Winning the Virgin
A Western Billionaire Cowboy Romance
Joanna Blake
Bella Love-Wins
Winning the Virgin
A Western Billionaire Cowboy Romance
Bella Love-Wins and Joanna Blake
Copyright 2018 © All Rights Reserved
Cover Models: Period Images.
Cover Design: Mayhem Covers and Tempting Illustrations
Contents
Blurb
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Excerpt of Cuffed – Joanna Blake
About Joanna Blake
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About Bella Love-Wins
Also by Bella Love-Wins
Blurb
I wanted the sassy little filly the second I first saw her. So I bought her.
Caleb
I had all the success that a self-made man like me could want. But something was still missing. Ready for a break, I returned to my home town to find myself.
And found her.
Riley-Ann.
The sassy, curvy bartender-slash-waitress at the local watering hole, with a body made just for me.
But as it turned out, she was the only woman around to turn me down. And a virgin.
That's why I put in a bid for her at the county fair auction.
And nothing was going to stop me from winning my virgin.
Riley-Ann
I thought my life was finally on the right track, then it all fell apart.
Booted from the only promising office manager job I ever wanted, I turned tail and took a break from everything at my best friend's ranch.
The local saloon was hiring, so I got a job to keep my mind and my hands occupied.
Until he showed up.
Caleb Jackson Reeves.
The biggest name in business around these parts sat down at my bar. He was larger than life, older, wiser, and hot as hell.
And the square-jawed, ruggedly handsome older man wanted me.
I was in no state to deal with anything else in my life right now, not even him. Not his gifts, not his attention, not even the smoldering kiss he planted on me without my asking him to. The one I had to deny enjoying so much.
Except the first chance he got, he made a bid for me at the county fair auction. And he won.
Now, I was bought and paid for, and he wasn't about to let me say no twice.
Warning. This hot and dirty western romance is steamy, spicy, and chock full of feels. If you like slightly over the top romance stories with a big strong alpha male who knows what he wants and isn't afraid to ask for it, this is for you! Standalone romance with no cliffhanger and a sweet happily ever after to make you swoon.
Prologue
Caleb
I lifted my finger and was rewarded by a beer sliding down the bar. It hit my palm with a satisfying thud. It was hot as hell outside, and the cool, dewy glass felt good in my hand.
I felt eyes on me and grimaced, tugging my hat down over my eyes. Being a gentleman rancher around these parts was my dream. Unfortunately, my dream didn’t always match the reality.
Of course, when you had your face plastered all over magazines like Forbes and Time, people tended to recognize you.
Local boy done good.
That’s what folks round here said about me. But I would have told a different story.
Drunk mom. Absent dad. One hell of a sterling grandmother. Boy gets into fights, causes trouble wherever he goes. Boy has a head for numbers and facts. Boy does well in school despite his best efforts. Goes to Harvard on full scholarship, then Harvard Business School.
I smothered a grin.
I hadn’t stopped causing problems there either, like sleeping with almost all my female TAs and the dean’s wife. Thankfully, I’d been too close to graduating for him to do much but spread rumors about me.
But I hadn’t needed his recommendation to get a job. There had been men lining up to hire me. Like I said, I’d developed a reputation for ruthlessness and being a rule breaker.
Apparently, that was a good thing.
I’d gone out on my own after a few years and done well for myself. Better than well. I’d taken the damn world by storm. By thirty, I’d had two private jets and five homes, along with a deluxe, sprawling office campus in Houston and office buildings in London and Zurich.
Yeah, I was that guy.
I didn’t have to work another day in my life, even if I wanted to use a gold commode and wipe my ass with hundred-dollar bills. I worked anyway. I worked so hard that I barely slept. Yeah, I took time out to hit my private gym and to run on a treadmill, but that was all I did.
I was one of the hottest commodities in America.
But I wasn’t happy.
With my nana gone, I didn’t have a damn person to share any of it with. I didn’t date. Didn’t have to. Women were constantly offering themselves to me in varied, sometimes astoundingly creative ways. I liked to fuck as much as the next man, maybe even more. But after, I ended up wanting to be alone and wanting them the hell out of my hotel room.
Oh yeah, when I took a woman to bed, I always did it in a hotel. No woman had ever been inside any of my homes, not unless she was a business associate or staff. I couldn’t imagine waking up next to a woman, or letting her use my toothbrush.
But here? Here in God’s country, no one bothered me. Well, other than the stares.
I’d woken up one morning with the strangest desire for home. Home? That was a joke. Nana had died years ago, when I was still in college. I regretted that I hadn’t even gotten a chance to spoil her rotten. So I did the next best thing. I’d bought the most beautiful house in town. She would have loved this old house, a rustic mansion built by the earliest land baron in Western Hills. You could just see it from the road, with the sweeping hills behind it. It looked like a jewel in a velvet green jewel box.
The place hadn’t even been for sale, but I’d made the descendants of that original land baron an offer they could not refuse.
So, I’d bought it for her, and I was still trying to decide what to do with the place. I’d renovated of course. Hired a decorator who had dutifully outfitted the place in deep tan leather chairs and Aztec-patterned rugs. It was beautiful and cold. In fact, the place felt like a hotel. Exactly what I’d been trying to escape.
I mostly kept to my ranch, but this was the town I’d grown up in. People knew me here, kind of. Everyone knew of me.
But in this bar, just down the road from my ranch, well the beer was cold and the chicken wings were crispy.
But it was the jukebox that really stirred a man’s soul.
The jukebox and the ambiance.
In fact, I was tempted to hire a damn designer and drag them in here, to style a room in my house after Danny’s.
This place was as manly as they came. Of course, most people didn’t know that the owner and namesake of this place was an ornery old woman named Danielle. She’d been a friend to my gran, and one of the few people around here I let hug me.
The only one in the entire world, truth be told.
But I didn’t tell h
er that. She wasn’t the emotional type. Another reason I loved the old broad.
So I spent a lot of time in here. My ranch might be the home I’d always envisioned for myself, but this place was my refuge.
I sighed as a group of college-age kids came in. It was about to get loud in here. I finished my beer and threw some money on the well-worn bar.
It was time to be getting home, so I could rattle around my estate by myself, and then stare at the ceiling for another couple hours. Then I’d wake up and do it all over again.
1
Riley-Ann
Sometimes, the kind and loving thing to do is run.
That’s what my mother used to say to rationalize why my father had left us. He was a soldier. A multi-tour military man who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and returned to America a hero.
A hero with severe PTSD.
He’d tried to overcome his demons, to integrate into normal home life. But there was nothing normal about waking up in a cold sweat with one hand tight around my mother’s throat and another rising skyward with a bowie knife, ready to neutralize one more enemy on the battlefield. It only took one nightmare, one flashback like that for him to sober up, and the second after he had caught himself, he did the only thing he could.
He ran.
He left us and never looked back.
Mom had forgiven him, prayed that he’d find peace one day, and we moved on without a man in the house.
But I was no runner.
I was a fighter.
That night when my father had almost killed her by accident, it had been my shrill teenage screams and my small fists pounding as hard as they could into his broad, strong, sinewy back that had brought him back from his waking nightmare.
His eyes had gone from ruthless, deadly and empty to regretful, remorseful and penitent.
After he stopped himself, even in his guilt-ridden state, all he’d wanted to do was thank me.
I didn’t want gratitude. I wanted my dad back. I was hoping some switch would be flipped and that we’d all go back to the days where I was his sweet girl. His little girl. Daddy’s girl. The one he used to carry around on those big broad shoulders. He used to boast to everyone who would listen about my silly little six-year-old accomplishments.
But that man, my real dad, had been left to die somewhere in the Middle East desert sands. That man was gone and was never coming back. And when the amped up, emotionally devastated, PTSD-suffering shell of his former self had come to the same realization, he ran.
He had run to save us.
Then, I had fought to keep my mother and I afloat.
For years upon years, I had worked multiple part-time waitressing jobs. I had fought my way through high school and college. I had charged into my first real professional position in my chosen career field. But trying to overcome the obstacles of where I had come from, well it only left me one thing.
Exhausted.
No, two.
Exhausted and unappreciated.
After three years managing the office of four attorneys in town, I was downsized. In their defense, we kind of all were. There just wasn’t enough business in our small hometown to keep our books in the black or to help four attorneys stay busy.
In the end, they packed it in to set up shop in the big city.
Without me.
They had run.
But I’d become so damn tired of fighting by then, all I’d wanted to do was stand still.
My best friend Kate’s offer to stay with her at the cattle ranch she had recently inherited from her late uncle had come at just the right time. She had sold it to me as taking a break. A timeout. An opportunity to regroup and figure out what the next chapter of my life would look like.
Perhaps this was me, running too.
Three days after moving to the ranch and settling in, I had already become bored. So when I had seen the help wanted sign in the window of Danny’s, the only bar in the nearby town, I did what was second nature.
I asked for the part-time job and I got it.
What I hadn’t expected was that my first customer of my first shift on my first day on the job would be Caleb Jackson Reeves.
The man was a legend.
A local hero in his own right.
A corporate hero featured on the national and world stage in every reputable business magazine and blog that mattered.
A rags to riches story that I knew every detail about, because I’d studied all about him in a project during my studies for my business associate’s degree.
An inspiration.
An integral spoke in the wheel that used to be my bone-deep motivation.
And now, here he was, sitting on the barstool, his broad hands on the smooth well-worn bar between us, his square-jawed, ruggedly handsome, middle-aged face tilted up at me, waves upon waves of his masculine energy radiating from him in my direction, his intense deep blue eyes just staring at me.
For the first time in my natural born life, I wanted to be the one who ran.
2
Caleb
I spent the morning riding my new horse, Zeus and working. I rose early and checked in with my team. My very effective team, that ran everything from my various business holdings, to my homes, and even made sure my fish were fed.
I had a thing for massive, hotel lobby-sized fish tanks. They relaxed me. In fact, I was pretty sure I had one in every office and every one of my homes.
Well, all of my homes except this one. A ranch was no place for a fish. I scratched my chin as I thought about it. It sort of sounded like a proverb, though I wasn’t quite so sure anyone needed to needlepoint it on a pillow anytime soon.
Around five, I decided it was time to knock off and get a beer. I was grinning as I pulled into the bar, wondering if Danny was going to grill me over my life choices today, or complain about the patrons, or what. I couldn’t wait to listen to the old curmudgeon whine and moan, giving me permission to bitch and complain over a cold beer.
I walked into Danny’s and knew immediately that something was off. Different. Changed.
Instead of the cozy, comfortable place where no one bothered to put on a clean shirt, the place was zinging with energy.
It took about a half second for me to see why.
Today, there was a goddess standing behind the bar.
Curvy, feminine and utterly touchable. Her skin practically begged for a man’s hands to stroke it. Her hair was silky and long enough to wrap your hand in to hold her firm while you kissed her, or more. And her narrow waist and juicy hips were the right size for gripping.
But it was her golden green and hazel eyes that grabbed, and held, my attention. Sparkling with humor and intelligence and framed with coquettishly long lashes, they curved up at the outside, making her look like a damn cat.
A cat that I wanted to curl up on my lap.
Here, kitty kitty kitty.
I hid a smirk at the thought of giving her some milk.
My annoyance at having my peace interrupted fled with the sudden heat that settled in my loins. Yes, I said loins. I was too damn old to talk about my cock all the time.
But yes, the sight of her had stirred him too.
I walked forward, taking my regular seat at the bar. So what if it gave me the perfect view of her figure as she bent and moved behind the bar like a goddamn ballet dancer?
The curve of her back and the swell of her hips had nothing to do with why I was sitting there. Not a damn thing! I was a creature of habit, that was all.
I pulled my hat down a bit so I could watch her serve a couple of cowboys who had clearly just come off a hard day’s work. Oddly enough, it looked as though they’d taken the time to change their shirts, and even shaved. They were leaning on the bar, huge shit-eating grins on their faces. In fact…
I looked at the place over my shoulder and saw a whole passel of cowboys. Regular folks too. Almost all of them men. In fact, it looked like every damn male in the county was in here. I even saw old Doc Holl
er, the town’s only medical professional.
Doc Holler was in his eighties.
But even he had a goofy looking smile pinned to his face.
“What can I get you?”
I swung my head back around. I froze as our eyes met. I’d been thinking that a pretty girl wasn’t worth all the bother. But that thought flew out of my head.
This girl was more than pretty. She was stunning. Sweet, sensual, and sharp as a tack from the look in her eyes.
And she was looking right through me.
“Bourbon and beer.”
She nodded and went to fix my drink, leaving me drooling at the sight of her oh-so-grabbable behind as she bounced away. Those jeans of hers looked like they’d earned the right to hug her curves. They’d paid their dues and now they were in heaven.
I cleared my throat and slid a hundred across the bar as she delivered the drinks. She barely even raised an eyebrow.
“Starting a tab?”
I never drank a lot. I never started a tab. I paid for my drinks as they came.
But I found myself nodding. For some reason, I had a feeling I would be keeping this seat warm for the rest of the damn night. I didn’t like the thought of this pretty little filly in here with all these guys.
“Where’s Danny?”
She flashed me a quick look.
“It’s her night off.”
“Danny doesn’t take nights off.”
She gave me a saucy look.
“She does now.”
And then she walked away. I had never really understood the old expression before that moment.
Winning the Virgin: A Western Billionaire Cowboy Romance Page 1
