Her phone buzzed again as she entered her loft. Expecting her mom, she accepted without checking the screen. “Hi. I just walked in the door. Look, I really hope you didn’t book a flight or something. I don’t think—”
“A flight? What the fuck are you talking about?”
It was Larry. Victoria’s skin crawled, and she had to resist the impulse to fling the phone away from her. “I thought you were somebody else. What do you want?”
“Are you seriously walking out without giving notice? Everybody’s pissed, Pamela’s walked out, too, the schedule is completely screwed, and they’re—”
She hung up on him. After a moment’s thought, she blocked the number.
The shuddering started again after she’d taken off her coat and wrenched the sodden Chucks off her feet. She reeled to the couch and slumped with her head between her knees, slowing her breathing until the sensation passed. She knew she ought to report the incident to somebody, but mostly she just longed for it never to have happened. To put it behind her. And she wished there were somebody around to give her a hug and tell her everything would be okay.
No, tighter than a hug. She wanted the ultimate comfort, the inexorable snugness of rope around her skin in an all-over embrace. Cradling and containing her, keeping her body secure so her mind could fly away. Providing just enough pain, now and then, to remind her she was alive. A few of her kinky friends in the Dallas scene could do that for her far better than anybody in Rhode Island had done to date. Another reason to go back.
Victoria pulled the dark red plush throw from the back of the couch and pulled it around her, wrapping it as tightly as she could. Looking around the loft, she saw a nearly barren space. A few plastic bins and boxes, plus her luggage, now contained all her worldly goods. A larger box full of fabric and other textiles sat by the door, waiting to be taken to the campus and donated. It had shocked her, in the end, how easily her life could be reduced down to these few things. In her extremity, she’d learned very quickly which things really mattered and what need really meant. And she hadn’t needed most of what had been in the loft.
It would be a tight fit to stuff it all in the Beemer, but she could do it. Her savings should just about cover gas and lodging for the drive if she could find cheap places to stay.
She punched out a quick text to her mother, stressing that she shouldn’t book a flight because Victoria planned to come home in a few days and they could talk then. Her mom’s first response was a terse, “So relieved!” and Victoria quickly forestalled any further discussion by replying that she was about to take a nap but would be in touch again later to let the family know when she’d be “getting in.” If her mother assumed that meant a plane flight instead of driving halfway across the country within the next few days, so be it.
Within minutes she was deep into plotting her route on her laptop, while a mix of swing and big band played in the background. But the stress of the last hour, and the physical toll of the eight hours of work preceding it, started to weigh in. Her eyes grew heavier and she jerked her head up a few times while doggedly chasing down motel rates in the various towns along I-81 and I-40.
When her playlist reached Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter, she gave it up and put the laptop down on the couch beside her, tugging the blanket even more tightly around herself. Still not enough, but it would have to do. She let her eyes close and softly sang along with Ella—to the rope she wished were binding her, or to whomever might do the binding, “You Do Something To Me.”
Chapter 2
It was just about everything Ethan Hill loved best in the world, all in one place. The view over the main grounds of Hilltop Ranch. The feel of a well-balanced tool in his hand. The smell of freshly sawn cedar and an underlying whiff—when the fall breeze was just right—of horse.
When the breeze wasn’t right, he caught an underlying whiff of himself, which was less pleasant but still somehow right. He’d earned that sweat, and the project he was working on was worth every drop. Not to mention the blood and, yes, even a few tears that had gone into the process of building his very own tiny house from the ground up.
Or at least from the trailer base up.
His older brother, Logan, thought he was nuts. “So lemme get this straight: You’re gonna build a two-hundred-square—”
“Two-twenty,” Ethan had corrected him.
“Two-hundred-twenty-square-foot RV—”
“Tiny house.”
Logan shot him a look. “On a trailer bed. And live in it. In the middle of Tornado Alley.”
Ethan had shrugged. “Technically, we’re way south of Tornado Alley, and also if we get a warning I can come down to the main house. Or find the nearest safe structure if I’m out on the road. Which is part of the point.”
He’d wanted a tiny house ever since he’d first read about them nearly a decade earlier as an undergraduate. The idea had taken root. Ironic that he’d thought of it like that, given that part of the structure’s allure was its mobility. Don’t like the view? Hitch up the trailer to the truck and find a change of scenery.
“Besides,” he’d pointed out to a still-skeptical Logan, “if I work out the kinks building one for myself, we could do a whole village of them as an alternative to building more cabins. It’s getting to be a thing. It’ll be cheaper than site-built, we won’t have to worry about septic, and it’ll make Hilltop a destination for a broader client base. Not just dude ranch guests but people who want to try out tiny houses. Or ecotourists. The fact that there aren’t any oil rigs in sight adds value.”
“Hipsters.”
“Paying customers.” Ever the little brother, he hadn’t been able to resist a dig. “Hey, I remember a certain Houston-based engineer who spent a whole year talking about his Chemex and making everybody taste test the difference between coffee beans grown in one field and coffee beans grown in a field two miles away, so I don’t think you have any stones to throw at hipsters, bro.”
“Hey, I appreciate simple, functional, elegant engineering, and full-sun coffee is a scourge on biodiversity . . . okay, fine, point taken.”
In the end, Ethan had found a plot of level, mostly treeless ground about a hundred yards up and around the hill from the old barn, parked his trailer base there, and started building. He was part owner of the ranch anyway, and he had as much right as Logan or their cousin Chet to do whatever he liked on the land. Today that involved finally installing the first section of reclaimed cedar planks he’d salvaged to use as part of his siding.
Soon, he’d have the exterior completed. Which meant it was almost time to have a talk he’d been putting off with the partners at the vet practice. Let them know they needed to start looking for a new associate. He hoped to stay on as relief staff until the spot was filled and be first on the list any time they needed a locum. But he couldn’t keep up his current heavy schedule of ping-ponging between the practice and Hilltop. Close as Bolero was to San Antonio, it was still too far to be a workable commute.
They knew it was coming—he’d never planned to buy in, that was understood from the start—although they probably didn’t anticipate his leaving quite so soon. Or under these circumstances. Ethan had always expected to take over the local practice from old Doc Taylor in Bolero one day; everyone knew that. What he hadn’t expected was that his investment in his grandparents’ old guest ranch would turn first into a time-consuming hobby, then pretty much a second career.
Pity was, he couldn’t exactly explain to the folks at the practice how a rinky-dink dude ranch and a sideline selling hand-dyed rope halters could provide him a living wage, much less one that would compete with his salary as an associate vet for one of the most highly regarded large animal practices in the state. So when he told them he was leaving to focus on the ranch—as he really ought to, sooner rather than later—they would probably think he was nuts.
Except that one weekend out of every month, Hilltop hosted a private event, by invitation only, with heavy security. And those
weekends—the now infamous Giddyup events—put the rest of the month’s earnings to shame. Just as Ethan’s biggest return on time and materials didn’t lie in selling handmade tack but in peddling batch-dyed handmade bondage rope.
A kink mecca. That’s what Hilltop had grown into as Giddyup had become more widely known. They had guests from all over now, and Robert had put a special world map in the office; you could scrape a gray film off any state or country, kind of like a scratch-off lottery ticket. They’d started scratching off all their visitors’ points of origins and been amazed at how much of the map was exposed.
Giddyup was the funding secret behind Hilltop Ranch’s success. It was amazing how neatly the operations overlapped, and how much equipment could serve dual purposes. Leather care was leather care, whether you were maintaining a saddle or making your submissive or slave polish your boots . . . or condition your whips. The soft, pliable hemp rope Ethan preferred for bondage was nothing like the stiff cord of a lariat, but either way he had the skills to do a great class in knot tying for the guest ranch visitors. The kids loved it, and the local scoutmaster had even asked him to do a demonstration for some of the kids working on a badge.
Human ponies didn’t have to make do with pretend barns or paddocks at Giddyup; they could have the real thing. And the amusing stocks the tourists liked to stage pictures in usually had a waiting list ten deep on Giddyup weekends. Getting the opportunity to put your sub in genuine stocks and whip them in public, outdoors, for a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers? Priceless.
He might not make as much money on Giddyup and rope sales as being a vet, but at Hilltop he didn’t have to pay rent. Or shell out gas money to drive back and forth to San Antonio all the time. The salary cut seemed worth it.
Ethan still planned to take over for Doc Taylor of course. Someday. He’d always planned to, someday. For now, though . . . He hefted the hammer, shifting his grip around the handle and frowning at the sensation of an incipient blister on his palm. As part of this rare full weekend off, he was doing a rope-making demonstration for the ranch guests the next day. It was time to either get some heavier gloves or lay off the construction, or he’d be miserable working with the jute yarn he planned to use for the demo.
But it was okay. He had time. Finally, he had time.
He exhaled slowly, scanning the horizon again, smiling at the perfection of it. The rightness. This house. This place. This work. The people here. The possibility of taking his rope to kink conventions across Texas, even across the country, and spreading the news about Giddyup as he sold his wares. Leaving the practice would give him time for all that.
Ethan descended the ladder, put his hammer carefully back into his toolbox, stripped off his work gloves, and picked up his cell phone to make that call.
* * *
Doing any kind of rope demo for the pure-vanilla Hilltop Guest Ranch clientele was always an exercise in cognitive dissonance for Ethan. Sunday morning, as he kept an eye on the volunteer turning the crank and carefully walked the wooden traveler back from the hooked jack to keep an even tension on the twisting jute strands, he was thinking of his recent attempt to dye a hemp rope multiple shades of red. He thought a gradation from scarlet to a deep merlot or even black cherry would look fantastic against bare skin and make the knotwork really stand out. But he was having trouble getting the shades to come out the way he wanted. When he’d hung the length of rope to dry the night before, following the latest stage of dyeing, he could see already that the colors were muddy instead of blending from one to the next smoothly, as he’d hoped. None of which should be on his mind while he was monitoring how that nice Mrs. Fedel-man was doing with the pacing on the crank.
“Okay.” He brought the traveler to a halt and quickly whipped the end of the slender new rope with a piece of string from his pocket, securing the twists before taking off the slack. It was about twelve feet long according to the gauge he’d set along the path. “We have a rope. Gather ’round if you like, see how it feels.”
He fielded a few more questions, laughed at a few jokes from the small crowd, and quietly pondered how he would get the red dye stain off the jeans he’d been wearing the night before. Maybe those would just become the dyeing jeans. But how to get that color fade right . . . ?
He turned the group’s attention to his horse, Sackett, who’d been dozing next to the fence a few yards from the ropewalk.
“So, once you’ve made your rope, what can you do with it?” So many, many things. “Sackett here is wearing one great example, and this is certainly a way lots of cowboys used handmade rope back in the day. Sackett can’t wear a bit, and usually I ride him with either a flat halter or a hackamore. But today he has on a simple rope halter, handmade by me.” He patted the buckskin’s beautifully arched neck, then scratched his fingers into the horse’s somewhat fuzzy, lingering winter coat before moving his hand up to the undyed hemp around Sackett’s long head. “He’s a good horse and I’ve worked with him a lot, so you’ll see this halter is very simple. But if Sackett here were an ornery type, and I were an old-time cowboy, I might have added knots in sensitive areas to get more control over the horse. Mostly on the nose and along the jawline.” He slipped his hand under the rope over Sackett’s cheek, touching the jaw beneath, and suddenly got a face full of curious equine nose for his trouble. He held up an open palm, letting Sackett explore with his sensitive lips: no treats at the moment.
“Wouldn’t that hurt?” asked one of the guests.
“It would and does, especially if you don’t have a light hand on the reins. It’s not something I’d advocate as a training method. Fear and pain don’t help you build a relationship with animals. They aren’t good ways to communicate long term.” They weren’t his jams anyway, for the most part; he liked control, and healthy respect built on trust. With horses, with kink partners. “It can also injure the horse. But there was no SPCA back then. And if your job, maybe your life, depended on getting control over a horse fast, moving it where you needed it to go, this was a way to accomplish that. Some people still use basically this same rope halter, which is one continuous piece, but there are adaptations.”
Resisting the string of warnings he wanted to give—he already knew most of this crowd didn’t have horses, and he could talk to the ones who did later on—he pulled a heavier, flat-woven green halter off the nearest fence post. He traded it out for the bare-bones model on Sackett as he explained the differences and the greater safety of the more involved version. Then he said he would be happy to take commissions for similar halters if any of the guests were interested.
“Handmade by me in any color you like.” He added with a grin, “Any solid color, at least.”
* * *
Ethan’s usual Monday involved a staff meeting, then a lot of paperwork unless he was in the field—which, in his line of work, often meant a literal field.
He’d expected things to feel different that week, after he’d dropped his bombshell about leaving the practice. To his vague disappointment, everybody took the news in stride. Nobody even seemed surprised or put out. It was just another item on the agenda.
“Way to make me feel needed, y’all,” he’d finally let out, when the whole practice seemed ready to move on to the pressing issue of who would be vetting the latest round of new calves at the Schultz farm.
The office manager shot him a quelling look over her reading glasses. “Ethan. Don’t be petulant.”
Malik Winston, the managing partner of the practice, chuckled. “So glad I got you that word-a-day calendar, Beverly. That was a good investment.”
One of the other associate vets, Angelo Torres, made a kissy face at Ethan. “You know we love you, man. But exactly no one here is shocked by this. Old Doc Taylor’s what, five hundred and three, now? He’s been talking about retiring for at least ten years.”
“Longer,” Dr. Winston corrected him.
“Okay,” Angelo went on, “so you didn’t want to buy in here because you were always plannin
g to take over for him, right? Since you were in kindergarten or something, and he cured your pony.”
“Third grade,” Ethan grumbled, “and it was one of my grandparents’ mares. He hasn’t retired yet, mind you.” They’d all made the assumption that he had an understanding with Taylor and was leaving to start working at his practice; Ethan hadn’t corrected them because it would be true eventually, right?
Dr. Winston leaned over the conference table, shaking his head. “Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it with Taylor. He’ll be out doing jobs until he keels over. But hey, congratulations on the move, and I’m glad to hear the ranch is doing so well. Sorry if we all seemed underwhelmed. You’ll definitely be missed.”
“Thanks.” Ethan felt like a complete asshole. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to derail things.”
“You’ve derailed the spring schedule more than the meeting, but we’ll figure things out. Uh, in fact, Bev, after we finish the meeting, let’s you and me look at the calendar and try to carve out some time for interviews. Okay, so where were we . . . calving time at Schultz’s?”
Ethan spent the rest of the morning on state vaccine reporting forms, one of his least favorite parts of the job. He couldn’t lose himself in that, the way he could when he worked with animals. He had to take frequent breaks, move around, remind himself how important the information was. Hard-learned study skills that continued to come in handy.
He had sent his resignation email after the staff meeting: two weeks’ notice, but he was flexible about the end date if they had trouble with scheduling. Apparently they didn’t. By late that afternoon, when he came back in from a follow-up visit to a horse with a snakebit nose, he saw Dr. Winston and Dr. Abelard, the other partner, leaning over Bev’s shoulder as she studied her computer monitor.
Dr. Abelard was pointing to the screen. “And if she can make it by then, she can also help with the yearling stuff at Lockwood’s. She’s got a great bedside manner. Maybe she can actually get along with Rusty.”
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