by Luxie Ryder
Hot Off the Ranch 2
A Ballad for Her Cowboys
When Misty sees Aiden and Seth again, she hopes the handsome cowboys have forgotten the wild night they all shared. But for the men who loved and lost her years earlier, finding her again at a resort in the middle of Arizona gives them another chance to show her how they feel. When they take on extra work at the rodeo in order to save their own ranch, they don’t know that the songbird performing at the cabaret lounge every night will be Misty.
A few bad years have driven her confidence and her career into the ground. She distrusts everyone and can’t allow herself to believe that they only want to love her. Can Misty admit that she loves them too and be satisfied with life far from the spotlight? Will the day ever come when the only song in her heart is A Ballad for Her Cowboys?
Genre: Contemporary/Ménage a Trois/Quatre/Western/Cowboys
Length: 31,521 words
A BALLAD FOR HER COWBOYS
Hot Off the Ranch 2
Luxie Ryder
MENAGE AMOUR
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Amour
A BALLAD FOR HER COWBOYS
Copyright © 2010 by Luxie Ryder
E-book ISBN: 1-60601-434-X
First E-book Publication: August 2010
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2010 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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A BALLAD FOR HER COWBOYS
Hot Off the Ranch 2
LUXIE RYDER
Copyright © 2010
Prologue
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please give it up for Misty Tucker!’
Misty walked out into the spotlight on the tiny stage, taken aback at the size of the audience waiting for her. The cabaret lounge of the Broken Jaw Rodeo and Wild West Holiday Lodge in Arizona looked filled to capacity. In the three months since she’d taken the job, she’d never seen so many people. Her boss, Hoagie Dunshaw, hadn’t lied when he promised things would pick up come high season.
To learn every guest staying at the Lodge crammed themselves into the bar wouldn’t have surprised her. It wasn’t as if there was anything else to do at night in an artificial town built in the middle of a dust bowl.
‘Hi everyone, and welcome to the show.’
Misty injected as much warmth into the words as she could muster. After all, she ended up singing for barely more than minimum wage at a fake saloon bar, in a place she never heard of, wasn’t the crowd’s fault. They shouldn’t have to pick up the tab for the bad management and bad loving of one low-life son-of-a-bitch named Wade.
She picked up her guitar and launched into a familiar tune, one she played and sung many times before. The song had been a minor hit when things went better a few years back before her ex ran her life and career off the road. If Wade found her right now, then he’d fuck up this gig up for her, too.
One song blended seamlessly into the other. Once upon a time she enjoyed performing for others, excited to share the thoughts and feelings she poured into her songs, but those days were long gone. Misty rarely sang her own compositions anymore. They reminded her too much of the hopeful young woman she’d been once.
Another sequin lost its fragile grip on her costume and floated to the ground distracting her for a moment. It lay glinting at her feet like a fallen teardrop. She tore her gaze away from it, lest she succumb to the urge to shed some real tears to keep it company on the stage.
A commotion at the doorway when more people entered was her signal to launch into the last part of her set. Many of the staff and ranch hands came to catch the end of the show after they got off work. She’d become accustomed to the loud, but well-meaning, interruption. The fresh air, which drifted in when the door opened, revived the crowd and gave Misty a much needed change of atmosphere. Sure, since the smoking ban, the air didn’t get as nasty, but two hours of breathing in what one hundred people breathed out was no fun at all.
The disruption lasted a little longer than Misty expected, and then she remembered with extra guests came extra staff. Hoagie took on a few more people to handle the horses, some to serve the guests, and a couple of extra camp guides for the kids. She waited until they all found seats, cast a smile their way to show them they were welcome, and then strummed the strings of her guitar to signal she needed them to quiet down so she could sing.
Misty about reached the middle of the first verse of another country standard, when the door swung open one more time. She threw a glance at the latecomers, a little annoyed to be interrupted again, and then forgot that and the words of the song when she recognized the cowboys who had just walked in. Or, at least, she thought she did.
With the spotlight blinding her, Misty couldn’t be sure at first, but then she watched them idle across the room and she knew no one else in the world moved like the tall, dark one. And the fact he had a slightly shorter, but no less impressive, blond man following him meant they could only be the
two men she prayed she would never see again - Aiden Black and Seth Orton.
Not that they’d ever done her any harm, far from it. What they gave her was a night she would never forget and a guilty secret only three people in the world knew about, them and her.
The tight knot in her stomach unclenched a little as she remembered what they taught her. She learned a lot about herself that night and she spent the years since trying to forget. But her memory had no conscience, knew no shame, and despite her embarrassment at seeing them again, her brain began to taunt her with images of how the three of them looked tangled in each other’s arms.
Misty turned away before they caught her staring. Her only hope was that in the time since she saw them last, they had many new conquests and had no reason to remember her.
But what if they did remember? She knew she’d never forget…
Chapter 1
Five years earlier——Nashville, Tennessee
Misty saw the two guys take, what became their regular seats at the bar. She smiled, secretly pleased they hadn’t taken no for an answer when they asked her to have a drink with them after they’d first seen her show almost a week earlier.
She couldn’t figure them out. They had the hots for her, that much was clear, but surely they didn’t plan to compete with each other for her? Both guys seemed totally aware of the fact that the other wanted her too, and it didn’t bother them at all. Would they eventually lay their cards on the table tonight and ask her which one, if either of them, she would go home with?
Her set ended with her feeling flustered by their attention as she always did. The dimly lit interior of the wood paneled room made it impossible to even see the guys’ faces under their Stetsons, but she almost felt their eyes branding her. They didn’t smile, talk, or applaud while she performed. They sat there, slowly sucking on their beers, and watching her intently. She knew they liked her voice, they’d told her that much. She wasn’t sure they came just to hear her songs anymore though. They were on the hunt, and while the thought of it annoyed her, she couldn’t ignore that it thrilled her a little too.
‘Has anyone told you that you look like a young Rita Coolidge?’
Misty turned toward the voice she heard when she left the stage, and made her way to the bar. The wealthy, middle-aged man she found leering down at her could be a music executive or the owner of a record label, so she couldn’t afford to be rude, no matter how much she wanted to be. It took ten years of her life for her to find the courage to tell her father she didn’t want to help him run the family business anymore, and another two years for her to get this gig in Nashville. Thirty-year-old women trying to break into the country music scene didn’t need to be making enemies.
‘Yes, I have heard that before, but she cut her hair a few years back, so I don’t think we look alike anymore.’
‘That sure is pretty hair.’
The slightly sweaty guy licked his lips as he looked at her breasts, pretending to admire the long, shiny black tresses covering them. Misty mentally dismissed him. She turned away, but he grabbed her arm.
‘Hey, I’m not finished talking to you, yet.’
‘Well, she’s finished talking to you.’
Misty didn’t need to turn around to know Aiden had leapt to her defense. The husky timbre of his voice, roughened with anger, made her insides melt, even considering the suddenly tense atmosphere. His strong jaw jutted forward as if daring the guy to try to hit him and his already deep-set eyes practically disappeared under his frown. Seth had been blessed with boyish features and might have looked a little less menacing, except for the cold, dead-eyed stare he locked onto the man beside Misty.
‘Okay, okay. Sorry, fellas. I didn’t know she was taken.’
‘She isn’t taken,’ Seth said to the guy as he backed away. Turning to her with a grin, he added, ‘Yet.’
Misty smiled, despite Seth’s arrogance. ‘Thanks, guys. I was handling it though.’
Aiden looked ready to argue, but Seth elbowed him in the ribs, and shook his head as if sensing a show of machismo wouldn’t help. So far, she found Seth the more sensitive of the two. Not that Aiden was a caveman or anything. He didn’t appear to have much time for unnecessary sentiment.
They moved toward the bar with Aiden reaching it first and taking charge of ordering a drink for them all. He didn’t need to ask Misty what she wanted—he bought her the same thing every night for the past week. She sat on the stool Seth pulled out for her, aware there was no point playing games when they all knew, if nothing else, they liked each other’s company. Besides, she would probably never see them again after tonight.
‘So, this is your last night here?’ Seth asked, taking a seat on her other side. ‘We gotta get back to work too.’
‘That’s right. You guys have your own ranch. I am surprised you could take any time off at all.’ The Missouri cattlemen told her of their lifelong friendship and of the partnership they formed years ago. They were the same age as her, but she guessed the fact they worked so hard all their lives was what made them seem a little older. When Aiden’s father died, leaving him the owner of a ranch sinking under a mountain of debt, Aiden was just out of his teens, and he had to grow up fast. Seth invested in the business, becoming part owner with Aiden. They told her the ranch barely kept its head above water, but the trip to Tennessee for a business meeting gave them the excuse for a long-overdue holiday.
Seth grimaced, and the expression looked totally out of place on his boyishly handsome face, and hid his bright green eyes for a second. ‘Don’t let Aiden hear you say that. I practically had to hog-tie him to get him away from the place as it is.’
‘Too late, I heard.’ Aiden smiled and nodded in Seth’s direction, handed them their drinks. ‘He was right, too. We both needed a break.’
Aiden eased his six-feet-plus, heavily muscled frame onto the stool beside her, and Misty swore she heard it groan in pleasure. Embarrassed at where her vivid imagination transported her thoughts this time, she took a long gulp of her drink. Having an eye for the small details of life made her a better songwriter, but if she’d begun imagining that wooden seats got a thrill out of having a firm butt pressed into them, then she’d gone crazy. Determined not to notice his habit of sitting with his long, lean thighs spread wide and his groin pressing hard against the shiny surface, Misty averted her gaze and turned a little toward Seth. Luckily, neither guy had any idea where her mind went. She wondered how they would react if they knew just how dirty she could be when she let her imagination have free reign. Not that she’d ever ask them to find out. They were horny enough without any further encouragement from her.
‘We didn’t intend to stay quite so long though.’ Seth left the sentence hanging while both guys looked at her, making it clear that she was the reason they were still in town.
Misty cleared her throat, made nervous by the message in their eyes. ‘So I guess we are all leaving Nashville tomorrow?’
‘Then we’d better make the most of tonight.’
Aiden’s voice seemed to curl around her and tingle across her skin. The words spoken plainly, as if the decision about where the night would lead was out of her hands and he knew she would go wherever—or do whatever—he wanted her to. The promise in his azure eyes stole the breath from her lungs as she stared into Aiden’s broad, tanned face.
So did Aiden win a bet between them or something? He made his play in front of his friend so she guessed they came to some agreement. When she turned back to Seth to see his reaction, he looked at his friend and nodded almost solemnly, as if conceding. But then he picked her hand up from the counter and rubbed his thumb across the back of her knuckles. His wide smile highlighted dimples in his cheeks she hadn’t noticed before. Misty found herself back to being as confused as ever, until Aiden all but mirrored the actions of his friend and then grinned when she looked from one to the other in shock, knowing for sure what they wanted.
Misty stared down at their linked hands and then up at t
heir faces, trying to figure out the nature of Aiden and Seth’s relationship before she even dared allow herself to consider what they were asking her for.
‘So are you, you know…lovers?’
Were they bisexual? Neither man looked to be, but then she realized she didn’t really care. What they did with each other didn’t interest her anywhere near as much as the thought of what they wanted to do with her. She blushed when they laughed at her question.
Aiden lifted her hand to his broad lips and brushed a kiss across her skin. ‘Sometimes we want the same things. That’s all. And right this moment, what we want is you.’
Misty claimed back her hands and wrapped them both around her cold beer as she tried to clear her head. Aiden and Seth kept right on drinking and smiling, as if they hadn’t just made her the most tempting offer of her life and expected her to be cool with it. She allowed her gaze to roam over them again while they spoke to each other about mundane tasks they had to do before they headed out of town in the morning. Neither man looked wild or particularly promiscuous. Sexy? Yes. Masculine? Hell, yes. Able to drive her wild, either separately or together? Oh God…
The air sizzled around her and she almost changed her mind about even staying to finish her drink. Even though she knew leaving would be the sensible thing to do—the good-girl thing to do—she couldn’t make her body obey her brain.
‘‘So how did you…I mean when did you find out that you both liked this kind of thing?’’
‘‘Sharing a woman, you mean?’’
Misty’s stomach hit her boots at the look in Seth’s eyes and the promise of sex in his voice. She nodded, taking another swig of her beer to hide her blushes. Aiden laughed and ran a finger down her cheek.
‘‘Did he embarrass you?’’
‘I’m not embarrassed.’ The tone of her voice told Seth, Aiden, and anyone else who cared to listen that it wasn’t embarrassment making her skin flame. It was want: pure, dirty, unadulterated want.
‘To answer your question,’ Seth continued, ‘we found out after a party back at the ranch. We both had too much to drink and wound up asleep on the only empty bed in the house—mine. The first we knew about it was waking up when Kristen crawled into the bed between us, naked as the day she was born.
