by Melody Anne
Tony looked up and gave some sort of movement to his lips that she supposed could be considered a smile, and she thought for sure that she’d finally won him over until a shadow fell over her and the room seemed to shrink.
Nope. Tony’s smile, or whatever it could be called, wasn’t for her. It was for the man standing behind her. And she knew exactly who it was. Not because she’d seen him yet, but because she could feel him.
“Afternoon, Tony. Problems?” Colt asked as he walked up beside Brielle.
She did her best not to look at him. If that happened, she’d lose her breath and get all airheaded. She wasn’t an airheaded type of girl. Yes, there were some people who might think that about her, but it was far from true. She’d actually been a straight-A student in high school and during her first year of college.
She’d made it into Brown, after all. Did these guys have any idea how much of an accomplishment that was? They had only a 9 percent acceptance rate for undergraduate applicants.
Perhaps her major hadn’t been the most practical: she’d studied English. But if anyone thought that was easy, far from it. She’d worked her tail off, and she’d planned on going into journalism, and working for a paper or magazine at some point. No, things didn’t end up working out, but it wasn’t over yet.
She’d ended up mixing with some people who partied hard after that first year, and fallen off a bit, but when she’d slipped up in a few classes, she’d manned back up and done better the next year. Everyone might think she didn’t have a care in the world, but she did take pride in accomplishing a difficult task. She would finish her degree!
But she’d never imagined she’d be doing something as difficult as running a ranch, especially when no one at the Ponderosa Pines Ranch would allow her to do anything involving the day-to-day operations. It wasn’t as if she could fire them all and start over.
She wouldn’t even know where to begin. She couldn’t say she want to wrestle around with the few livestock they had, or mend the fences, but she did want to see how it operated, wanted to understand it, wanted to know why it was failing, and how she could turn it around.
If she was stuck in this place for an entire year, then she was going to walk away with at least some knowledge. She might not like that her father had thrown this at her, but she had accepted the challenge. Still, that wouldn’t stop her from grabbing her calendar and marking off each day she was trapped here.
“The little woman here wants someone to take her out on the land,” Tony said, rolling his eyes in disbelief.
“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” Brielle said. What sort of a chauvinist was he? “Tony just said no. He didn’t explain why, just told me no.” She lifted her head and met Colt’s gaze.
Dammit. It had taken only about thirty seconds before she was making eye contact. The man really did muddle her brain. She seriously wanted to stamp her feet. But she was trying to grow here, and throwing a tantrum was the opposite of growth.
So Brielle just stood there, hating that her eyes were pleading for one of the two men to listen to her. She needed to inspect her property.
At least that’s what her brother Crew had told her to do. And since Crew was all happy with his project and kicking ass at it, she’d decided she’d better listen and check out the land she now owned.
Her father had called several times and left messages, but she was still angry with him and had refused to take his calls, refused to call him back. Let him sweat. She hoped he was worried that wild coyotes were going to drag her off into the hills at any minute. Wait. That thought stopped her cold.
“There aren’t wild coyotes who eat people here, are there?” she asked, and felt like a fool when both men grinned.
“Not usually,” Colt said, the start of a chuckle evident in his throat, though he was doing his best to keep his mirth at bay.
She wanted to imitate her last name and storm from the barn. The only thing that stopped her was that she knew both men would be a whole hell of a lot happier if she did just that. Well, tough. She wasn’t going anywhere.
“Again, I want to explore my land. I need to know why the operation is failing. Who is going to take me?”
This time Brielle faced Tony with her shoulders back and a determined glint in her eyes. She wasn’t going to back down again, even if he did intimidate the hell out of her.
This time, she was going to get her way, and she was going to learn something about all these acres of land she’d unwillingly inherited from her father. She would make this damn ranch successful even if it killed her. And it might just.
“I’ll take you,” Colt said, surprising not only her but Tony as well, if his expression was any indication.
“You sure you have time for that, Colt?” Tony asked, making Brielle want to slug him.
“Yeah. I’ve got my projects done for the day,” he said with a shrug before turning back to her. “But there’s no way you’re getting on a horse wearing that ensemble. You need to change into jeans and boots. A hat wouldn’t hurt either. It will shield your face from the sun.”
“I don’t need fashion advice from a cowboy.” What was wrong with the cute shorts and tank top she was wearing? It was an unusually warm summer, she’d been told. And that was okay with her. She loved hot weather, and she hadn’t gotten enough of it in Maine.
“I’m not giving you fashion advice, Princess. I’m just stating how it is. You’ll break your neck if you even attempt to get on a horse in those heels. And your thighs will be scraped raw if you wear shorts on the long ride.”
Colt leaned against the wall and crossed one foot in front of the other, his thumbs tucked into his front pockets. He looked as if he could stand right there all day long and not be bothered in the least.
“Well, I don’t have that sort of clothes,” she said with a frustrated sigh.
The thing she wouldn’t admit to either man was that she was excited to take her first horseback ride. She’d seen it done in the movies all the time, and it actually looked like fun. But if she told them that, they’d just ramp up the mockery. She was through with being pegged as the dumb city girl.
“We’ll have to hit Peggy’s shop, and then I’ll take you out,” Colt said as he pushed off the wall and moved to the door. He turned around before he walked through it. “I’ll see ya later, Tony.”
With that, he left the room. Brielle stood there for a minute, watching his retreat through the open doorway. She knew he expected her to follow him without question.
The stubborn Storm blood in her told her to stand her ground. After all, she was the boss here. But the practical part of her told her that he didn’t give a damn. If she didn’t follow him, she’d lose her tour guide.
Curiosity and a desire to ride the land made her decision for her. She turned to follow him, but still stopped in the doorway and turned to give Tony a narrow-eyed glance. “We will talk further.”
He just stared back at her with surprisingly alert brown eyes. The man was wrinkled, balding, scrawny, and downright rude, but she had a feeling nothing got past him. She couldn’t fire him. That would be foolish.
“Looking forward to it,” Tony finally said before setting his hat back on his head and standing up.
She knew he was getting ready to leave the room too, so she decided to make her exit first. It was a matter of pride. Spinning around, she walked away feeling as if she’d just had a small victory. A smile even tilted the corners of her lips, if just the smallest fraction of an inch. But it was still a smile.
By the time her ride ended, that smile would be long gone.
CHAPTER SIX
DEAD SILENCE WAS their companion as Brielle rode in the shotgun seat of Colt’s huge diesel pickup truck. The black beast boasted more bells and whistles inside the cab than her last Mercedes had.
How could a ranch hand afford such a smooth ride?
It was killing her not to ask him, but she refused to. She’d be damned if she spoke first. No way. No how! Brielle Stor
m was used to having people cater to her needs. That had been the story of her life. Well, it had been the story of her life up until a year ago, when her father had pulled her sweet Persian rug right out from under her.
Now she was twenty-five, living in a slightly ramshackle home, owner of a failing 10,000-acre ranch, and in charge of a whole hell of a lot of men who wouldn’t even look at her, let alone listen to a word she said. This was not something Brielle was used to, and it wasn’t something she planned to ever get used to.
Still, she was finally getting somewhere today. She was going to inspect her property, learn what ranching was all about, and when she did see her father, she wouldn’t sound like a twit. After all, the stars of all those cowboy flicks she’d watched made ranching look easy — well, when they didn’t end up in one mishap or other, that is.
She was too smart to make a fool of herself, so she had nothing to worry about, did she?
The truck cruised down the long Montana road without her feeling a bump. It was a much different ride than the one she’d approached the house in. Why had her father bought that old and rusty truck? Was that part of her punishment? She was sure it was. He had to be sitting back in his nice, comfy office chair with a cigar in his mouth and a grin on his face as he thought about his spoiled daughter fighting the elements and who knew what else in Montana.
When they pulled off the roadway and Colt suddenly swung in front of a store that simply said Peggy’s in big bold red letters, Brielle looked up and down the street. Surely this couldn’t be Sterling.
Could it?
She was seeing a post office, a very small post office, a pharmacy, a dental office, a sheriff’s office, maybe a salon, and a small café. There were a few other small buildings scattered on the street, and what looked to be a fire station not far away, but this one little street just couldn’t be the town she was expected to live in for the next year.
Her throat was practically burning with her need to talk, but she was still unwilling to speak first. She couldn’t! But when Colt climbed wordlessly from the truck and moved around to her side of the vehicle and opened the door, she was unable to take it any longer.
“Where are we?” she practically shouted, clearly startling him with the decibel level of her voice.
“Sterling,” he answered as he held out a hand to help her down.
Ignoring the hand he was offering, she grabbed the handle above her and stepped onto the wide running board before landing on the sidewalk next to Colt.
“This isn’t the whole town, though, is it?” Please, please, please don’t be the whole town, she added silently.
“You’re looking at the town center,” he drawled, and she practically wept with relief until he continued. “Around the corner sits the school, and ball fields, and two churches. Then Sterling stretches for miles in each direction. We’re a ranching community with lots of cattle, wheat, and oil. We don’t need a whole heck of a lot of shops.”
“But there are more stores than this, right?” This was what she wanted to know.
“Nope. This is it.”
“This can’t be it!” She began walking, reached the end of the street in less than a minute, and then spun on her heels and headed the other way, passing Colt where he was still standing next to his truck, leaning against the side as if he had all day to wait for her. Of course he could lean like that — it wouldn’t take her long at all to traverse the entire town!
Brielle moved to the other end of the pathetic “main street” and looked out to see some houses dotted along the next street over, along with the school and churches he’d just mentioned, and that was it. Colt hadn’t been duping her. This one street, one simple street, contained every freaking business in the tiny town.
She found that the place she’d thought was a hair salon was proudly announcing in their window that they did nails. Then there was what looked like a Little House on the Prairie sort of store, and a grocery store with a huge neon Coors Light sign blinking in the front window.
She really was in hell. No, this was worse than hell. At least in hell a person could find evidence of exciting vices, but none of those could be seen in this pitiful excuse for a place. She felt totally defeated.
“How far away is the nearest real town?” she asked when she reached Colt again.
“Sterling is a real town.”
His chuckle made her want to claw his eyes out.
“Okay, how far is it to find the nearest large town?” Why, oh why hadn’t she done some research, any at all, on where she was going? Probably because she hadn’t planned on staying, and probably because she’d never have figured that a town this small actually existed.
“Well, Billings is about half an hour’s drive away.”
“I want to go there for clothes.” Brielle indicated that she’d like for him to move from the passenger door so she could climb back into his truck. She expected nothing less than his full compliance. He did work for her, after all.
“Too bad” was all he said. He clicked the lock button on his key fob and headed toward Peggy’s.
Brielle was so stunned that she didn’t move from her place on the surprisingly pristine sidewalk for a full thirty seconds. “Oh, this is so my last straw,” she muttered as her eyes narrowed and she took determined steps in his direction.
She was through with cowboys, through with Sterling, and through with this business of ranching. Someone was damn well going to listen to her today — and that someone just happened to be Colt Westbrook.
Fury rolling off her in waves, she practically took the glass door off its hinges when she barreled into Peggy’s clothing store. When she came up against a solid wall of muscled chest, she didn’t slow down; she just plowed into him with such force that she knocked him off balance, causing them both to go sailing toward the floor.
All the air was ripped from Brielle’s lungs when she landed on Colt’s chest, her breasts bouncing off him before she settled in and found herself pressed tightly against his body.
Once the shock wore off, a new light entered his eyes — a light Brielle didn’t want to think about. She knew that look, knew exactly what was on his mind. No flipping way.
Too late.
“If you wanted to get me horizontal, all you had to do was ask.”
That was all the warning Brielle got before Colt gripped the back of her neck and pulled her face to his, then gave her the most searing kiss of her life.
Peggy’s store, and the entire town of Sterling, disappeared in a single heartbeat.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HELLO, COLT. LOOKING for something?”
Damn. Damn. Damn. It was just getting good. Colt wasn’t happy to release a now horrified Brielle, but the viselike grip he’d had around her waist loosened and she scrambled to her feet as if he were a teeming anthill.
“Morning, Peggy,” he said, not bothering to get up quite yet. Instead, he flipped his hands behind his head and grinned up at the shop’s owner as she scowled down at him.
“This store isn’t your personal brothel, Colt.” One foot was tapping while she rested her hands on her ample hips.
“Aw, Peggy, I just got carried away. What else was I supposed to do when a hot little number like Brielle comes hurtling through your doors and literally knocks me off my feet?” he asked, amping up the wattage on his killer smile.
“When that happens, what you should do is help the lady back up on her feet and then do some shopping — a lot of shopping.”
“That’s what we’re planning on doing, darlin’. And as you can see, she had no problem getting up all on her own.” Okay, it was probably time to get up off the floor.
The store wasn’t huge, but somehow Brielle had managed to disappear, and he figured it was about time to find her. Sparks were flying between them, and though he knew it wasn’t a good idea to pursue the enemy, he couldn’t seem to talk himself out of it. Ms. Storm intrigued him.
That hoity-toity image she’d assumed and wanted him to thin
k she was all about had to be a smoke screen, because the kiss she’d just given back to him was about as hot as it got. There were some serious fireworks hidden inside Brielle, and she’d just ignited his curiosity — and that wasn’t all she’d ignited. The home fires were burning.
Halfway to the back of the store, where the women’s clothing was located, Colt got distracted by a rack holding new merchandise. He could use a few more shirts. Having no qualms about stripping in the store, he began unbuttoning the shirt he was wearing, pulled it from his broad shoulders, and flung it over a chair.
He didn’t notice Brielle stopping in her tracks as she came around a clothing rack and focused in on his obscenely toned abs. Working on the land day and night had done delectable things for his body, and Brielle was openmouthed and wide-eyed, with her gaze locked in tight on his midsection.
When Colt turned and saw the look she was sending his way, he stopped what he was doing, which left him standing there with one sleeve of the shirt on and one not, and with his bare chest on display for anyone who happened to stroll into the store.
After a few tense seconds, Colt broke out into a grin, looked down at her luscious pink lips, and took a step toward her. That startled her enough to make eye contact with him. Perfect.
“Enjoying the view, Princess?” he asked with an exaggerated drawl.
“Just trying to figure out if you’re as arrogant as you act. I guess you are.”
Colt might have been offended, but that look in her eyes was pure fire. He’d seen it before, so he wasn’t fooled — not at all. She wanted him, and if he put in the slightest bit of effort, he had no doubt that she’d be his. Colt just had to choose whether he wanted to make that happen or not.
He decided right then and there that he was going to find out.
A plan in place, Colt slid the shirt the rest of the way on and buttoned it up, then turned to find the mirror. “Nice color. Pull the tag, Peggy. I’ll wear this one home.”
“You’re going to need to buy a few more things before you’re forgiven for your previous display, Colt Westbrook!” But Peggy was already thawing as she moved toward Brielle. There was nothing Peggy liked more than to outfit a pretty lady — and Brielle was certainly that.