Before I could dig my hole any deeper, I pulled out my phone and sent a covert text to the guys. After falling in the cow water, I’d made sure to get all their numbers and have them at the ready both individually and as a group text in case of emergency. I did seem especially prone to them on the ranch. And if being stuck in a house with their mother wasn’t a dire emergency, I didn’t know what was.
*
“Mother,” Sawyer said, striding in a few minutes later. “How nice of you to drop in on us like this.”
“I didn’t know I needed an invitation,” she said. “I gave you life, after all?”
“How could I forget,” Sawyer said, rolling his eyes over her head.
Holden came in a minute later, stomped his boots, and appeared in the kitchen. He was breathing hard, and his eyes moved from one of us to the next. “Is everyone okay?” he asked. “I got your SOS text.”
I winced, cursing him silently. Now his mother was going to hate me even more.
“Is that so?” their mother asked, eyeing me.
“I can see why,” Holden said, crossing the room to sweep his mother up into a bear hug. “It would have been just awful to miss you, Mama.”
“A real tragedy,” Sawyer said.
“Thanks for letting us know, sis,” Holden said, shooting me a meaningful look over his mother’s head. As if I’d tell her what I’d told Waylon.
The next minute, Waylon came rushing in and pulled up so short his boot heels nearly left skid marks on the kitchen floor. “Lidia,” he said, giving her a curt nod.
“None of that,” she said. “You best call me Mama. I’m the only one the good Lord gave you, and I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Fine,” he grunted.
“Unless you’re planning to replace me with that senator your father’s gone and married.”
Before I could think, a snort escaped me. They all looked my way. “Trust me, you don’t need to worry about that,” I said.
“Speaking ill of her own mother,” Lidia said, shaking her head.
“Would you like something to eat while you’re here?” Holden asked.
“You should try some of Amber’s special avocado-truffle oil mayonnaise,” Waylon said.
I shot him a death glare, but his poker face never wavered. Damn, he was good.
“Kids these days,” Lidia said. “What’s wrong with regular old mayonnaise?”
“Just wait until you try it,” Waylon said, heading for the fridge. “It’s to die for.”
I slid over to the counter and planted my hands on my hips, waiting for Waylon to turn from the fridge. When he did, I hissed, “What are you doing?”
“Making a sandwich for my mother,” he said, a picture of innocence.
“She’s going to hate it,” I whispered.
“If you’re lucky,” he muttered. “If she likes it, she’ll be back every day. And I can’t lock her out like Mrs. Grimes.”
“So tell me, how are you all getting along?” Lidia asked behind us.
“Famously,” Sawyer said.
Only Holden had sat down at the table beside his mom. It was sort of sweet how genuinely pleased to see her he seemed, though I couldn’t say I shared that sentiment.
“No squabbles? After the last time you had a woman here, I can’t say I approve.”
“Amber’s nearly our sister, though,” Sawyer said, catching my eye and shooting me a wink.
Lidia nodded. “That’s good to hear. Can’t have a repeat of that last one.”
“Trust me, Mother, that will never happen again,” Waylon said, his jaw set. He was the only one who hadn’t talked to me about Maria, who had broken all their hearts.
“Thank the Lord,” Lidia said. “But I still don’t know if I think this is a good idea. The way people talk around here…”
“Amber’s helping out with the horses,” Holden said. “She’s good at it, too. In fact, she’s pretty damn near the perfect sister.”
“Like the little sister we never had,” Sawyer agreed, his eyes sparkling with merriment.
“Hmph,” Lidia said. “Could have fooled me.”
“You may have caught me at a bad moment,” I said.
“I’ll say.”
Oh no. I could feel a verbal torrent building inside me. I was helpless to stop it.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person,” I went on. “I actually have been helping with the horses, though I can’t say I’m keen on making that old buzzard’s life any easier. By that I mean Grimes, not you. Not that you’re old. Or a buzzard. I just mean, Grimes is a total creep. But I’m sure you know that, seeing that you lived here at some point, I’m assuming. Right? Or did it skip a generation, like twins, and go straight from your dad to your kids?”
Lidia opened her mouth, then closed it again. Finally she said, “Well. I guess you could keep her around for entertainment value if nothing else.”
Now I didn’t just have to prove myself worthy to all the guys, but to their mother? Craptastic.
“She’s only here for a couple more months,” Waylon said, delivering a sandwich to his mother and one to me.
“And then you can get your payday and live happily ever after,” I said, remembering I was mad at him.
“Sit, eat. It’ll take the edge off,” he muttered when I gave him a withering look.
“Well, the talk in town’s just getting started,” Lidia said. “And I don’t think it’s proper, her being what she is.”
“What I am?” I asked indignantly.
Waylon’s hand closed on my shoulder, firm and commanding. “If people want to gossip, they’re going to gossip,” he said, facing his mother.
Sawyer tipped his chair back, his legs sprawling under the table. “If it’s not this, it’s something else,” he said. “You can’t stop gossip any more than you can stop the wind from blowing.”
“It’s true,” I said. “You know why the gossip column is always full? It’s not because there’s always something scandalous going on. It’s because it has to be. There’s a space for it, an audience for it, and it’s the job of the writers to fill the column with something. They have to find something to talk about.”
Lidia narrowed her eyes at me, but she didn’t say anything.
“Whatever people in town say about us, they’ve been saying for years,” Sawyer said. “Doesn’t bother us.”
“Does it bother you, Amber?” Holden asked.
I shrugged. “My parents are both in politics. People have been talking about me since I was born.”
“Well, aren’t we humble,” Lidia said.
“Were you married to Senator Westling when he was a senator?” I asked. “If you have tips on being invisible in politics, I’d love to hear them.”
“All I’m saying is that people will talk,” Lidia said. “I think my sons deserve to know that. You know they caused quite a local scandal a few years ago.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I’m going back to work,” Waylon said. “I don’t have time for gossip.” When his hand left my shoulder, I felt woozy again, and desperate for his hand to steady me. But he stomped out of the kitchen, leaving me with his two brothers and his mother.
“I just think you might be happier someplace else,” Lidia said to me. “My ex-husband has no right to force you to live with these boys. And neither does your mother.”
“She didn’t force me to,” I said. “It’s a break for me, that’s all. I needed to get away, anyway. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been decorating around here. I’ve never seen such a bare bones place as this. The only decoration in the whole house is a rack of antlers and a bear skin on the floor. It looks like a hunting lodge, not a home.”
“Well,” Lidia said with a huff. “That’s not my style, but they are boys.”
“Doesn’t mean the place couldn’t use a woman’s touch.”
Sawyer smiled at me. “Trust me, Mother, Amber’s no trouble for us.”
“Depen
ds on your definition of trouble,” she muttered.
Ain’t that the truth, I thought, trying not to openly ogle Sawyer as he peeled off his jacket.
6
Amber
When Holden took their mother outside to show her some new farm equipment, I finally breathed again. “Sorry about that,” Sawyer said, taking a seat beside me. “Our mother can be a handful.”
“All women are,” I said lightly. But inside, I was fuming.
“Here, I think you’ve earned another glass,” Sawyer said, pouring some wine and handing it to me.
I took the wine and set it down carefully, so I wouldn’t spill any when I turned and punched him in the shoulder. “You could have warned me,” I hissed. “I made a total ass of myself.”
“You do have a pretty nice ass…”
“Not funny,” I growled. “She hates me!”
“Aww, no one could hate you, Princess,” he said, reaching out and slowly tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. His touch lingered on my cheek.
“This doesn’t feel like brotherly love,” I whispered.
“The house isn’t the only thing that could use a woman’s touch,” he said, leaning closer.
“Is that so?” I turned in my chair to face him.
Sawyer pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes cast down at my wine-stained lips.
Suddenly breathless, I lifted my hands and steadied myself by clutching his massive arms. My god, I’d never found muscles so sexy in my life. Slowly, he moved the tip of his nose back and forth across mine, a smile beginning on his lips. Tingles spread down my spine, and my back arched, wanting to get closer. I clenched my knees together against the heat swelling between them.
His hand slid from my ear to the back of my neck, and he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
“Kiss me,” I whispered.
He did. His kiss wasn’t tentative and soft like Holden’s. It was passionate and forceful. His tongue took command of mine, and I was lost. My pussy throbbed as he angled his head sideways to taste my mouth more deeply. I’d never been kissed like that in my life—as if he wanted to know every millimeter of my mouth, my tongue, my lips. As if he wanted to claim them for his own. A sound escaped my mouth, somewhere between a moan and a whimper.
Embarrassing. But who the hell cared? I was too busy kissing my stepbrother to worry about it. I mean, sure I’d made out with Charlie tons. Usually I was desperately trying to get him to show just a little bit of passion, instead of doing everything in the mechanical way he had. He kissed like he’d researched how to kiss on the internet, and he was following the steps exactly, and no deviation was allowed.
Sawyer’s kiss was nothing but passion, his tongue claiming mine, his breath coming fast. He bent me backwards with the force of it, and I dropped my hand to his knee to steady myself. His skin was hot through his jeans, and I wanted to run my hand all the way up his thigh and touch him the way I’d done the night we’d slept on the living room floor together.
Before I could, he pulled away.
I wanted to howl in frustration. I grabbed the front of his shirt, trying to keep the kiss going, but he pried my fingers loose. “We’d better stop now, or I won’t be able to,” he said, breathing hard.
“Who said I’d stop you?”
He cocked an eyebrow and grinned. “I don’t think my mother would be happy if she came back and found me eating you on the kitchen table.”
A shiver of desire went through me at the thought of him kissing my pussy the way he’d just kissed my mouth.
“You better not have been thinking about her when you kissed me,” I said.
Sawyer made a face. “Never,” he said. “But I might have enjoyed it a little more knowing how pissed she’d be if she knew.”
“You’re terrible,” I said.
“You’re irresistible,” he countered. “Too irresistible to be my stepsister.”
I smiled up at him and batted my lashes. “Does that mean you don’t want me here?”
“Wanting you is not the problem,” he said, pushing back from the table. He held out a hand, and when I took it, he pulled me effortlessly to my feet. I stumbled against him, and he laughed and caught me around the waist, pulling my body against his. “Or maybe it is,” he growled, nuzzling my ear before releasing me.
“Maybe that last glass of wine wasn’t such a good idea after all,” I said, suddenly breathless again. I gripped his arms—God, his arms were great—and he steadied me on my feet.
“Want to go lie down?” he said. “I could probably make an excuse to my mother.”
“Only if you’ll come lie down with me,” I said.
What can I say, the wine made me bold.
Sawyer laughed. “If you weren’t intoxicated, and my mother wouldn’t notice, I’d take you up on that. But I think she’d notice if we both disappeared.”
“She’d be scandalized,” I said. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“We better join them before they start thinking we’re in here kissing at the kitchen table,” he said with a wink. He took my hand and led me to the door, his grip firm and strong around mine. I didn’t want to let go, but I figured holding hands was not acceptable brother-sister behavior beyond age six or something.
We emerged from the house just in time to see Holden and Lidia walking out of the barn. A flare of guilt shot through me. Seconds earlier, I’d been kissing my stepbrother with no shame. Actually, I’d been propositioning him.
“I seriously need my vibrator,” I muttered.
“What?” Sawyer squawked.
Laughter burst out of me before I could stop it. “What? Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”
“I think you did,” he said, his eyes sparkling with amusement.
“I definitely didn’t say whatever you think I said.”
“How do you know what I think you said?”
“Because I can see it on your face,” I said. “Now shut up and let’s go charm the pants off your mom. Not literally, though, this is already weird enough without adding any Oedipus shit to the mix.”
“We’re in agreement on that one,” he muttered as we joined the other two.
“Your brother was just showing me the horses,” Lidia said. Her eyes met mine, narrowing as she studied me.
Craptastic. I must be blushing, or flushed from the kiss. Or was there some kind of mark he’d made by kissing me so hard, like a hickey on my lips? I wanted to touch them to make sure they weren’t swollen, but that would be a dead giveaway. But she could definitely smell my guilt like a bloodhound on the trail.
This was bad. Why hadn’t I gone and laid down when Sawyer told me to?
I peeked at him from the corner of my eye as we headed for the guys’ shop. Were his lips stained from the wine I’d drunk?
When we stepped inside, Waylon was under the hood of his old car again. We made our way to the back of the shop where he was working.
“Oh, this is beautiful,” Lidia said, walking around the car and admiring it.
Waylon grunted.
I did a double-take. It was a pumpkin-colored boxy old thing with a bar running right through the middle of the top, so it wasn’t even a real convertible. Not that I knew anything about cars. People in New York didn’t really drive. My parents both had cars, but they never took them out of the garage unless they were going out to the Hamptons or upstate for a weekend. When she did use her car, Mom hired a driver so she could ride in the backseat and nurse her gin-and-valium hangover while pretending to work on emails.
Lidia leaned over and peered through the glass top.
“Leather,” Waylon said, glowering at his mother.
“A ’78,” she said, tapping on the glass with one manicured nail. My mother got shellac manicures, short and practical, in a neutral color that would last out a season, like lilac or nude. Lidia’s nails looked like she’d smashed a piece of candy corn onto the end of each finger.
“Hurst Hatch?” she asked.
Whatever a Hurs
t Hatch was, it seemed to wake Waylon from his stew of resentment. He straightened up and actually smiled, though I could tell he was fighting it. “Fisher units,” he said.
“This is in excellent condition,” she said. “Are you keeping the color?”
“This isn’t the original color,” he said. “Come here.” He opened up the door and she went over and bent down, and they started talking about cars like they were fancy cocktails they couldn’t wait to try.
I turned to Sawyer. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s their thing,” he said with a shrug. While his mother and brother were busy looking at something inside the door, Sawyer took my hand and gave it a squeeze. When I glanced at him in surprise, he licked his lips and then grinned, squeezing my hand for another second before letting go. A shiver of naughty feeling crept through me. For the rest of the twenty minutes we stood there, my body was aware of his every movement even when I wasn’t sneaking glances at him.
Finally, Waylon and his mother remembered we were there, and we all headed towards the door. I followed Sawyer, my gaze riveted on his ass. How had I never noticed a guy’s ass before? The muscles in Sawyer’s ass hypnotized me as they flexed with each step. So much so that I kinda-sorta ran into one of the huge tractor tires.
I bounced off the tire and went reeling straight towards the wall, which was covered in shovels and rakes and hoes. Flailing my arms, I tried to right myself, but I only managed to grab the handle of a pitchfork, which came loose from its hanger. Off balance, I plowed forward, careening straight for Lidia like a savage warrior about to impale the enemy.
7
Waylon
By the time we got the tools hung up and Amber dusted off, my mother had calmed down.
“We’re not laughing at you,” Holden assured her before turning to Amber. “Or you.”
Amber stood there looking so damn cute with her stunned, bewildered expression. She hadn’t reached our Ma, but had fallen flat on her face in front of the lot of us.
“It’s safe to say you’re not curbing her drinking ways,” our mother said in a huff.
“She’s fine,” I said. “She’ll sleep it off and have a headache when she wakes up. No one ever died of a hangover.”
Wrangle Me, Cowboys_A Reverse Harem Forbidden Romance Page 3
