“Okay then,” I said. “If you’re so protective of them, why don’t you move out there and rent out this place? It’s huge. You could get a whole bunch of people to rent the lodge at once, and you’d have your privacy out back.”
“You don’t know anything about this place,” Waylon said. “You can’t just come in here for a week and start making changes. That’s not how this works.”
“Then enlighten me,” I said. “How does it work? I’m just supposed to sit up in my room and stay out of the way for three months? And then when I leave, you can forget I was ever here at all?”
Waylon’s stormy grey eyes were hard as slate. “Exactly.”
“That might work if we weren’t related,” I said, shooting him a triumphant smile. Maybe I was gloating a little. But he couldn’t get rid of me that easily. If I was stuck with him for the rest of my life, then he was stuck with me. We were all in the same shitty situation together—thrown together by our parents, who couldn’t even be bothered to tell us before they got married.
“We’re not related,” Waylon said, his brows lowered in a fierce glare. “We’re blood brothers. You’re just a busy-body like Mrs. Grimes, living on our property and poking into our business. I suggest you stay out of it.”
“I suggest you get used to it,” I said. “Because I’m here to stay. If not on your ranch, at least in your life. And don’t count on me making it easy for you to forget it.”
To my horror, my throat constricted painfully, and my eyes ached with unshed tears. They threatened to burst forth at any minute, but I wasn’t going to let this jerk make me cry. At least not where he could see it.
“Enjoy your dinner,” I said. I stalked out of the kitchen, grabbed my jacket from the rack, and headed out into the bitter cold twilight. I hoped they felt guilty for sitting around the table eating the dinner I had cooked for them. Part of me was furious at Waylon, but a little part of me knew he was right. Here, just like at home, I was dispensable.
Sure, they might enjoy the chicken I’d made for dinner, but if I hadn’t been there, someone else would have cooked. They wouldn’t miss me. I hadn’t made a notable contribution, and Waylon had let me know it. He’d told me exactly where I stood. I was a nuisance—a forgettable nuisance.
I thought of all the times my parents had made me feel exactly like that. Classes they’d signed me up for, only to shove me off on the nanny. It was her job to take me to ballet, gymnastics, piano, painting, tennis, horseback riding… When I had a recital or a match, they’d forget as often as not. And when they did come, they’d spend most of their time ducking out to take phone calls. They’d let me know in not-so-subtle ways that I was a pain in their very busy asses.
Ducking my head, I hurried past the barn and stables, along one of the wide paths the guys drove around the ranch on. This one was wider, the tracks worn down to dirt with just a bit of dried up brown grass in the middle. A cow mooed at me from across the field.
Of course, as I’d grown older, I’d found ways to make myself less forgettable, though I was still a nuisance to my parents. Getting in trouble was at least memorable—not to mention fun. And I’d found a partner in crime in Haley, someone who never made me feel unimportant or stupid, boring or annoying.
I smiled to myself as I walked. I still owed her a good cow picture. It was a little dark, but the cows were crowded around a feeder up ahead, chowing down on some new hay bales the guys had put out that evening.
I stopped and felt for my phone, relieved to find it in my back pocket. This was the perfect opportunity to get close enough to snap a picture, while the cows were distracted by their food. Hurrying along the road, I kept my eye on them until I drew closer, then I pushed apart the strands of barbed wire and squeezed through. It was easier now that I knew they weren’t going to electrocute me.
Stealthy as a coyote, I crept towards the cows. I wasn’t actually sure coyotes were stealthy, but I figured they must be to take down one of these beasts. As I drew closer, I could see the sheer size of them. Their jaws worked, and I could hear their grinding teeth from twenty feet away. Each one must have been a ton of solid muscle. My heart beat faster as I slunk even closer, picking my way around stinky piles of manure.
“Here, Bessie,” I coaxed in a voice barely above a whisper.
A cow lifted its head and stared at me. Holy crapoli! I hadn’t actually known one of them was named Bessie.
She stared at me a long moment, raised her tail, and shot a stream of hot, steaming urine onto the ground. I tried not to recoil in disgust. Bessie plodded into the herd, her big hips bumping the other cows, who shuffled and moved restlessly around the bale of hay. I circled a huge black tub of water that sat nearby, a tank suspended above it. And then I was there, so close I could see the breath puffing from the cows into the cold night. I could smell them, too—the warm animal smell of them, the smell of their waste, of rotting grass and dry hay and a tinge of mold.
“Here, Bessie,” I said, hoping the cow would turn around. It was too dark to get a good picture unless I used the flash, and I wanted to make sure she was looking when I took my one shot. I figured she’d freak out and run when the flash went off, maybe cause a stampede. That would give Waylon something to remember.
“Here, Bessie Bessie Bessie,” I coaxed. One of the other cows swung its giant head towards me. Its eyes disappeared into its solid black fur, so it looked like some kind of weird, blind mutant. I could only hope it would look like a cow and not a freaky sasquatch in the photo. Holding firmly to that hope, I snapped the picture.
The dumb old thing didn’t even move when the flash went off. I took the opportunity to check out the photo. But when I looked up, the beast was advancing on me at a trot.
I screamed and turned to run, but I ran smack into the edge of the water trough. Panicked, I bounced back from the plastic wall of the thing, only to see the black monster bearing down. It was only a few steps away.
“Go away,” I said, holding out a hand, as if I could stop it.
The giant sort of skipped its legs sideways, like it was having the time of its life teasing me as it prepared to skewer me. It would probably run around the ranch carrying my head on its horn like a trophy in some barbaric cow ritual.
And then I remembered seeing a couple minutes of a rodeo—or maybe it was a bullfight—in a movie. The bull skipped around just like that.
Oh shit. I’d forgotten about the bull. What if it couldn’t see in the darkness that my jacket was actually burgundy and not red?
It skipped towards me again. I turned and bolted. I expected a horn to fatally gouge me at any moment. That would give stupid Waylon something to remember. I’d be dead, so I wouldn’t be here to enjoy it, but it would serve his smug ass right.
Instead of being hit from behind, I was hit across the thighs. More accurately, I hit something. Arms pinwheeling, I gave a blood curdling scream before I promptly sprawled headlong into the water trough.
17
Amber
The water was so cold I couldn’t move for a second. I just lay there like a frozen corpse at the bottom of an icy sea. But after a second, I thought of the bottom-feeders that would come to devour me, and I scrambled to get up. My head broke the surface, and if anything, the air felt even colder than the breath-stealing water. I flailed my arms, gasping in a breath. To my horror, the bull was hovering over the trough, waiting to take me down.
Double shit. It was either die a slow death by freezing in the trough, or get skewered by a longhorn.
I figured the second sounded better—more glorious, like a cowgirl in the old west. But the choice was harder than it sounded, because I really wasn’t keen on dying tonight. I huddled against the tank of water, away from the horns of the bulls. In fact, there were two now—the black one, with the short horns, and a longhorn. So if one of them didn’t get me, the other would.
I reached for my phone, but my heart sank as I patted my pockets. I’d been taking a picture when the bull noticed me, so I’d had it in m
y hand. Which meant it had already met its end by one of the two means I was now facing. It was either out there being trampled by vicious bulls or lying at the bottom of the trough in a watery grave.
No phone. No weapons. No escape.
I didn’t even have anything to throw to distract the bulls. My hands were so cold I didn’t know if I could have closed them around a rock or something if I had it, let alone punch in numbers on a phone. It took several attempts just to pull my sodden jacket closed around me. Everything on my body ached with cold from my toes to my scalp, and I had skipped straight past shivering to quaking.
I had one hope left.
I started to scream.
It turned out the cows didn’t like screaming very much, and they actually backed off a few feet. But I had no doubt the second I stepped out, they’d barrel down on me, banshee shrieking or not. I could only hope the boys could hear me from the house and didn’t think it was just the wind.
And then my heart sank. They were running the tractors for some reason. They’d never hear me over the loud engines. I could see lights far off and hear the engines on the path that I’d walked the first day, when I’d gotten stuck in the fence. Maybe they were looking for me. Surely, they didn’t think I was dumb enough to get stuck on the fence twice!
When I looked around me, I swallowed that little seed of pride. Hell, maybe I’d rather die than have them come to my rescue now, anyway. I’d never live this one down.
But when I faced the possibility that I might actually die, I knew that wasn’t the case. I started screaming at the top of my lungs again.
After a few minutes, lights washed over the tank. They were going to miss me! I was huddled too close to the tank. So I jumped towards the edge, spooking the cows back another few feet, and waved wildly for an entire minute, which wasn’t easy with my limbs seizing up from cold.
At last, the lights stopped moving on the path. I could hear the tractor idling, but I couldn’t tell if anyone had gotten out. A second later, though, Waylon came hurtling over the fence.
He waved his arm in a shooing motion at the cows and yelled, “Hya! Hya!” And they all scooted back.
He ran over to the water trough, grabbed me around the waist, and lifted me out. “What the hell are you doing in there?” he demanded, peeling off my jacket. “It’s twenty degrees out here.”
“I f-f-fell in,” I chattered through my teeth, trying to fight his hands. Was he seriously trying to undress me right now?
He brushed my hands away like they were nothing more than annoying flies, grabbed the bottom of my shirt, and wrenched it over my head. “Why didn’t you get out and run back to the house?” he barked. “Were you stuck?”
“N-no.”
“You’re going to get hypothermia.”
“Exactly,” I managed, falling back against the trough as he unzipped my pants. “So why are you taking off my clothes?”
“Stop fighting me,” he said. “Wet clothes suck the heat right out of you. You got only a couple minutes to get out of them before hypothermia sets in.”
It was probably too late for that, but I didn’t seem able to form the words. Waylon had peeled my jeans down, and my underwear had gone with them. He didn’t say a word about it or try to pull them up like a decent person. He just peeled them off over my feet, along with my shoes. Then he threw me over his shoulder like a sack of oats for his horses, with my bare ass sticking straight out for all the world to see, and ran for the fence. Even with me on his shoulder, he hopped it with seeming ease. Then he hopped up into the tractor and pulled me in with him.
I ended up on his lap. Naked. But it was not exactly the way it had been in the fantasies I’d been having since arriving at Coyote Ranch. I was too cold to be embarrassed though, and luckily, the tractor wasn’t one of those old ones with a metal seat and an exposed top. No, this was a huge one with lights, and closed-in cab with heat. Waylon turned the heat on full blast and looked at me. He swallowed so hard I could see his Adam’s apple move up and down.
Then he scooted me off his lap, peeled off his own jacket, and put it around me.
I pulled it tight. “Th-thank you,” I chattered.
Waylon looked at me another moment, then lifted up his hips, unbuttoned the shoulders of his tan, canvas coveralls, and began to undress.
It wasn’t the most romantic moment I could imagine for getting laid. But then, I was going to have to get properly laid eventually, and I’d never had a romantic moment. My only long-term boyfriend had been a frigid, misogynist pig who wanted to lock me in a chastity belt while he galivanted around Manhattan letting redheads ride his face for fun.
But when Waylon slipped out of his coveralls, he was wearing a pair of thin black pants under them. He leaned over and pooled the coveralls at my feet, slowly working them up over my legs. They were heavily lined, and warm inside from his body heat, but I didn’t think I’d ever get warm again. Waylon sat back, cranked the tractor into gear, and we hurtled along the bumpy path. Finally, we reached a spot where we could turn around, and Waylon turned the tractor back towards the house. I was starting to regain feeling in my limbs at last, but Waylon was still shooting me concerned looks every two seconds.
When I heard him curse under his breath, I looked up to see a flashlight beam in the path. Waylon honked the horn, then cursed louder, braking fast enough to make me almost slide off the seat.
“Yoo-hoo,” tootled a familiar voice.
Craptastic. Mrs. Grimes had stopped us for a chat.
Waylon rolled down his window and tried to wave her away.
“I heard a commotion, and I just had to come make sure everything was okay,” she said, coming around the side of the tractor. As soon as she was out of the path, Waylon shifted gears, and the tractor rolled forward.
“Now hold up,” Mrs. Grimes called, but Waylon paid her no mind. He drove straight up to the doors of the lodge, jumped out, and ran around to my side of the tractor. Opening the door, he scooped me into his arms and ran inside.
“What happened?” Sawyer asked, rushing to my side.
“I fell in the cow water,” I managed.
Waylon carried me to the fireplace and laid me on the bearskin rug. This was probably not the appropriate time to think about how sexy it was to have this rugged cowboy laying me down in front of the fire like he was about to ravish me. So I blamed the hypothermia for that thought. I was, after all, bedraggled as a wet rat, half-frozen, and wearing a pair of men’s coveralls. But damn if they weren’t the warmest thing I’d ever worn in my entire life. I was totally putting a pair on my Christmas list, and I was going to wear them all over Manhattan until it became a major fashion trend. Or at least until my mom’s strategists told her to make me stop.
Waylon took my hand and started rubbing up and down my arm. “We need to get her warmed up,” he said.
I could think of something he could rub that would get me warm a lot faster, but then, I probably wasn’t supposed to think something like that about my stepbrothers, let alone say it aloud.
Sawyer knelt at my other side and, before I could warn him, unzipped Waylon’s jacket. His eyes widened, and his mouth fell open and then closed without a word coming out. “Oh,” he said, his voice slightly choked.
Just then, the door flew open, and Holden stepped inside. He pulled up short, the heels of his cowboy boots probably leaving skid marks on the hardwood. His eyes just about popped out of his head.
Not gonna lie, I was not entirely comfortable with my nipples on full display for my three sexy stepbrothers to stand around ogling.
But I was not entirely uncomfortable, either.
A sense of power swelled inside me as Holden rushed to the couch to gather blankets, and Waylon rubbed feeling into my arms, and Sawyer sat there staring at my nips like they were made of rubies. I could have sat up, or pushed them away, or grabbed my jacket closed. But I didn’t want to. For once, just this once, I wanted to enjoy being the center of attention.
For on
ce, I wasn’t doing something bad just to get that attention. I wasn’t drinking or puking or threatening to hook up with someone from the libertarian party. I wasn’t getting my picture taken by a photographer who might extort my mother to get it hidden. I wasn’t putting my leg behind my head at a bar while wearing a skirt.
For once, it was all about me. I wasn’t doing it for anyone else. It was just me, and just them, and maybe I deserved to have someone pay attention to me for some reason other than what I’d done wrong.
So for just for a minute, I let myself feel the warmth spreading through my body as Waylon’s strong, capable fingers massaged my muscles. I let myself enjoy the concern in Holden’s eyes when he dropped to his knees and spread a thick blanket over me. I let myself soak up Sawyer’s admiration as he slowly eased off the jacket and dropped it on the floor beside him.
His hand closed around mine at the same moment Waylon found my other hand again after dropping it to help remove his jacket from around me. This time, his fingers moved slowly up my bare arm, sending fire racing through my veins. His grip was firm, his thumb pressing deep against my muscle as he slowly massaged the feeling into my right arm. Sawyer held my left hand, his strokes quick and agitated as he tried to get my blood flowing faster. Holden knelt above me, gently rubbing my hair with a towel.
The sensation warmed a lot more than my arms. As my cold shudders subsided, tingles took over, racing across my body and down my belly, building pressure between my legs.
I couldn’t decide where to look, at Sawyer’s burning, intense eyes or Waylon’s stormy, dark ones. So I looked instead at Holden, whose earnest expression of concern almost broke my heart. His fingers slowed when our eyes met, then slipped from the towel into my hair. Electricity sizzled through my body, and before I could stop myself, a moan escaped my lips.
And then the front door flew open and a blast of icy wind swept across the room, along with the scrutinizing gaze of one Mrs. Grimes, elderly neighbor and caretaker.
18
Rope Me, Cowboys Page 6