by Dahlia West
This was it. Today was the day. Two and a half years of rodeo hustling had finally brought in her first client—and not just any client. Tucker DelRay, whose horse, King, was one of the top calf-roping horses in the entire United States—‘was’ being the operative word.
After a lower leg injury, it was pretty clear that King would never see the inside of a roping arena again, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t live a long and happy life, so long as Erin worked her ass off to rehabilitate him (and luck was on her side).
She gave herself a final perusal and ducked out the second-floor bathroom to head down the stairs—‘head’ being the operative word on that. The farmhouse was approaching two hundred years old and it showed every one of those years. The wooden stairs were slightly uneven and the ceiling in the master bedroom had been patched several times. Erin had a lot of things to fix in the barn and outbuildings before she got around to her own living space, though.
The horses came first. Always.
She walked through the kitchen, past the stack of bills on the counter. The one on top was from the First National Bank of the Badlands, the mortgage holder on Thunder Ridge. She rolled her eyes whenever she caught a glimpse of it.
Outside, it was chilly but sunny and a layer of dew sparkled on the grass. Erin frowned at it, pretty as it was. It was too long and needed to be cut. Somewhere around here was a foreman (in the loosest sense of the word) who was supposed to be doing that, for the five hundred bucks a week that Erin paid him.
It wasn’t much, admittedly, not compared to other high-end operations in the area, but she provided a room for him and she wasn’t too difficult to work for, if she did say so herself.
There was a long list of things to do at the ranch, but Erin never hurried Hank or harped on him about them. He seemed to get things done at his own steady (slow) pace, and that was good enough for the time being.
But as she neared the barn, she frowned again. The roof needed immediate attention, though. Last week, one corner of it had caved in, which was odd because Erin had had the place inspected before she bought it and it hadn’t been listed among the things that needed to be fixed.
It did now, though, covered as it was in a blue plastic tarp, which kept coming loose and flapping in the breeze. They needed to take a trip to the hardware store, but Erin had been busy preparing for King’s arrival. She hated the way it looked, what it said about her and Thunder Ridge, and made a mental note to get to town as soon as possible.
She opened the small, human-sized door that was cut into the larger sliding door, and ducked inside. In the cool darkness there was a soft nickering from a few feet away.
As Erin crossed to the occupied stall, a soft, fuzzy nose framed by light blond hair stretched out and into the aisle. Erin reached her in just a few strides and greeted her warmly. “Morning, Bee.”
Bee chuffed and danced her head back and forth underneath Erin’s hand.
Their morning greeting was the best part of Erin’s day. It probably always would be, mostly because it had been a long time coming. When she’d gotten the call years ago from Molly at the ASPCA about a seized horse, Erin had hopped into her truck and headed straight over.
She’d seen a lot of abuse, unfortunately, both in the farming industry and, occasionally, in the rodeo. But nothing had prepared her for her first sight of a half-starved horse who trailed blood from cuts on her legs every time she took a single step.
Bee had been people-shy, head-shy, trailer-shy, in fact ‘shy’ wasn’t even an accurate word. Bee had been traumatized. After Erin and a few borrowed ranch hands had gotten the terrified palomino back to her father’s ranch, the Flying ‘W,’ it had taken over two months just to get Bee to voluntarily come to Erin when she saw her.
Now Bee was her best friend. And a survivor. And a champion, to boot.
Erin couldn’t be prouder than if Bee were a daughter instead of a beloved pet.
The door behind Erin opened and Bee stepped back into the safety of her stall. She wasn’t usually skittish of other people anymore, but Bee had never liked Hank and made no secret of it. She eyed him warily as the man walked to the bunk room on the far side of the barn, where he slept.
Erin bit her lip and hoped it wasn’t nap time already.
Hank was a bit older than her own father, but not by much. Unlike Buck Walker, though, Hank seemed to suffer from a debilitating kind of narcolepsy that seemed to be tied to how much work he had to get done that day.
“Do you think you’ll have the fence finished today?” Erin called out, because he’d left the door open. She could hear him washing his hands in the sink. “Early enough to mow the lawn?”
There was a long silence then Hank finally reappeared in the doorway, drying his hands on a grease-stained towel.
Erin didn’t see the wisdom in pointing out the irony.
The man grunted and Bee stomped her foot against the dirt floor of her stall. He shot her a quick, irritated look and then brought his gaze back to Erin. “Yeah,” he finally said. “No problem.”
Erin nodded gratefully. “I’ve got a client dropping off this morning. Then we’ll head to the hardware store this afternoon. For supplies to fix the roof.”
Hank raised his eyebrows.
Erin couldn’t tell if he was surprised she had a client—it was her first real one, after all—or if it was the fact that she could afford to fix the roof in the first place.
Erin was tight with her money, this was true. She had to make sure she had enough to take care of the animals and pay the bills. And she controlled all of it, accompanying Hank to the feed or the hardware store to get anything he said he needed, rather than giving him access to her accounts.
She’d worked too hard to get this place to make any stupid decisions.
Hank definitely did not have a light touch when it came to horses. But it was Erin’s job to care for them and so she mostly ignored his failing in that area. It was Hank’s job to do all the things she didn’t have time to do: check fence lines, bring in the hay and grain orders, and do general maintenance on the place. And he had basic construction skills, which Erin lacked. He’d replaced the stall doors and put in a small but serviceable bathroom in the tiny foreman’s bunk in the barn.
Erin gave Bee a smile and moved away from the stall gate, to the barred half-walls that secured the mare. She rose up on her tiptoes, grabbed the canvas tie and lowered the heavy shades that blocked Bee from view of the rest of the barn. There was no shade above the door, though, but Erin felt confident the steel bars would keep Bee safe.
“We’re going to have a guest,” she told the palomino. “A big, scary one.”
Bee snorted and stomped her foot. She didn’t much like being shut in.
Erin sighed. “Just for today. Just until he gets used to the place. Trust me, he’ll be a testy one.”
* * *
An hour later a large truck and trailer turned down the long drive that led from the highway to the gravel turnaround in the center of the property. Erin held her breath, heart knocking in her chest, as the driver’s side door opened and a large, burly man in a ten-gallon white hat put one spurred boot on the ground. Erin pressed her lips together and tried not to laugh.
These were decorative, silver and turquoise, and no self-respecting, hard-working cowboy would wear them during the day. But Erin figured that Tucker DelRay had earned the right to retire from hands-on labor at this point, and if the man wanted to wear gaudy spurs with matching shirt buttons, who was she to criticize?
She had a lot of years ahead of her before she could even think about doing the same.
He held out his hand and shook hers vigorously. Inside the trailer, a sharp banging echoed off the walls as its occupant kicked out at his rolling cage.
Tucker narrowed his eyes at Erin, as though he were seeing her for the first time. Not quite true, but they hadn’t spent too much time together. DelRay had heard about her through word of mouth. And this was only their third meeting.
Erin gritted her teeth and kept the smile plastered on her face as the man eyed the blue tarp covering the roof of the barn.
“It’ll be fixed tomorrow,” she said quickly, before he had a chance to comment.
“Well,” DelRay said in a drawl, looking up at the roof, “Buck didn’t say anything about it. Guess that kind of thing happens occasionally.”
Erin could only nod. It grated on her that she was inadvertently trading on her father’s reputation. She wanted nothing to do with him, but then again, buying a piece of land just down the road from the Flying W may not have been the best choice if her goal had been to disassociate from him. But this place had been in her price range and it was more than a mile to the W.
They shared a fence line but that was all.
He pursed his lips and looked her over. “You sure you can handle my boy, little lady? He’s mighty cantankerous at the moment.”
Erin forced herself to smile and nod. “I got it, Mr. DelRay. It’s not my first rodeo,” she said and gave him a wink. She found that humor often softened the edges of the rougher ranching men who weren’t always keen on a woman doing much more than looking pretty in the saddle.
DelRay hesitated for a moment and Erin held her breath, hoping he didn’t change his mind. They’d made the deal on a handshake and nothing else. It wasn’t Erin’s preferred method of doing business, but she understood that she’d have to make a few sacrifices in the beginning in order to get Thunder Ridge up and running.
He finally nodded to his ranch hand and the lanky younger man headed for the rear of the trailer to open it.
Erin watched the stallion being unloaded and was in awe of his size now that she was so close to him. He was huge, sixteen hands at least. She had only seen him in a paddock before now. His long black hair hung in waves over his dark eyes and his coat was dappled gray, owing to an Andalusian or two probably somewhere in his breeding line. The rest of him was All-American—Quarter Horse—athletic and well-built, a veritable powerhouse.
Erin had heard all the usual tales of stallions killing handlers and riders. She kept a safe distance from King, because they hadn’t formally met yet. He looked around, whipping his head back and forth, taking in his surroundings with a keen eye.
The ranch hand pulled the lead rope taut and tried to walk King through the open barn door. The large male balked, though, and turned away, unwilling to cooperate. The man was forced to turn with him and walk him in ever-widening circles, edging closer and closer to the door. Erin noticed the prominent limp in his rear leg.
She and DelRay followed them slowly, bringing up the rear but well out of range of the stallion’s iron-shod hooves. They all made it through the door, but King suddenly decided he would go no farther.
He shook his head again, snapping the lead tight in an instant. The ranch hand holding desperately to the end of the rope went sprawling.
Responding quickly, Erin spun away from the stallion and toward the barn door. She slammed it shut, giving him no exit, then snatched the yellow raincoat hanging off the hook on the wall.
She held it up, raising it high like a makeshift bull fighter. It had the opposite effect, though, as she suspected it would.
King’s eyes widened and he hopped away, backward, farther toward the center of the barn.
“Easy now,” Erin called out in a calm, lilting voice. She was careful to wave the slicker at him, just using it to keep him at bay. She sidestepped the kid on the ground and circled wide around King. He took another step back, unknowingly angling his haunches toward the empty stall behind him.
“Come on,” Erin coaxed. “Back. Back. Back.” She advanced slowly, after every command.
King, reluctantly, did as he was told, soon finding himself inside a ten-by-ten stall with reinforced wooden walls halfway up and steel bars the rest of the way. It was a little prison-like, Erin admitted, but nothing that any rodeo horse wasn’t used to.
She reached out and pulled the gate closed, sliding the inch-thick pin into the bored hole in the hardwood doorframe. The barn may have been old, but it’d been built to last, and Erin was confident that the stallion was contained.
DelRay seemed satisfied for the time being and eventually hauled out his calf-skin wallet and produced a check for the first month of King’s stabling and rehab fees.
Erin tried not to let her hand shake as she plucked it delicately from his fingers. This was what it was all about, right here in her hand. She said a silent prayer that it was the first of many.
The ranch hand passed her a large bottle of pain pills and a smaller bottle of antibiotics. Erin took them, made a mental note of the labels—including dosage and frequency—even though she’d printed off charts and would be keeping careful records.
Then Tucker and his man secured the now-empty trailer and Tucker gave Erin a tip of his ridiculous hat before he got behind the wheel of his extended cab truck.
Erin watched them ramble down the driveway before turning away and heading back inside the barn to look at her very first boarding patient.
His lower leg was still swollen.
He glared at her and then at the door, and Erin turned to see her own ranch hand stepping in from the blazing sun outside. His eyes shone when he looked at King and Erin supposed she couldn’t blame the man. King’s presence meant money and Erin could now afford to give Hank a raise. Or at least, she supposed that’s what he was guessing.
Hank hadn’t been exactly reliable, though, these last few weeks and if he had any inclinations about getting paid more, Erin was going to tell him that he needed to take more pride in his work before that happened.
Erin put King’s meds in the solid steel cabinet with a tiny glass window, locked it, and pocketed the key. As far as she knew, Hank’s bad habits only extended to beer, and then only on nights and weekends when he wasn’t working, but she wasn’t going to tempt the man by having narcotics readily at hand.
By the time she turned around, Hank had already disappeared back outside. It was better anyway. Erin didn’t want King to get too overwhelmed.
She double-checked the lock on the cabinet and headed to his stall to look him over again. The scar from his surgery was still very prominent on his back left leg, just above the hoof. He had it partially up off the ground now, keeping his full weight off it. Erin hoped he hadn’t hurt himself while traveling. He glared at her, ears pinned back. Erin stood her ground at the stall door.
Suddenly, he darted forward and she was forced to step away so that he couldn’t bite her. He snorted loudly, then turned his harsh gaze on Bee. His chest bumped the gate and it rattled loudly.
Not one to be threatened, at least not these days, the smaller, blond mare chuffed and glared at the stallion. She nickered a bit and Erin thought maybe it was a chastisement of sorts.
King might have thought so, too, because his ears came forward, off the base of his skull, and pricked up at Bee.
Erin had to laugh. In his entire life, this large, unruly male had probably never been given the business by anyone, let alone a tiny female with an attitude. “There’re two of us,” she warned King. “And neither of us takes any shit.”
King looked back at Bee and rattled the door again, not as hard this time. When Bee didn’t scurry away, he finally turned away, ignoring her altogether.
Erin watched him favoring his leg again and sighed heavily. “Guess we all have our work cut out for us,” she said aloud.
Chapter Three
‡
Jack parked his Harley out front and headed inside the clubhouse through the front door. Several men sitting in the corner acknowledged him with nods. Jack’s bedroom was at the end of a dimly lit hallway, at the back of the place. He unlocked the door and stepped inside.
He was
glad his nightly appearance at Maria’s was over. He was bone tired and just wanted a smoke, a slut, and some sleep. He opened the top drawer of the dresser, drew out a baggie, and dropped a nug into the silver grinder.
As he packed his silvery blue bong, the door opened behind him. His eyes narrowed at a short-skirted little girl who was maybe twenty-one, if he squinted hard enough.
“Will you share?” she asked, putting on a clearly practiced seductive smile.
Jack grinned at her lasciviously. “Gotta suck my pipe first, sweetie, before you suck my pipe.”
She licked her lips and came farther inside the room. “I can do that.”
Jack was about to tell her that a blow job was just the appetizer when another woman, this one older and definitely less attractive, strutted into the room.
“Get out,” Diamond snapped to the girl. The girl started to protest but Diamond rolled her eyes. “You gonna let him tear up your ass, honey?”
The girl’s eyes widened and she glanced at Jack, who merely shrugged and flicked his Bic, well, actually it was a Zippo. He took a long, deep hit as the girl shook her head.
“Then get going,” Diamond urged.
The girl turned and fled the room.
Jack was slightly disappointed because the blonde was younger, prettier, and not quite so used up as Diamond. The older woman had been around the club for a long time—too long, Jack sometimes thought. If she hadn’t managed to get anyone to claim her by now, she should bow out gracefully instead of snorting half of Candyman’s stash of coke every week and shaking her sagging ass on tables.
But Jack was too tired from the road to wrestle with a fresh, young chippie, as his father would have called her. He didn’t have the patience to hold her down and talk her through her first ass-fucking. It was pretty well known, though, that his sexual tastes had become ever more depraved over the years.