“Ready?” I asked Amber. She strode over, patted Van Gogh, and stuck her foot in the stirrup. I guided her hand to the saddle, aware of the heat of her body so near mine. My cock stirred at the memory of our kiss the other night, and having my hand on her ass as I helped her into the saddle didn’t help.
Damn, this was bad. We were supposed to be looking out for this party girl, not falling for her. But as we rode out, I couldn’t stop. It had been way too long since I’d had a woman in my bed, that was all. I kept telling myself that, but it didn’t stop me from seeing sexiness in everything Amber did. Her rhythm in the saddle, her thighs around the horse, her tight little ass in those designer jeans she wore—she had my cock straining against my jeans, wanting her riding me that way.
When the horses were warm and I thought she could handle it, I urged Picasso ahead, letting him run a little. Rembrandt and Frida cantered along beside us, used to this routine. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Amber riding with her eyes closed, her head thrown back and her blonde hair flowing out in the wind behind her. God damn, she was beautiful.
Too beautiful for us to destroy her with our perversions. She looked so pure and joyful in that moment, not like the kind of woman who wanted to be plowed by three cowboys at once. Amber wasn’t a girl to take turns fucking—she was one to treasure and care for. I’d floated the other idea by her, and she’d seemed interested, but she hadn’t said yes. Now I could see that it would be a mistake. We were supposed to be getting to know this girl, not having an orgy with her.
She was part of our family now, a girl we should protect as we would our own sister. And that’s what we were going to do. If not because she was our stepsister and that’s what we’d been asked, then because she deserved it. And because I cared about her too much to ruin her the way we would if we let ourselves.
4
Amber
The next morning, it was my very first day to feed and tend the horses on my own. They hadn’t wasted any time giving me some responsibility. I’d thought they’d give me a week of training or something, but they seemed to trust that I could remember the right amount of feed and water.
Van Gogh whinnied when she saw me, swinging her head in my direction. The horses were already getting used to me, like Holden said they would, and soon they’d look forward to my visits, knowing that meant they were getting food.
When I turned to feed Picasso, Mr. Grimes was standing in the wide aisle that ran the length of the barn, between the stalls.
“Hi,” I said, raising a hand to him. While I was distracted, Van Gogh reached out, grabbed the edge of the scoop, and dumped her oats all over the floor at my feet.
“You brat,” I said, pushing her head away. I refilled the scoop and fed her, poured Picasso’s oats in his feed pan, then turned back to the metal drums. I bent down to fill the scoop, and when I turned, Mr. Grimes was still standing there, leaning on the gate of one of the stalls, watching me.
Okay, that’s a little creepy.
Ignoring him, I went about feeding the rest of the horses. He was probably just watching to make sure I did everything right. I was new, after all, and he’d been doing this for years. Still, it was unnerving to have him just stand there, not hovering but observing. When I finished, I brushed off my hands and blew the hair off my face.
“Did I pass?” I asked.
Mr. Grimes grunted.
“Well, then,” I said. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
When he still didn’t speak, I started to get a creeping feeling in my gut, so I headed for the door. Just as I passed him, I heard a single word uttered.
“Whore.”
The word hit me like a bullet, hard and unforgiving. I stumbled before righting myself and turning to face him.
“Excuse me?”
“I know what you been up to in that house.” His voice was gravelly and nasal, with a strong southern twang.
I took a step back. “What?”
“My wife told me all about it.” His eyes crawled over me with a mixture of disgust and lust. “I know what kind of girl you is.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, forcing my voice to remain calm and steady. “And neither does your wife.”
“I know you ain’t got morals nor standards,” he said. “Letting a group of men take turns with you.” His lip curled into a sneer as his eyes roamed over my body.
“We don’t take turns doing anything but making dinner,” I said coldly. “And what your wife saw the other day was my brothers keeping me from dying of hypothermia. If she saw something dirty in that, maybe she’s the one who needs to look at her morals.”
With that, I whirled on my heels and stomped out of the barn, but not before I heard him mutter after me, “Jezebel.”
The nerve of that guy! I was shaking with rage as I stomped back to the house. Here I was, taking over the horses to make his job easier, and he was calling me a whore. I had half a mind to go back out there and give him another lecture. But knowing me, I’d spill out way too much and it would come back to haunt me. After all, his wife was at least a little bit right about that night. It hadn’t been completely innocent. Had it?
*
A while later, when I’d calmed down, I saw Waylon heading for the shop out beyond the five empty cabins behind the house. I threw together a sandwich as an excuse and let myself out the back door. I wasn’t sure if Holden had told his brothers about our kiss, or if I should tell them first. I didn’t know how this whole thing worked at all, but I knew they didn’t like secrets. If I came clean about it, I figured they’d respect me. Then again, it might get Holden in trouble.
Either way, I wanted to feel Waylon out, see how he felt about it and find out if he knew. So I balanced the plate and headed out. I’d never been inside the shop, though I’d seen the guys pulling their farm equipment in and out of it. This seemed like a good time to go explore. When I stepped inside, it was a bit gloomy, despite the overhead fluorescents. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust. The huge tractor was up front, the one that Waylon had driven out to pull me from the cow trough on the night of the infamous topless massage.
Hurrying between that and the side-by-side, I spotted movement at the back of the shop. I hurried back and found Waylon halfway under the hood of an orange muscle car. He had his usual tan Carhartt coveralls on, but the top was peeled down to hang around his waist like jeans. His green thermal shirt showed off his lean muscles. For a minute, I stood there watching him turn a wrench, wondering if it was possible he could be any hotter.
“I brought you a sandwich,” I said at last.
Waylon straightened up so fast his head hit the bottom of the hood, and his cowboy hat toppled off, landing in the engine. He growled a curse and plucked it up, replacing it on his head as he turned to me.
“What’d you need?” he asked.
“I…” I trailed off, stung by his short response. I should have been used to it by now. Waylon wasn’t a man of many words, and when he did use words, they weren’t especially pleasant ones. I tried to imagine what he’d been like with Maria, the ex who had run off and left him for his brother.
“Is that for me?” he asked, plucking the sandwich from the plate. He took a big bite of it and then stood chewing and looking down at it. “What’s that taste?”
“It’s avocado mayo,” I said. “Made with truffle oil.”
“Huh.” He took another bite.
“Do you like it?” I asked hopefully.
“What’s wrong with regular mayo?” he asked, depositing the half-eaten sandwich before turning back to his car.
But I could not be dissuaded that easily. I’d wear him down eventually. No matter how surly he was, I could always get a smile out of him. I sidled up to the car and leaned against it. “So you fix cars?”
“I’m rebuilding the engine,” he said, not looking up from his tools.
I tried to pose sexily against the car, but I immediately started sliding back along it. Seriously, looking
sexy was difficult while balancing a plate on one hand. I mean, the car was really polished!
“Don’t scuff the wax,” Waylon said from under the hood.
I propped myself against the side mirror and nibbled at his sandwich. “Did Holden tell you what happened the other night?” I asked.
“What happened?” he asked, not sounding interested at all.
“We kissed.”
“Is that right,” he said flatly.
“He said you were all okay with…us being together. All four of us. So I guess I’m just wondering…how does it work?”
Finally, Waylon picked up a rag and wiped his hands roughly on it. “It doesn’t,” he said shortly. “My father’s lending us money to save the ranch if we keep you out of trouble for the next two months. That’s all.”
My heart dropped straight out of my chest and onto the dirty, oily concrete floor. “He’s paying you?”
Waylon paused, guilt flickering across his face. “Lending us money,” he said after a few seconds. “Not giving it to us.”
“So you’re babysitting me?” I asked, my humiliation building. My heart was flopping around down there like a fish out of water, just begging him to pick it up or at least put it out of its misery.
“Call it what you want,” Waylon said. “You knew we were doing our parents a favor by taking you in.”
“I didn’t know you were getting paid,” I said. “I thought we were supposed to get to know our new family a little. That I’d come out here and help out, and you’d let me stay.”
“That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t realize I was such a pain in the ass that you had to get paid to get to know me.” To my horror, I felt my lip trembling. My heart was coated with dirt and grime like someone was kicking it along the dusty tractor trails through the ranch.
“You’re not a pain in the ass, Princess,” Waylon said, stepping around the open hood of the car. But I could tell he was just saying it to make me feel better. He didn’t sound or look like he meant it one tiny bit.
I gulped against the sting of salty tears and stared at anything but his eyes. He had a grease smear on his bare, tan arm. I wanted to freaking lick it. How had I fallen so hard for someone who had to get a paycheck to spend time with me?
But hell, if they were my gigolos, shouldn’t I be getting more action?
Waylon took the sandwich from me and took a bite before handing it back. “I didn’t ask for money,” he said. “I didn’t ask for you to come stay here. Our father offered us a deal. Keep you out of trouble, and he’d lend us some money to help keep the ranch going. That’s all.”
“I just wish I’d known to begin with,” I said. “I thought you were all so keen on honesty and openness and not keeping secrets.”
“From each other,” he said.
Those words stung even deeper than what he’d already said. I wasn’t one of them. They were a family who looked out for each other, trusted each other, cared about each other. And I was their stepmother’s out-of-control daughter.
“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said.
“Amber,” he said, his voice gruff. “What happened with Holden shouldn’t have happened. He’s my brother, but I’ll be the first to admit, he’s got a weakness when it comes to good-looking women.”
“So you think I’m good looking,” I teased, desperately trying to sound like I wasn’t about to burst into tears.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “If you weren’t my stepsister, I’d bend you over the hood of this car and fuck you until you screamed loud enough for every neighbor in the next ten miles to come see who was making such a fuss?”
“Oh,” I whispered, my thighs quaking at that image.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you are my stepsister.” He finished the sandwich and picked up the grease rag to wipe his hands again. “Keeping an eye on you means keeping you out of trouble in town, or with the law, but it also means protecting you. Out here, the rules are a little different than what you’re used to in New York.”
“So you’ve said. But they don’t seem so different to me.”
“People see something they want, they take it,” he said. “Ranchers came out here to claim land. There’s a little of that spirit left.”
“Good to know,” I said. “I guess you haven’t seen anything you wanted in three years?”
His mouth twisted into a smirk. “Sometimes we want something for a night,” he said. “But nothing we’ve wanted to keep.”
I took that as a challenge.
5
Amber
After talking to Waylon, I decided not to tell my stepbrothers about their creepy ranch hand. They would do anything to save their ranch, and I didn’t want to be a reason they failed. After all, if they fired Grimes, the whole ranch would fall apart. They’d told me that themselves. And besides all that, he’d been here for forty years, and I’d been here less than a month. He belonged there. If I told on him, he’d probably do something worse than calling me a whore.
So I went back to the house and had a glass of wine. Okay, maybe it was two. And they were pretty full.
When a car drove up, I got up from the table and peeked out. A gold Cadillac sedan sat in the gravel area in front of the house.
Great. Another neighbor.
A woman with frosted blonde hair and a puffy parka climbed out of the car and tottered across the gravel in heels. She looked to be in her forties or fifties, and from her car and her bag, comfortably living but not extravagantly wealthy. I opened the door before she could knock.
“Well, hello, dear,” she said, clattering up the steps in her heels. “I thought I’d come pay a visit. See what all the gossip was about in town.”
“Oh, hi, then,” I said as she bustled past me and into the house.
“I figured the boys would be out this time of day, so we could have a little girl talk,” she said, hanging her coat on the rack behind the door.
Okay, then. A bit presumptuous, but whatever.
“I don’t know if I’m the best one to share gossip,” I said. “I’ve only been to town once, and all we did was buy a new phone and some hardware.”
“Oh, honey, I’m not here to gossip with you about other people,” she said. “I’m here to see with my own eyes what other people are gossiping about.”
I gulped. “Other people are gossiping about me?”
“Well, of course,” she said. “You’re new to the area. Not to mention, a pretty girl like you living with three handsome single men.”
“Uh huh.” I wasn’t drunk, but I wasn’t sober enough for this conversation. What if I said something wrong, like, hell yeah, they’re hotter than hell and I want to make up for lost time and do all three of them?
“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?” she asked, standing by the coat rack.
“Sure, I guess,” I said, wondering if the boys would like this gossipy stranger snooping around in their house. I’d have to watch the old coot if she went to the bathroom.
“Manners are a little lacking,” she commented as I led her into the kitchen.
“Wine?” I asked, motioning to the bottle and my empty glass, which were still on the table.
“Heavens no,” she said, sounding truly scandalized. “It’s barely past lunch time.”
“Never stopped me,” I said with a grin, hoping she’d lighten up and join me.
“I see that,” the woman said, glaring disapprovingly at my glass.
“We’ve also got beer,” I offered.
Instead of laughing, she frowned harder. Craptastic. That hadn’t worked at all. If we both got a little tipsy, we’d be on a more even playing field. Maybe we’d even be friends. I could use someone to stop by, have a cocktail, and chat every once in a while, even if she was the neighborhood gossip. That would serve Waylon right for being a dick to me.
“Or tea,” I said weakly. “Soda?”
“I’ll take a Diet Coke, please and than
k you,” she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table. “And throw another log on the fire if you don’t mind.”
“Okay, then.” I handed over the can of Diet Coke, which she scowled at. “Diet Coke, right?” I asked when she didn’t reach for it.
“I’ll take a glass and some ice, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“Guess I’m not the only one who needs to learn manners,” I muttered as I grabbed a glass and filled it with ice. When the drink was up to her standards, I turned to the wood stove.
“They told me you were easy on the eyes,” she said. “That might be a good thing for my boys if my ex-husband hadn’t gone and married that senator. It does no good for stepsiblings to be the same age.”
I had opened the door to the fire, and I almost pitched headlong into the coals.
“What did you just say?” I squeaked.
“I said it’s no good for you to be the same age as my boys. I’m sure they could use some good women around here, but it’s not doing anyone any favors to put a pretty girl in front of three lonely men and tell them they can’t have her. I don’t know what that man was thinking.”
“You’re their mother?” I reached out to steady myself and almost put my hand on top of the stove. Considering my history with mishaps since I’d arrived, I figured I should get away from any hot surfaces, so I stumbled to the table and collapsed into a chair. I’d been rude to their mother! I wanted to die.
“Of course I’m their mother,” she said. “Who did you think I was? You smell like you’re three sheets to the wind, but try to keep up, dear.”
Oh my God, oh my God, it’s their mother. What do I do?
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. It was useless trying to think of the right thing to do. I’d had exactly one long-term boyfriend who introduced me to his mother, and she’d hated me. Heaven forbid a girl like to get her drink on and hit up the dance floor every now and then. You’d think I was a seasoned criminal, the way Charlie’s mother had treated me.
And now here I was, making a total fool of myself in front of the mother of all three of the men I was currently crushing on. I’d never even had a chance.
Wrangle Me, Cowboys_A Reverse Harem Forbidden Romance Page 2
