Rope Me In
Cerise DeLand
Knights in Black Leather, Book One
In Bravado, Texas, the men are good and plenty…and lonely.
Not inclined to remain horny bachelors, the three MacRae brothers devise a plan to find one fine woman and get the good lovin’ they deserve. One gander at the new gal in town, charming Cara Ford, and the cowboys decide to do some old-fashioned courting. Then they’ll offer her a thoroughly modern deal—all three of them, just for luscious, lovely her.
Cara has returned to Bravado to rebuild her life after cutting the cord to her self-centered husband. One man was a pain. Why would she want to tie herself to three ranchers known for their wildcattin’, no matter how sexy?
Undeterred, Jed, Harry and Will rope her into their daily lives, sweet-talk her into sharing their torrid nights, and set out to convince her that three hard-lovin’ men in bed is better than one.
Rope Me In
Cerise DeLand
Chapter One
Cara Ford hit the brakes as the river of water pushed her pickup truck sideways into a ditch. Whiplashing forward, she winced at the sound of the underside scraping against a boulder. The damn rickety truck teetered for a mind-rattling second, then righted itself. And held its ground.
Cara grabbed a breath. One hand clamped to her wild heart, she cursed and noticed that the rain made her windshield wipers stutter to a halt. And yes, she realized as she turned the key in the ignition, not only were they done for, but so was her engine. What now?
Think fast! Gulley-washers kill people within minutes.
Thunder drummed across the brooding sky. Why had she believed the weatherman when he said showers today?
She undid her seatbelt, stretching up to peer over the rim of her car door at the gush of rainwater cascading beneath her.
The flood wasn’t deep enough to sweep her old heap down the two-lane highway but it was forceful enough to stick her here for the duration of the storm. And knowing firsthand how spring tempests and flash floods could wash away entire houses, even whole towns in the Hill Country, Cara realized she could be here for hours. All night, even.
Hell. Welcome back to Texas, Cara.
No time to fret here. She had to get the two boxes out of the back and into the cab. She doubted she had enough room for them and her inside this tiny front seat. Heck, by now the cardboard was soaking wet and she’d just push until she squeezed them in. She knew delivering the MacRaes their packages was the neighborly thing to do. And in the best shape possible, even if the sky had opened up and the rain slanted sideways. Not as though it was her fault the UPS man had given her the wrong boxes. But if she needed her silks and laces, the three MacRae men definitely needed their intriguing bits of leather. And she needed to see the intriguing MacRaes up close and personal.
But if you can’t get inside, your well-laid plans will be washed away in this deluge.
Glancing once more outside to see how deep the water was, she calculated that if the flow held steady, it wouldn’t rise over the tops of her knee-high boots. But would she be able to stand in the water without getting hurled downstream? And would her little pickup roll over without her weight to hold it in place?
Only one way to know.
Hand to the door handle, she was primed to spring herself loose when she froze. There, before her, a broad black animal glared at her over her hood.
“Damn, buddy! Where’d you come from?” she demanded of the longhorn bull.
He had run his fence, clearly. Spooked in the storm, she guessed. And the brand of the Rocking M on his rump told her precisely who he belonged to.
The MacRae brothers.
She frowned at the handsome hulk, horn span at least six feet wide, body of about two thousand pounds staring her down. Big and hunky, just like his three owners. Black-haired too, come to think of it. Obstinate as well, cuz he was not moving one gigantic muscle.
So much for getting out of this truck. She’d be a fool to take a chance he wouldn’t run her to ground. Longhorns could be angels or devils. True, Cara had lived here in Bravado until age fifteen, but she’d been a townie and knew nada about livestock. For sure, she wasn’t eager to learn now.
So it’s you and me, Blackie, my boy, out for the afternoon. As long as the water doesn’t rise, we could stay here, yards shy of where we should be inside that main gate of the Rocking M Ranch. She sighed. She’d get to the main house if she had to swim. She’d get dry and do what she came for. She’d get those three MacRae men to traipse down here and grab their own boxes, while she hoped for sunshine. Then, if she could withstand their legendary charm and their mouthwatering good looks without mooning over them as if she were a lovesick kid, she’d ask them to help her dislodge her pickup from this ditch. Afterward, she’d skedaddle down the road. She just wondered if they had opened her own shipment and admired the contents.
She smiled, reminiscing about how as a pimply teenager she had drooled over the three young MacRae men. Now about in their mid-thirties, Jed, Harry and Will MacRae had become the town’s famous bachelors, rich as sin and, according to local female gossip, heartbreakers to boot. So why they needed the risqué contents of the boxes now miserably drenched in her truck bed beat her. But she would love to know, damn her curious hide. Love to use some of those nifty items with one of them. Or each of them.
Now you are delusional.
A clap of thunder jolted her in her seat. And Blackie curled his lip at the rumble too. Fuss all you want. As long as you don’t charge my pickup, we’re good.
Another drumroll rent the sky. Lightning struck the earth as if it were a giant’s steps shaking the ground, her truck and her heart.
She zeroed in on the bull’s unhappy face.
The animal snorted at her. Then he bent his head to her truck.
She gripped the steering wheel. No. No, no, don’t charge.
Over the beat of the rain, she heard an ear-splitting creak and the groan of iron. The main gate with the huge Rocking M logo yawned wide. From the gathering fog, a lasso whirled into her line of sight. Then another twirled in the air.
Cara wiped at the vapor on her window, not believing what she saw. But wow, was she glad she did.
Two big cowboys on huge quarter horses whooped as they each sank a rope over the horns of their animal. Then they urged it around and away from her puny truck, through the open black iron gate.
Her truck door swung wide and the rain poured in. Soaked through in an instant, Cara sputtered, registering two strong arms pulling her sideways. Suddenly she was ass over teakettle, hair and clothes sopping wet, eyes dead ahead on the immediate view she had to admire. Had to smile. Rain, ditch, dead truck and longhorn notwithstanding, she was gazing at a wet, form-fitting, denim-clad set of the tightest buns she’d glimpsed in years.
Ah. The MacRaes. Her insides bubbled with glee.
Which one? her mind demanded.
“Does it matter, girl?” her Aunt Bree would probably ask in this very situation. “They are so easy on the eyes. Such beautiful, horrible men.”
Whatever that meant, Cara mused as her captor took to jogging down the driveway and jarring every tooth in her head.
She beat on his back.
He swatted her behind and yelled at her.
Beast.
What was with these three?
She didn’t recall them as mean. Not in any way. In her tender teenage years, she’d sighed over them for their looks and their happy-go-lucky ways. Even her old childhood girlfriends still living here had pretty much the same description for the three tall, swaggering cowboys. Some just described them with platitudes like “bachelors”. “Sweet treats”. “Available”. Her best pal, Eva Cordona, had been more specific, calling them “pussy bait”. But only one wo
uld elaborate beyond a few words or a wave of a hand. Skylar Freemont told a tale of having been propositioned years ago by Jed to make love with him and his brothers in a four-way. Skylar had given them a “hell no” and run off, scared out of her wits to try it.
Cara’s imagination tried though. Rich it was too. Hot and sweaty. Just what a divorcée needed to liven up her pathetic celibacy.
Finally, now, Cara could glimpse the brothers’ lifestyle. See if that last deliciously decadent rumor might have roots. True, slung over the shoulder of one of them as if she were some drowned cat was not how Cara would have pictured renewing their slight acquaintance. She tingled at the memory of dancing with Harry last Friday night at the local dancehall. Harry, the second oldest, with his powerful bod had surprised her with his dexterity on the floor and his statement that he’d call her this week to make a date for dinner. His younger brother Will had taken her out for the two-step and kept her laughing at his jokes through the entire tune. She’d met the eldest, Jed, last week in town. Six inches taller than she and built like a woman wanted a man, he was a prime piece of Texas male. Built just like his brothers with shoulders to shelter a girl, eyes to adore her, big hands to hold her and pleasure her.
Cut that out. She frowned at herself, getting a sore tummy and probably bruises too, where she bounced against this MacRae’s shoulder. How far away was their house from the highway?
She’d complain about this. Let them know she was not easily manhandled. She wasn’t interested in becoming any man’s docile little mate ever again. But wow did she want to be some worthy man’s bedmate.
That’s why she’d come today.No man in town appealed to her hungry libido like any one of the MacRae boys.
She had to learn more about the Beautiful Horrible. Why they still appealed to her after all these years. Why she fantasized about them in her bed at night. Did each brother have a female interest at the moment? Did they want one?
And why the “horrible” nickname? Did they run drugs? Guns? Catch rustlers on their spread and boil them in oil? What was beautiful about that?
And why was everyone in town in on the secret? And she wasn’t?
But she was being carried up to the house, wasn’t she? Rescued by the illustrious MacRae brothers. Reclusive and oh so ornery, the men of Clan MacRae ran the biggest cattle ranch in Bravado County. Men respected by the other men in town. And lusted after by the women, married and single.
Sounds like a win-win afternoon to me.
I get my boxes of French lingerie plus a little private time with the three men I could crave through flood, lightning and hell.
* * * * *
Jed MacRae shoved open his front door with his foot and upended his burden with a move that had Cara Ford weaving in front of him.
“Whoa, baby!” He caught her by her shoulders, steadying her as the two of them dripped all over one of his mother’s fine oriental carpets. “Tough day, huh?”
“Yeah, for me and your longhorn,” she managed, one hand shoving back her long, blonde hair plastered to her pretty head. “How’d you know I was out there?”
He chuckled as he preceded her down the hallway past their home office toward the country kitchen and the fire he and his brothers had laid earlier this morning. “Surveillance cameras. Batman is afraid of thunder.”
“Batman?”
“Our big fella out there.” He turned, caught her admiring his ass in the skintight jeans and grinned at her interest in him. “He runs the damn fences every time he hears a clap from heaven.”
She flushed, caught in the act of sizing him up. But she smiled, her soft brown eyes as big as chocolate Kisses on him, hands rubbing her rib cage, looking a little dazed from her journey up the driveway. “You have cameras on him?”
Well, Jed wasn’t going to tell her the full set of reasons why they had cameras at all entrances to the Rocking M. He tugged at her arm to resume their path to the warmest room in the big old house. “He is our prize boy. Worth about twenty grand, give or take. But in general, we just like to be able to see who comes calling on us.”
“Smart,” she said as they made their way toward the kitchen.
“Can’t open the gates to just anyone,” he clarified. Their family business and their fraternal pleasure were not anyone else’s concern.
“You have a lot of visitors, I guess, what with your prize cattle and insemination programs.”
“We do. Come on over to the hearth and drip on this carpet a few minutes. I’ll get you a towel, but I’d say you should get out of those clothes fast. Take a shower.”
Her gaze spanned his chest before she locked eyes with him. “Thanks for the hospitality, but I’ll just get dry here, Mr. MacRae.”
“Jed,” he corrected her. “And I’ll call you Cara, if you let me. We know each other from back in the day. And we met at the feed store last week, remember?”
“Oh I do,” she murmured, her expression dreamy, as if she were memorizing the shape of his nose and lips.
Good. You’re interested all right. Just like you were years ago. “Joel Winthrop introduced us.”
“My cousin,” she added, “on my mother’s side.”
“So I hear.” Jed put up a hand to hold off her objections before he headed for the recently modernized bathroom off the country kitchen. He knew more about her and her new addition to her Aunt Bree’s store than he’d bet she knew about him and his brothers. He and his two brothers had grilled Joel, among others who had known Cara when she was a kid. But Jed didn’t have to ask too much to recall how pretty she’d been back then. How young she’d been.
Now? She was lovelier yet, no longer jailbait and, according to what he’d learned in the past few days, she’d been insulted and disheartened by a man who had sought to control her. Jed and his brothers wanted to take a turn at improving her opinion of men in general, and all three of them in particular.
If she’s ready. And willing to try new ways to please him, his brothers and herself.
He grabbed two towels from the bathroom and returned to stand in front of her. “We’re a tight-knit town here in Bravado.”
“Yes. I keep forgetting,” she told him as she dropped a towel over her head. “Everyone knows everyone else.”
“Sometimes too well,” he acknowledged. Time to let her see what he did know about her. “Paris and New York are too big for everyone to keep tabs on all the neighbors.”
She stopped rubbing her head and looked up at him. Her full lips parted in surprise that he had learned where she lived for the past few years. And he nearly went to his knees just imagining how that pretty pink mouth would feel under his. Lush and giving. Damn, slow down, man. You’re tickled she’s here. Thrilled this little mix-up with the packages brought all of you together sooner than you planned. Just don’t rush her. She’ll buck.
Instead, she shook her head. “Paris and New York were certainly too big for me.”
“How’s that?” He had a good idea, but he wanted her explanation.
“Too much traffic, too much conflict. Too impersonal. I need a simpler way of living. Kinder people.”
He hoped she also needed a kinder man. He had three in mind.
“Let me help you.” He grinned at her, giving her a sample of the gentleness she needed to accept his mastery. Reaching out, he rubbed the soft terry cloth over that wealth of pale champagne hair.
She pulled away, but not before he got a good feel of the perfection of her scalp.
Oh yeah, Cara Ford. You might be interested in a man, but that hubby of yours made you skittish. Not all men who want to dominate a woman are cruel.
Fingers clenching so as not to seize her right then and there as if he were a caveman, he stepped backward. “Hold up a minute here. I’ll go grab something so you can get out of those clothes.”
She snorted as she bent over to dry her long hair before the fire. “I doubt anything you have will fit me.”
True. What if you wore nothing? Jed grinned like a satyr. Taking t
he far hall to the wing that housed each man’s bedroom plus the new bigger room for playtime, Jed wondered what the hell to take to her. Jeans? No, ours are six inches too tall. The hips too slim to surround those sweet curves. The asses too flat to cup her firm cheeks. And their shirts would drop past her knees. Not exactly useful or warm. So what’s the plan, man?
Rounding the corner of his own bedroom, he grinned at the new king-size bed, then stopped in front of his closet. He hitched his hands on his hips and examined his clothes. Every item that hung inside here was almost a duplicate of his brothers’ racks. Time-worn Levi’s and tees, chaps, boots, a few pairs of trousers and starched white shirts. Finally, hand to his bathrobe, he grabbed the heavy black terry and turned for the kitchen.
When he arrived, he stopped at the threshold. The sight of her made his cock rise to attention. She looked like an X-rated goddess, petite compared to their huge Scots MacRae proportions. She was drenched through, her nipples poking at her white cambric shirt, jeans molded to her small waist, her face so fair without makeup, her eyes large as if she were a porcelain doll, her hair wound up in the turban exposing her elegant neck.
And she was staring at her two boxes that sat upon their circular kitchen table.
As if startled by a glimpse of him, she blinked. “You do have my shipment.”
“We do,” he assured her in his smoothest come-to-papa voice. Then he strode toward her. “I brought this for you. It is the only thing I could find that might work.”
She looked at it as if it were a handful of snakes. “Your bathrobe doesn’t seem…”
“Decent?” He shrugged. “The only thing I know is that you have to strip off those wet clothes and get dry and warm or you’ll be down with pneumonia in a heartbeat.”
She looked skeptical.
“No more arguments.” He put his hands to her shoulders and turned her toward their newly remodeled bathroom. “Go down the hall to the bath. First door on the right. Take a shower. A hot one. There’s a hairdryer in the cabinet. Get warm. Then come back. It’s almost suppertime and we’re having a beef stew Harry made. And a good cabernet to go with it. You need both.”
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