“Mom?” I squeaked when she answered on the last ring. I could already picture her pushing her glasses up and pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and finger. I could imagine the long-suffering voice she’d use when I asked for Sawyer’s number. But I was so relieved that she’d actually answered that I just blurted it out. “Mom, I’m stuck on a cow fence and I can’t get off.”
11
Amber
One Week Earlier
“Do you have any idea how humiliated I am right now?” my mother asked.
“Probably not as humiliated as me,” I muttered.
“I had a meeting today, and needless to say, I had to cancel it. If I’d had to cancel my flight this evening…”
“Already?” I asked. “I’ve barely seen you since you got home.”
“You’re not a child,” Mom snapped. “It’s time you started acting your age.”
“Can’t an adult still want to spend time with her parents?” I asked.
“You’re making this very difficult, Amber,” Senator Westling said.
“I don’t even know what this is,” I snapped. “Why am I here? What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Senator Westling asked.
“Remember what?”
Mom gave me a long, hard look. “You were arrested last night.”
The world swayed unsteadily under my feet. I felt like I was going to get sick.
“What—what happened?” I asked again. “How could I have been arrested?”
“You assaulted Charlie Bontrager,” she said, her mouth in a hard line.
“Charlie?” I remembered his Cheshire grin, and the two chicks pleasuring him. A fist of pain punched my hollow heart, but the pain was quickly overtaken by the revelation of what had happened after that. “I threw soup at him,” I said, trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness.
“You threw eggs at him,” she corrected me. “You and that…friend of yours. I always said she was trouble.”
Eggs…a flash of memory of pulling cartons of eggs from Haley’s refrigerator, running to the window in our bare feet. “But Mom, you don’t understand. He cheated on me. He—”
My mother’s palm smacked the table, interrupting me. “I don’t care what he did,” she yelled.
Senator Westling cleared his throat. “You were arrested, Amber. If he presses charges, you’ll have a criminal record. This will affect the rest of your life.”
“Not to mention mine,” Mom said, taking a shaky breath. “I’m up for reelection next year, and my daughter is running around getting arrested? Your lovers’ quarrels are your own private affair, Amber. It’s time you started behaving like an adult and using a little discretion.”
“It’s on Page Six,” Senator Westling said, pushing his tablet towards me.
My stomach lurched, and I had to swallow the urge to puke. I gripped the edge of the table, my throat aching with unshed tears. Moms were supposed to hold their daughters’ hands and get them ice cream when they got cheated on. If I opened my mouth to defend myself, I was going to break down in a blubbering, sobbing mess.
“A gossip column,” my mother said, sounding as horrified as if I’d made a sex tape. “My daughter cannot be in a gossip column. Do you think Hillary Clinton would be where she is today if Chelsea had been running around getting drunk and being arrested instead of going to an Ivy League school?”
“Bush Senior didn’t have any trouble, and his son liked to party,” I managed, giving her a hopeful smile.
“They are men,” my mother said, slapping the table.
“That’s not very fair,” I protested, tears burning behind my eyes.
“Grow up, Amber,” she snapped. “You should know by now that life’s not fair. And it’s far past time you straightened up and stopped all this nonsense.”
“Okay,” I said, swiping at an errant tear. “You’re right. I will.”
“She’s right,” Senator Westling said, nosing into our family business like he belonged. Technically, he did, I supposed, but I didn’t like it. “It’s time you learned a little bit about responsibility and hard work. I never would have learned those lessons myself if I’d grown up here, but I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. Three of my sons live there now.”
“And we’ve decided you need a break from the business of the city,” Mom said, taking the senator’s hand. “You’ve had too much freedom here, going to a private school, doing as you like. We think it’s time you learned a little about hard work, discipline, and responsibility in a safe environment.”
“Where?”
“With my sons in Wyoming,” Senator Westling said. “You’ll be out of the headlines until it’s all blown over and is forgotten.”
“Babysitting?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s not babysitting,” my mom said, but she was straight-out lying. I could tell.
12
Amber
Now
Now here I was, in Wyoming, tied to a cow fence that might electrocute me at any moment. And Mom was pissed at me all over again. But she must not have wanted to actually kill me, because ten minutes later, something that looked like a dusty golf cart rolled onto the grassy path.
Mom had insisted that she would call my stepbrother for me. True to her word, here they were. One of them, anyway. Hoping against hope it was Holden, who probably wouldn’t make fun of me the way Sawyer would, I watched the cart bouncing along the road. I wasn’t above laughing at myself, once I was out of danger, so I decided I didn’t really care who it was at this point, as long as they got me off this damn fence.
The cart rolled to a stop, and a guy I’d never seen before hopped out. My heart nearly stopped beating altogether, and it wasn’t because I’d been electrocuted. He had long legs clad in a pair of worn jeans, narrow hips, and broad shoulders inside his flannel shirt. Though he was a bit leaner than the other two, he was just as tall, and even sexier than the two I’d met before. He looked harder, as if he were made of solid steel. His face was weather-worn and tan, with a bit of dark scruff on his cheeks. He looked to be a little older than his brothers, in his late twenties or early thirties. His hair was dark, and so was his scowl.
He strode towards me, his hands balled into fists inside his leather work gloves. His jaw was set, his eyes hard. When he reached me, he towered over me and glared down, making me feel about as big as an ant.
“Is that my jacket?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Maybe?” I asked, giving him my most charming smile, the one that had conned many a bartender into serving me a drink although my fake ID was questionable at best.
“My father called,” he said after an awkward moment of silence. “He said you were stuck. Did you break your ankle in those ridiculous boots?”
My mouth fell open, and if I could have pulled myself to my full height, I would have. “For your information, these boots are designed specifically to keep me an extra two inches away from the piles of cow dung in your field,” I said.
He snorted, but I was sure a flicker of humor glinted in his steely grey eyes.
“And no, I didn’t break my ankle, thank you very much. I am quite capable of wearing, and walking in, shoes that are both practical—hence the cow dung barrier—and stylish. But if it makes you happy, I’ll take your opinion of my boots into account next time I’m shopping.”
“So what’s the problem?” he asked. “I thought you were hurt.”
“Not hurt,” I said, tugging at the edge of the hood to show him. “Stuck.”
He bent over me, and I caught a whiff of pine needles and something as wild as the west wind. My heart tripped in my chest, and I had to resist the urge to close my eyes and inhale him like the chilled Wyoming breeze across the grass.
He pinched the fabric of my hood, and with one tug, I was free. I jumped to my feet and dusted myself off.
“Sorry about the jacket,” I said. “I was just going to wear it to step outside, but then I wanted to see what those yellow trees
were, and…”
He glared at me.
“And I got stuck,” I finished, gulping down a sudden bout of nerves.
“Christ, this really is a babysitting job,” he muttered. “You couldn’t pull a quarter-inch barb out of a piece of canvas?”
“I could, but I didn’t want to get electrocuted.”
“What are you on about now?”
“Holden told me to be careful of the electric fences.”
Cursing under his breath, he shook his head. I wracked my brain for his name, but I couldn’t come up with it, so I thrust my hand out. “I’m Amber,” I said. “Thank you for coming out here to get me. If I could have pulled the hood off the fence without touching the wire, I would have. I just couldn’t see it from that angle.”
“Barbed wire isn’t electrified,” he said flatly.
“What?”
He wrapped a hand around the top strand of wire and leaned on it, crossing his feet and looking me up and down. Suddenly, I felt not just small, but very naked and very stupid.
Suddenly, Chatty Amber bubbled up. “I had no idea,” I said. “And although you might think I’m a total dumbass for getting stuck on your fence when it was apparently an easy fix, I have never actually seen a barbed wire fence, or any kind of wire fence, for that matter. You don’t have to babysit me, but you might have to forgive my ignorance of farm life. For what it’s worth, if I ever invited you to New York City, I wouldn’t expect you to know how to get a taxi or have the subway map memorized.”
When I saw Waylon’s taken-aback expression, I slapped a hand over my mouth, stopping a further flood of words. To my surprise, Waylon nodded, pressing his lips together. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m being a complete ass.”
“Well, maybe not a complete ass,” I said. “But at least a half ass.”
Waylon smiled, and his whole face changed, the coldness melting away like the first warm day after a long winter. “Can’t have that,” he said. “I’m of the ‘go big or go home’ frame of mind.”
“I can’t go home for three months,” I said. “So I guess I better go big.”
Waylon shook his head and hopped up into the cart, grabbing the top to swing himself up and in. “Hop on up and hold on tight,” he said, patting the dusty leather seat beside him. “You’re in for a wild ride, Princess.”
“I think I can handle it,” I said with a smirk, hopping up beside him.
“We’ll see,” he said, swinging the cart around in a tight circle. “If you’re planning to stick, you might as well learn the lay of the land.”
“Really?” I asked, perking up. “Can we go see those yellow trees?”
He started towards the trees, away from the house, along the narrow trail I’d walked down before I got distracted by the cows.
“Thanks,” I said after a minute of bouncing up and down in the seat. It was hard not to notice the rocking motion of it when I was so close to such a hot man.
A hot man who’s your brother, I reminded myself.
“It must be hard to come out here by yourself,” he said after a minute of listening to nothing but the hum of the motor. “Not knowing anyone or anything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I know everything.”
“I know better than to disagree when a woman says that,” he said as the cart crested a little swell in the land and started down the other side. Ahead, I could see the line of yellow trees. They were tall and thin, with white bark and bright yellow leaves that cheered up the whole place.
“Are those birch trees?” I asked.
“Aspen.”
“Okay, maybe I don’t know everything,” I admitted. “But I’m sure you can fix that.”
He gave me a funny look, opened his mouth, then closed it and stared straight ahead, his fingers gripping the steering wheel and his brows drawing together.
“So, um, is this still your ranch?” I asked, twisting around to look back at the house. It was probably five blocks away, but there was not a single thing standing between it and where we were. Unless cows counted.
“Uh-huh,” Waylon said. The cart passed from the field into a stand of trees, and I leaned back to look up at the yellow leaves contrasting against the clear blue sky, which had never looked so big or bright back home. Just then, the cart did a nose-dive.
I screamed and grabbed onto the dash with one hand and Waylon with the other. We bounced down into a ditch at least as deep as the cart. The tires ground and skidded on sand and round, smooth stones. My butt bounced at least a foot into the air despite my grip on the dash and my stepbrother.
Waylon shot me a grin, shifted gears, and hit the gas pedal. The cart lurched forward, lumbering up the other side, tilting so far we were nearly flat on our backs. When it bounced onto flat ground again, I tried to catch my breath.
“Some grip you got there,” Waylon said.
I looked down, only then realizing I was still clutching his thigh. It was solid muscle under my hand, hot and hard inside my tight grip. And I didn’t want to let go.
I jerked my hand back and smoothed my hair, which had flown all over the place in the turmoil. “You could have given me some warning.”
“I told you to hang on tight,” he said. “The creek bed is about halfway across the ranch. It only flows part of the year. We got access to the river a little further on, and five ponds on the property, too.”
“My God, you must own as much land as the island of Manhattan,” I said, marveling at the new expanse of land.
“For now,” Waylon muttered, shifting gears.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re almost to the river. You gonna be mad if I get you a little wet there, Princess?”
13
Amber
Now
By the time we got back to the house after riding around the entire property on the cart, which Waylon called a side-by-side, the tinge of embarrassment over getting stuck on the fence had disappeared. But when we got back to the house, Waylon switched off the motor and turned to me.
“If you don’t mind, can you…not tell the others?” I said. “I don’t want all three of you thinking I’m a ditzy dumbass.”
“I don’t think that,” Waylon said in a low voice, his eyes locked on mine. A jolt went through me, and my heart trembled. I found my gaze dropping to his smooth, angular mouth. His eyes explored my face, too, but he pulled away and turned to face the big house in front of us. He lifted his hat, ran a hand over his short black hair, and shook his head. “I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to,” he said. “But I don’t think you give my brothers enough credit.”
“Just give it a few days, until I’ve actually done something right. Then I’ll tell them.”
He nodded. “Good. We share everything. I don’t like keeping secrets.”
“Thank you.” And then, because I was feeling both grateful and daring, and a little crazy from the wild ride, I leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on his scratchy cheek before slipping out of the vehicle and darting towards the house. I had worked up the courage to do that, but I didn’t dare look back until I was inside the house.
I ran up to my room to call Haley. “Oh my gosh, Amber,” she said. “How are you? I’ve been so bored without you. How’s Wyoming? Are the boys good, or are they little snots?”
“Um. One of them might be a big snot, but I think I’m growing on him,” I said, stepping up to my window and pulling aside the thin white curtain.
Waylon was sitting in the side-by-side, staring off, his fingertips resting against his cheek where I’d kissed him. A shivery feeling went through me again.
“Explain,” Haley demanded. I quickly filled her in on the details of the night before and that morning, including the incident of getting stuck on the fence. Since I knew she wouldn’t judge me, I didn’t hold back, and we were soon laughing our asses off.
When we finally recovered, Haley said, “At least on
e of us isn’t bored. I’d rather be sent off to a rehab ranch than stuck here on house arrest.”
“You’ll be fine,” I promised. “It’s just three months. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Nothing,” she agreed. “I’m not allowed to leave the house on my own. So nothing will happen here. And you’re in the middle of nowhere, so it’s not like you can get in trouble even if you tried.”
I thought of Sawyer’s blue eyes scoping me out. “Exactly,” I said.
“And if those boys act in any way but brotherly, I will break my house arrest and fly out there to personally kick their asses,” Haley added.
“I might not mind,” I said, remembering the hardness of Waylon’s thigh under my hand.
“Amber,” Haley shrieked. “You’re so bad!”
“You’re one to talk.”
She sighed. “I know. I’m sorry I got you into this mess.”
“No way,” I said. “It was my boyfriend who called the cops when we egged him. What a complete wuss.”
“I have to tell you something,” Haley said. “I should have told you sooner.”
My stomach flipped, and I gripped the phone tighter. “What? Did he call?”
“No,” she said. “Amber, it really was my fault. It was my idea to egg him. I’m so sorry. You might have been too drunk to know better, but I wasn’t.”
“Shut up,” I said. “I threw the eggs, too, didn’t I? I don’t think you made me do anything.”
“Yeah, but I got you arrested.”
“No more than I got you arrested. It was my boyfriend we were egging. He’s the one who got us both arrested.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I’m still sorry.”
“Don’t even mention it,” I said. “You’d have done the same for me.”
Rope Me, Cowboys Page 4