Awakening Veronica [Divine Creek Ranch 17] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Heather Rainier

  Gratitude filled Veronica’s heart for Caressa MacFarland. The lady had guts and class.

  Moments later, another instant message box popped up, this time from the group moderator, and Veronica tuned the chatter out while reading the message.

  ReaderAngel204: I’m so sorry, Veronica. I placed BookAddictedWhore on moderation. I’d hoped she wouldn’t show up for this chat.

  Veronica Benedict: It’s all right. This isn’t anything new from her. I wish I had a dime for every time she’s called me a bitch. I could buy a pair of brass knuckles to use on her head.

  ReaderAngel204: LMAO! Good one. I’ll get started wrapping things up. Just hang with us for a few more minutes.

  Another instant message window opened up over that one. This time the message was from her current online stalker.

  BookAddictedWhore. Can’t take the heat, bitch? You should be used to this by now. Seriously, are you going to write in Angelina as Nate and Gaston’s heroine because I can totally see her in a threesome.

  Veronica Benedict: I haven’t decided.

  BookAddictedWhore: Well, I just decided for you, so get to it.

  Veronica Benedict: Sorry, I need to get back to the chat.

  She could see the tiny icon indicating that BookAddictedwhore was typing when she minimized the message so that it wouldn’t interrupt her time left with the reader group. A few seconds later, the notification tone for Skype dinged twice, and she looked down, noting that she had messages from two sources. Shit.

  Another reader asked her a nicely put question regarding the hero of Bound at the Bonfire. She continued on, answering questions and giggling and laughing with the rest of the group members. This was one of her favorite groups to chat with, with the exception of a few asshats. The ones who talked dirty didn’t bother her nearly as much as the ones who sought access they had no right to. Like BookAddictedWhore, they mistook fun naughtiness for an opportunity to be rude and ask questions to which the answer was none of their damned business.

  No, BookAddictedWhore, I’ve never had anal sex. Fucking bitch. Even thinking those words made the heat in her cheeks increase. She could still hear her mother’s superior tone of voice echoing in her head. You are much too intelligent to use such language, young lady.

  She tried to focus on the chat. She smiled when she saw the next chat room message pop up.

  Caressa MacFarland: I think that Veronica will blow us all away with what she writes no matter what genre it’s in.

  Veronica smiled when lots of people chimed in behind her with the same sentiment. Leave it to Caressa to raise the standard in the group.

  Veronica Benedict: Thank you, Caressa. Thank you, ladies.

  Caressa MacFarland: No, thank you for sharing the sneak peek into your current work in progress, Bound at the River Bridge, with us tonight. I look forward to reading it and I know your readers are going to love it.

  Caressa messaged her privately a second later.

  Caressa McFarland: I hate when that bitch shows up at live chats. She was firing questions at you faster than you could answer them and then got pissy at you for not answering fast enough. There’s no pleasing some people. Is she still pestering you privately?

  Veronica Benedict: Yes.

  Caressa MacFarland: Ignore her. Both publicly and privately. She’ll find someone else to stalk eventually. Don’t respond to her because it just encourages her.

  Veronica Benedict: I already have messages from her waiting for me on Skype. I know, I know…I never should’ve added her as a contact on Skype. I also wish I’d taken a pseudonym like you did.

  Caressa MacFarland: Live and learn, honey. I’d delete her and block her everywhere I could. A lot of promoting in this business is trial and error, and your readers love you. Thankfully, most of them are normal.

  Veronica couldn’t have known that BookAddictedWhore would wind up being such a toxic force until it was too late. She hated looking like the mean guy, but this particular “fan” had to go. She regretted not protecting her privacy by taking a pseudonym when she began writing sweet romance several years before. In her mind, she’d had nothing to hide and no one to hide from. But that was before she’d discovered firsthand that there was no such thing as privacy online.

  She’d learned to protect her privacy in reverse, by changing her apartment lease and all her other bills and personal contact information to her middle name, Louise. The switch had been a huge pain in the ass, and hadn’t worked in a couple of instances.

  The chat ended a few minutes later and she poured a glass of wine and returned to her messy desk in the study. Opening the messages in Skype, she prepared to delete BookAddictedWhore from her life. She wasn’t sure why she felt guilty about it. She’d thought that ignoring the rude comments would lead to BookAddictedWhore not saying such things anymore but the reverse was happening as though she was purposely seeking to see how far she could push Veronica.

  In the distance, she heard the slamming of her front door, followed immediately by the sound of the shower starting down the hall. She sighed heavily. Brent’s home.

  Mentally bracing herself for the confrontation with him, Veronica scowled at the computer screen. I’ve been bullied by better than you, bitch.

  With a sigh, she put fingers to keyboard, and at the last second opened Grandma Kate’s message window instead. BookAddictedWhore and all her drama could wait. Her heart lurched at the purposeful avoidance, wishing she had the guts to take the world by the horns like Caressa.

  She spent the next half hour shooting the bull with Kate, who was actually her great-aunt. As the Benedict family matriarch, Kate preferred to keep things simple for all the numerous relations and everyone addressed her as Grandma Kate. She lived in a quirky little town in central Texas. Over the years, she’d always been the one to visit Veronica’s family, whose branch of the Benedict family lived in Montana. After Veronica had moved out on her own, Kate had visited her regularly in Billings, Montana, where she leased an apartment.

  Lately, Grandma Kate had been asking her to finally come to Texas for a visit. She’d never visited there before. Air travel and Veronica didn’t mix well, but she’d never revealed that to Kate. If ever there was someone in her life that she’d suck it up for, though, Kate was that person.

  By the end of the conversation, Grandma Kate had convinced Veronica to make the plane trip as well as filling her in on her brothers Cord and Jackson’s news. They were engaged and embracing the Lusty ménage lifestyle and a party was planned for them in Lusty in a few days’ time. She dreaded the thought of socializing and being in crowds but she’d weather the anxiety to wish her brothers well. Of her siblings, they were the closest to her heart.

  In the back of her mind was the inkling that she’d been bamboozled by the wily nonagenarian. No one else from her family would be attending the engagement party, either because they were in denial about the choice Cord and Jackson had made to commit their lives to one woman, or because busy schedules didn’t allow it. Veronica had a feeling the latter excuse was really a veiled form of the former excuse. Sometimes her family sucked.

  On that note, she heard the shower shut off and she couldn’t ignore the tightening knot in her gut any longer.

  Time to deal with Brent.

  * * * *

  Grandma Kate pressed her fingertips to her lips and then touched them to the computer screen as her beautiful relative and wildly successful romance author signed off from their Skype conversation. She’d be arriving in Lusty in a few days for a working vacation, which was better than she’d hoped for. Even though she’d kept up with the Montana Benedicts over the years, she couldn’t say her relationship with Emerson had carried forward to George and Norah—Veronica’s parents—and the rest of her siblings.

  Bunch of horse’s patoots.

  She reached across the desk to the stack of photos that had recently arrived in the mail. She tended to let the pictures pile up in her camera and then ordered them in bulk once or twice a year. F
lipping through pictures of Chloe’s commitment ceremony, she smiled when she came across a picture of Grace Warner with her delightful spouses Jack, Ethan, and Adam. Grace glowed with happiness in the shot, and there wasn’t any reason to wonder why. Her men clearly doted on her.

  Another shot slipped from the stack, this one taken in Divine the last time she’d been down when that adorable Julian Alvarez and his best friend Chris Potter had bound their hearts and lives with their lady love, Gwen Henderson. Chris had been quite the charmer and she felt a girlish giggle flutter inside of her as she remembered how he’d flirted with her after asking her for a dance at the wedding reception. Her jitterbug might be slower nowadays, but he’d stirred happy memories of dancing with her men in decades past.

  Her fingers paused as she sorted through the photos and her eyes were drawn to another guest at that same wedding. A wizened fingertip, the skin soft and nearly translucent after close to a century of living, stroked the image of a tall, strong-looking man chatting with Grace. He was what her granddaughter Rebecca would call a sexy silver fox. It was only a one-dimensional image but Grandma Kate thought she saw the traces of a stalwart personality in his chiseled face and the set of his broad shoulders. She saw loneliness, too.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” she whispered to herself.

  Chewing her lip for a second, she recalled being introduced to him. She’d wondered back then at the sense of “family” she’d gotten from him, with his easy smile and mannerly ways. She’d had that feeling before in the past and she’d learned to not ignore it. Talking Veronica into taking a little side trip with her to Divine was sounding like a better idea all the time.

  “Ah, I remember. Sheriff Hank Stinson. You look protective. I’ll bet you’re the type who believes watching out for the ladies is the burden the world has laid on your shoulders. I wonder what you’d think of sweet, young things being bullied. You wouldn’t take kindly to it, I imagine.”

  Kate recalled from previous conversations that Grace also knew a thing or two about being bullied.

  She was a night owl like Kate, and she’d still be up this late. “I need to finalize those plans with Grace anyway.”

  * * * *

  Grace slid her arms into the long, azure-blue satin robe, fresh from her shower and feeling much more relaxed.

  Ethan had sat in on the chat with her and she’d watched his consternation grow as Veronica had been berated by a “fan.” The verbal pummeling Veronica had received from that troll, complete with laughing and giggling emoticons meant to veil the sarcasm and aggressiveness of the comments, had hit a little too close to home for Grace.

  As always, Ethan had an uncanny ability to read her emotions and had refused to allow her to internalize the stress after it was all over. He’d lifted a sleepy little Rose Marie into his arms before leading Grace up the stairs, and started the steam shower for her.

  Tidying up her bedroom afterward, she smiled as Ethan’s deep voice filtered from Rose Marie’s bedroom next door, where he was reading their toddler a bedtime story. Rose Marie had been giving her fits lately and Grace felt blessed to have three very patient spouses to rely on for help with her.

  She lifted the scrapbook she’d recently completed from her dresser and carried it downstairs before settling on the couch with Jack, who was talking on her cellphone. Ethan had convinced her to leave the phone downstairs so she could relax for a while. If she didn’t have her smartphone at hand, she’d be less likely to check her e-mail and Facebook status when she should be relaxing. Adam smiled and winked at her from where he sat in the big overstuffed chair, working on his laptop while listening to a football game on the television.

  Jack said, “She just came back downstairs, Grandma Kate. I’ll tell Dad you said hello. Nice talking to you, too.” He grinned and handed her the cellphone.

  “Grandma Kate! I was happy to see you made it to chat tonight.”

  “Hey, sweets!” Kate’s energetic voice said from the other end. “I’m calling to make arrangements with you for my trip out there.”

  “I have great news. Some friends are getting married and having their binding ceremony the weekend after you arrive. We’ve already added you to the guest list.”

  “Wonderful! I’d love to be there. Who’s getting hitched this time?”

  “Remember Lucy Owen? It’s her sister-in-law, Maizy, and her three men.”

  “What wonderful news! I enjoy weddings nearly as much as I enjoy grandchildren! I have an engagement party to attend this Friday night, and then I’ll be arriving Saturday, if that works for you. I want to ask you about something. Feel free to tell me no, but I’m hoping for a little favor from you.”

  Grace didn’t hesitate to answer. “Sure, Kate. Anything.” Kate wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important to her.

  “I’m sure you noticed that ill-mannered person in the online chat room tonight?”

  “Kind of hard not to, wasn’t it? And to be honest, what happened tonight is kind of mild in comparison with some of the bad behavior Veronica’s had to put up with online. She seems to have had more than her fair share of creepers and trolls.” Thinking about the chat made Grace tired. She admired Veronica’s ability to maintain her composure under pressure. She was on board if there was a way she could help.

  “I agree and I think Veronica is more stressed out than she lets on. She’s a bit of a hermit, you know. Someone actually showed up on her doorstep a while back, claiming to be her greatest fan. She wasn’t very forthcoming when I asked her but I heard about that and one other incident from her brothers recently. I have to confess, I’m a little worried about Veronica. She lives so much of her life online and that can’t be healthy.”

  “Tell me what you need.”

  “She needs a change of scenery, in my opinion. I don’t know if she’s ever taken a vacation. And there’s this pattern I see in her that I don’t like. It’s not so much that I wanted to see her defend herself against that bully in chat tonight, because those kinds of battles are impossible to win, but…” Grace perked up, because Kate wasn’t the type to not be able to put her feelings into words. “I think she could use a little sabbatical. A little time to gain perspective and to find…whatever it is that’s missing in her life.”

  Grace answered without hesitation. “I think you should bring her with you. We have plenty of room.”

  “The dilemma lies in the fact that you keep your online life and your real life very separate and I wouldn’t want to compromise your privacy. She doesn’t realize that my friend Grace in Divine and Caressa MacFarland, successful erotic romance author, are one and the same person.”

  “Do you think she could be trusted?”

  “Absolutely. I’m sure of it.”

  “Then that’s good enough for me. You understand why I protect my privacy and wouldn’t endanger that by letting someone know my secrets. I’ve known Veronica online for some time now. While I don’t make a habit of revealing my private life to author friends, there are exceptions. You say you’d like for her to take a sabbatical down here but early in the chat she mentioned that she was going into a heavy writing cycle, trying to get a three book series completed.”

  “Yes, that’s what she said.”

  A plan began to formulate in Grace’s mind. “Would she like someplace quiet, where she could work and get some much-needed rest?”

  “Ideally, yes. She’s already planning on a working vacation in Lusty. I just want to get her out of Billings. Out of her gloomy apartment, and…”

  “And?”

  “And away from that boyfriend of hers. Brent-somebody.”

  “She has a boyfriend?”

  Grandma Kate’s voice took on a sharper edge. “Yes. I’ve met him a time or two in the last couple of years. He’s not respectful or loving toward her. He drives one of those jacked-up trucks that sometimes make me wonder if the owner isn’t compensating for a small penis size. The gigantic bull testicle ornament he displays on his trailer hitch leads me t
o believe that he’s covering up for all-around deficiencies. Veronica’s brothers, Cord and Jackson, refer to him as Bubba, the knuckle-dragger. I don’t think online bullying is the only kind of bullying Veronica is dealing with. I think she has a hard time with confrontations and defending herself.”

  “Oh, no. He sounds like someone I used to know.”

  “I was hoping you’d see it that way. So you wouldn’t mind an extra houseguest?”

  “Not at all. You could stay in the ranch house with us, and if Veronica would like to have quiet and a little space, she could set up in the old foreman’s house. It’s clean and unoccupied at the moment. It has some beautiful views of the ranch, too.” She glanced up to find Jack and Adam watching her and when she caught his eye, Jack nodded and gave her the thumbs-up.

  “You’re sure it’s no bother?”

  “None at all. And if she’s interested in ménages, this would be a great place to do research. I know several people who would be happy to talk with her.”

  “You know…she mentioned doing some hands-on research into the Dominant-submissive lifestyle. We have several people in Lusty who she could interview, but she didn’t seem comfortable with talking to family about that when I suggested it. Do you suppose there’s someone there she could speak with, maybe get to know?”

  Grace could practically hear the fishing line being cast and she giggled quietly. “As a matter of fact, I know a Dominant she could ‘speak with, maybe get to know…’”

  Kate’s giggle made her smile. “Mightn’t Ethan speak with her? Hmm?”

  “I’d be fine with that, but I was thinking about introducing her to Hank Stinson. He knows a thing or two about the subject. He’s also starting a women’s self-defense class soon. And he’s single,” she added, stifling a snort of amusement when Jack shook his finger at her and grinned. Her matchmaker instincts were on alert. She couldn’t help it.

  “I remember Hank. I think I might like to take a self-defense class if he’s teaching it. A Dom, you say?”