Over by the pecan tree, Sackett seemed interested in the noise too; his big ears strained in the same direction as Roxie’s. Fitful gusts of breeze carried a few clear words to Ethan and his animal companions. Enough words to suggest that something unpleasant was going down at the main house.
“Mumble UNBELIEVAgarble garble garble NOT YOUR DECISION garble mumble TELL YOU TO FUCK OFF IF I mumble garble. . . DAMMIT!”
Ethan winced. “Yikes.” It hadn’t sounded like Mindy, but the wind could play tricks. He hoped his brother wasn’t at the receiving end of . . . whatever that was.
Glancing around at the view, the house frame, the siding planks still waiting to be placed, he gave himself a moment to fix the scene in his mind. It had been, for a few moments at least, near perfection. His animals nearby, the smell of cedar and pine and hard work in his nostrils, a reminder of his physical accomplishment and that he could soon leave his town house behind for good. He hated to step out of that magic bubble of unexpected, simple enjoyment. But the babble of raised voices wafted toward him again and he sighed in resignation.
He whistled sharply, grabbing both animals’ attention. Roxie shook herself out and pranced toward the trailhead, circling in readiness as Ethan gathered Sackett’s reins, then swung into the saddle.
“Maybe we’ll get to ride in and save the day.”
Sackett snorted, and Ethan chuckled at the perfect timing. Then he urged the sturdy buckskin into motion down the trail that led toward the horse barn and the main house.
* * *
The worst part was, Victoria knew Alexandra was right. This was a golden opportunity. She should be grateful she had a place to go and people willing to take her in and give her work. She had acted foolishly and put herself in this position, more or less. She was, in fact, behaving exactly like the spoiled little princess everybody thought she was. Yelling, cursing on a stranger’s lawn, being not only unkind but ungracious. Inexcusable.
But dammit.
“Dammit!” She stomped a foot in her frustration, wincing as her toe came down on a rock. Out of spite—and because she was wearing cowboy boots anyway, so what the hell—she kicked the rock. It skittered only a few feet. Wholly unsatisfying.
“Are you finished?” Alexandra waited, eyebrows raised, arms folded over her chest. Not really looped together, but in that fancy way where the top hand rested lightly in the opposite elbow crook, fingers fanned to better display her manicure. She looked 100 percent unruffled, but also 100 percent done with the situation.
Victoria wished she had another rock to kick. “Yes, I’m finished.” She crossed her arms, folding them carefully in conscious imitation of her older sister. Time for some damage control. “I apologize for my outburst. I just wasn’t expecting to be offered up for manual labor to strangers for an indefinite period. A little warning would have been nice.” Like at any point during the five hours they’d spent in the car that morning.
“Sure would’ve.”
Ha-ha. “Fair enough.”
“Look. You showed up on my doorstep and I found you, pretty much overnight, a place to live. Three squares a day. A job, provided you can make yourself useful.” Alexandra sounded like she doubted it but was being too polite to say so. “All without having to ask Daddy for a bailout. And the weather’s even nicer here than in Dallas most of the year. I realize it’s not the vacation you probably hoped for, but it’s not like I’m forcing you into indentured servitude here. I was only trying to help. You’re free to walk away anytime you like.”
Walk away. Literally, because Alex would be driving back up to Dallas in Victoria’s former car once they’d hauled her stuff out of it.
A bailout . . . God, it was so tempting. Even now, Victoria could probably go back to RISD if she wanted to. She’d lost the semester, and because of the way the capstone courses were scheduled, that would probably set her back a full year on graduation, but she might be able to fill the time with additional interning, extra classes, something. It was ridiculous to get so close to graduation, then throw away the whole thing in a fit of pique; she knew that intellectually . . . even if her parents might scoff at the term intellectual as applied to her.
Then she pictured going to her father and confronting him with what she’d heard. Enduring his critique, his dismissal, his condescension. Or, maybe even worse, his excuses or rationalizations. She couldn’t make herself do it.
Hilltop was way more beautiful than Alex had given it credit for, and Logan Hill and his girlfriend Mindy seemed genuinely nice. They had been more than willing, at a day’s notice, to let a friend’s wayward little sister stay on the ranch indefinitely as long as she helped out around the place. They were being incredibly generous, and she was being a huge asshole to have responded to Mindy and Alexandra’s initial discussion of Victoria’s job description—“as we discussed on the phone yesterday”—with a tight smile, a tug on her sister’s arm, and a curt, “Alexandra, can we speak outside for a moment?”
She’d just been so startled to hear Alex calmly outlining her plan and discussing it all with these two strangers as if Victoria didn’t even have a say. Agreeing, on Victoria’s behalf, that she would be more than capable of mucking out stables, doing laundry, serving food.
Those were all things she was willing to do to earn her keep . . . but she wanted to make that decision herself. Not have it listed to her as if she were a child being handed a chore chart. And especially not have it sprung on her this way—like a kid lured into Mom’s car with a promise of ice cream only to be taken to the dentist. Or to the new boarding school.
To their credit, neither Logan nor Mindy had batted an eye when Victoria had first walked in and they’d all recognized each other from a kink club in Dallas. The introductions had been perfectly polite, as though Wildcat and Ariel had never seen Velvet wound from head to toe in rope and spinning, inverted, from a suspension scaffold while a top carefully caned her ass once on each rotation. And as if she’d never seen Wildcat flogging Ariel into a deliriously joyful orgasm. The unexpected secret acquaintance was a curiosity, though; it didn’t factor in to the bigger issue of Alexandra trying to make decisions for Victoria. Even if it had helped to ramp up Victoria’s anxiety about the whole situation to the point of her storming out for a perhaps not entirely deserved rant at her sister.
“Look.” Alexandra’s fingers tightened around her own upper arm to the point where her knuckles whitened. She was apparently trying to keep her cool. “You can’t get something for nothing, Victoria.”
“I didn’t ask—”
“You’re going to have to earn your keep here. That was the choice you made.”
As if she hadn’t already realized that months ago. “If you had just told me what the deal was, I would have—”
“Would have what?” Alex shifted her hands to her hips. “Refused to get in the car with me? Tried to couch surf somewhere and get another minimum-wage job at a . . . what was it, a coffee shop?” She might as well have been saying cesspit or bordello. Disgust tightened her lips, marring the plastic-perfect lines of her face. “You can’t live like that.”
Frustration rose in Victoria’s gullet like bile, hot and thick and bitter. “I would have known in advance and not been surprised. That was all I was going to say. I could have made an informed decision. Instead, you assumed you knew best, just like everybody else does, and you tried to do everything for me. When I asked you for help, I wasn’t asking you to take over and arrange my life. I didn’t ask you to find me a job, or even a permanent living arrangement; I just asked if I could use your guest room for a few days.” She exhaled, closing her eyes, trying to release some of the sick tension in her gut. “I appreciate the help. I really do. I’m sorry I was startled and angry, and I’m sorry I told you to fuck off. But I am just so tired of people assuming they know what I need better than I do. Assuming that I’m incapable of deciding for myself instead of giving me tools to make good decisions.”
“I . . .” Alexandra bit her
lip, then shrugged. “Okay, fair. I guess I was doing that. I should have let you know everything Mindy and I talked about before we came here. But you have to admit, you’ve made some deeply questionable choices recently.”
Victoria wasn’t sure that was true. She thought she’d made some hasty decisions that came from the right place and had unforeseen consequences. But how was she supposed to learn about consequences if she never got the chance? Her bills had always been paid and she’d never had to worry about a thing, but that meant she hadn’t known how many things there were to worry about out in the real world. She hadn’t merely had a safety net all her life; she’d practically been enveloped in Bubble Wrap and stored in a vault.
Some time she would have to ask Alexandra how she’d borne it long enough to get through law school. Whether she’d had to fight to learn this stuff, too, or whether their parents had simply assumed she’d be able to handle it because she never had any of the early school struggles Victoria had. But right now, Victoria had some ground to make up with her potential employer. Because angry though she might be with Alex, it really was too good an opportunity to pass up. Especially if her new employers could help introduce her to the local kink scene. “We should get back inside.”
Alexandra looked about as thrilled at the prospect as Victoria felt. “I really hope you take the job. But I’ll try to let you do the talking this time.”
“Thanks, Sis.” Victoria gazed up the steps to the farmhouse, unsure whether she was heading to her destiny or her doom. “I appreciate it.”
Chapter 5
The yard in front of the house was empty when Ethan pulled Sackett to a halt and slid off. As he looped the reins around the hitching post, he scanned the clearing from the horse barn to the trailhead. Nobody was out there, and not a creature stirred in the dusty afternoon light except his brother’s dappled gray, Charley, who was dozing at the rail.
“Huh.”
With Roxie at his heels, he took the porch steps two at a time and opened the front door right on time to see his brother, Logan, lean out of the office down the hall and say the words nobody wants to hear when they’ve come to investigate a ruckus.
“Ethan! Just the person I was looking for.”
Ethan caught the screen door before it could swing shut and started to back up, but he was too late to escape and he knew it. Roxie, puzzled by the sudden direction change, circled at his feet and nearly tripped him on her way back out the door.
“Ah, shit. Sorry, Rox.”
Logan grinned—bared his teeth really. “Roxie! Bring ’em on.”
Ethan groaned as his dog shifted position behind him, claws ticking on the wooden porch. She closed on his ankles, bumping one boot with her snout. Not quite a nip but close. Damn Border collies.
The last of his everything’s-coming-up-Ethan high fizzled out. Sighing, he gave in and walked inside toward the office, following Logan. “What?”
“C’mon in here, bubba. I’m glad you happened by. Got some folks I want you to meet.”
Logan’s voice had gone extra-Texan, which usually signaled he was either angry or up to no good. Given the earlier shouting, Ethan feared it was some combination of the two, so he approached the office with considerable trepidation and stopped in the doorway.
Mindy waved at him, smiling way too broadly, just as Logan had. She nodded toward the couch, where Ethan recognized a comely brunette friend of Mindy’s who’d visited the ranch a few times with her family. He couldn’t recall her name—Adrian, Athena, Alexa?
“You remember Alexandra?” Mindy chirped at him.
He nodded and tipped his hat. “Nice to see you again.” The last time he’d seen her, she’d been in jeans and boots, with a plaid shirt tied at her waist. Now she was wearing a buttoned-up blue Oxford, dark slacks, dusty flats, and looked out of place on the ranch.
Mindy moved on with the introductions. “This is her sister, Victoria Woodcock. Victoria, this is Ethan Hill, Logan’s brother. Our vet, and also our semiresident rope-making expert.”
The woman sitting next to Alexandra leaned forward, waving one hand with a casual “Hey,” and Ethan finally saw her face.
She was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Okay. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. He took off his hat and held it in his hands, nodding at the woman, blinking a few times to make sure she wasn’t an illusion. Nope. She was really there and she really looked like that.
Logan was saying something, but Ethan couldn’t focus on the words. He tried to break down exactly what it was about the woman that struck him as perfect. Her hair wasn’t quite blond or brown but some in-between color with sunnier streaks in it. Dark gray eyes; it looked like maybe she’d been crying recently. Symmetrical features. Her cheeks were flushed, but he couldn’t tell if it was from too much emotion or too much sun. No one element stood out. So what was it?
She was looking at him like she was uncomfortable, and he realized he was openmouthed, staring, about the same time Logan cleared his throat loudly.
“Sorry, what? I’ve, uh . . . I’m kinda worn out. Probably should’ve taken a lunch break.” True, though unrelated to the staring thing.
“I said,” Logan repeated, with a look that made it clear he suspected where Ethan’s mind had been, “since you’re going to have a bit more spare time on your hands, you get to be in charge of helping Victoria here learn the ropes . . . uh, so to speak. Help us figure out where her skills can best be used to help out around the place. She’ll be shadowing you when you’re here. Obviously, when you’re at work, she can hang with Diego or Lamar. Maybe Robert. Victoria, do you cook any?”
“Well, I—” she started.
Alexandra broke in, snorting. “Are you serious?”
Victoria cleared her throat and shot her sister a glare that could strip paint from the side of a barn. “Alex.”
“Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead.” Alexandra sighed and fidgeted, sliding her hands under her thighs.
Victoria continued. “I’ve never cooked for large groups, or a restaurant or anything, but I cook for myself. And I bake a lot.”
“You do?” Alexandra seemed genuinely surprised.
“Yes, I do.”
“Okay, then.” Logan clapped his hands, clearly satisfied with her answer. “So you can spend some time with Robert, too. Maybe you’ll end up being the new part-time pastry chef or something. Excellent.”
Mindy groaned and put a hand on one hip, pinching her waistline. “Just what we needed. More delicious food.”
Logan grinned and slapped her on the butt, sharp enough for the sound to ring in the small room. Mindy chuckled. Alexandra put a hand to her mouth, her eyebrows lifting halfway to her forehead.
Ethan looked at Victoria, curious to see her reaction, but she was staring down at her clasped hands, playing with one of the half dozen or so silver rings adorning her fingers. Each ring was different, and she wore some of them at the middle knuckle. Weird. Her jeans had fashionable rips in them, which he’d always thought was the dumbest thing imaginable. And her boots looked sort of like cowboy boots, but they stopped at the ankle and had zippers. Useless. So . . . despite her looks, she was probably not part of the universe’s recent decision to favor him, since it was pretty clear the last place she belonged was a ranch.
He had a house to build, rope to make, plans. He hadn’t made a drastic career decision so he could become his brother’s flunky; he had to get out of this. “I’m only here to exercise Sackett today. I was about to head back to the practice. Uh, and is she—sorry, was it Virginia. . . ?”
“Victoria,” she replied softly, not looking up.
She sounded sad. Fuck. He wanted to cheer her up, even with her stupid jeans and the boots made for city girls. Retreat, retreat. “Victoria. Sorry. Are you . . .” How did one ask that? Especially with her sister standing there? How kinky are you anyway? Because if the answer was not at all, she was in for a shock the following Friday. He turned back to Logan. “Is she going to
be here on all the guest weekends?”
“Yes,” Logan said briskly. “I think we can find some things for her to do at the private functions.”
Victoria propped her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, and shot him a quick smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Great.” Ethan rubbed the brim of his hat, needlessly reshaping the dip in the front. So the world’s most beautiful woman was also kinky. That didn’t give him any ideas at all. Nope. None. Jesus, please let her be a bottom. Please please please . . . “Good to have that cleared up. Anyway, I’ve really got to get my horse put up.”
“No problem.” Logan responded too quickly and easily for Ethan to trust him. His smile was pure evil. “Victoria needs to see the barn anyway. You can give her the grand tour. Then, on your way back here, you can point out cabin fourteen.”
“I—”
“And you were planning to be here tomorrow to work on your trailer, right?”
“Tiny house,” Ethan corrected automatically. “Right.” He was going to set up camp there, actually, now that the exterior was all but finished and he’d started on the interior. A sleeping bag and a few weeks of roughing it appealed more than the idea of yet another night at the main house or a bleary midnight drive back to his place in the city.
“You’re building a tiny house?” For the first time Victoria’s eyes shone with interest. A hint of a real smile touched her lips, and fuck if it wasn’t like a sunbeam lighting up her face. “I’m fascinated with them. I’m a little claustrophobic, but it’s still such a great concept. And some of them seem so open.”
I am so fucking fucked. “Yeah.”
“The idea of voluntary simplification really appeals to me.” Victoria leaned forward, ignoring her sister’s disbelieving snort. “I mean, my supplies and work always take up space—I can’t really help that—but in terms of personal goods. Things. People get so invested in quantity or novelty instead of meaning, you know?”
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