by A. D. Ryan
“It’s a cobalt blue sheath dress,” Willow interjected before I could open my mouth. “It’s a low V in the back and a V-neckline.”
“Sounds lovely. So, were you thinking something up and off your shoulders and back? Or did you want to leave it down?” Georgia asked, looking at me through the mirror.
“Um, well, what if we pulled it off to the side … so it was off my back, but still down? Is that stupid?” I really had no idea what the hell I was talking about.
Georgia smiled and shook her head. “Not at all. In fact, I’ve got just the style. Trust me.”
I nodded, and Georgia turned me away from the mirror and toward Willow and Brandon as she started on my hair. “Sorry I was a little late this morning.”
Willow shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. As soon as I answered the phone this morning, I knew what it was about. Jensen sounded pretty rough.” Willow laughed. “You two must have had a crazy night. Any details you’d care to share?”
Brandon squirmed slightly in his chair, causing me to laugh. “Actually, no. It turns out I passed out trying to rid myself of the hiccups.” Willow exploded into a fit of giggles, and Brandon laughed pretty heartily as well. While I wanted to grumble and bitch them out, I couldn’t; the truth was it was pretty damn funny. “Yeah, awesome, right? Poor Jensen, though.”
My phone started vibrating in my pocket just then. “Sorry, Georgia, my phone’s vibrating. Just give me a sec?” Georgia stopped styling my hair while I fished my phone out. As soon as I had it in my hands, she started working again.
“It’s Jensen,” Willow announced to the room. “You can tell by that goofy-ass grin she gets. I witnessed it more times than I can count that weekend I stayed with them.”
Hey. Just wanted to let you know
I miss you. How’s it going?
Smiling, I quickly tapped out a message in return. He missed me? That seemed … deeper than we’d agreed on.
Just getting my hair tugged and
pulled, but it should look amazing.
Miss you, too.
I set my phone on the station’s tabletop and turned back to Willow. “Sorry.”
“No worries. So, Brandon said you wanted to do dinner tomorrow night? I think that would be fun! You guys should stop by the loft. We’ll order in.”
I was just about to respond when my phone vibrated again. Before I could grab it, Willow snatched it up and clicked a few buttons, smiling like a Cheshire cat the entire time. Brandon looked over her shoulder and chuckled before she pushed one more button and set it in her lap.
“What are you two doing?”
“Nothing,” they said in unison. Schemers.
Glaring at them, I held my hand out. “Give me my phone, or so help me, Willow …”
Huffing and rolling her eyes, Willow handed me the phone, and I flipped to my messages.
Tugged and pulled?
Sounds kind of kinky?
I’ll show you kinky later ;)
My mouth gaped open. “Willow!”
I was just about to text him back and tell him that that was Willow when my phone vibrated again, and Willow started bouncing in her seat. I could feel my cheeks flaming as I opened the newest message.
Oh really? I look forward to it.
What was I supposed to say to that? Should I confess that it was Willow who sent that? Ultimately, I decided to leave Willow’s involvement out as I tapped out the next message.
Me too. It was a shame you
couldn’t join me in the shower
his morning…
I closed my eyes tightly and hit send.
“Aw, look! Madi’s sexting!” Willow exclaimed.
I laughed and waited for Jensen’s response.
Madison! That wasn’t me! Kyle
Got my phone after I sent the
first message!
“Oh, God!” I cried, dropping my phone to my lap and covering my mouth.
“Must have been juicy …” Willow guessed, leaning forward to grab my phone.
I shook my head, still pressing my hands tightly to my mouth. “No, it wasn’t.” I dropped my arms. “You were sexting Kyle. And then I continued it!”
Willow and Brandon’s laughter filled the salon, Georgia joining them as she continued to do my hair. My phone vibrated in my lap again, even though I had yet to answer Jensen’s last message. Terrified, I picked it up and read his newest text.
I’m sorry. I didn’t realize he took
it! And I most certainly didn’t
expect you to respond.
Smiling, I tapped out another quick response.
Actually, Willow stole my phone
and responded first. It wasn’t until
“you” enjoyed what she had to say
that I figured I’d try it.
His reply didn’t take long.
Well, even though I didn’t start it,
I did enjoy it. However, maybe we
should keep track of our phones
at all times?
I laughed, causing Willow and Brandon’s curiosity to grow.
Agreed. I should go though.
I’ll see you soon.
Can’t wait.
I turned my phone off and tucked it under my right thigh so it wouldn’t distract me any further before I turned back to Willow. As Georgia put the finishing touches on my hair before moving on to my makeup, Willow suggested several meal options for dinner the next night.
“All right,” Georgia announced, swiveling my chair to face the mirror. “What do you think?”
I leaned forward and took in my newly made-over appearance. The makeup wasn’t overdone, which was nice. She used gold and brown eye shadows to make my hazel eyes pop, yet kept everything very natural looking. But my hair … it was stunning. She had pulled it all into a low ponytail off to my right, letting it drape over my shoulder, keeping my back exposed. It was styled in large, shiny curls, and she had styled a bow out of a few strands of my own hair to conceal the elastic that held my hair in place.
“I love it, Georgia! Thank you so much!” I exclaimed, hopping out of the chair and hugging her. I wasn’t usually a hugger, but what Georgia had done definitely deserved one.
“Madi, you look fantastic!” Willow said happily. “Georgia, you did an amazing job.”
After paying and tipping Georgia generously, I looked at the time and noticed that I only had just over an hour before Jensen was going to come pick me up. “Well, I guess I should go. I’ll see you guys tomorrow night, though. Thanks again for squeezing me in, Will.”
I hugged Willow and Brandon before I left the spa and drove back to the hotel. Once I was back in our room, I grabbed my garment bag from the closet and unzipped it. I smiled before I started to unbutton my blouse to get changed. I was definitely excited to show him the dress finally. It had been hard to keep it from him as long as I had.
I quickly folded the clothes I stripped out of and placed them into my suitcase before changing into a pair of sexy blue panties and discarding my bra—the dress’ back was so low that a bra just didn’t work. I grabbed my body lotion and moisturized before pulling the dress on. The satin was smooth against my skin as I positioned it and zipped the back up. Standing on my tiptoes, I did one rotation in front of the full-length mirror outside the bathroom and beamed as I took in the color against my golden skin tone.
After I was done gawking at myself, I found the shoes I wore the night before. Jensen was going to lose it.
It wasn’t long before I heard the lock disengage and the door creak open. “Madi?” Jensen’s smooth voice called out from just around the corner from where I stood. Turning in the direction he would inevitably pass by to head to our bed, I cleared my throat to get his attention.
The look on his face when he saw me was priceless.
Chapter 6. My Past
“So, Madi seems great,” Kyle said as he handed me a beer from the large fridge his penthouse suite had. His parents and ours went together
to get him and Lilah the penthouse for their wedding. And it was spectacular.
I had just left the hotel room Madison and I shared to come and do the last-minute bachelor thing that grooms did while they got ready. I didn’t want to leave her; she had made a very tempting offer before I left, and I so desperately wanted to accept after our failed attempt last night. But I couldn’t. Well, I guess I could have in that respect, but I wanted our first time to really mean something because she meant something.
Even if I tried to tell myself she didn’t.
Over the last few weeks, I’d like to think that Madison and I had grown closer. Even though, we may have started off on the wrong foot, there was something about her that intrigued me. She was different than other women I had dated. Clearly, in a good way; along with being beautiful, she was smart, funny and she didn’t seem to take shit from anyone. Not anymore, anyway.
The energy between us was immediate; I felt it when I helped her up after she fell off her mount that first day. Even though my good deed was met with contempt from her, there was something in her eyes that told me differently.
Days of treading carefully around her followed. There were moments where she would let her guard down, and I would catch a very brief glimpse of who she really was, but just as quickly, that wall slammed back into place. Normally, I had no trouble reading people, so it was frustrating to not have any insight into what had happened to make her so jaded.
The day she told me about her ex’s violent outbursts and infidelity, I felt an immediate bond between us. It wasn’t that I would wish the betrayal of a significant other on anyone, but there was something strangely cathartic about knowing I wasn’t alone. That neither of us was. Things changed between us after that. While Madison still put her guard up every time I started to take a new brick down, we were quickly becoming friends.
The sting of what Kaylie did behind my back would always be with me. How could it not? She destroyed a part of me the day she told me she had “taken care” of the pregnancy—our child—I’d also just learned of. As if I wasn’t going through enough, serving a three-year sentence for aggravated assault after giving Robert exactly what he deserved. I never thought I’d be whole again, to be honest.
At least, not until I met Madison.
I looked up at Kyle as he stared at me expectantly before nodding and taking a swig of my beer. “She is.”
Great was an understatement. She was actually the best thing to ever happen to me.
“You guys have a good night last night?” Kyle asked, waggling his eyebrows. It was ridiculous of him to even ask, because I wasn’t a “kiss and tell” kind of guy. Ever.
I smirked, arching an eyebrow as I took another drink of my beer, and then sat back in the chair.
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Pussy,” he grumbled. “We’re dudes! We share!”
“Uh,” I started to counter. “That’s women who share.”
“Fuck. Whatever. Dudes share too. Especially when it’s about sex.” He smiled impishly. “In fact, Lilah—”
I grabbed the cushion behind me and chucked it across the room at him. “Shut your hole, Lewis. That’s my baby sister. She might kill me, but I’ll give you a black eye and break both your legs before the ceremony.” I wouldn’t really, just like he wouldn’t really tell me whatever it was he was going to tell me—at least, I hoped he wouldn’t.
“You nervous?” I asked, trying to change the subject before he got it out of me that I had yet to “seal the deal,” as he would say.
Kyle brushed my question off with a wave of his hands, scrunching up his face. “Pssssh, nah! This is gonna be a cakewalk.”
I laughed. “Glad to hear it. Listen, man, I just wanted to thank you for taking care of Lilah. I know I gave you a hard time in the beginning, but I’ve never seen her happier than when she’s with you.”
“Whoa,” Kyle said, clapping his free hand on my right shoulder blade. “Enough with the heavy.”
Shaking my head, I smiled before bringing my beer to my lips and taking a drink. “You’re right. However, that said…” I lifted my eyes to Kyle’s. “If you ever do anything to hurt her—and I mean anything—I will end you.”
While I knew Kyle treasured Lilah and had nothing but respect for her, I needed to be sure that she would never be hurt by another man again. Kyle knew about Lilah’s past—hell, he’d woken up to her screaming in the middle of the night just about as much as I had—and he’d always been there for her. He never pushed her beyond what she was ready for.
Kyle’s laughter boomed throughout the room as he flopped down on the sofa and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. “Jensen, I think you’re failing to see the dynamics in our relationship,” he joked.
“I know, but it needed to be said.”
“All right!” Gavin exclaimed, joining us from the bathroom and grabbing the beer he had left on the table before sitting in the chair at the small desk. “What are you two pansies talking about?”
“Jensen just threatened to kill me,” Kyle summarized.
Kyle and Gavin soon became engrossed in a conversation about Lilah’s other bridesmaid, Bethany. Gavin was apparently pretty adamant about hooking up with her. While they talked, I pulled out my phone and sent Madison a quick text to see how her morning was before I excused myself to use the washroom.
The truth was, I hated being apart from Madison. Now that we had nothing to hide anymore, I never wanted to be without her. Ever. I had been so nervous to open up to her about my past, thinking for sure she’d kick me out or push me away, but she was surprisingly okay with it at all once she’d processed it. I couldn’t have asked for a more caring and understanding person.
Which was precisely why I felt bad for acting like such a shit this past week. I hadn’t intended for it to happen, but thinking about seeing Kaylie again had me struggling with my demons. Knowing my past helped Madison understand my stress. Was it fair to her? Absolutely not. Every time she tried to take things further between us, I’d freak out and pull away; for no reason other than my own anxieties of seeing my ex again.
I didn’t love Kaylie. How could I? Not after what she did. Madison knew that. But I also didn’t hate her, because hate would mean that I still cared for her on some level. Kaylie was just dead to me in every way. A ghost of a memory.
A ghost that haunted me more and more as the days to my sister’s wedding drew nearer, because seeing her would remind me of the lies I told my family.
When Kaylie told me what she had done, I decided to tell my family that she had a miscarriage. I lied because Kaylie was the only friend Lilah had after leaving her entire life behind and moving from Chicago to Houston. Not to mention, I couldn’t admit to myself that I didn’t see her actions coming. It was denial, plain and simple.
Letting Kaylie walk away from me was easier than I thought—and not just because I was restricted to the visitor’s area of the prison. This alone should have tipped me off on how clearly it wasn’t meant to be.
Starting over once I got out, however, was much more difficult. I had built a life for myself in Houston with Kaylie. Sure, I was working for her father, but I was his right-hand man and practically ran that company for him. I moved across the country within days of being released, pissing Kaylie off since I hadn’t “discussed it with her first.” After she broke off all lines of communication three years prior.
Yeah, try to figure that one out. She was the queen of double standards.
When I arrived back in Tennessee a few weeks after my release, I felt a multitude of things—loss, heartbreak, fear … It was almost too much to bear. Because of my recent release, nobody wanted to hire me—especially considering why I’d been convicted in the first place. I had no doubts that Robert used every resource he had to have me blacklisted at any company I might have had a shot with.
My sister and Kyle took me in without hesitation, and just as I was about to give up on ever being employed by any-one again, my father stepped in. When he told me abou
t how Wayne Landry might be looking for a new ranch hand, I really had no other options. The last name niggled at me, but I couldn’t quite place where I knew it from.
Originally, I thought about protesting, saying I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, but then remembered the predicament I was in and why. When my father pointed out that the job might be one I would enjoy and would be outside the city, well it sounded even more appealing. It would be much easier to try and put my past behind me if I tried moving forward.
Before I met with Wayne, I decided to do a little research on the Landry ranch and found out that it was the most popular ranch in the area and they had just started a massive expansion project this past spring to up their rescue and rehabilitation efforts. Then, there was his daughter. Madison Landry.
That was where I knew that name.
Madison Landry was a professional rider who had pulled out of the Master’s Cup in Spruce Meadows when her mount for the last two years had been injured during training. She was good, too, from what I could remember. It had been a while since I’d had the time to sit and watch a competition, so I decided to Google her. There were countless links to her rides, another that showed her winning silver in twenty-fourteen with her mount, Halley’s Comet.
My favorite links though? Her interviews. Not only was she a good rider, she was eloquent and funny, as well as beautiful. Her big hazel eyes were expressive, twinkling whenever she laughed or smiled at something the interviewer said. There was something that drew me to her, even then.
When I met Wayne for coffee in town for our first sit-down, I brought up a few additional ideas that might also bring in a little more revenue. He really liked my idea of running summer camp programs—which he would implement the following summer—and he also seemed really perceptive to the idea of hosting smaller competitions for the students. There were always people looking to sponsor events like that for a good cause.
He knew a little about my past from what my father had told him. Well, that and the background check he admitted to running on me. He knew about what happened in Chicago that led to my arrest—not a lot of people did, at Lilah’s request—and he knew why I moved back. He seemed to show a lot of empathy, and I wouldn’t know until my second day on the ranch exactly why he understood what I was going through. His daughter had been in an abusive relationship too.