by Lexie Davis
Her thoughts circled back to her father. In all the years she’d been alive, she’d never seen him act that way. Living in Kansas wasn’t the ideal situation since everything she knew and loved was in Atlanta, but after the funeral and the reading of the will, it would be nice not to have to deal with him for a little while. Maybe a little distance would make his heart grow fonder. She knew he did love her. She didn’t really think he’d cast her into the same category as his mother, but she really didn’t want to have that conversation with him. Not right now anyway.
Leaving the comfort of her chair, Harper decided to carry her things to her new bedroom and unpack. The cabin was a nice size residence from what she could tell. Definitely had some potential if she wanted to fix the place up to sell it. The foyer was filled with dark woods. Wallpaper lined the halls in a tacky floral design that made Harper cringe on the inside. To the left of her were several doors that lead to the unknown. She assumed one was at least a closet and maybe a bathroom. She’d discover that later, after she’d unpacked.
Upstairs was as roomy as the downstairs. The square footage was a nice comfortable living space with the bedrooms and bathrooms proportioned for a nice-sized family. She didn’t expect so much drywall and tried to imagine it without it. Most of the log cabins she’d seen held natural beauty by letting the wooden walls shine through. She had no idea why someone would want to cover that up with dry wall but it didn’t look too terribly bad.
She imagined her grandmother living there. Raising her family in the house. They’d told her that she fled from an abusive relationship and she imagined that the ranch was a safe haven from that. She tried to picture her father growing up there and simply couldn’t. She’d known him for so long being one way, that anything other than that seemed crazy.
Inside the first bedroom she spotted a nice double bed with one dresser along the wall. It didn’t look occupied so she claimed it as her own. She went inside and sat her luggage at the end of the bed.
This was her home for the next few weeks. She took in every little detail. The small window could have been bigger to allow in natural lighting. She didn’t know who built the closet but it was tiny and without a doubt unable to hold all her things. Unpacking her things, she ended up hanging her designer clothes on the blue polyester floor to ceiling curtains. The ten pairs of shoes she’d brought with her sat at the bottom of the closet covering the dark hardwood with designer brands. She needed to get something more appropriate to hold Jimmy, Christian, and Manolo. She tried to picture the room once her real stuff came. She imagined the room would look like a hoarder’s episode: designer edition.
“Wow. Love the decorations.” Logan came in and plopped down on the bed. “Can you decorate my bedroom in fancy designer things too?”
She laughed. “This isn’t even ten percent of what I own. In my penthouse back in Atlanta, I’d converted two bedrooms to make a closet. I may have too many things for my new abode.”
“Two bedrooms?” He stared at her like she’d gone mad. “I have seven pairs of pants and seven shirts. Two pairs of boots and two hats. All that can fit in a regular closet.”
She shook her head. “Women need more stuff.” She glanced around. “Maybe not as much stuff as I have, but definitely more. Where do you five sleep?”
He shifted slightly on the bed. “We’re supposed to stay in the living quarters in the barn. It’s a really nice area big enough for all of us. It’s upstairs and we each have a room to ourselves with a nice bed. But since Janine passed, we’ve been sleeping at the house. We didn’t want it to be left unattended incase someone thought they could break in and steal things. Plus, the kitchen’s here and we like to eat.”
She nodded and lifted a pair of her shoes. “I brought two outfits and ten pairs of shoes. I told Cooper shoes were my obsession, my baby, if you will. I think I might need to go to rehab for my addiction.”
He gave her a sexy grin. “I definitely like the way you look in them. I’ll give you that.”
Damn all of them for making her hormones hitch up a notch. So much testosterone in one area and she was smitten like a teenager in love. She didn’t know what to think about it but she definitely thought she shouldn’t act on it. In some ways, she was their boss now. It would make things complicated.
After getting settled in, she went downstairs to her grandmother’s office. The room had been a former closet or part of a larger room that someone had converted to an office. She could see the messy drywall that covered the walls and the chipping paint. The place could definitely use some renovations. Cooper walked by and Harper called to him.
“I didn’t know you were back yet.”
“Yeah. Me and Gabe put the food in the fridge if you get hungry.”
She nodded. “Uh, can I ask you a question?”
He nodded. “Sure. Anything.”
“How does the ranch make money? I’m looking at the books and the expenses are minimal but so is the income. I would imagine that with five men working this ranch that you’d at least be making fifty thousand dollars for salaries a piece. I’m only finding roughly that much in salaries total.”
He came in and sat in the vacant seat next to her. “We don’t really earn a salary. Not much anyway. We get a stipend of a thousand dollars a month. Janine gave us a nice room and food to fill our bellies. We don’t really need much of anything else.”
She stared at him trying hard to comprehend what he had said. “You make twelve thousand dollars a year? As a salary?”
“Room and food make it more.”
She gaped at him. “I cannot even fathom making that much. That’s right at the poverty line. You definitely need a raise. Why didn’t she give you a raise?”
Cooper shrugged. “We don’t need much around here. Janine gave us just about everything we need.”
These men had a great sense of loyalty to live here and make so little money. Harper felt bad about her intentions of fixing the place up to sell it. Not only would they lose their home, but they’d lose their job, too.
“Are there any other places to work in town?”
“Not really. Crawford is a small place. Mom-and-pop shops are generally the way of life around here.”
Harper sat back in her chair taking in everything that he had told her. “How does the ranch make money?”
“Cattle. We have four hundred acres and run a thousand or so cattle head. Janine switched out the herd every two years to avoid cross breeding. She also changed the bull every year to avoid the same. We raise the cattle and then sell them at auction for hopefully a profit.”
She stared at him. “And the horses?”
Cooper grinned, showing her perfect white teeth against the darkness of his tanned skin. “You ride those.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not getting on the back of a beast and riding it anywhere.”
“So you’re a save the horse, ride a cowboy kind of girl, huh?” His eyes twinkled.
“Something like that.”
Before she could stop it a mental image of the thoughts she’d been entertaining all afternoon played in her head. Hot slick bodies sliding against her while mouths, fingers and cocks pleasured her. She swallowed hard, meeting his eyes. As if he could read her mind, Cooper’s navy eyes darkened with arousal.
He cleared his throat and broke the trance. He switched to a safer topic as well. “It’s not a bad life, working here. It’s probably different than what you’re used to, but we do okay. Janine rescued a bunch of misfits and made us family. To me that’s better than all the materialistic things in the city.”
She smiled at him. “A bunch of misfits?”
“Yeah. We all grew up in the system. I lived in Lincoln for a while but I found out my birth mom was from Crawford. So I packed up on my eighteenth birthday and went looking for her. I was a little late. She died two years prior to that in a car accident. I didn’t have anything to my name or a place to stay so Janine offered me a room and some food. It worked out, I think.�
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She remembered the story they told her about Leslie and wondered if that had anything to do with her generosity toward the men. She couldn’t save her own daughter, so she made it her life’s mission to save her ranch hands. It was admirable.
God, what did she do with this place? She couldn’t get rid of it. That was almost certain. Not now anyway. She needed to fix the place up and maybe consider it down the road. But it didn’t seem right to force five men to move. She had no intention of taking up ranching, not when she had a great job in real estate in Atlanta. She could afford to take a leave of absence though. It could be a vacation home.
She glanced around at the dingy walls and the dirty carpet and sighed. Okay, maybe vacation home was a bad reference. Second home. One she could rent to the ranch hands. They made the money off the land and paid her a rent fee. That seemed good enough to work. After all, they didn’t need her to run this place.
“You’ll get the hang of things.” Cooper leaned forward. “Until then, have some fun with it.”
“I want to do some renovations. Please tell me that there is a hardware store around here.”
“Sure. In town.” His handsome face frowned as his brown eyes narrowed at her. “You’re going to actually tear down walls and put drywall up?”
“In here, yes.”
“In heels?”
She smiled and stood. “Yep.”
Maybe not in heels but she’d done plenty of renovations. She may have been a real estate executive but she flipped houses on the side. The more work she did herself, the more money in profit she earned. Harper grabbed her keys and purse from the desk.
“Do you know anything about carpentry?” she asked Cooper.
“I’ve built barns and stables in my day.”
She smiled. “Then you’re just the guy to help me.”
He didn’t look too enthused. “Do I even want to know?”
“Nope.” She moved toward him and reached for his hand. “Take me to the hardware store and we’ll go from there.”
Harper hoped that they had some cute stuff to fill the house with otherwise, she’d have to call her sister and have her ship her what she needed. It would be pain, but something necessary if she wanted to eventually sell the house. The first thing on her agenda to fix was the closet in her bedroom. She needed at least half the floor, but figured that she’d have to settle for six feet instead.
“Let me guess, you’re going to make a bigger closet for all your fancy things?”
“Smart and cute. I like you.”
Sexy cowboys were only something of fantasies but Harper couldn’t help thinking that she’d found her real life fantasy in Kansas. Cooper was taller and leaner than the other men. He knew how to wear tight jeans and he wore them well. He favored baseball caps which made him look pretty damn hot. He was a pretty boy cowboy that she definitely wanted to get to know better.
Without saying another word, he leaned in and kissed her. She fisted his shirt in the center of his chest and tried not to think about all the hard muscle he possessed pressing up against her. The thought went out the window when he backed her up to the SUV. He was so damn wonderful that Harper gave in and kissed him, tugging him closer. His hand pressed against the small of her back, keeping her body against his while his other hand rested against the hood of the Range Rover.
She pushed against him, breaking their mouths apart. Need filled her body to the point she contemplated giving into it. She barely knew these men. Not to mention she was more or less their boss. Landlord. Something, she was certain. Something that demanded some sense of professionalism. She chewed on her lower lip and Cooper watched her intently.
“We all want you Harper.” Cooper swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Let us have you.”
Five men. She couldn’t imagine how that even worked. Cooper’s taste lingered on her lips and an overwhelming need rushed through her. Instead of replying, she got in the SUV and waited for him to do the same. She needed to wait at least a day before deciding to jump into bed with them. Especially when her grandmother had only been buried hours before.
Chapter Three
Cooper noticed Harper had changed since he kissed her the previous night. It was probably completely brash of him, but the opportunity presented itself and he took it. He almost wanted to regret it, but he couldn’t. She was beautiful and kind. Nothing like any of them pictured when they talked about her arrival. They assumed she’d be just like her father, a man they all despised.
She got to work on renovating the upstairs. She had him help her pull up carpet and take down wallpaper. He worked on taking out the drywall while she looked through a book on hardwood flooring. She had expensive taste and he couldn’t help wonder about the budget to go with it.
“What do you do in Atlanta?”
“I’m a real estate executive for my father’s agency.”
“What do real estate executives do?”
She sighed and flipped the page of her brochure. “Sell real estate. I mainly work on commercial properties since nobody in the office wants to deal with them. I also buy and flip houses.”
He stared at her a moment. The woman was a mogul. He smiled at his thought and went back to the drywall. “Is that what you’re going to do with this place? Flip it?”
“I thought about it. I have no need for a ranch.” She flipped the page. “I don’t have the heart to do that though. You guys would be out of a job, even though you don’t make that much, and you’d be out of a house, too.”
Cooper picked up some drywall screws. “Thank you for seeing that.”
She chuckled and closed the brochure. “Right now it’s going to be my vacation home. I’m definitely remodeling the place to make it more modern. I still need to go look at the barn or wherever it is that you guys stay. I’m also going to figure out a way to increase your salary. There is no reason you shouldn’t make more for as much work as you do around here.”
Cooper lifted his drill and fitted the screw in the drywall. “That really bothers you doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It does.” She walked over to the bucket and reached for the trowel. Her attire was still more fancy than his. He wasn’t sure the woman owned any real work clothes even though she wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty.
Down and dirty. He’d thought about her more often than not, stretched out on his bed with his head between her legs. He swallowed hard at the image he’d been reliving in his mind all night. His cock stirred in his pants while he stared at her, watching as she painted the wall with the goop on the trowel.
“Did you think anymore about what I said yesterday?” Cooper asked fitting another screw into the drywall.
“About me fucking all five of you? Yeah, I’ve thought about it a lot.”
“Oh, really?”
Both Cooper and Harper turned to see Nick and Aaron in the doorway eyebrows arched and big grins on their faces. Cooper rolled his eyes and went back to his work.
Harper turned toward Cooper. “You are all in on this?”
“I’m completely in the dark but I definitely am interested in this tidbit of information.” Nick walked into the office and sat in the chair they had left uncovered. “Go ahead.”
Harper snorted and smoothed the trowel and goop along the drywall. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
Cooper turned toward Nick and frowned at him. “You were always the troublemaker.”
Nick laughed. “I didn’t say anything. She’s the one that said she wanted to fuck all five of us.”
“For the record,” Aaron chimed in, “I’m down with that.”
“Me, too.” Nick leaned back. “What’s the hold up? Why are we down here instead of fucking like bunnies in a bedroom or something?”
“The hold up,” Harper chimed in, still keeping her back to them, “is that I’m your boss or landlord or something. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. Anyway, it’s not professional to screw five strangers at the same time. I’m not even sure t
hat’s even possible given the mechanics of how sex works.”
“Oh, it’s possible.” Nick said it with nothing short of confidence. It wouldn’t have surprised Cooper if he’d shared women before. Maybe even one with four other men.
“Really?” Harper scraped the excess goop off the drywall and glanced over at him. “You know from experience?”
“From imagination.” He wiggled is eyebrows. “You’re not the only one with dirty thoughts around this place. You stepped your designer shoes into the funeral home and we all wanted to pounce. I’m not going to deny the thought of you wet and moaning around my cock kept me up last night.”
Nick’s wicked gleam made Harper blush. Cooper watched as Harper tried to busy herself with the task at hand but she was so frazzled she didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what went through her mind at Nick’s bold words. Cooper reached out and brushed his finger along the softness of her cheek.
“Don’t be embarrassed.”
She glanced up at Cooper before looking over at Nick and Aaron. “And you all feel this way? You don’t even know me. It’s not really classy to jump into bed with people you don’t know.”
“What do you want to know about us?” Aaron asked. “We’ll tell you anything. Just ask.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “That’s not what I meant. There are certain things you get to know about people by living with them.”
“Nick never picks up his dirty towels. Leaves them lying on the floor in the bathroom just to piss Gabe off.” Aaron smiled at her.
Nick shoved him. “Aaron always drinks from the milk carton and puts it back in the fridge.”
“We all do that. It’s not a secret.” Aaron glanced over at her.
