“You know, I think we just christened the barn, so to speak.” Dressed again and looking very much like a cowgirl, she ambled over to him. She laid her hand on his cheek and gave him a sexy-as-hell pouty grin. “I think it’s time to go buy some horses. What do you think, cowboy?”
Then she kissed him.
* * * *
“You were supposed to be making sure she wanted out of the cattle business, not buying more,” he ground out and held his cellphone in a death grip. He rarely angered, but when it came to Blackwell Ranch, he did so often.
“How the hell was I supposed to know she’d buy more cattle?” Kyle McPherson’s whiney voice raked over his nerves. “I couldn’t kill the calves. The damned old man, Jesse Riley, watches me like a hawk. It’s Quinn. He’s pushing her to do this. They shacked up together. Today when she was riding in the roundup, Dylan acted like a lovesick puppy because she was with us. Tom told me he thinks she’s knocked up. Now, the bastard really acts like he owns the damned place.”
He ran a hand through his hair. The jewelry box weighed down his suit pocket. Flipping open the lid, he looked at the diamond ring. Snapping the lid closed, he tossed the five-carat bauble across the room. He never, ever lost a conquest, and he wanted Charli Monroe more than he liked to admit. The fact Dylan Quinn was the one warming her bed damn near had him seeing red.
“Do something about it. I’m paying you to make sure Charli Monroe signs over that ranch to me.”
“What the hell do you want me to do? I can’t kill Dylan. I already tried.”
He reached into the depths of his being and found calm against the seething rage making it hard to breathe. He’d long ago learned never to let extreme anger or fear show in the business world. To do so was a weakness the enemy could easily exploit, a lesson his grandfather had taught him.
“Come up with something, Kyle.” He paused to make sure his point got across loud and clear. “I want the ranch. I still have the evidence I’m sure your Texas Ranger brother or the Dallas police would love to get hold of.”
A loud, disgusted curse sounded down the wire. He let a predatory smile touch his lips. The young fool was right where he wanted him. “All right,” the younger man said, resigned. “All fuckin’ right.”
He disconnected the call and looked out at the night. He’d get what he wanted and avenge the wrong done to him when that crazy bastard abandoned him long before he’d been born.
* * * *
After making love in the barn, Charli and Dylan went inside. She listened to his even breathing as he spooned close behind her. Hugging the arm holding her, she stared at the wall. She should have told him she loved him when she offered him the partnership. She’d told Ricardo she’d loved him, too, and he’d even married her, or so she had thought at the time. But he hadn’t ever loved her.
And neither did Leon. She doubted he was even truly her friend, and that hurt. Every man she’d ever cared for had used her or planned to steal from her by bending her emotions to fit their purposes.
Was Dylan doing the same? Why hadn’t he ever told her he loved her? But when she’d offered him exactly what he’d always wanted, a ranch of his own, he didn’t take it. What else could be holding him here? If he was only with her for the baby, why didn’t he want to marry her so their baby would never carry the stigma of being illegitimate? What would he do if he ever found out about her past? Would he take her baby from her? The thought terrified her. She could never give up her baby.
Sniffing back a sob, she closed her eyes against all the questions buzzing in her head. When sleep finally came, she was no closer to having the answers to any of the questions. Then the dream flickered to life.
“I can’t stay here,” she said as she threw clothes into a duffle bag. “You shot him when he was right beside me. What if you would’ve missed, Ric?”
He laughed, tossed the bag across the room and grabbed her wrists. “You’d be dead, I guess.”
Her knees turned rubbery and bile boiled in her stomach. She couldn’t fight his grip.
“You think I care about you?”
“You told me you’ll take care of me. You told me you loved me.” Her brittle voice cracked. “You married me.”
The harsh chortle hurt as much as his tightening grip on her wrists did. “Shit, how many of your Johns tell you the same thing, Bambi? The only reason I even keep you in my bed is because you’re a good fuck. The reason I take care of you? The reason I married you? Guys know you’re my girl, so they’re willin’ to pay some major bucks to fuck you. You’re an investment. I’d be a moron not to make sure you have clothes and food and plenty of coke to keep you happy. I love you making me a rich man. I love the way you give a blowjob, but that doesn’t mean I’m in love with you. Better get used to men sayin’ they love you to get what they want, baby. Only fools ever mean it.”
She yanked on her arms, trying to get free. Her heart, what little hadn’t already shattered, crumbled to dust. “I’m not doin’ it anymore! I’m leavin’ you.”
“Where the hell do you think you’ll go? Back to the farm?” He pulled her close and his face twisted into a frightening glower. “No one will ever want you. You’re nothing but a coke addict and high-priced hooker who helped me kill six men.”
When she shook her head, he scoffed, “Oh, you forgot about Hodges’s guards. I had them killed, too, you know. You led me to Hodges’s hangout. You’re as responsible for those deaths as you are Tyrone’s.”
“No!” She sobbed and fell to her knees before him.
He picked her up by her wrists and tossed her on the bed. “Who will buy your drugs, Charli? You have no idea how good you have it, being my personal slut. You get to have the pick of Johns, live in my apartment, and I provide you with all the nose candy you want. All I ask is I get to fuck you whenever I want.” He ripped her shirt and bared her breasts. “Like right now.”
“No, Ricardo, no!” she screamed, but fighting him was useless. She’d learned that lesson a long time ago.
Dylan gathered her in his arms, murmuring soothing words into her hair, and held her until morning.
Chapter 18
Two days later, Ella called Charli. Annie was at work. When she entered Ella’s Diner, the place was empty. Ella nodded in greeting and brought her a glass of sweet tea.
A few moments later, Annie stopped next to her table. “Mom said you want to talk to me.”
She smiled and gestured to the seat across from her. “Yes, please sit down.”
Annie remained standing with her arms crossed over her black t-shirt. “I don’t want to talk to you. I saw you that day at the mall.”
She returned the girl’s stare. “And I saw you.”
Annie put her hands on the table and leaned over them into her personal space. The skull pendant of her necklace swung forward and dinged off the untouched glass of iced tea. Charli calmly moved the glass and continued to stare into the girl’s scowling face.
Annie snarled, “I could get fined and have to do stupid community service and rehab for a fuckin’ year because of you.”
“You sure could,” she evenly said. “Rehab isn’t a bad thing and neither is community service. It’s your first offense and you’re a minor. If you were older, like your friend who sold you the drugs, you’d be doing jail time.”
Annie cursed again and straightened to stand over her. “I’d have to be caught first.”
“Like you were when I called the sheriff?”
Annie growled and turned away.
“I only want to talk, Annie.”
With her face flushed and her hands fisted, Annie spun around. “I don’t need a shrink.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t think I did either.”
The words had the effect she hoped they would. Annie glanced over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”
The tea was cold and sweet, but it did very little to calm her nerves when she took a drink. “Sit and I’ll tell you.”
For a tense moment, they loc
ked gazes. Then Annie slid into the booth. “I’m sittin’.”
Charli smiled and sat back. “How long have you been smoking pot?”
Annie lifted one shoulder up in a half-shrug. “Everyone knows pot is harmless.”
“Really?”
“Hell, they want to make it legal.”
“Sure. For medical purposes. Are you suffering from some disease?” She leaned forward. “Annie, marijuana is far from harmless. It’s addictive. Since the authorities don’t usually threaten rehab and jail time unless something a lot more potent than marijuana has shown up on your drug test, you’ve done more than just smoke pot. I know it was coke in the bag.”
Annie shifted in her seat and looked away with a sneer. “Why the hell do you care? I know who you are. You’re the heiress who the whole damned town’s talkin’ about just because you bought some stupid ranch.”
She had to be honest with the girl or nothing she said or did would make a difference. She took another sip of the iced tea. “I care because I was where you are when I was fifteen.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I grew up in Tulsa. When I was fifteen, my mother died in a car accident. My grandfather, whom I’d never met, took me back to his ranch in western Oklahoma. I hated him, and I was angry my mother died leaving me alone. I got involved with one of the ranch hands on the ranch. Danny. He was only four years older than me, but I thought he hung the world.”
Pausing to drink more tea, she prayed she wasn’t making a mistake by telling this girl one of her deepest, darkest secrets. But she knew it was now or never to save Annie from making the same painful mistakes.
“What does that have to do with anything? So, what? You lost your virginity, and he didn’t love you.” Annie scooted across the seat to get out of the booth.
“Yes, I lost my virginity to him.” Her quiet words stopped Annie. “I also stole from my grandfather for him, and in return, Danny introduced me to drugs. First, marijuana, and then I graduated to coke.”
“You did drugs?”
She squeezed her shaky hands into fists under the table. “Yes.”
Annie stared at her for a few heart-stopping moments. She half expected her to run and announce to every gossipmonger in town she’d been a drug addict. Instead, Annie leaned in over the table. “You said your mom died. Why didn’t you live with your dad?”
How personal did she want to get? Somehow, knowledge about her being a runaway and living in Vegas had become common. She’d just admitted to drug use, but only Dylan knew about her mother or that she was illegitimate.
“I never knew my father.”
“Why not?”
“He didn’t know about me.”
“Why did you do drugs?”
She leaned over her arms and peered into Annie’s dark eyes. If she’d read her correctly, she should hit a chord with her next statement. “I wanted to escape the pain and anger of losing my mother. I felt alone, and I didn’t understand why she was taken away from me. I ran away from home two months before my sixteenth birthday and ended up on the streets of Las Vegas. I was furious with my grandfather and blamed him for my mother’s death. She’d moved to Tulsa because he disowned her after she got pregnant with me. In my messed up thinking, I figured, if we had stayed at the Long Arrow, Momma wouldn’t have been going to work in Tulsa that morning.”
She took a breath and looked down at the fake red and white marble of the table. “We had nothing for years. Momma worked in a bank and lived partially on welfare, but she still barely had enough to cover the rent. She’d go without lunch for months before Christmas just so I’d get whatever overpriced, foolish toy I wanted that year from Santa Claus. It hadn’t been until about two years before her death things started looking up for us because she’d gotten a management position at the bank. Then she died.”
She paused and swallowed back a ton of old hurts and pain she’d long ago thought were resolved.
Deep inside, she still wanted Hank to take it all back. “I’ll never forget the day I saw the sprawling ranch house. Twenty-five thousand acres of land, cattle everywhere. The foyer of the house was bigger than the condo my mother had scraped and starved to pay for. Then I found out just how rich my grandfather was. I hated him.”
After a moment of fighting back the pain from the old memories, she cleared her throat and met Annie’s gaze. “Annie, I know you’re hurting, too.”
“Nothing’s hurting me. You don’t know me. You tell me some sad sob story. Boohoo.” On the defensive, Annie shifted to get out of the booth again.
“I know your father and mother are divorced, and since then, he won’t so much as talk to you. I’d bet you blame your mother and can’t understand what happened.”
Annie narrowed her eyes on her, the tension as thick as Ella’s famous biscuit gravy. “Every nosy old biddy in this hick town knows that. My dear old dad wanted a son but got me instead.” She shrugged and looked down at the table. “He decided he’d wasted enough time on waiting for me to grow a dick.”
She had done some research on Jeremy Greenberg. “He works as a cowboy on the CW and trains their horses.”
Annie looked up. “Yeah. So what?”
“Can you ride?”
“Depends on how cute he is.” Annie’s lips twitched.
“Did your dad teach you how to ride a horse?”
“Yeah. Dad taught me.” Annie lost some of the hostility and her shoulders sagged a little. She was looking for something more than she had right now. “I learned how to train horses, too. I wanted to work on the CW someday.”
She swallowed her heart, which was stuck in her throat. Jeremy Greenberg had no right hurting this girl whether he was Annie’s biological father or not. “I hope you and I can be friends.”
“Why?”
“Because I think we have a lot in common.”
“My mom won’t let me talk to any of my real friends, and I don’t want to be friends with you.”
“Are these ‘real friends’ the ones supplying you with drugs?”
Annie shrugged and narrowed her eyes.
She should talk to Ella first, but she’d made progress and what she was offering was harmless enough. She wanted to save Annie. “I’ll have to discuss it with your mom, but if she says it’s okay, I’d like you to come out to the ranch and ride with me. In fact, I want to buy some more horses, and who knows, I may need a trainer someday.”
Annie’s shrug was meant to look indifferent and bored, but the sudden gleam in her big brown eyes betrayed her very real interest in her offer.
Charli stood and smiled. “You think about it.”
* * * *
Two weeks later, Dylan drove out to the CW Ranch to purchase at least five more horses, which he intended to give real horse names–like Traveler and Trigger and Geronimo.
When he drove up to the main corral at the old homestead, Zack Cartwright, dressed in the tan uniform of the county sheriff, stood by the railing. He had a boot resting on the bottom rail and leaned over his arms on the top one. Zack turned his official Stetson-covered head to watch him exit his truck.
Once he headed toward him, Cartwright said, “Captain.”
He bristled, but let the nickname slide. “You told me I’d be meeting with either Luke, Paul or your cousin Lance because you were too busy playing lawman.”
Zack pushed back his hat and stepped away from the railing. “Lance has a meeting in Dallas, Uncle Paul has a meeting at the Mayor’s office and Dad refused to meet with you. He reminded me in not too many uncertain terms he’s retired and these horses are mine.” He pasted on a shitty grin. “I think it was their back-handed way of reminding me I own the ranch, despite the fact I should be sitting out on Highway 6 trying to catch today’s crop of speeders. I have a budget to meet.”
Maybe it was another incredible night spent in bed with the most amazing woman he’d ever known, or perhaps he just found the comment funny; whatever the reason, he laughed. “Are you still res
isting the inevitable?”
Zack shrugged and looked out over the corral full of some mighty good-looking horseflesh.
“I suppose old habits really do die hard.”
Zack Cartwright had been a hell raiser who wanted nothing to do with his half of the ranch.
“You know…” Dylan leaned against the railing. “I never quite understood why the hell you never wanted to run this place.” He looked across his shoulder at the slightly taller man. “First, you were a damned rodeo champion, even back in high school. Second, it’s in your blood.”
Zack shook his head and peered out into the distance above the horses. “I suppose I’m a lot like you.”
“Me?”
Zack met his eyes. “The military’s in your blood. Your father’s a general, but you came to Texas a spoiled Army brat and decided you wanted to be a rancher. I’m a hayseed ranch kid who decided he didn’t want the ranch anymore.”
“Why’d you join the Marines? You were getting rich rodeoing. Even had your mug in one of those stupid girlie calendars.”
Zack let out a long sigh and leaned over the rail again, mimicking Dylan’s relaxed pose, but he had a feeling Zack was no more relaxed than he was. “Nine-Eleven happened.”
“So? Most people tied yellow ribbons on their trees and stuck bumper stickers on their cars. They didn’t join the Marines.”
Zack smiled and glanced at him. “I was in Cheyenne and met Lisa. Her dad was a veteran of Vietnam and her brother is a Marine.”
“Don’t tell me you signed up to impress a girl?”
“Yep.” He laughed, but it didn’t hold much humor. “I guess I did. She’d only marry me if I gave up the rodeo. No way in hell would I have stayed on her daddy’s ranch. And I sure as hell wasn’t coming back here. I needed a job and the Marines seemed like a good choice. I bought the whole spiel–hook, line and sinker.”
Zack’s sad smile told him everything. “I suppose it did set me on a career path. I wouldn’t have gotten my job if I hadn’t been a MP.” He shrugged. “What can I say? I felt compelled to do my patriotic duty.”
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