Axton: Sweet dreams, baby.
My traitorous heart leaped and I lay there for nearly a full minute just staring at the screen. When I started typing a reply, I was surprised at myself for answering him. Damn, I was going to have to be careful.
Me: G’nite Ax.
A week passed in the blink of an eye. Zander arrived and things got more interesting. Natalie and Zander were hilarious when they were together. I could see some interest flashing in Zander’s eyes from time to time when it came to Nat, but I didn’t see the same in her blue-gray gaze. When Devlin and Harris arrived, however, my friend’s eyes nearly blazed with interest. There was just one problem.
Natalie and Devlin did nothing but argue. Linc joked that it was because they wanted to rip each other’s clothes off so badly and neither one of them wanted to admit it. Wroth even commented that Devlin was standoffish about Natalie because Shane and Drake had told all of the guys in OtherWorld that if anyone touched their sister they would be pissing in a bag for the rest of their lives when they finished with them. Considering the whole Liam/Tawny/Devlin thing I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because Zander showed signs of liking Natalie as more than a friend too, and he didn’t want a repeat of history.
One week turned into two and before I knew it three weeks had gone by and everyone was starting to pack for the tour. Liam was about as ready as he could be for the next few months on the road. The cast on his wrist was removed and Linc set to work on getting his hand stronger so that he would be ready to play. The cast on his leg was still going to be on there for a while longer and we would see a specialist while out on tour, or so Emmie had informed me.
While I was ready to get on the road and out of a house that threw me and Axton together so much, I was counting down the days until my dad came to Tennessee. He had promised to stop at one of the farms he had an interest in so that I would get to spend a little time with him before I left. As I straightened up Liam’s room, while he was in the living room with everyone else, I kept glancing down at my phone. Today was the day and I was just waiting on my dad to text me so I could go visit.
The plan had been for him to visit at Wroth’s farm, but my dad had a few things he needed to take care so I’d just told him I would drive over to where he was. I didn’t want to have to wait on him to finish what needed his attention, so I was impatiently waiting. It wasn’t every day that I got to see my dad. I was pretty much kept as far away from Austin Bradshaw from the moment my mother had decided to divorce him. Which had happened about five seconds after Austin had told her that he didn’t want his daughter subjected to the circus show of Texas beauty pageants.
When the text finally came through, I gave a happy dance because I loved my dad so much. Skipping through the house, I grabbed my coat and the keys to the truck that Wroth had made available to anyone that might need it. Linc and Natalie both knew where I was going, so I didn’t bother to tell them that I was leaving.
The truck had a GPS and I had to punch in the address before I could go. I hadn’t left the ranch for anything but to go with Liam to his doctor’s appointment so I didn’t know where I was going at all. It took thirty minutes to get to the house my dad was staying at.
When I pulled up in front of the house, which was more like a mansion, I couldn’t help but frown. I wasn’t expecting something this extravagant out here in the country, although I had passed some really nice houses as I had gone through town. Even when I had driven through the gates at the entrance of the property with a sign that had read ‘Huntington Estate’ I hadn’t figured the place would be so… Ostentatious was the only word that kept entering my mind.
The house was a two-story, but it was as wide as my apartment building back in New York. The garage that connected to the house could have easily held eight large vehicles. The grounds were expertly manicured, looking green and luscious even though it was the dead of winter. But it was the stables in the distance that really caught my attention. The thing was huge and for some reason my heart began to race as soon as I spotted it.
Turning off the truck, I stepped out and let out a happy squeal as soon as I saw the big man walking down the front steps toward me. “Daddy!” I threw myself into his arms.
With a deep laugh Austin Bradshaw swung me around and around. In my eyes there was no man better than my dad. He was rough around the edges and as mean as a snake at times. But he was also a straight shooter, always letting you know how he felt without pussyfooting around the issue. He also loved me more than anything in the world.
After a few minutes he put me on my feet and stepped back to look down at me. I hadn’t seen him since Christmas and only then for a few hours. His face had changed a little, a few more lines and a few more gray hairs, but that didn’t distract from how handsome he was. I loved that I looked so much more like my dad than I did my mother. There were other changes in his appearance but the biggest was in his waist. Austin had always had a little extra weight on him, making his stomach thick and slightly round. But that was gone now.
“Damn, Daddy!” I teased as I took him all in. “Who you lookin’ good for?”
Austin chuckled, but didn’t deny it, which had my brows rising. Before I could call him on it and demand to know what he was doing, because my dad hadn’t ever cared about his appearance or a woman in any shape or form, he distracted me by telling me he had a surprise for me.
Automatically my eyes went back to the stables and my heart started pounding. Seeing the look on my face, Austin grabbed my hand and we hurried toward the big building. The closer we got, the more anxious I was to reach it.
Several men were standing by the entrance to the stables. When we stepped inside it was warm and cozy, the all-too-familiar scent of horses filled my nose and I couldn’t help but smile. I glanced around with excitement, feeling like a kid let loose in a candy store after getting the taste of sugar for the first time. My dad just laughed as I continued to act like a little girl.
Halfway down he turned to me and told me to close my eyes. “Trust me, darlin’.”
With a shrug I closed my eyes and let him lead me the rest of the way through the stables. With my eyes closed, the scent and sound of horses moving around took me back to a time when I had been happy and innocent. A time before my mother had gotten crazy with the pageants and then the whole modeling thing.
“Okay, Dallas.” Austin put his hands on my sides and turned me to the left. “Open ‘em up, darlin’.”
Slowly I opened my eyes. When they focused on the horse in the stall before me, my legs nearly buckled. “Raad…” His name came out in a whisper and with a trembling hand I reached out to touch his nose. Tears burned my throat and eyes as I took in the horse that I had considered my first friend.
“He’s been here for about five years now. When your mother sold him I started looking for him as soon as I could, but I finally tracked him down about a year ago.”
I glanced back at the black Arabian stallion. Raad was seventeen years old now, but the way he was nuzzling my hand told me that he remembered me. I’d missed this horse every day for fifteen years. My mother had used Raad against me when I had refused to do the pageants. One day I had come home from school and Raad, who had lived in the single stable just a few hundred yards from the house my mother had moved us into when she had divorced my father, was gone. She said that if I wasn’t going to do what she wanted then I couldn’t have what I wanted. Then she had promised that she would get Raad back if I did what she told me and I started winning the pageants. Her promise, like all her promises, had been a lie. I hadn’t seen Raad again until that moment.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I leaned forward and kissed Raad’s nose.
“Was just waiting on the perfect time to give him back to you, darlin’.” Austin wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “I own every horse in this stable now. So while you’re in the area, feel free to come over and ride any horse to your heart’s content.” He nodded toward the stallion now trying to sn
iff out some treats, obviously remembering that I always snuck him a carrot or some sugar cubes out to him every day. “As for Raad, or Prince—as Tink called him until she realized that it wasn’t his real name, he’s all yours just like he is supposed to be.”
“Really?” I kissed Raad again then turned and threw myself against my dad. “You swear?”
“Swear, darlin’.” Austin’s face was completely serious. “You let me know what you want done with him and I’ll do it. But he seems happy here. Tink might have sold me the horses and the stable itself to go with it, but she still takes care of all of them.”
“Who’s Tink?” I asked my dad as he took my hand and led me away from Raad’s stall. I blew him a kiss over my shoulder before turning my full attention back to my dad.
“Tink owns Huntington Estates. A few years ago, when her brother died, she nearly lost everything because of her sister-in-law’s excessive spending. When I came along and wanted to buy Raad back, she offered me all of the horses and the stables for a lump sum that got the Estate out of trouble. She sold off the family company and I hired her to take care of the horses for me.”
My eyes narrowed on my dad as we exited the stables. He seemed to light up at the mention of Tink. Having never had to fight for my father’s attention when it came to other women, I suddenly felt like any other Daddy’s girl would. No woman would ever be good enough for my hero. Whoever this Tink woman was, she had better measure up in a big way or I wasn’t going to let whatever was going on continue.
As we walked toward the house, Austin told me all about Tink. She was a horse lover, and had been collecting them from the time she could ride. The Huntingtons were seriously rich, or they had been until Samuel Huntington had passed away eight years ago. Now it was just Tink and her sister-in-law who lived in the huge house on the estate. While Tink took care of the horses, her sister-in-law, Sharon, continued on with her life as if they were still richer than God by hosting parties as often as possible.
When we entered the house, I found it just as ostentatious as the outside was. I raised a brow at my dad and he sighed. “Sharon has full command of the house. It was left to her in her husband’s will. But that was all she got. When it comes to money, she has to rely on Tink.”
“Someone needs to get the broom out of their ass and lighten up a little,” I told my dad as he led the way down a hall that was covered in expensive paintings. I shook my head, wondering where all the family photos were. This place felt more like a museum rather than a home.
Austin entered a room that looked like an old-style sitting room. I rolled my eyes when I found a woman in a dress with long dark-blonde hair sitting on one of the loveseats that looked as if it were hard as hell and ridiculously expensive. Across from there sat a tall, slender woman in a pair of well-worn jeans and a flannel shirt.
Both stood when we entered the room. Two sets of eyes landed on my father and my hackles began to rise as I saw interest flare in both. I stood there for a long moment, assessing the two women as they seemed to gobble up the sight of my father. I zeroed in on the woman who had to be Sharon Huntington first. She was really lovely at first glance. Slender, with a nice figure. Her long hair was gorgeous and her eyes, a dark green, really quite striking in her face. But when I looked at the woman, I saw my mother—the greed in her eyes telling me that she was only interested in my father because of the money that came with him.
There was a lot of money that went with Austin Bradshaw, after all. If the Huntingtons had been sickeningly rich, that still probably hadn’t gotten close to touching the amount my dad was worth. He came from old Texas money. His grandfather had been into oil and cattle. When the oil had gone dry, the cattle had still remained. Austin had only added to the wealth that he had inherited.
Turning my gaze to the other woman, who had to be Tink, I took all of her in. She was absolutely breathtaking. For a woman in her forties, she dressed more like she was in her teens. Her hair was pulled up into a simple ponytail and her face was makeup free, which made me completely jealous when I noticed how long her eyelashes were naturally. When she looked up at Austin, her entire face seemed to light up, much like my dad’s had when he had been talking about her earlier.
Sighing, I decided then and there that if Tink really cared about my father, then I wasn’t going to go all Daddy’s-girl bitch on her. If she could make Austin happy, then more power to her. Just as long as she kept him away from the haughty bitch turning her disapproving gaze on me.
Axton
The house was starting to suffocate me. I felt like if I didn’t get out of the house, off the farm—fuck, out of Tennessee—I was going to lose my shit in a bad way. I kept counting down the days until we would be out on the road, and they weren’t. Coming. Fast. Enough.
The only thing that helped with the overpowering feelings was Dallas. Sure, she tried to ignore me during the day, but at night I always found her easily. We usually ended up out on the porch, either sharing a beer or sharing our lips. I always sent her to bed alone, then took care of my aching body in the shower before falling into bed and texting her for at least an hour before one of us would fall asleep. All in all, I felt like we were moving in the right direction.
Today, for some reason, the suffocating feeling was worse than usual. Nothing seemed to help and I knew that I needed Dallas to distract me before I started climbing the walls and scared Marissa. Upsetting Marissa in any way would only force Wroth to kill me, and as much as I wanted this feeling to go away, I didn’t want to be dead.
Moving through the house, I discovered that she wasn’t anywhere to be found. Liam hadn’t seen her all morning because it was technically her day off. Marissa and Wroth had seen her at breakfast but nothing since. Finally I found Zander, Natalie and Linc in the family room watching some old movie that I was sure Nat and Linc loved but Zander was forcing himself to watch because he was trying to ease his way into Nat’s pants. As much as I cared about Z, I wouldn’t blink at ratting him out to Nat’s brothers. I couldn’t help but grin as I wondered how pretty his face would be once Drake and Shane got finished with him.
“Anyone know where Dallas is?” My gaze went to Linc because he was whom I was really asking, but I knew that he wouldn’t answer. Linc was loyal to Dallas to a fault and that only made me respect him more. The fact that he hated me right now didn’t bother me. As soon as I got Dallas back he would be my friend again because he supported anything that made Dallas or any of the other women in his life happy.
It was Natalie that raised her head. “Her dad is in the area. She went over to visit with him.”
“Where?” Maybe I could go out and meet her. I liked her dad, and he had seemed to tolerate me the few times I’d gotten to meet him.
Natalie frowned, trying to remember. “Huntington Estate? Yeah, I think that was it.”
Zander’s head snapped up in time to watch the blood drain from my face. “Fuck, man.”
I suddenly felt like vomiting. No. No. No way. I wasn’t going to let her get frostbite from my bitch of a mother. No way was I going to let that hoity-toity bitch sink her teeth into Dallas. My girl’s skin might be tough, but if Sharon Huntington got her teeth into her she would leave . My jaw suddenly hurt and I realized that it was because I was clenching it so hard.
If Dallas was at Huntington Estate, then that meant I was going to have to do something I had sworn never to do again in my lifetime.
Go home.
I didn’t say another word to the three sitting on the couch. Instead I found the keys to Wroth’s SUV and drove like the hounds of hell were behind me as I raced toward the other side of town. I passed the run-down streets that Devlin and Zander had grown up on, the new high school that had been built only a few years ago—but that I hadn’t ever attended, since my mother had insisted on a private school an hour’s drive away—and then the country club members’ homes. All of those pretentious assholes were friends in one way or another with my mother and I hated them simply by associ
ation.
A drive that should have taken twenty minutes ended up only being nine. When I skidded to a halt in the driveway, the tires squealed. The SUV was barely in park before I was running up the steps to the stupidly big house. Seriously, when I was a kid there had only been my parents and I living there. Who needed a ten-bedroom house when you only had one kid?
The door was locked and I had to either ring the doorbell or kick the damn door down. I would have rather kicked it down and would have done exactly that if the housekeeper hadn’t answered the door so quickly. When I focused on the older woman standing there in her maid’s uniform, I felt a small kick to my heart that it wasn’t Margret, the housekeeper who had basically raised me.
“May I help…” I pushed past the woman, “…you?”
“Dallas?” I called her name as I stomped through the house. If she was here then there was only one place to look first. My mother only entertained her guests in that stupid formal sitting room of hers. When I reached the door I heard the cold voice of my mother.
“…degrading your body.”
I entered the room to find Sharon Huntington looking down her straight nose at Dallas as she stood beside her father. It was obvious that she hadn’t been there too long if Dallas still had her coat on. The coat covered up most of Dallas’s tattoos, but that didn’t disguise the facial piercings.
“I don’t believe I asked for your opinion on what I’ve done with my body. Actually, I don’t remember asking you anything. So let’s try to keep our opinions to ourselves. If you keep your dislike of my piercings and tattoos—by the way I have twenty-two—to yourself, I will keep the fact that you are a snotty bitch to myself.”
I froze in my tracks. Had I really worried about Dallas being unable to stand up against my mother? If I had, then I had surely lost my mind. Dallas could stand up to anyone or anything. She was stronger than anyone I knew.
The Rocker Who Wants Me (The Rocker... Series) Page 8
