Tie Me Down
Arizona Heat Book 1
Katie Douglas
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Thank You!
Sneak Preview
Chapter 1
Alana
I’d been driving for the past ten hours. My neck ached, my nipples were sore, and I really hoped my water hadn’t broken but something down there felt too damp for comfort. To be fair, Arizona was really freaking hot in July. Way hotter than Seattle. I wasn’t even sure where I was going, except as far away from my jerkwad ex-boyfriend as possible. I tried rolling the windows down, but a blast of hot air hit my face. The a/c was broken, and that asshole never took care of anything.
I’d spent pretty much all day every day driving since I fled our apartment. All I knew was I couldn’t let him hurt my baby. I had almost no cash left, and I’d been sleeping on the back seat which was unbelievably uncomfortable with a bump and weird circulation things going on in my hands and feet.
The worst part was, it wasn’t technically my car. And I wanted to drive it into a river somewhere before some well-meaning cop called it in, threw me in jail for theft, and told Jimbo where I was. I felt sick at the thought of ever seeing him again. It was unlikely he’d report it stolen, but there was always a chance that he’d be brazen enough to risk his own arrest to get the knife in my back one last time.
Arizona was a good place to hide. It was mostly desert and cacti, punctuated by the occasional farm full of so much greenery that it hurt my eyes after all the sand. Towns seemed few and far between. I just wished I’d stolen a vehicle which didn’t need so much gas. This Mustang was eating what little cash I had dared to take from Jimbo’s stash before I escaped.
The fuel light came on and I decided to stop at the next gas station. A sign said, “Welcome to Snake Eye.” The town names in Arizona were really something. So were the towns. The gas station was two pumps and a tiny kiosk. It didn’t even have metal bars to protect the old man behind the glass window.
I crossed my fingers and hoped there was enough cash left to get a bottle of water, as well as gas. I lumbered out of the car and put in twenty bucks. That should see me most of the way to New Mexico. Standing still to fill the tank made me even hotter, and it got difficult to breathe. I really needed that drink. Maybe I should have got it before the fuel.
I replaced the pump, locked the car and was waddling toward the kiosk to buy the bottle of water, when the ground rose up to meet me and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my face on the forecourt. I had exactly half a second to feel the burn of the hot concrete through my thin clothes and to panic about whether the fall had hurt my baby before I lost consciousness.
* * *
Lawson
“You got everything ready for the rodeo, Clay?” I asked my twin brother, and co-owner of the Lemon Tree Ranch, as he walked by with a cooler and filled it with beer from my fridge. That was fine. If I got thirsty, I’d go to his place and take his beer while he was gone. It was how we rolled.
“Pretty much. Just gotta get on the Phoenix road before traffic. Sure I can’t tempt you to join us?”
“Someone’s gotta keep an eye on the place.”
“Jake’s a grown-ass man. Let him do it.” We’d already had this conversation, but Clay apparently wanted to re-hash it.
I shook my head while Clay shook out his Stetson. “Jake’s a horse man. You know what happens if we leave him in charge.” Jake didn’t care about anything that didn’t neigh.
“It’s a real shame, buddy,” Clay sighed. “Some of those rodeo chicks are wild.” But he knew I would stay, even if it meant missing out on hooking up with any random girl who liked to be tied up and spanked until she came. Hookups were nice, but I was looking forward to the tranquility of the ranch this weekend.
I waved him and Barrett, our cattle guy, off as they left for the rodeo. They’d be gone all weekend and I’d get some peace and quiet to organize a thing or two I’d been putting off for a while.
“Hey, Lawson, I’m outta gas!” Jake complained as he came to the house. “They leave already?”
“Yeah. Find the gas can and we’ll go straight to the gas station in my truck. I could use some myself.” I put on my hat and sunglasses. Never fuck with the sunshine. That’s what my momma always used to say and I found those to be wise words at this time of year. I headed out to my Toyota pickup and waited for Jake to join me before setting off for the Texaco station down the road.
I’d wrangled the gas can and had just about finished filling the truck when a woman stopped at the pump across from me. She looked confused and disoriented. I pulled the nozzle out of the truck and replaced it in the pump, keeping an eye on her. She tumbled flat on her face, out cold. I thumped my window.
“Jake! Get out here!” I ran over to her and rolled her on her side. She was breathing. I wasn’t a paramedic but she didn’t look hurt and it seemed more important to get her somewhere cool than to leave her in case she sued or something. Jake joined me quickly.
“Take her feet, we’ll get her into the back of the truck out of the heat,” I told him. Between us, we maneuvered her into my Toyota and laid her on the back seat. Now she was out of danger, I took a good look at her. Pregnant, but I couldn’t say how far along she was. Flushed face. Clothes near soaked through with sweat.
“Here—water.” Jake held out an ice cold bottle and I put it against her forehead.
“Ohhhhhh...” she murmured. It was an encouraging sound to hear.
“You’re in my truck coolin’ down. Don’t you worry, we’re going to take good care of you.”
“W-water?” she rasped out. I unscrewed the cap and put the bottle to her lips, gently pouring in a very tiny amount. She tried to grab it but I pulled it away.
“You gotta take small sips, or you’ll be sick. Didn’t anyone ever teach you ‘bout sun safety?” I didn’t intend to come across as stern, but her cluelessness surprised me.
“M’ from Seattle,” she replied.
“Oh.” There wasn’t a lot else to say, but it prompted a childhood memory. “When I was a kid, I used to think the phrase, ‘stick it where the sun doesn’t shine’, meant Seattle.”
“Heh.” The laugh was like sandpaper but at least I’d cheered her up.
“I’d best get going,” she murmured, and tried to sit up, but I put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her.
“Ma’am, in your state, you need to lay down in a real bed and rest.”
Her eyes widened. “I can’t.”
“Where you going in such a hurry that you won’t take your health seriously? Or that of your baby?”
She stared pointedly at the safety belt and her eyes filled with tears. Was she on her way to a funeral? No. Not in those clothes. Regardless, I decided to take control of the situation for her own best interests.
“You’re coming back to our ranch. Jake will drive your car for you.”
“I have to keep going,” she whispered, putting a hand on her belly protectively.
“We can talk all about that when you’re tucked up in bed with a big old glass of lemonade and I won’t take no for an answer. Name’s Lawson, by the way. Lawson Dale.”
If she’d truly wanted us to leave her alone, she could have said something and I’d reluctantly have let her go on her way, but instead, she gave in. She might not have wanted to depend on the
kindness of strangers, but at least she was self-aware enough to know it was the smart choice right now.
“I’m Alana Rose,” she muttered, as though she didn’t want to tell me. “Rose is my last name.” Sounded like people often got confused about that.
I hopped into the driver’s seat and Jake held out his hand for her keys. She gave them to him with a heavy sigh and I winked at him. She was going to do as she was told. Good. I started the truck, glad I’d prepaid the gas, and set off home.
This girl was running from something. Well, she’d be safe and sound on my ranch. And if anyone came a-huntin’... we had more than enough guns to run a ranch in the remote desert.
* * *
Alana
When we arrived at Lawson’s place, he picked me up and I hissed with pain where his hands made me put weight on some of my worse bruises. He carried me straight into the house, cradling me in his arms like I was a weightless doll. I kept worrying he might drop me, but he seemed to handle my whale-like figure easily. It made me feel cared for, which was something I hadn’t felt in a while.
“Welcome to Casa Nova,” he said, and I snickered. “What’s so funny? It’s Spanish for ‘my house’.”
I laughed out loud, my voice still raspy from dehydration. That wasn’t why the sound startled me, though. It was the realization that I hadn’t laughed in such a long time.
“Casanova was the historical Italian guy who slept with lots of women,” I explained. “Mia casa means ‘my house’.”
He growled and rolled his eyes and for a moment I stiffened, worried I’d irritated him by being an insufferable know-it-all, but he said, “I’m gonna kill Clay! My brother told me bad Spanish!”
The fear dissipated and I chuckled with amusement.
He carried me upstairs, mindful not to hit my head or feet against the wall on one side or the railing on the other. There were a lot of doors up here. He kicked open the nearest one and laid me gently on the bed. The scent of potpourri gently fragranced the room. It had been so long since I’d slept on a mattress instead of a squashed and stinking couch bed that the softness brought tears to my eyes.
“I’m going to the kitchen to fix you some lemonade.” He went downstairs and the first thing I did was roll onto my side to get comfortable.
I took a moment to look at the room. It was a place of peace and light. Warm wooden furniture and floral print wallpaper. The window was adorned with net curtains covered in delicate roses, and the actual drapes were thin, mostly white and printed with more roses. This time of year in Seattle, thin drapes would be a big problem—the sun went down pretty late up there—but I’d noticed the further south I’d driven, the earlier it seemed to get dark, so I guessed daylight wouldn’t keep me awake half the night in Arizona.
I reveled in the softness of the pillow against my face for a long moment. Everything here was sweet, cozy and gentle. It was a world away from sleeping on the couch bed in a derelict building with Jimbo. I mentally tore into myself again for being so stupid as to give myself to a dangerous ex-con. I’d thought there was some good buried deep in his heart. I thought I could change him. I thought he’d cared about me in his own way. I’d been so wrong.
But before I’d seen the truth, I’d let him knock me up. It wasn’t intentional, but when it happened, I’d thought he’d soften when he found out he was going to be a dad. I was wrong about that, too.
Yeesh. What had I been looking for in his soul? What had I seen that made me hold on for so long? I couldn’t even remember, but whatever it was, I hadn’t found it.
“Lemonade.” Lawson was back and the way his muscles flexed when he handed me the glass... I wanted to lick his bicep. I took little sips of the lemonade. It was good, and definitely homemade. A mental image of Lawson’s strong hands grinding lemons over a handheld juicer made my nipples harden and I couldn’t explain why.
I was a little wary, though, and I didn’t want to end up trapped in another violent situation. It would have been easier to relax around him if he didn’t have those huge muscles.
“Do you grow the lemons yourselves?” I asked, to derail my thoughts.
“Yep. That’s why it’s called Lemon Tree Ranch.”
“It sounds like the name of a restaurant.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It sounds like the name of a restaurant’s salad dressing. Like, ‘waiter, can I get some of the special Lemon Tree Ranch on my garden salad?’”
He fixed me with a serious expression and raised a stern brow. Instead of making me flinch, it caused my pussy to clench. An apology was on the tip of my tongue because it seemed clear I’d gone too far, but it turned out to be unnecessary.
“Nah, I’m just kidding. Clay and I know the name is weird. It was our mom’s idea of a joke. See, the day my parents got this ranch, thirty-five years ago, mom planted a lemon tree in the yard. It’s still there today.”
“That’s... that’s really sweet, actually,” I replied, my throat constricting slightly as my heart tingled. I wished my parents had that sort of connection to my childhood home.
“She’s gone now, but we still go out there to talk to her sometimes. Clay even put a bench by the tree.”
“Mhmm,” I said noncommittally because if I opened my mouth right then, I knew I would start crying and I didn’t want him to think I was a crazy hormonal pregnant woman. I already felt like one without other people knowing.
He cleared his throat awkwardly and I realized I should have been outwardly a little more sensitive to what he’d said.
“So anyway, what do you do?”
Oh, boy, was that a loaded question. I took a big sip of lemonade and tried to figure out how to answer that.
Chapter 2
Lawson
She looked uncomfortable when I told her about mom’s lemon tree. Maybe she wasn’t very sentimental. It was hard to tell. When I asked her what line of work she was in, she clear clammed up, and buried her face in her lemonade.
“I... well... I went to art school,” she said quietly, her face flushing a deep red. I had no idea why it was such a point of contention. “You can laugh now,” she added.
I frowned. “Why would I laugh? You’re an artist?”
She shook her head, then she nodded.
“Okay, now I’m all turned around. Are you or aren’t you?”
“I was. I haven’t actually done any art since I was with... him.”
Oh. She was in the ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’ phase of this breakup. That point where saying their name out loud somehow summoned their ghost to turn up and be generally shitty. Toes got stubbed. Lightbulbs blew. Horses suddenly spooked for no reason and enormous and unexpected bills appeared in the mail. Yup. I’d been there with an ex-girlfriend. It was hard. Sometimes it had felt like that girl’s spirit was watching me, haunting my soul and making everything in my life go sour, which was crazy because last I heard, she was alive and well in Oklahoma, shacking up with a truck driver.
“He stopped you doing your job?”
“Uh... art isn’t really a job. I mean, sometimes it pays the bills but usually not so much. He didn’t like that I spent so much time doing something that wasn’t for him and wasn’t profitable.” She stared off into the distance and I got the distinct impression there was more to it than what she’d said, but I didn’t press the point.
“How far along are you?” I gestured toward her belly, trying to be a decent human being but my eyes lingered on her full, curvy breasts for a second longer than they ought.
“Five months.”
“And when did you last see a doctor about your little one?” I don’t know why I was being so inquisitive, but some gut instinct told me to ask.
She stared at her lemonade glass and didn’t answer.
“Alana?” I prompted. “I asked you a question.”
“I... uh... I haven’t seen a doctor,” she replied in a small voice. “I don’t have one.”
Was she a hippie? She
didn’t look like one but it was hard to tell with some people. “You do believe in modern medicine, right?” I checked.
She nodded. “I believe in Mercedes, too, but I can’t afford one of those, either.”
I knew she was being flippant about a serious situation, but it was hard not to laugh when she put it like that.
“And the baby’s father didn’t pay for an OB/GYN?”
She laughed bitterly. “The only things he paid for were beer and hamburgers. He had money, he just refused to spend it. I asked him if I could borrow a twenty for gas one time and he accused me of being a gold digger.”
Wow. I couldn’t even imagine living in a situation like that, let alone bringing a child into it. I didn’t know how she’d gotten pregnant, and I didn’t think anyone could judge her for it, but it must have been a hard prospect.
“Did you want me to get anything out of your car?”
She shook her head. “I got nothing in there. Didn’t want to waste time packing in case he stopped me.”
Whew. That was some serious shit.
“So where are you headed?” I asked, to try and fill the awkward gap between us. I still couldn’t understand why she was in Arizona in the first place, if her hometown was Seattle.
“As far from Seattle as I can get. He was an ex-con when I met him. Thought I could change him. He’s gone back to a life of crime. When I told him about our baby h-h-he...” she began to cry and I instinctively plucked the lemonade out of her hand, left it on the nightstand and put my arms around her.
“Shh, it’s okay, sweet one, he’s not here now,” I murmured.
“I’m sorry. You’re a complete stranger and I’m being so negative...”
“Stop that. You’re not being negative, you’re letting it all out.”
Tie Me Down: Arizona Heat Book 1 Page 1
