In Bed with the Wrangler

by Barbara Dunlop

  Or was he always so quick to leap to expectations?

  Then, an unsettling thought hit her. What if Royce hadn’t leaped to expectations in the past two minutes? What if his expectations had been there since their meeting in the lounge?

  Had she been hopelessly naive? Did he consider her a one-or two-night stand?

  “Is that why you brought me here?” she asked, watching closely, giving him the chance to deny it.

  “Depends,” he said, cocking his head and giving her a considering look. “On what you mean by that.”

  “Because you thought I’d sleep with you?”

  “It had crossed my mind,” he admitted.

  Her embarrassment turned to anger. “Seriously?”

  He sighed. “Amber—”

  “You are the most egotistical, opportunistic—”

  “Hey, you were the one who was dressed to kill and insisted on ‘taking a ride in my jet plane.’”

  “That wasn’t a euphemism for sex.”

  “Really?” He looked genuinely surprised. “It usually is.”

  Amber compressed her lips. How had she been so naive? How could she have been so incredibly foolish? Royce wasn’t some knight in shining armor. He was a charming, wealthy, well-groomed pickup artist.

  Her distaste was replaced again by embarrassment. She’d proposed paying her way here by doing office work. He’d had a completely different line of work in mind.

  She pushed the wheeled chair aside and moved to go around him. “I think I’d better leave.”

  She’d have to call her parents to rescue her, head back to Chicago with her tail between her legs, maybe even reconsider her relationship with Hargrove, since, as the three of them so often told her, she was naive in the ways of the real world.

  At least with Hargrove, she knew where she stood.

  “Why?” Royce asked, putting a hand on her arm to stop her.

  She glanced at his hand, and he immediately let go.

  “There’s obviously been a misunderstanding.” She’d hang out in the upstairs bedroom until a car could come for her. Then she’d head back to the airport, home to her parents’ mansion and back to her real life.

  This had been a crazy idea from beginning to end.

  “Clearly,” said Royce, his jaw tight.

  She moved toward the door.

  Royce’s voice followed her. “Running back to Mommy and Daddy?”

  Her spine straightened. “None of your business.”

  “What’s changed?” he challenged.

  She reached for the doorknob.

  “What’s changed, Amber?” he repeated.

  She paused. Then she turned to confront him. No point in beating around the bush. “I thought I was a houseguest. You thought I was a call girl.”

  A grin quirked one corner of his mouth, and her anger flared anew.

  “Are you always this melodramatic?” he asked.

  “Shut up.”

  He shook his head and took a couple of steps toward her. “I meant what’s changed on your home front?”

  “Nothing,” she admitted, except it had occurred to her that her parents might be right. She had been protected from the real world for most of her life. Maybe she wasn’t in a position to judge human nature. They’d always insisted Hargrove was the perfect man for her, and they could very well be right.

  “So, why go back?” Royce pressed.

  “Where else would I go?” She could sneak off to some other part of the country, but her father would track her down as soon as she accessed her bank account. Besides, the longer she stayed away, the more awkward the reunion.

  Royce took another step forward. “You don’t have to leave.”

  She scoffed out a dry laugh.

  “I never thought you were a call girl.”

  “You thought I was a barroom pickup.”

  “True enough,” he agreed. “But only because it’s happened so many times before.”

  “You’re bragging?”

  “Just stating the facts.”

  She scoffed at his colossal ego.

  “You’re welcome to stay as a houseguest.” He sounded sincere.

  “Are you kidding?” She couldn’t imagine anything more uncomfortable. He’d been planning to sleep with her. And for a few seconds there, well, sleeping with Royce hadn’t seemed like such a bad idea. And he must have known it. She was sure he’d known it.

  Their gazes held.

  “I can control myself if you can,” he told her.

  “There’s nothing for me to control,” she insisted.

  He let her lie slide. “Good. Then it’s settled.”

  “Nothing is—”

  He nodded toward the desk. “You organize my office and pay my bills, and I’ll keep my hands to myself.” He paused. “Unless, of course, you change your mind about my hands.”

  “I’m not going to—”

  He held up a hand to silence her. “Let’s not make any promises we’re going to regret.”

  She let her glare do the talking, but a little voice inside her acknowledged he was right. She didn’t plan to change her mind. But for a few minutes there, it had been easy enough to imagine his hands all over her body.

  Four

  Royce felt the burn in his shoulder muscles as he hefted another stack of two-by-fours from the flatbed to a waiting pickup truck. The two ranch hands assigned to the task had greeted him with obvious curiosity when he joined the work crew. Hauling lumber in the dark, with the smell of rain in the air, was hardly a choice assignment.

  But Royce needed to work the frustration out of his system somehow. How had he so completely misjudged Amber’s signals? He could have sworn she was as into him as he was her.

  He slid the heavy stack across the dropped tailgate and shifted it to the front of the box, admitting that he’d deluded himself the past few months in the hotel fitness rooms. High-tech exercise equipment was no match for the sweat of real work.

  “Something wrong?” came Stephanie’s voice as she appeared beside him in the pool of the yard light. She tugged a pair of leather work gloves from the back pocket of her jeans. “You looked ticked off.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Royce denied, turning on the dirt track to retrace his steps to the flatbed, passing the two hands who were on the opposite cycle. “Where’d you come from?”

  Stephanie slipped her hands into the gloves, lifting two boards to Royce’s five, balancing them on her right shoulder. “I drove down to join you for dinner. I wanted to see how Amber was doing.”

  “She’s fine.

  “She inside?”

  He shrugged. “I assume so.”

  “You have a fight?”

  “No. We didn’t have a fight.” An argument, maybe. In fact, it was more of a misunderstanding. And it was none of his sister’s damn business.

  “Something wrong with Bar—”

  “No!” Royce practically shouted. Wait a minute. His sister might have changed topics. He forced himself to calm down. “What?”

  “With Barry Brewster,” she enunciated. “Our VP of finance? I talked to him earlier, and he sounded weird.”

  Royce slid his load into the pickup then lifted the boards from Stephanie’s shoulder and placed them in the box. “Weird how?”

  It was Stephanie’s turn to shrug. “He yelled at me.”

  Royce’s brow went up. “He what?”

  They stepped out of the way of the two hands each carrying a load of lumber.

  Stephanie lowered her voice. “With Jared gone. Well, Blanchard’s Sun, an offspring of Blanchard’s Run, took silver at Dannyville Downs, and—”

  “S-o-n son?” Royce asked.

  “S-u-n. It’s a mare.”

  “You don’t think that will get confusing?”

  Stephanie frowned at him. “I didn’t name her.”

  “Still—”

  “Try to stay on topic.”

  “Right.”

  The temperature dropped a few degrees. The w
ind picked up, and ozone snapped in the air. Royce went back to work, knowing the rain wasn’t far off.

  Stephanie followed. “Blanchard’s Run is proving to be an incredible sire. With every week that passes, his price will go up. So I called Barry to talk about moving some funds to the stable account.”

  “Did you really expect him to hand over a million?”

  “Sure.” She paused, sucking in a breath as she hefted some more lumber. “Maybe. Okay, it was a long shot. But that’s not my point.”

  “What is your point?”

  The first, fat raindrops clanked on the truck’s roof, and one of the hands retrieved an orange tarp from the shed. Royce increased his pace to settle the last of the lumber on the pickup, then accepted the large square of plastic.

  “You two get the flatbed,” he instructed, motioning for Stephanie to move to the other side of the pickup box.

  “My point,” Stephanie called over the clatter from the tarp under the increasing rain, “is Barry’s reaction. He went off on me about cash flow and interest rates.”

  “Over a million dollars?” Royce threaded a nylon rope through the corner grommet of the tarp and looped it around the tie-down on the running board. It was a lot to pay for a horse, sure. But there weren’t enough zeros in the equation to raise Barry’s blood pressure.

  “I felt like a ten-year-old asking for her allowance.”

  “That’s because you behave like a ten-year-old.” Royce tossed the rope over the load to his sister.

  “It’s a great deal,” she insisted as lightning cracked the sky above them. “If we don’t move now, it’ll be gone forever.”

  “Isn’t that what you said about Nare-Do-Elle?”

  “That was three years ago.”

  “He cost us a bundle.”

  “This is a completely different circumstance. I’m right this time.” She tossed the rope back. “You don’t think I’ve learned anything in three years?”

  Royce cinched down the tarp. He wasn’t touching that question with a ten-foot cattle prod. “What exactly do you want me to do?” he asked instead.

  “Talk to Barry.”

  “And say what?”

  “Tell him to give me the money.”

  Royce grinned.

  “I’m serious.” The rain had soaked into her curly auburn hair, dampening her cheeks, streaking down her freckled nose.

  “You’re always serious. You always need money. And half the time you’re wrong.”

  She waggled her leather gloved finger at him. “And half the time I’m right.”

  “So I’ll get you half a million.”

  “And you’ll lose out on generations of champion jumpers.”

  Royce walked the rope around the back of the pickup, tying it off on the fourth corner. “Sorry, Steph.”

  Her hands went to her hips. “I own a third of this company.”

  “And I have Jared’s power of attorney.”

  “You two have always ganged up on me.”

  “Now you’re sounding like a child.”

  “I’m—”

  “I’m not giving a million dollars to a child.”

  Her chin tipped up. “You weren’t giving it to me anyway.”

  “True,” Royce admitted. He couldn’t resist chucking her under that defiant chin. “You’ve got a perfectly adequate operating budget. Live within your means.”

  “This is an extraordinary opportunity. I can’t begin to tell you—”

  “There’ll be another one tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month.” He’d known his sister far too long to fall for her impassioned plea.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Life never is.”

  Thunder clapped above them, and the heavens opened up, the deluge soaking everything in sight. The ranch hands ran for the cook shed, and Royce grabbed Stephanie’s hand, tugging her over the muddy ground toward the lights of the house.

  Amber stood in the vast Ryder living room, rain pounding on the ceiling and clattering against the windows in the waning daylight as she stared at the cell phone in her hand. Royce had been a gentleman about it, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d put herself in a predicament and behaved less responsibly than she’d admitted to herself.

  She really needed to let someone know where she was staying. She also needed to make sure her parents weren’t worrying about her. Her father tended to blow things out of proportion, and there was a real chance he was freeing up cash, waiting for a ransom note.

  She pressed the on button with her thumb, deciding she’d keep it short and simple.

  “Calling in the cavalry?” came Royce’s dry voice.

  Amber glanced up to see him and Stephanie in the archway leading from the front foyer.

  “Did you hear the thunder?” Stephanie grinned as she stepped forward, stripping off a pair of leather gloves and running spread fingers through her unruly, wet hair.

  Amber nodded. The storm had heightened her sense of isolation and disquiet.

  “I love storms,” Stephanie continued, dropping the gloves on an end table. “As long as I’m inside.” She frowned, glancing down at her wet clothes. “I’m going upstairs to find something dry. Is that lasagna I smell?” Her pert nose wrinkled.

  Amber inhaled the aromas wafting from the kitchen. “I think so.”

  “My fav.” Stephanie smiled. “See you in a few.” She skipped up the stairs.

  As he stood there in the doorway, the planes and angles of Royce’s face were emphasized by the yellow lamplight reflecting off the wood grain walls.

  An hour ago, she’d come to the conclusion that she couldn’t really blame him for thinking she was attracted to him. She imagined most women who requested a ride in his plane were coming on to him. Not that she blamed them. His shoulders were broad in his work clothes. His dark, wet hair glimmered, and those deep blue eyes seemed to stare right down into a woman’s soul.

  “Did you decide to leave after all?” he asked, his deep voice reverberating through her body, igniting a fresh wave of desire.

  She shook her head. “I’m just reassuring my parents.”

  Royce moved into the room with an easy, rolling gait. He struck her as different than the man in the hotel lobby lounge. In just a couple of days, the wilds of Montana had somehow seeped into him.

  “Not worried they’ll track you down?” His steps slowed as he stopped in front of her, slightly closer than socially acceptable, just a few inches into her personal space, and she felt her heartbeat deepen.

  “I’m worried they might be raising the ransom.”

  Royce quirked a brow. “Seriously?”

  “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Royce.” She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to him, or how she should say it.

  But before she could formulate the words, his voice and expression went soft. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m the one who’s sorry. I gave you the wrong impression. It wasn’t on purpose, but I realize now that—”

  “It was wishful thinking on my part.”

  “You flat out told me you were hitting on me.”

  “I was.”

  She fought a reflexive smile. “And I’m honored.” She found herself joking.

  “I don’t want you to be honored.” His expression said the rest.

  “I know exactly what you want.”

  He eased almost imperceptibly closer. “Yes, you do.”

  They both went silent, sobering. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the moisture-laden air hung heavily in the room.

  Stephanie’s light footsteps sounded on the landing above.

  “You should make that call,” said Royce, stepping back.

  Amber nodded, struggling to get her hormones under control. She’d never been pursued by such a rawly masculine man. Come to think of it, she’d never been pursued by any man.

  Oh, she received her fair share of flirtatious overtures
on a girls’ night at the clubs, but a flash of her engagement ring easily shut the guys down. Plus, usually she was out with Hargrove. And they generally attended functions where he was known. Nobody was about to hit on Hargrove Alston’s fiancée.

  While Stephanie skipped down the stairs, Amber pressed the speed-dial button for her mother. It rang only once.

  “Sweetheart!” came her mother’s voice. “What happened? Are you okay? Are you having a breakdown?”

  Amber turned away from Royce, crossing the few steps to an alcove where she’d have a little privacy.

  “I’m fine,” she answered, ignoring the part about a breakdown.

  “Your father is beside himself.”

  Royce’s and Stephanie’s footfalls faded toward the kitchen.

  “And Hargrove,” her mother continued. “He came home a day early. Then he nearly missed the Chamber dinner tonight worrying about you. He was the keynote, you know.”

  “He nearly missed it?” asked Amber, finding a hard tone in her voice. Hargrove hadn’t, in fact, missed his big speech while his beloved fiancée was missing, perhaps kidnapped, maybe dead.

  As soon as the thoughts formed in her mind, she realized she was being unfair. She’d sent a text saying she was fine, and she had expected them to believe her. She wanted Hargrove to carry on with his life.

  “The Governor was there,” her mother defended.

  “I’m glad he went to the dinner,” said Amber.

  “Where are you? I’ll send a car.”

  “I’m not coming back yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Didn’t Dad tell you?”

  “That nonsense about not marrying Hargrove? That’s crazy talk, darling. He wowed them last night.”

  “He didn’t wow me.” As soon as the words slipped out, Amber clamped her lips shut.

  “You weren’t there.” Her mother either missed or ignored the double entendre.

  “I wanted to let you know I’m fine.” Amber got back on point.

  “Where are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters. We need to get you—”

  “Not yet.”

  “Amber—”

  “I’ll call again soon.” Amber didn’t know how long it took to trace a cell phone call, but she suspected she should hurry and hang up.