her hands on her hips, she tapped her left boot on the ground and considered her next move. The tour bus would arrive soon, spilling out several dozen cheese tourists, including the guy from the bank who would decide whether or not she got that business loan.

  She was running out of time.

  “You see that?” Janice said.

  The old woman had her grey hair tied back in a messy bun. She stood next to Ashley in dust covered jeans and green polka dot rain boots.

  “Yeah,” Ashley said, sighing.

  The rams were not giving them compliant signals.

  She shifted her weight inside her own blue striped rain boots. This was California dairy farm country. Sure, people wore cowboy boots, but why muck up a nice pair in the mud and shit when plastic rain boots would do just as nice and clean up even easier?

  She stepped closer and King tracked her, looking eager. It meant he wasn’t afraid of her. It meant he didn’t respect her. It meant he was dangerous and might even be deadly.

  The crate smelled like hay and piss and wool. She tasted the cinnamon from her breakfast oatmeal finished not two minutes before this ram, King, and his nethered companion, Gandalf, had arrived in the back of a pickup truck.

  She was King’s new caretaker.

  He was the ticket to her dreams.

  Her cheesemonger dreams, to be specific.

  There was something special in his genetics she wanted breed into her trio of ewes. The combination would turn out some of the best sheep milk in California—and some of the best sheep cheese in the world.

  Sheep wasn’t big yet in California, not like goat, and not like anything close to cow—but Ashley thought it would be. Someday.

  The problem?

  Well, the previous owner had called King the most aggressive damn ram of the past thirty years of his sheep-rearing life. And Gandalf, his neutered sheep companion, wasn’t much better.

  But it didn’t matter.

  The genetics were rare, and right, and she didn’t have a lot of options.

  Scratch that, she had no options.

  Loud engine noised whirred behind them. A bus began its ascent on a narrow lane that would lead the tourists straight to Janice’s dairy shop door.

  Too bad no one was manning it right then. It was just Ashley and Janice—and Janice’s dogs. Had been that way for seven years, other than seasonal help here and there.

  “Ashley,” Janice said, a warning note in her voice that Ashley knew too well. It meant worry and care and hard work and love—but mostly hard work. “Leave him until the tour is over. We’ll deal with him later.”

  Ashley shook her head, tendrils of brown hair flying from her loose ponytail. “If I don’t get him inside the paddock now, it’ll be dark—and even more dangerous.”

  Ashley flicked her brown eyes back to Janice. Both of them were slim, toned with muscle, though Janice was in her sixties and it showed in the lines of her tanned skin. Ashley was still in her late twenties, smooth, strong, though her hands were plenty calloused with the work the small, artisan dairy farm required everyday.

  “You go on and meet them,” Ashley said returning her attention to the crate. “I’ll finish up and be up there soon.”

  “It’s your cheese, girl,” Janice said, putting passion into her words. “You should share it, talk about it, make it sing in their mouths. Not me.”

  “Janice—”

  Ashley had spent the last seven years apprenticing at the Sweet Weather Dairy Farm and though the owner, Janice, was like a wonderful, old aunt, she had been hinting that it was time for Ashley to think about something more for herself.

  Something of her own.

  “It’s time to stop hiding, girl. It’s time to get back out there.”

  Ashley frowned.

  Janice wasn’t just talking about the bus about to spill its passengers onto the farm. They’d had this discussion plenty of times. Janice liked her men and couldn’t understand how badly Ashley had been burned the last time. How scared Ashley was to trust anyone, especially a man again—especially herself again.

  Didn’t matter how many times Ashley explained it—running away, hiding herself, starting over—that’s exactly what had saved Ashley. She’d left the state and come to California. To here. To this farm, and by luck, Janice had needed a farmhand and had a decrepit little one room farmhouse on the property that she let Ashley fix up and call home.

  She still hadn’t forgiven herself for taking even that long to leave him. He’d hit her once and Ashley had left. But for years, she had taken the emotional abuse and owned it and thought she deserved it.

  “You got to stop hiding,” Janice said again, emphasizing every word.

  “This isn’t that.” Ashley wiped sweaty hands across her jeans. “You know it’s not about trusting men. It’s about trusting myself. I don’t trust myself.”

  Janice motioned her head at King. “He trusts you.”

  “Yeah,” Ashley said wryly. “A little too much, I think.”

  Janice laughed, releasing the tension between the two women. “I trust you.”

  Laughing voices and conversation floated down the hill from the dairy shop front.

  Ashley looked Janice straight in the eyes. “I know you do—”

  The bus was unloading its passengers—a great gaggle of people who had paid good money to wine and cheese taste and get educated about farms along the way.

  “So let me be the farmhand you hired seven years ago.” Ashley waved at King and then at the bus. “I got him. You start them off and I’ll swoop in like a sheep girl fresh from the barn. They’ll like that. Authentic farm-life.”

  Janice laughed but then turned serious. “You better get up there quick after me. I want the cheesemonger present the first time the world tastes your cheese.”

  “Bitch, you know it! You better wait for me!” Ashley called after Janice’s retreating back.

  Janice laughed again, all the way up the hill to the bus. People milled around her and she began ushering them inside, pointing the way to the bathroom, to the garden area, and announcing the tour would begin inside in five minutes.

  Five minutes.

  Ashley turned back to King and Gandalf.

  Two years ago Janice had let Ashley start her own mini breeding program.
Ashley had gone so far as to DNA sequence her ewes. After many bleary-eyed, late nights of research, she figured out what it all meant and what she wanted to do with that information. When she discovered the genetics she was looking for, it seemed to only exist under lock down on special, super competitive, super high security sheep farms in Europe. It didn’t keep her from haunting every livestock exchange or ranch sale and running up quite a DNA sequencing bill every month.

  She figured her quirky little sheep cheese dream would never come true.

  And then King showed up.

  King’s previous owner had been sporting a leg cast from King’s last head butt, and had only shaken his head in disgust when she’d requested a DNA sample for testing. He hadn’t cared about the results.

  King was exactly what she was looking for—Ashley had sequenced the DNA as a condition of purchase. Whether King’s father or mother had been smuggled into California illegally at some point, or whether King was a strange coincidence of mutations, the only one who knew how special he was—was Ashley.

  But none of that mattered now. King was hers.

  Or he would be if she could get him out of the damn crate without killing herself—or him.

  There wasn’t time to put up the right fencing to guide the two rams to their intended paddock. The truck couldn’t drive closer for risk of getting stuck in the mud. She was looking at maybe fifty feet of space between the truck and the open paddock gate.

  That was a lot of room for things to go wrong.

  “Fuck it.” Ashley picked grabbed a wooden broom stick with the brush part long ago broken off, then picked up the metal top to a glorified trash can used to store farm supplies from the rain.

  She hefted her dull sword and shiny shield into position, pursed her lips and whistled a loud piercing call that carried across all 250 acres of the farm.

  Tasting acid in her mouth, she opened the damn crate. She sunk her blue striped rain boots in the muck and braced herself.

  Chapter 2

  King and Gandalf rushed out. King lowered his head, spiral horns mean and deadly looking. Gandalf galloped after him, head lowered too.

  Shit. She couldn’t take two at once.

  Thinking quick on her feet, she waited until the two rams were almost on her, ready to trample her into the muck. All sound vanished except for the blood pounding in her ears and her heart galloping in her chest.

  Ashley gripped the broom stick until she lost all feeling in her hand, then pivoted out of the way at the last second as King barreled by. Using the garbage can shield as her own version of sheep horn, she threw her weight into his shoulder, flipping him on his side to the ground. His hooves flew up, one of them glancing off her thigh, but she didn’t have time for that because Gandalf was there, taking advantage of her distraction. There wasn’t time to do anything else but bring the stick down as hard as she could across his sensitive nose and brace herself for impact.

  Gandalf put on the brakes, shaking his head from the way his nose smarted. He’d gotten in too close for her to do any real damage, plus she didn’t WANT to damage either of them. She wanted to get them safely into their paddock, and maybe, if she was really lucky, earn some respect from them.

  She backed away from both sheep, her back to the open paddock gate and whistled again.

  This time there was an answering bleat.

  King sprung up onto his hooves, flecks of dirt and grass spotting one side that would easily fall off in a few hours. Both King and Gandalf swiveled their full attention onto that bleat, which was exactly what Ashley had been hoping for.

  Rams were dangerous and never to be trusted, but ewes—bottle raised, named, petted, and trained by whistle to come to her for their treats—ewes were different. Plus, if there was anything that could distract a ram from a fight, it would be an ewe.

  Tension sizzled in the lines of King’s body and as soon as he locked onto the sound of the ewe, he galloped straight into the paddock and for the back fence. Ashley wasn’t stupid, she loved her ewes, so she had separate paddocks and tall, double-fencing to keep her ewes safe from King until Ashley was ready for them to breed.

  Keeping up her shield and stick, Ashley didn’t dare look away from Gandalf and King until they were fully in the paddock, but she was pretty sure Marcie was the one who had answered her whistle-call. Marcie was always the most eager for a treat though the other two girls would likely be on her heels soon.

  Working quickly, Ashley tossed aside her battle gear, dragged the gate into place, and locked everything up. She checked it all twice before she allowed herself to really breath again.

  That had been a little too damn close.

  Whooping noises made Ashley turn. The bus full of tourists—men and women in jeans, flannels, dresses, and nice shoes—stood almost in a line at the little hillside ridge above the paddock.

  They were cheering—her.

  The group broke into applause and Janice whooped again.

  Ashley rolled her eyes but couldn’t help break into a smile. It must have been quite a funny show from up there. Metal garbage lid, broken broom stick, striped blue rain boots, two rams, and woman who should know better.

  She hiked up the hill and strode forward, trying to somehow channel sheep girl, warrior, and cheesemonger all in one. She knew the importance of making a good first impression and she thought maybe that’s what had just happened.

  “There she is, ladies and gents,” Janice called out from the back of the crowd. “The sheep-wrangling, cheese-mongering legend of Storm Weather Dairy Farm. Now with that exciting introduction, the tour can truly begin. And just so you know, we’ll be tasting cheese today made from Ashley’s very own hands and lambs. So head this way and let’s get this cheese party started!”

  Ashley flushed under all the attention and stared down at her rain boots now almost completely covered in muck. But then she told herself this was exactly the kind of attention she needed, so she forced herself to stand tall and look back out on the crowd.

  About half were following Janice’s directions and milled toward the dairy shop door. A few headed for the restroom. Several men in jeans and flannel shirts stood looking out across the ranch’s little valley. Her asking prickled. Something about them didn’t sit quite right with her. They wore aviator sunglasses and big frowns, neither of which matched their clothes or the festive air of the other bus riders. They stared down at King and Gandalf, who were both sniffing and testing the fencing.

  Ashley was glad to see things looked calm down there and that the fences were holding strong. She dismissed her odd feelings about the men and headed for the hose spigot to give her boots a quick rinse off, but stopped when she felt this electric energy zing down her spine.

  She turned and caught the bluest eyes she had ever seen staring down at her.

  He was tall, head and shoulders taller than her. He wore a dark collared jacket over a light-colored shirt that framed a muscular body, a strong chin, and strong eyebrows. Laughter and conversation faded away to nothing until the only sound was a bit of breeze that ruffled his dark, close-cropped curly hair. He stared at her like he was devouring her.

  Ashley took a deep breath, settling her heart, squaring up her shoulders, and meeting his gaze like she wasn’t drowning in it right then.

  “What?” Was all she could think to say.

  She cringed. He was a guest, a tourist. For all she knew, he was the banker she needed to impress today. But his gaze unsettled her.

  She liked the way he was looking at her and suddenly had this urge, this incredible, shocking urge to step real close to him. She most definitely could not allow that.

  No, there was no room for that sort of thing in her life right now. So she used her words to put distance between them.

  “Is there something on my face? Why are you staring like that?”

  “I could ask you the same.” His voice was low and deep and almost silky. It sent another zing down her spine.

  “What are you talking abo
ut?”

  “Well, you’re staring at me too.”

  She felt confused, how did this turn into a staring contest? It was some sort of weird attraction-challenge.

  But. It. Didn’t. Matter.

  There was no time for this. Except, she couldn’t be the first to break the stare. It was like with King. Somehow, she knew she would lose if she looked away first.

  “That was some fine dancing down there.”

  “What?” Ashley said again.

  “With the ram.”

  “What’s your name?” The staring became almost unbearable, intoxicating, it was like the whole world was vanishing around them and both of them were pretending it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Darius,” he said, after what felt like an eternity.

  “I’m Ashley.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?” Ashley said, suspicion now flaring in her mind, but that didn’t tear her gaze away, oh no, she was swimming in that blue and imagining all sorts of things they could do to each other under the cover of water.

  “Your friend announced it, remember?”

  Right.

  Two of the aviator sunglass-wearing men strode between Ashley and Darious, breaking their sizzling connection.

  Ashley took satisfaction in their tie. Just as well.

  “Where’d you get that ram?” The taller one asked.

  Ashley released an inward sigh of relief and reoriented her thoughts. Her body was still buzzing from the adrenaline rush of surviving King and Gandalf. That was all. She was susceptible right now to attractive men. Impressionable.

  She stepped back from all three of the men. At least she hadn’t looked away first. She still felt how Darius’ eyes had seemed to see all of her, like she was standing in front of him naked.

  “Head on inside now,” Ashley said. “Tour’s going to start and I’ll answer all your questions in there.”

  “The ram,” the taller one said.

  Ashley frowned and noticed Darius did his own frowning. She didn’t owe anyone information about anything, not that it mattered where she had gotten King. It was all legal.