Table of Contents
Book One
Book 2
Rope Me, Cowboys
Coyote Ranch
Alexa B. James
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Excerpt of
Wrangle Me, Cowboys
Rope Me, Cowboys
Coyote Ranch
Book One
Alexa B. James
Rope Me, Cowboys
Copyright © 2018 Alexa B. James
First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in cases of a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, and events are entirely coincidental. Use of any copyrighted, trademarked, or brand names in this work of fiction does not imply endorsement of that brand.
Published in the United States by Alexa B. James and Speak Now.
ISBN-13: 978-1-945780-20-2
Cover design by Ally Hastings of Starcrossed Covers.
Contents
Rope Me, Cowboys
Coyote Ranch
Book One
Alexa B. James
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Excerpt of
Wrangle Me, Cowboys
Coyote Ranch
Book 2
1
2
1
Amber
One Week Before
“Make it Irish?” Haley whispered, nudging the table cloth back to reveal a silver flask at the hem of her sinfully short skirt.
“I wish,” I hissed back. “I promised Mom I’d be on my best behavior.”
“Since when does Amber Durant follow her mommy’s orders?” asked Haley’s brother, leaning forward to give me his most charming, douche-baggy smile.
“Since I haven’t seen her all summer?” I said. “I’d like to hang out with her before she jets off to Africa and pretends to save starving children while really pushing a questionable pharmaceutical brand that hasn’t gotten FDA approval.”
Mark leered at me, taking in the scant cleavage allowed by my mother-approved wardrobe—a pink silk blouse that brought out my summer’s end tan and a knee-length brown skirt. “When you give up on that and get schnockered, I’d be happy to give you some attention,” he said. “But make sure it’s after midnight and no one sees you come in. I don’t want my parents lecturing me about the company I keep.”
“I have a boyfriend, remember?”
“Hmm, and yet, I don’t see him offering to help you scratch that itch.”
“He’s sick,” I said in my frostiest voice.
“Mark, seriously, shut up,” Haley said, holding up a hand to block him from my view. Her parents had been lecturing her about the company she kept for years, but since she was no more “respectable” than me, they’d pretty well given up on her. They had decided to put all their eggs in the more promising, Mark-sized basket instead.
Haley turned in her seat, angling her shoulder away from Mark, and gave me her impish smile. “Are you sure you’re okay? I’ve never known you to refuse a drink.” With her short and curvy figure, fair skin and black pixie cut, she looked like a charming fairy god-sister offering up whiskey instead of pumpkins.
“I’m kind of nervous,” I admitted. “Mom’s been acting weird all day. She’s been all…dreamy and smiley.”
“She probably just got a new prescription,” Haley assured me with a roll of her eyes.
“She said she has an announcement.”
“That she’s running for New York Senate again next fall, which everyone already knows?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, trying to relax. I hated these stuffy formal parties, but it was nice to know I wasn’t alone. Haley had been my best friend since elementary school, when we bonded over our mutual love of Circus Peanuts, our respective mothers’ suckiness, and our tendency to misbehave at the private school we’d both attended, along with Mark and nearly every Manhattan politician’s children. Since graduating earlier this year, Haley and I had spent nearly every minute together. We planned to travel the world together before deciding if we could stomach four years of college.
“Maybe,” I muttered, catching my mother’s stern smile. She dabbed her mouth with a linen napkin and tapped at her wine glass with a fork, making a tinkling sound. The fifty or so politicos and schmoozers at the party stopped wheeling and dealing for two seconds and looked up.
“I—we—have an announcement,” Mom said, standing and smoothing her Prada skirt over her trim hips. To keep her figure, she spent more time on the treadmill than she spent lecturing me about decorum. But I’d actually missed her during the summer, and I was determined to make amends now that I was an adult and no longer in high school. After all, one day I wanted to have a career. I couldn’t blame her for putting that before her family.
“As you know, we spent the summer helping children in Africa gain access to much-needed medical supplies,” she said, smiling at her philanthropist senator friend. “But we also fell in love.”
I coughed out water, spewing it across my lobster thermidor.
Mom cast one warning glare at me before turning her attention to her audience. She smiled as far as her Botox would allow, and Senator Westling stood and put an arm around her. The gesture was so stiff it made my own shoulders cringe up towards my ears.
This must be a political move. My mother did not fall in love. She fell into Xanax-and-gin stupors. She fell into every new fad diet that took the talk shows by storm. If she fell in love with anything, it was the season’s latest Armani-for-the-office collection.
“And we got married,” she said.
I swayed slightly in my seat. Not that I expected to be first to know if she wanted to date again after Dad—she’d probably ask her political advisor before making that decision—but married?
“Like I said, if you need to drown your sorrows later tonight…” Mark said.
He was only a year older than us, but he already looked like a smarmy politician. I’d had a crush on him once, but after experiencing his douche-baggery firsthand, I stayed far away from his panty-melting smile. Behind it, his brain was full of sociopathic schemes.
Pretty much the norm for Manhattan private school boys bound for senatorial races. I was the luckiest girl alive to have found Charlie, the rare exception to the rule.
“Always the opportunist,” Mark said with a shrug, turning back to his lobster.
It struck me that I should have been the one to say that, but I thought it as if from a distance. My brain seemed to be short-circuiting as my mother smiled wanly and described th
eir ‘charming little wedding among the villagers.’
She’d gotten married. And not only hadn’t she invited me to be a bridesmaid, she hadn’t invited me at all. Hell, she hadn’t even told me!
“I think I’m going to need that Irishness after all,” I said, picking up my glass and lowering it beside my chair. I wasn’t about to call Mom out for forgetting me. It wasn’t like I’d wanted to go to her stupid wedding anyway.
If I said something to her, she’d tell me I was being silly and selfish. And I was. I knew I was overreacting. I wanted my mom to be happy.
“I can’t believe she didn’t tell you,” Haley said, her big brown eyes widening. “What a selfish bitch.”
I could have kissed her for saying that. Instead, I took a gulp of the whiskey, which burned like fire going down. “You’re a life saver,” I said, squeezing her arm. We’d saved each other from a lot through the years—bad dates, absentee parents, mean girls, creepy teachers, boring dinners…and parties. If there was one thing we’d learned in high school, it was how to party.
“Come on,” I said, liquid courage warming my veins. “There’s a band playing. Let’s dance.”
“That’s the Amber I know and love,” Mark said, though he’d never make a fool of himself by dancing in a restaurant to the string band that was playing. But I needed something to take the edge off my hurt, and it wasn’t like I’d get arrested for dancing to elevator music.
2
Amber
Now
I squirmed in my airplane seat, trying to get comfortable, but it was impossible. Giving up, I laid my head back and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the kid beside me who was flying a tiny toy airplane around in circles and making vrooming noises. My life was officially ruined. Instead of flying off on a whirlwind adventure with my best friend, I was being shipped off to babysit three spoiled stepbrothers I’d never met.
“Hey,” the boy said loudly, pushing my arm off the armrest. I leaned against the window as he used the armrest for a runway for his toy plane.
I knew nothing about Senator Westling’s kids except that they didn’t live with him, so I was assuming they lived with their mother. I was going to have to be their nanny and “bond” with them, far away from reporters for Page Six and other gossip columns. Apparently, they’d had fun taking pictures of me running around town misbehaving the night of the announcement. Mom said a senator’s daughter should be volunteering for community service, not showing everyone in a bar that I could put my leg behind my head.
Okay, so maybe she had a point.
Giving up on sleeping, I scrolled through my phone, tearing up through my laughter when I saw all the pictures of me and Haley having fun over the summer. I couldn’t believe how fast our plans had fallen apart. Granted, I had made some questionable decisions on the night of my mother’s wedding announcement. So I really couldn’t blame her for wanting to hide me away in the middle of nowhere. Or Wyoming, to be exact.
The kid beside me shoved his finger so far up his nose I was afraid he was going to give himself brain damage. Wincing, I turned away and tried to ignore him.
I went back to my pictures. Over the past few days, I’d meticulously combed through my phone, erasing every picture of Charlie. If only I could erase him from my mind.
That was part of why I’d agreed to this three-month hiatus from real life. I didn’t want to be around anything that reminded me of Charlie. I could have said no to my mom, moved out, and gotten my own apartment. I was eighteen, after all. But in truth, I felt like shit for embarrassing her in the media, and I wanted to make it up to her. If she loved this Westling guy, and these kids were going to be my brothers, then I might as well get to know them. They couldn’t be worse than my seatmate, and I’d survived him for a good three hours now.
There was another reason I’d agreed to this trip. If I kept my head down, stayed out of trouble, and worked hard, Mom was going to fund my trip abroad in the spring. I’d promised Haley I’d do whatever it took. We would have those memories to look back on for the rest of our lives, and I would be across the world from Charlie, forgetting his shit-eating grin ever existed. I was determined to make that happen. If babysitting three nose-pickers would convince my mother I could be a responsible human being, then I’d do it. It was only three months. How bad could it be?
3
Amber
One Week Before
“I can’t believe your mom kicked us out.” Haley howled with laughter as we strutted down the street. She clung to my arm, though we were both stumbling a bit by that point.
“Um, I can,” I said. “We were moshing to a string quartet.”
“Oh, man, you’re right,” Haley said, wiping away tears of laughter. “So what now, baby-girl? We gotta celebrate you getting a new daddy.”
“Do not call him that,” I said, bumping her so hard we nearly toppled into the street.
“You want to hit the clubs?” Haley asked. “I got my ID.”
Our IDs were, of course, fake. A friend of Mark’s had made a killing selling them to all the kids at our school. I had to admit, they were top quality.
“I don’t feel like it,” I said. “Can we just go to your house and binge-watch Game of Thrones?”
“Oh no,” she said, pulling up short. “That’s wallowing.”
“I think this calls for wallowing.”
“You only get to wallow for one night. Are you sure you want to use it already?”
“Yes.”
“Tell you what,” she said, taking my arm again. “Let’s stop by that little sushi joint and get a vat of the miso soup you love so much, and if you still don’t feel like forgetting your sorrows, then we’ll go home.”
“Deal,” I said. “We can run by Charlie’s on the way and bring him some. He sounded awful on the phone today.”
I still had no idea how I’d landed a guy like Charlie. Not that there were other guys like Charlie. He was literally perfect in every way—handsome, athletic, class president, valedictorian, and hopelessly devoted. Haley’s explanation was that I was badass. Mark’s was that Charlie had a weakness for bad girls. This was obviously not a flaw in my eyes, since I was the bad girl he had a weakness for.
The one area we didn’t agree on was his vow to wait until marriage to have sex, and it wasn’t like I could fault him for that. The problem was, we were only eighteen and that was a long-ass wait. But I knew I’d never find a guy like him if I spent the next twenty years searching. I made do with the finger vibrator Haley had given me for Christmas two years earlier when I’d told her about Charlie’s vow of celibacy. She’d also bought me a package of rechargeable batteries so I wouldn’t blow my college fund on batteries. Haley was nothing if not thoughtful.
“Of course,” she said. “Come on, let’s get a cab.”
I felt a little guilty for running by my boyfriend’s place when I was spending time with Haley, but she wouldn’t fault me for it. She knew I’d never ditch her to hang out with a guy, even Charlie. And she loved Charlie because he loved me. If I were sick, he’d check in on me, probably bringing chocolate, homework, cold medicine, and chicken soup. If it weren’t for his cold, he’d have been there for moral support tonight just like she was. Plus, my mother loved him, so she always forgave my bad behavior a little when he was around. The least I could do in return was make a quick stop for miso soup delivery on my way to Haley’s.
When the cab finally pulled up in front of his Park Avenue apartment, we piled out, giggling and trying to hold the takeout bag upright so the soup didn’t spill. We told the cab driver to wait, and I let myself in. Charlie had gotten his own place after graduation, and I had my very own key. I still felt a little thrill of pride every time I used it.
The apartment had been decorated by one of the best in the business, and as always, it was immaculate. I expected to find Charlie wrapped in a blanket on the couch watching TV, but the spacious living area was empty.
“He must be sleeping,” I whispered, tipt
oeing towards his bedroom.
“Is he watching porn?” Haley asked, stifling a giggle.
“Charlie doesn’t watch porn,” I said, rolling my eyes. And then I heard what she must have already heard. A breathy, gasping sound. My tipsy brain couldn’t come up with an alternative to the porn explanation, but I was sure it was something totally innocent. It was Charlie, for God’s sake. The guy wore sweater vests.
Because I knew it wasn’t anything he wouldn’t want me to see, I marched my drunk ass right into his bedroom without even knocking.
And then I screamed.
As I had so confidently assured my bestie, Charlie was not watching porn. If there had been a camera set up, however, he could have been starring in porn. Hell, maybe there was. I didn’t have the presence of mind to look around his familiar, tastefully decorated bedroom. I was too busy staring at my boyfriend.
He was lying on his back, halfway off the bed, with a naked brunette kneeling between his knees, her head bobbing as she devoured his previously-unseen-by-me cock. A naked redhead straddled his face, moaning in rhythm with the strokes of his tongue. Apparently, he had no reservations about oral sex before marriage. Or threesomes, as long as there was no penetration—or girlfriends—involved.
When I screamed, the brunette didn’t even seem to notice. She was too engrossed in blowing my boyfriend.
The redhead twisted around and looked down at Charlie’s face—the part of it that wasn’t buried in her twat. “Oh, is that your girlfriend?” she asked.
Charlie pulled his mouth from her pussy long enough to peer around her ass at me. He gave me a shit-eating grin and released the girl’s thigh to make a welcoming motion that included me and Haley.
“Come join us,” he said. “Or should I say, join us and come?”
“You—you piece of shit,” I screeched, wincing at my shrill tone even as it came from my mouth.
“Four mouths are better than two,” he said with a wink, then buried his face in the redhead’s crotch.
“Give me that,” Haley said, snatching the forgotten takeout bag from my hand. She popped the lid off one of the tall soup careens and pushed it into my hand while she opened the second one.
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