“If Dad’s happy, we should be happy,” Holden said.
“Three months,” Waylon said, rising from the table. “That’s too damn long. Anything can happen in three months.”
I wondered if he was thinking about Maria, and how quickly things had gone south after she’d moved in.
“Three months isn’t much,” Holden said, finishing up his eggs. “But it’s an eternity.”
We were probably all thinking about Maria, and the mess it had caused when she turned tail and ran. We were finally all back to good with each other, brothers until the end. We couldn’t make the mistake of letting a woman come between us again, no matter what role she played in our lives.
After we washed up and stacked our plates in the drying rack with last night’s dinner dishes, we headed out to do the morning chores.
I stopped Waylon at the barn door. “You okay, brother?” I asked. “I thought we talked it out and agreed on this. We can call Dad and tell him the deal’s off if you aren’t on board.”
Waylon grunted. “I’m on board,” he said. “We need that loan to save the ranch. That doesn’t mean I gotta like it.”
“Oh, you’ll like her, all right,” I said.
“If you give her a fair chance, that is,” Holden added.
Waylon pushed past me with a scowl that would scare the cows up from the pasture. He opened the barn door and strode off towards the side-by-side, calling back over his shoulder as he went. “I have no intention of giving her a chance or liking her. She may be our stepsister forever, but she’s only our problem for a few months.”
I wasn’t quite so sure.
8
Amber
Now
When I woke up the next morning, the house was so quiet I thought I’d gone deaf. I leapt out of bed, scrambling frantically for my phone. The tone when I turned it on told me I still had my hearing, and I faceplanted on the bed in relief. I wasn’t deaf. Wyoming was just freakishly devoid of pissed off drivers blaring their horns.
After my heartbeat had returned to normal, I rolled over and sprawled out, luxuriating in the huge, soft bed. But soon enough, my stomach growled and I had to give up the warmth of the blankets. After freshening up and getting dressed, I headed downstairs. I hadn’t heard a peep from the rest of the house, so I took my time looking over everything in the big lodge. The cursory glance I’d given it the night before proved to be enough, though. There wasn’t much to see besides the building itself.
The lingering smell of food drew me to the kitchen. If I’d been hoping for a homemade breakfast waiting for me, I was sorely disappointed. The fireplace was going in the big living room, and a small black stove was putting off heat in the kitchen, but there was not scrap of food sitting out. Besides a rack of dishes beside the sink, the kitchen was as barren as if no one lived there.
Luckily, the refrigerator was stocked with lots of food, and I happened to make a mean omelet. I whipped one up and scarfed it down, grateful no one was there to see me inhaling the food. After eating nothing but airplane food the night before, I was famished.
Having fortified myself with breakfast, I still hadn’t seen any of my stepbrothers, but I remembered Holden’s warm welcome the night before. A smile crept across my face and refused to leave when I thought of him filling up my bedroom with his genuine warmth and earnestness. He’d said that everything was mine to explore, and if I wasn’t going to be stuck wiping snotty noses and nagging three kids to get off their phones and get outside all day, I was going to take full advantage. I couldn’t believe how much I’d lucked out. Not only was I not watching spoiled kids all winter, I was living with two super hotties.
Who are your brothers, I reminded myself. Which was true in a weird legal sense. But there was no law against looking.
Grabbing a canvas jacket off the hook beside the door, I stepped outside. A blast of cold hit me first thing. It wasn’t the kind of clinging cold we got in New York, where the snow stuck around for ages in the spring, sitting in grey slushy piles in the gutters and sticking to your boots. This was a dry chill, windy and wild. I pulled the jacket tighter around myself, although like the house, the clothes here were lacking in style.
But I didn’t care any more than I would have if the boys turned out to be five-year-olds like I expected. So, I headed down the steps and looked around. The ranch was flat as far as I could tell, but there was a gorgeous view of the mountains jutting up in one direction. In the other, at the edge of a seemingly endless expanse of fields, a line of trees had burst into bright, daffodil yellow.
“Yoo-hoo,” a high voice called. I nearly jumped out of my skin. But I needed my skin for later use, so instead of jumping out of it entirely, I just jumped a foot into the air and shrieked.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you now,” said a woman who looked to be in her late fifties or early sixties. She was short and round, with short, curly blue hair, narrow eyes, and round, red cheeks. As she waddled up to the porch, I checked for a vehicle, but she must have parked around back. Or she lived here.
“Hi,” I said, bounding down the steps so she wouldn’t have to walk up. She seemed a little out of breath already.
“Hi, there,” she said. “I thought I saw one of the boys coming home late last night.”
“You live here?” I asked, thinking she was the cook or housekeeper.
“Out back, in the last cabin,” she said. “Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m Amber. Their stepsister.”
“Oh, you’re Amber,” she said, her beady little eyes scanning me up and down. “Hmph.”
What was that supposed to mean? I drew myself up straight and tall. I wasn’t going to let this nosy old bird intimidate me.
“And you are?” I asked, giving her my best New York attitude. Which, admittedly, wasn’t great.
“Oh, I’m Mrs. Grimes,” she said. “Mr. Grimes works with the cattle, but I’m around here all day, and just next door every night.”
I wasn’t sure what she was insinuating, but I didn’t like it one bit.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll make sure to come by if we need anything.”
Just then, a man strode around the side of the house. He looked about the same age as her, but he had on a ball cap and a canvas jacket just like the one I’d pulled on.
“Oh, Gerald,” Mrs. Grimes tootled. “Come and say hello to our new resident.”
Gerald stopped and took me with one sweeping motion of his eyes. “Hiya,” he said, nodding at me as he pulled on a pair of work gloves. “I got to get to work. Nice to meet you.” And with that, he was gone.
“He keeps to himself,” Mrs. Grimes said. “Likes to say that whatever happens under a man’s roof is his own business. That’s why we ladies have to stick together. Isn’t that right?” She gave me a wink.
“I guess so,” I said slowly.
“Good,” she said. “You make sure to let me know if there’s anything going on that I should know about.”
“Okay.”
“I work in the garden and clean up in the big house,” she said. “They don’t let me go into the cabins. Say they’re private.”
She looked like she was waiting for me to dish up some gossip, but I’d barely gotten out of bed. And I wouldn’t be contradicting my stepbrothers, anyway. If they didn’t want her snooping around, I certainly wasn’t going to invite her in. Holden had told me I could go anywhere, but I didn’t figure I should mention that to Mrs. Grimes.
Instead, I told her I was going out for a walk, and I left her in the driveway. Shaking off the odd encounter, I headed along a narrow dirt road that was nothing more than two tire tracks worn in the grass.
I was on a ranch. In Wyoming. A week ago, my life had been totally normal. Now I had to keep reminding myself it was real.
I almost squealed with delight when I saw my first cow. Wishing Haley was there to share the experience, I whipped out my phone and snapped a pic, but it was so far away that it did
n’t look much different from a dog. Sighing, I put my phone in the jacket pocket, absently fingering the gloves I found there. The thought of not sharing this moment with Haley made my eyes feel all salty. Suddenly, I missed her painfully. She would totally get me right now, and we’d forever laugh about the pic I sent her of real-life cow.
I had to get a picture. Pressing my lips together in determination, I stepped forward. The barbed wires of the fence were strung just close enough that I wasn’t sure I could slip through. That was the one thing Holden had warned me about, so I figured it was pretty important. I walked along the fence a little way, trying to find a good spot. Further along, I saw a section where the wires were bent a little, making them about two feet apart instead of eighteen inches.
“Okay, Haley,” I muttered under my breath. “I’m going in.”
Preparation was key. I looked to see if anyone was around to stop me. Nope. I zipped the canvas jacket so the zipper wouldn’t fall against the wire and electrocute me. I pulled on the gloves in case they would protect me from cow dung if I accidentally had to put a hand down for balance. I put up the jacket’s hood so it wouldn’t catch on the wire above me. And I dove the for opening.
Okay, I didn’t really dive. I carefully bent and lifted one leg, then put it back down, not sure I had good enough balance to slip through the wires not using my hands. Bent over like that, lifting one leg in the air, I probably looked like a dog stopping to pee on a bush in the park. Good thing there was no one around to see me.
Gathering my courage, I channeled my inner ballerina. It was all about balance. My mom had put me in dance classes for a few years, before it became clear that I was hopelessly uncoordinated and about as competitive as a cow.
A cow that I’m now going to take a picture of.
Slowly, I lifted one leg and extended it over the wire. Not too bad. I eased my body over and set my foot down. Now I had a hot barbed wire between my legs. But I had no intention of touching it, so it didn’t matter one bit. I eased my body through, bending my knee and sliding my body sideways like a ninja master. I even remembered to duck my head.
When I lifted my other foot off the ground, though, my balance wobbled. Instead of trying to catch it, I dove sideways, through the fence, and landed in the grass. The wire was rippling from where my boot had hit it, but it either hadn’t been long enough to convey a shock, or the thick soles of my boots had protected me.
Thanks to the resurgence of 90’s fashion trends, my boot soles were probably thick enough to protect me from the shock of an electric chair. Which is probably where my mother would send me if I got kicked off Coyote Ranch on my first day for trespassing in a cow pasture.
Picking myself up, I examined the borrowed jacket, looking for signs of cow dung. I didn’t see much on it but some bits of dry grass and dirt, though there was something suspect near my foot. It looked like a wrinkled, grey pancake, but I wasn’t taking chances, so I skirted around it and headed for the cows.
Holy hellions, I’d done it! I’d navigated an electrocution device, and I was going to get a picture for my bestie. Wyoming was going to be awesome.
9
Amber
One Week Before
My head was lying next to a toilet. My mouth tasted like I might have drunk toilet water. My neck was cramped, my shoulder ached, and my whole body was stiff with cold from lying on a tile floor in just my underwear and bra.
I sat up. I had no idea where I was. This was bad, even for me. Sure, I liked to party and pretend to be a bad girl back in high school, but four whole months had passed since then. I was reformed. Or at least, I had learned to control my drinking. And I’d wanted to get laid, but this had not been part of the plan. I tried to cover myself with my hands, as if some perv might be watching me through a camera.
The truth was, I’d never been as bad as I pretended. I was a huge faker. I didn’t do drugs, though I had to pretend to keep up my image. Sure, I liked a fruity cocktail, but who didn’t? The things tasted like heaven, and who could resist those cute little umbrellas that looked like they belonged in Barbie’s beach house?
Okay, so I wasn’t perfect, but we all had to do what we could to survive high school. And despite my poor decision-making skills, I had always had Charlie there to deliver me safely home before dawn with nothing more than a chaste kiss. When I went out without him, Haley and I had a strict stick-together policy.
Stumbling to my feet, fear quaked through me. Where was Haley? Was she okay? Had we been drugged and kidnapped? Or worse? And where the hell were my clothes? I remembered telling her I was going to get laid, and I remembered arriving at a bar, and taking tequila shots, and dancing… I guessed from my state of undress that I’d succeeded in my mission, though like my infamous first attempt at getting laid, I had no memory of it.
I reached between my legs. My panties were dry, and I wasn’t sore. A flash of memory jolted through my mind—Charlie looking up at me from the street. There was no way I’d let him out of this one, even to prove that I could give him what those girls had. Or had I? And where the hell was I?
Groping the walls, I stumbled from the bathroom into a hallway with abstract art prints on the wall and heavy, Oriental rugs that did not match the paintings at all. “Haley?” I whispered. Clearing my throat, I called again. “Haley!”
“Miss Durant,” said a disapproving voice behind me. I turned to see a man in uniform—a servant. My hands flew to cover myself before I saw that he was holding a folded towel with my clothes laid over the top. “I’ve washed your things. Your mother requests your presence when you’ve cleaned yourself up.”
My mother?
Nodding mutely, I grabbed the clothes and dashed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. This wasn’t my mother’s house, or her brownstone. So it must be…Senator Westling’s. As I dressed, dread clung to my every move. Way to make an impression on my mom’s new husband. Oh my god. Was I going to have to call him Dad?
And how the hell had I ended up at Senator Westling’s? I didn’t even know where he lived. No matter how drunk we’d been, we would have given the cab driver Haley’s address and gone back there to pass out. What the hell had happened after the tequila shots?
I wracked my brain, but besides that image of Charlie’s face, I drew only a blank.
Ten minutes later, after splashing my face and rubbing toothpaste over my teeth with my finger, I shuffled into the kitchen. Mom and Senator Westling were sitting at the table together, both on their devices. They looked up as one, both setting down their tablets when they saw me. For one weird moment, I thought they looked like parents about to discipline their naughty child.
And that’s exactly what they did…or so they thought.
10
Amber
Now
Wyoming totally sucked. I had done everything right. I snuck up to the cows, but they danced away from me, bumping each other with their big butts. Mooing and moaning, they cast baleful glances my way, as if I meant to shoot them with a gun instead of a cell phone camera.
“Stupid cows,” I muttered, stepping forward. Something slid under my foot and I shrieked, sure it was a rattlesnake. But no. It was one of the grey pancakes. The upper crust of it had slid off when I stepped on it, and my heel was now an inch deep in brownish-green cow dung. I didn’t have to look up a picture to know what it was. It smelled like…well, like shit.
“Craptastic,” I said. I spent a minute wiping my heel on any spots of grass I could find, though now I could see millions of the dung-patties, some of them still brown but most grey. I could hardly find any grass, and most of what I did find was brown.
At last, I took a few pictures for Haley, though they weren’t as close as I’d have liked. I wanted a close-up of a cow’s soulful eyes and shiny wet nose. But they weren’t giving me their good side today. Maybe they’d come around once I’d been here a few months.
Before I went home, I vowed to take a picture of the prodigious poopers. Then I headed b
ack, not wanting any of the boys to come along and laugh at me for being grossed out by cow dung or not being able to get up close. They probably threw their legs over the cows and rode them all over the farm. I laughed to myself at the image of giant Holden sitting on a cow. It would probably collapse under his weight. I wondered how he’d even manage with a girl. He’d probably crush her with his weight, too.
Giggling a little, I made it back to the fence. Pulled my gloves back on, since I’d had to take them off to take pictures. Checked my zipper. Checked that I was still unobserved. Made sure my phone was still in my pocket. And went in.
Halfway through the wires, I felt a sharp tug on the back of my neck.
Craptastic! I’d forgotten to put up the hood. And now it was caught on the wires. I reached back, but I didn’t dare untangle it, since I couldn’t see behind me. With my luck, I’d definitely touch the electrocution lines. Apparently, electricity was not conveyed through wanna-be camel-colored canvas jackets, though, so I’d gotten lucky with that. I didn’t want to push my luck much further. But just as I started to ease through, the hood pulled me off balance, and I had to put my hand down on the wire. With a yelp, I jerked it back and dove through.
This time, I ended up twisted around and flat on my back, hanging halfway upright by the hood of the jacket. Even with the giant yank from my weight hanging on it, it hadn’t broken free. I scrambled around, trying in vain to break free. But after five minutes, it was clear I was never going to get loose. I couldn’t even rip the jacket. I’d tried.
I pulled out my phone, ready to call the boys, when I realized I didn’t have their numbers. Fuming that my mother had handed me a post-it with one of the numbers scrawled on it instead of sending me a text like a normal person, I scrolled through and hit her number. Not her office phone, where her secretary would pretend she didn’t know me, and then put me on hold forever like I was a random citizen calling to complain about the homeless guy sleeping on the corner, and then tell me my mother was in a meeting.
Rope Me, Cowboys_The Complete First Novel_A Reverse Harem Forbidden Romance Page 3
