Sequel to Saving Grace
Taming Jenna
Jenna can outride and outshoot any of the cowboys on the Wagner ranch. She's content to live invisibly amongst the ranch hands, hiding from a past she can't accept.
When Trevor and Conner find out her carefully guarded secret, Jenna's life turns upside down. She gives in to the rugged, sexy cowboys and explores her sexuality in new and unconventional ways. When the lust fades, can she handle committing long-term to Trevor and Conner?
Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys
Length: 35,354 words
TAMING JENNA
Sequel to Saving Grace
Stacey Espino
MENAGE AMOUR
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Amour
TAMING JENNA
Copyright © 2011 by Stacey Espino
E-book ISBN: 1-61034-395-6
First E-book Publication: April 2011
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
To my fellow Western authors on the Wild and Wicked Cowboys blog. There’s just something special about a cowboy ;)
TAMING JENNA
Sequel to Saving Grace
STACEY ESPINO
Copyright © 2011
Chapter One
“The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours—it is an amazing journey—and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.”—Bob Moawad
Jenna supervised the cattle run from a distant hill, giving her a full view of the roundup. Her horse snorted and stomped, eager to join in the melee below, but she held him steady. She savored this time of morning when the new sun slowly lit up the land, changing the dark sky from navy to a robin’s-egg blue. The dew-covered hay fields behind her smelled sweet and earthy. At this point in her life she could honestly say she was satisfied with her lot. She had a simplistic life doing what she loved. Her boss, Mr. Wagner, was a good and honest man. He paid her well, provided food and shelter, and most importantly, he kept her secret. The cowboys on the Wagner Ranch respected her and didn’t give her a lick of trouble.
Would this life always be enough? Would there ever come a time when she craved more? Jenna scoffed at her own thoughts and pressed her heels against the horse’s sides. Quiet reflection only served its purpose for so long. After that it just pissed her off.
She galloped at full speed, savoring the wind on her face and the rhythm of the horse’s hooves on the hard-packed earth. The powerful beat tore through her body, completing her, vanquishing any misgivings she had about her future. Her skills in the saddle surpassed most of the hard-core cowboys working the ranch, and she loved every second of it. She sailed past Conner, a blur as she raced to the center of the roundup. Trevor and Bryce were leading this party. Jenna only showed up to help train a couple greenhorns. Mr. Wagner trusted her to be firm, but fair, and she’d never let him down.
“Jenna, keep track of your boys! They don’t know shit.” Trevor had to shout over the roar of the stampede. Her trainees were an embarrassment, but getting hired hands to spend the busy season on the ranch became more and more difficult, regardless of the paycheck. The kids these days were moving away from farming and moving to the cities to go to fancy universities. She’d never choose modern conveniences over the open land, but it seemed she was a minority.
“I’ll deal with them my way. Get the cattle moving, foreman!” Jenna knew about everything that happened on the ranch. Whatever Wagner wanted done, she’d make sure it was done to his satisfaction.
“Yes, ma’am.” Trevor waved his tan cowboy hat in a circle above his head and whistled. The crew followed his lead, and they continued to the east paddock, where they’d begin a weeklong branding of the new stock.
Jenna had known Trevor since she moved onto the Wagner Ranch six years earlier. He’d matured over the years, now a ruggedly good-looking cowboy with a sexual appetite to rival most of the men that passed through each season. She knew all about his kinky stories, even heard about them firsthand around the bonfire time and time again. To the men on the ranch, Jenna was just another one of the guys. That’s the way she wanted it. The way it had to be.
She whacked the rump of Steve’s chestnut gelding as she sailed past, signaling him to follow. Her new boys had had enough for one day. If she let them help any more with the roundup, the regular guys would have her by the proverbial balls tonight at dinner.
Back at the main barn, she dismounted before coming to a full stop, landing solidly on her prized cowboy boots. Mr. Wagner bought them for her twentieth birthday, and anything from him held a dear place in her heart. After gathering her rifle and belongings from her saddlebag, she led her horse to the water trough. She loosened his girth strap, planning to come and unsaddle him with her two-man trainee crew. They still hadn’
t arrived and should have been right behind her. This was more like babysitting than training. The two hired hands wanted a free ride, and she planned to show them that nobody screwed around with Mr. Wagner…or her.
A few minutes later Steve and Tanner showed up in the yard, laughing, without a care in the world. She was waiting, leaning against the side of the barn with one leg bent up. Today she donned her rifle because she planned to put the fear of God in these two jokers. “When I tell you to follow, I expect you to be right on my ass.” With her rifle resting over her shoulder, she circled the two riders. She may be barely over five feet with a small frame, but she could outshoot or outride any of the men on the ranch, and they knew it. These boys would learn that in a hurry. They’d understand that she didn’t offer second chances or do sympathy.
Steve had a shaggy mop of brown hair which seemed to be popular with the men these days. Tanner’s hair was darker, but neatly kept. Although they were both tall, they hadn’t filled out their frames yet. Not yet men in her opinion—not like the crew that lived in the trailers out back. Conner would eat them for breakfast if she wasn’t watching them every hour.
They each looked at her, then each other, with condescending smirks. If they saw her as the weaker sex, they had a lot to learn. Once at the horses’ rears, Jenna emptied a shot from her rifle into the air, the explosion of sound deafening. Both horses reared up and dumped their riders onto the mud and hay-littered yard by her feet. When they looked up at her with dazed eyes, she smiled.
* * * *
“Looks like Jenna’s teaching the new guys a lesson,” said Trevor. He chuckled when the distant shot echoed throughout the property, and he wished he had been there to witness Jenna’s brand of justice. A few months earlier she’d shot Grace’s ex-husband dead on the spot. The police investigation deemed it as self-defense because that bastard was off his rocker, but the regular cowboys still gave her a wide berth of space after the incident—wider than they usually did, anyway. Trevor rarely messed with her unless he was teasing. She was Wagner’s treasure, so only a fool would get on her bad side. Besides, no matter how gorgeous the girl was, she was off-limits. Why did all the best women have to be married, nuts, or gay? If she’d been into guys, he had no doubt that he’d already know her luscious body intimately. Watching those curves day in, day out gave him blue balls when he barely had time to take leave into town for a quick fuck.
“How long you think they’ll last with her as their teacher?” asked Conner.
“Normally, not a day, but she’s been going easy on them. Wagner needs the new staff, so the pressure’s on to shape them up rather than scare them off.”
“Sounds like she’s trying real hard.”
“If my memory serves me, you were at the receiving end of her shotgun once upon a time.” The whole ranch heard about Conner’s temporary hearing loss from the shot that came a few inches from his head, tearing through the side of the barn. It taught him and all the other cowboys to keep their hands to themselves when it came to Jenna. Unfortunately for Trevor, dominant women rang his bell.
Trevor had been tense lately. Things weren’t quite normal with all the wedding preparations going on for Wagner’s only son, Scott, and Grace. They were having an outdoor wedding, and the planners never seemed to stop coming and going. It was all a pointless waste of money in his opinion, but Mr. Wagner wanted to go all out for the event. The whole thing forced Trevor to think about his own life, his own future. He was still young, but getting older each day. He supposed he’d need to settle down sooner or later, but the idea didn’t comfort him, and he hadn’t found a woman worth keeping. Working at the Wagner ranch gave him purpose. Living the single life and not having to answer to anybody suited him.
He’d admit to reevaluating his life after his time with Grace. She forced him to think about a future with one woman, only she wasn’t the one for him. The sex had been great, and she was a sweet girl, but there was no spark between them. As much as he hated to admit it, Scott and Grace were perfect together. He wished them well, but couldn’t help but feel sorry for himself, even though he should be the lucky one, not getting tied down.
They spent the next hour rounding up the new herd into the holding paddock. They’d keep them penned until the branding. His job was an excellent distraction for wayward thoughts. He loved getting dirty—the dust and sweat, his muscles aching after a hard day’s work. This was a man’s job, and there wasn’t a prouder cowboy than him.
Once he cooled off his horse and set the gelding to graze, he carried his saddle to the tack room. The quiet inside the barn was deafening after running with the cattle. Only his heavy footfalls on the hay-littered concrete, and leather chaps brushing together, broke the hush. He placed his saddle on the saddle horse and then took off his cowboy hat, giving it a few good whacks on his thighs to remove the dust.
“Finished for the day?” asked Jenna. She leaned against the opening of the tack room sipping a can of Coke. It wasn’t even lunch, so she had to be messing with him.
“You know I’m never finished. I’ve got a shitload to do and deliveries to make.” He brushed past her into the center of the large barn. “You scare those greenhorns off?”
“No, they’re washing up for lunch. You should get your ass inside before Pete throws a fit. You know he hates warming up your plate.” Jenna walked to the open bay doors and stopped. He settled beside her, following her gaze. Out back, behind Wagner’s house, hired workers were setting up large white tents for the wedding. It looked like a fucking circus. Only a few more days and it would all be over with. Trevor couldn’t wait for things to get back to normal.
“Can you imagine spending all that money on one day?” he said.
“You know how much he loves Scott. I bet he’ll do the same for you whenever you get hitched.” She smirked.
“That’ll be the day.”
Before turning away from the sight, she took a cleansing breath, as if returning from a daydream. Her gentle reflection vanished in a heartbeat. “By the way, I want that front yard free of your pickup trucks starting today. Park them around back.” The little firecracker was bossy as hell. If things were different, he’d love to bend her over his knee for a spanking.
“What on earth for?”
“Wedding guests. Wagner’s expecting a load of guests today and tomorrow. If he wants the front yard clear, it’ll be clear,” she said, leaving no room for arguments.
He dipped his cowboy hat. “Yes, ma’am. Want me to wipe your ass, too?”
She rolled her eyes and gave him a healthy shove before heading back to the house.
He watched her go, her blue jeans hugging her curvy ass. His sexual attraction to her felt foreign because she was essentially one of the guys. You didn’t get a hard-on looking at a buddy, but even though Jenna was into women, he couldn’t help but appreciate her appearance. Blonde, blue-eyed, with a body to die for. He kept those impure thoughts to himself. Compliments earned cowboys a sharp kick in the balls when it came to Jenna. She hated anything remotely feminine and saw sensitivity as a weakness. The only time he ever saw her acting tenderly toward another person, besides Mr. Wagner, was when Grace stayed at the ranch for a month. The two women bonded, and she protected Grace like a mother hen. A lot of good that did, considering what Trevor and the other farmhands did with Grace when Jenna wasn’t around. If only she knew, she’d skin him alive.
* * * *
After lunch, the guests started to arrive. Jenna glanced out the window to ensure Trevor had moved the trucks like she’d asked. They were gone. Good thing for him because she was in no mood for incompetence. She had enough of that from her trainees. Everything had to be perfect for the wedding. She loved Mr. Wagner like a father, and Grace deserved a special day. Although she never shared anything too personal about herself with the other woman, they enjoyed each other’s company. That was as close to friendship as Jenna dared to get.
She rushed around the living room making last-minute adjustments. T
he place was tidy as a pin thanks to Pete’s help. They had scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom together the day before. She’d even emptied the fireplace of ash and cleaned the flue. Now it was time to receive guests. Jenna would play the hostess, anything to ease Mr. Wagner’s burden.
“Jenna, is Scarlett’s room ready? I just saw her car pull up out front.” Mr. Wagner tucked the tail end of his shirt into his jeans. He had aged so well over the years. His body was lean and fit, his hair more pepper than salt.
“Everything’s all set,” she assured. Although the house was a modest bungalow, it had plenty of extra room considering Wagner lived alone now.
“You make sure them boys don’t come in for dinner swearing up a storm. Scarlett has children, and they don’t need their ears burning.”
“Not a problem, Mr. Wagner. They’ll be as good as gold.” She could handle the rowdy crew of cowboys. If they dared to embarrass her or Mr. Wagner, they’d pay dearly.
He smirked and pulled her against his side for a hug. “You’re a good girl. What would I do without you, darlin’?” After a kiss atop the head, he meandered to the door to greet his guests.
Amazing how one touch, a few words, could reinforce her complete and utter devotion to the man. He was the father she should have had.
Jenna stood to the side, hoping to blend into the background, but be available should Mr. Wagner need her for anything. If Ms. Scarlett had children, Jenna may be needed to keep an eye on them. She didn’t know too much about the guests. They were all friends and family of Mr. and Mrs. Wagner’s, but she’d only met a few in the past. Scarlett was a childhood friend of his and had known Scott when he was just a boy. Jenna expected a big reunion with plenty of laughing and sharing of old memories. God knows her boss deserved some good times. She’d watched his marriage deteriorate over the years and hated seeing him alone for the past year. Although he took life one day at a time with a positive attitude, he rarely left the ranch to visit friends during the past couple weeks. He buried himself in work around the farm and lost his carefree edge.
Taming Jenna [Sequel to Saving Grace] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 1
