Theirs To Protect: a Reverse Harem Romance

by Stasia Black

  With so many horses, one of whom had an abscess that needed to be drained, it took several hours before they were finished. While Jeremiah and Hunter had bantered back and forth, Hunter hadn’t spoken to her directly again the entire time. Jeremiah tried to include her in their conversation and he’d occasionally direct a question her way, but Hunter would just move around the horse and pretend she didn’t exist.

  After they finished with the last of the horses and Hunter had packed up and was heading for his truck, she went after him. She waited until they were around the front of the house almost to their vehicles before jogging up to him and grabbing his arm. “Hey.”

  His nostrils flared as he looked down at her hand on his forearm. She yanked her hand back. Just the feel of his skin seemed so intimate after everything they’d shared last night.

  He stared down at her stone-faced. “Was there something you needed?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “So that’s it? We’re just not going to say anything about what happened last night? Look, I’m sorry for how I left this morning.” She lifted her hands and shrugged. “I figured you were a guy and you know, I was doing you a favor by leaving without any big morning after scene.”

  His whole body went tense at her words and he let out a short huff of air through his nose. “Consider last night forgotten.” His words were clipped. “I’m just your boss and you’re just my intern. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out his keys and his wallet. Opening his wallet, he slipped out a white business card that was slightly worn around the edges. It read Natrona County Veterinary and then had Hunter’s name, phone number, and the clinic’s address.

  “Come to think of it, the office really does need tidying up,” he said. “I can handle the rest of today’s calls by myself. Why don’t you head in, do some cleaning, and see if you can make heads or tails of the filing system.”

  “I should be done with Mr. Guzman’s steer in a few hours.” He searched along his jangling key ring. “Here’s a key. There’s filing to be done if you run out of things to do.”

  Isobel nodded and took the key after he unclipped a small carabiner with an attached key ring from the larger set. Their fingers touched for the briefest moment as he passed the key and it was like a spark of static electricity lit between them.

  Isobel’s breath hitched as she looked up at him. But if he felt it, he gave no indication.

  “All right.” Isobel’s voice came out a little higher pitched than she would have liked. She swallowed and then finished. “I’ll see you there.”

  Hunter nodded and then he opened the door to his truck. He paused before getting in, though, and turned back toward her. His eyes were focused past her and his jaw was still hard.

  “And Isobel?”

  “Yes?”

  “In the future, don’t do me any favors.”

  He flicked his eyes ever so briefly in her direction before he hauled himself into his seat and slammed his truck door behind him.

  Chapter 7

  HUNTER

  The sun was low near the horizon by the time Hunter pulled open the clinic door. The stop at the Guzman ranch was supposed to just be a pregnancy check. But one of the heifers was calving early and there were complications.

  Hunter ended up having to extract a dead calf. Never a nice scene, but at least he was able to save the mother. And before he left, he double checked two other pregnant heifers. Everything looked to be going great with them.

  But now he was tired, he stank of cow, and the last thing he wanted to deal with was a certain black-haired beauty on the other side of that door. He should have just told her they’d start tomorrow but he thought he’d make one last attempt to discourage her from staying.

  Surely anyone seeing the state of the clinic reception area would be put off the job. He knew it was a disgrace. He and Dr. Roberts—the aging veterinarian he shared the practice with—were strict about keeping the exam rooms clean and disinfected. But their regular cleaning lady had had to take time off to have a baby and they’d had difficulty finding a reliable replacement. Even a couple weeks without a good scrub-down and the waiting room full of animal patients started to stink to high heaven.

  But when Hunter stepped into the lobby, instead of the normal sour smell of cat piss, he was hit with the strong scent of lemon and bleach. The lobby was also bright for once—the flickering fluorescent light that he kept meaning to get around to had been replaced.

  And best of all, Hunter was greeted with the sight of Isobel’s wiggling backside as she leaned over and scrubbed at the baseboard with a big sponge, a bucket of soapy water beside her. Her ass swung back and forth like she was bobbing to music Hunter couldn’t hear. That was when he noticed she had earbuds in.

  For a second, he could only stare in appreciation at her delectable ass in those tight little leggings.

  All he wanted to do was drop his bag of instruments, walk over to her, grab her waist with one hand and yank down those leggings. He’d bite that sweet ass of hers and then—

  Isobel pulled back to dip the sponge in the soapy water and shrieked, obviously just then noticing him. She almost knocked the bucket over in her surprise.

  Hunter took a step back, quickly averting his eyes from her backside.

  “Crap, you scared me.” She jerked her earbuds out and wiped her hands down her thighs, standing up.

  Hunter grunted in response. Shit. What the hell was he doing? Staring at her ass? Last night was bad enough. He didn’t need to add idiocy on top of stupidity.

  “I need to be getting home.” He strode toward the lobby desk. “Let me show you how the system works so you can get familiar with it and start on the records tomorrow.”

  “I already figured it out,” Isobel said as Hunter was shaking the mouse to bring the computer to life.

  “What?” Hunter turned around, looking at her in spite of himself. Her long black hair was pulled up in a ponytail but wisps escaped all around her face. Jesus, he swore every time he saw her she got prettier. Creamy skin, vibrant blue eyes, cherubic cheeks flushed so prettily—he wasn’t sure if it was because of the work she was doing or because he made her nervous. Why did he stupidly hope it was the latter?

  He shook his head in disgust at himself as he looked down at the computer screen. It was already open to the advanced record keeping program that neither Dr. Roberts nor he could ever figure out.

  “I saw you have the VAP system installed. I’m familiar with it—they used it at a clinic where I volunteered during my first year in vet school. But then I saw that you’ve just been keeping your records in Excel files.” Isobel leaned over and took the mouse from Hunter, clicking to a patient roster tab. “So I organized the columns to match the input parameters and then batch uploaded the records into the VAP database.”

  “Oh,” was all Hunter could manage. Damn, she smelled good. Like flowers or some shit. Which only made him more acutely aware of how bad he must reek.

  He stood up and took several steps away from the computer. He couldn’t believe she’d done all that in the what, four hours, since he’d last seen her?

  He’d sound like a complete idiot if he told her he and Dr. Roberts had held off using the new system because they’d assumed all the patient records would have to be input individually—a task which would have taken weeks. But she apparently did it with the click of a few buttons?

  She looked up at Hunter, eyes wide. Like she was waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, her eyes narrowed. “I think the words you’re looking for are, thank you, Isobel.”

  Shit. Hunter lifted a hand to the back of his neck. This woman had him fucking tongue tied. Of course he was—she went to an Ivy League school. And yeah, he’d gone to Purdue, but he’d barely passed his classes because he was busy trying to work and pay the tuition not covered by scholarships at the same time.

  But this woman—she was beautiful. Intelligent. Witty. So what the hell was she doing all the
way out here?

  “You know, what I don’t get is why you lied.” He stared at her.

  She jerked back at his words. “What? I didn’t lie.”

  “You said you grew up in a small town in New Hampshire.”

  “I did.” She averted her eyes like she had something to hide. “Part of the time anyway.”

  He frowned. “Were your parents divorced?”

  “No,” she said quickly, then paused before adding with a slight cringe. “We had a summer house there.”

  Fuck. Him.

  Beautiful, intelligent, and wealthy. This woman was probably more of a goddamned princess than even Janine.

  Janine, the vibrant girl he’d met in college who was so determined to rebel from her rich East Coast roots by dating and then marrying a poor farm boy from the Middle of Nowhere, Wyoming.

  Of course, the romance of a working man wore off real quick once she was living the reality of being married to a small town vet just establishing his practice. Almost from the moment they’d unloaded the moving truck, she hated it here.

  She couldn’t stand the people. The food. The lack of culture. How there was never anything exciting to do or places to go. Hunter had cut his hours as short as he could, he’d found special picnic spots, and he’d saved every penny so they could go spend weekends in the biggest nearby city, Cheyenne. He did everything possible to give her back something of the life she was accustomed to.

  But even Cheyenne was horribly provincial to Janine’s sophisticated palate. No matter how hard Hunter tried to make up for bringing her here and to please her, it was never enough. He was never enough.

  “Look,” Isobel said, “it doesn’t matter where I came from. I’m not afraid of hard work.” She jutted out her chin.

  But all Hunter saw was another rich city girl, come to rough it for the summer on some lark. He wasn’t going to be caught in the cross hairs again.

  “I think you missed a spot back there.” He gestured at the wall behind her.

  Her eyes flashed and it wasn’t hard to imagine that she felt like hurling the bucket full of dirty water at his head. Hunter had to turn away because Jesus Christ, she was even more appealing when she was pissed.

  He should have just said no earlier when Mel proposed Isobel work for him. But how was he supposed to turn Mel down? Especially with her pregnant?

  Plus, he and Dr. Roberts were actually desperate for the help. Dr. Roberts had just turned seventy and hadn’t been doing farm calls for a couple years now. He only came in to the clinic three days a week and Hunter knew he wanted to retire. Ever since Janine… well, suffice to say Hunter had been happy to lose himself in his work for the past year. But even he had his limits. Still—why couldn’t it have been anyone other than her?

  “So we’re really just not going to talk about last night?” she asked as he was almost to the hallway.

  He paused and his eyes dropped closed. Why did she have to keep bringing that up? Images flashed of her underneath him. Her responsive gasps as he licked deep into her cunt. The feel of her perfect breasts and hardened nipples pinched between his fingers and thumb. The way she clutched his shoulders when he finally thrust—

  “Nope,” he said without turning. Then he strode quickly down the hall before he did something really stupid like turn around, kiss the fucking daylights out of her, and beg her for a repeat of last night.

  Chapter 8

  ISOBEL

  The nerve of that guy. Isobel threw the sponge in the bucket after emptying out the dirty, sudsy water in the clinic’s bathroom.

  She’d busted her ass all afternoon. First with figuring out how to make sense of their absolute disaster of a record keeping system—seriously, she could not believe that a modern day veterinary clinic could have such an archaic method of record keeping. Using a basic Excel spreadsheet instead of a database program was little more efficient than just using all paper records! Isobel had to research how to format the records to import them. It had taken her two hours and several botched attempts to figure it all out.

  And then she’d taken on the herculean task of cleaning up that lobby that smelled like it hadn’t had a deep scrub down in months.

  But could Mr. High and Mighty acknowledge any of that?

  I think you missed a spot.

  She fumed about it the whole drive home.

  The nice guy from last night was definitely all mirage.

  Isobel mopped her sweaty forehead with her forearm and then wrinkled her nose when she caught sight of herself in the little mirror on the sun visor.

  Or maybe he just got a good look at you in the light of day.

  Because God, did she look like a wreck.

  Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the ugliest of them all?

  Her hair was coming out from her ponytail everywhere, except from the very front where sweat had slicked little wisps against her forehead.

  She pulled in front of the ranch house and parked. She angled the mirror to take a better look at herself.

  Oh God. No wonder Hunter was so eager to rehash last night. Ugh.

  She slammed the visor back up and squeezed her eyes shut. She and mirrors had a bad track record and she knew better than to look.

  “Enough.” She gritted her teeth, then grabbed her purse and headed inside.

  She was looking forward to a long bath and some time to decompress, but the first thing she heard after she walked in the door was her name being called out.

  “Isobel!”

  Startled, she looked over toward the open room and saw one of the twins jogging toward her. He was the one with the dreadlocks. What was his name again?

  “You’re just in time for dinner.”

  “Oh.” She glanced around at the meatloaf and mashed potatoes heaped on everyone’s plates. “That’s okay, I’m not—”

  “It’s Reece,” he said, pointing at himself. “I don’t know about you, but I always mix up people’s names when I first meet them.” He smiled warmly. “Come on, you can meet everyone properly.” He put his hand to her upper back and started herding her toward the table where they were all sitting.

  He was being nice and she didn’t want to come off as a bitch, just running away to her room the first night. She took a deep breath and pasted on a smile. Even though she felt like scuttling and hiding behind the curtains at the way all the eyes in the room were zeroed in on her.

  Liam was seated beside Reece’s twin Jeremiah. He gave her a blatant once over and then grinned unabashedly. She tried not to wince when she remembered that she looked like death warmed over. Mack just glanced over his shoulder at her then went back to his food while Nicholas gave her a welcoming head nod.

  “Mel and Xavier have already gone up for the night,” Reece explained. “I usually put the boys down before dinner. Bossman likes having the wife to himself in the evenings.”

  “To think, they actually need a break from our fabulous and magnanimous company,” Liam shook his head.

  “Hi again, everyone.” Isobel gave a short, awkward wave.

  Reece urged her toward the side table where the food sat steaming in heated chafing dishes. “What’s your pleasure? We’ve got meatloaf tonight. Green beans, along with a vegetable medley over here to the right. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Biscuits. A little bit of everything?”

  Isobel’s eyes widened as she took it all in.

  Calories.

  Fat.

  CARBS.

  “Um,” she swallowed, glancing from the food to everyone still staring at her. “No, thanks,” she tried again. “That’s okay. I’ll just—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Reece laughed. “There’s plenty.” Then he started heaping food on her plate.

  She made a strangled coughing noise but Reece just kept on shoveling food until Jeremiah jumped up from the end of the table.

  “Enough already.” He took the plate from his twin. “Sorry for my brother’s enthusiasm,” he apologized to Isobel, offering a warm smile with dimples id
entical to his Reece’s. Apart from their hair and the way they dressed, they looked exactly alike. “He equates hospitality with feeding people. It’s a Southern thing.”

  Isobel couldn’t help but smile gratefully at Jeremiah as he scooped half of what Reece had put on her plate back into the trays.

  Nicholas looked up from his food. “Texas barely counts as the South.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Reece said, waving a hand.

  “I’ll take more of the vegetables,” she said as Jeremiah reached them.

  “Are you vegetarian?” Reece winced. “Sorry, I should have asked.”

  “No, no. I just…” She scrambled. “You know. Being on the road. I’ve been eating a lot of junk food. Vegetables would be nice for a change.”

  God, that didn’t come off too awkward, did it? Maybe it would have been easier to just say she was a vegetarian. But then she’d be locked into that and she did like meat. But rarely and usually only when it was boiled. She’d already cheated this week with the burger last night.

  At least her neurotic thoughts weren’t playing across her face, or if they were, the guys were too oblivious to notice. Jeremiah handed her plate back and then Reece tossed an arm around her shoulders, pulling her away from Jeremiah. He flashed a friendly grin down at her, dimples on display. “You’re in for a treat. Nick cooked and the food’s always the best on his nights.”

  “Because I grew up in the actual south and we do food the right way,” Nicholas said.

  “Stop hogging the beautiful woman all to yourself,” Liam jumped up and pulled Reece’s arm off Isobel’s shoulders. He took Isobel’s hand and dropped a kiss to her fingertips. “Will you please do me the honor of sitting beside me?”

  “Oh, um,” she looked around at all the guys. Then she shrugged. “Okay?”