The Divine Creek Ranch Collection Volume 4

by Heather Rainier

  “Regina went to rehab and Roger went to jail and later prison, where he died. I joined Duke’s family and was never returned to Regina’s care. She never kicked her addiction and died of a heroin overdose. She’s buried in San Angelo.”

  “I noticed that you refer to them all by their proper names.”

  “I do that to make it easier to explain. I refer to Aunt Mary as Mom and Uncle Joe as Dad, the same as Duke. They insisted on it when we were little and we reaffirmed it when I got to be in middle school. I asked to go to a counselor and they took me and we hashed out issues I was having with being bullied at school. I was small for my age and an easy target. I told them then that I would always consider them my mother and father.”

  Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe were his saving grace, taking a scared little kid and helping him to grow into a man. When he’d had struggles as a geeky teen, they’d gotten him the help he’d needed, and he knew deep down he owed them his life.

  “What did you do about the bullying?”

  “The counselor noticed how close Duke and I were, and she suggested that we take martial arts training or self-defense classes together. We learned how to defend ourselves and each other. It also helped me to build up some muscle mass. When bullies find out you’ll stand up to them they back off.”

  “So you and Duke have been close since you were little bitty. Is that why you went into business together?”

  Gage saw Duke smile at her question and grinned himself. “Actually, we kind of…backed into that. Ace and Kemp knew Mom and Dad. They were the ones who taught us how to defend ourselves. I think they got more than they bargained for with us. We hung around them as much as we could and learned from them and got interested in the field. Of course our specialty is really the technological end of special investigation but we’ve gotten in our fair share of interesting places, too.”

  “I’ll bet you have. So you help Ace and Kemp?”

  “As much as we can. Besides subcontracting for them we also have our own IT consulting business.”

  “Which explains why you stay so busy. Which part of your job do you like best?”

  Gage didn’t even have to think about the answer to that question. “Helping people who can’t defend themselves or don’t know how. Helping good people out of tough situations.”

  The case Gage and Duke had been working on the week before came to mind. They were helping Ace and Kemp in a situation involving the father of a toddler who had just discovered that the little boy he’d always thought was his son actually had been fathered by another man. The biological father was currently in jail along with the boy’s mother for a vast array of charges.

  Ace and Kemp’s future bride, Summer Heston, was indirectly involved with the case, which had placed her in a lot of danger at one point. The mother and biological father of the boy had been behind numerous attacks on her and her business. Duke and Gage were working with Ace and Kemp on the case and were hopeful that it might possibly never reach the court system. That all hinged on them discovering enough information to dissuade the extended family from choosing to pursue custody of the boy, who was better off with the man he knew as father.

  Emma yawned sleepily and said, “We need heroes in this world.” A few seconds later she said, “Gage, if you ever need to talk to someone in the future about what happened to you, I have a friend, a counselor who is very good at listening. Just remember that, okay?”

  “Sure, angel.”

  Being bullied as a teen had dredged up all kinds of hurt and anger from his early trauma, and he’d benefited from counseling then. He didn’t discount the possibility that it might help in the future, too. Some wounds went deeper than humanly imaginable.

  Emma wiggled around between them, finally got comfortable, and drifted off to sleep a few minutes later.

  “She’s something, huh?” Duke whispered in the dark.

  “Yeah.”

  Chapter Nine

  A couple of weeks later, in mid-September…

  Emma shifted her yellow-and-black Aztek into park in front of Grace Warner’s house. She pulled up her planner on her smartphone and checked her to-do list. Duke and Gage had asked her in advance to make preparations for a night out on the town.

  At first, she’d been filled with trepidation because that meant dressing up. Dressing up meant makeup. Dressing up and makeup generally involved high heels of some kind. The thought of having to put all that together made her cringe, but at least she had someone to go to. Several “someones,” in fact, but Grace was her go-to gal of choice for today. Plus, she had a baby gift to deliver and a little one to coo at.

  Besides the night out, Duke and Gage had also asked if she was taking a vacation in the fall, because they wanted to knock a couple more items off the bucket list. So she’d actually taken the red pen and marked a whole week off in October for their next adventure. They didn’t hint at what they’d planned, but she had big hopes.

  She grabbed the handles on the big pink gift bag and climbed from her vehicle. Jack answered the door when she rang the bell, and she smiled when the first thing she heard was the sound of Rose Marie squalling.

  “Hi, Emma! Come on in. Grace is expecting you. Pardon the noise.”

  “Don’t apologize, Jack. That’s the sound of a healthy, hungry baby. I love it.”

  Jack directed her into the living room, where Grace was seated in an upholstered chair, arranging Rose Marie so she could nurse. Emma giggled when the caterwauling ceased in midwail as Rose Marie’s meal began. Grace smiled in relief and beckoned Emma to come sit down.

  Emma patted Rose Marie’s head gently before placing the gift within Grace’s reach and then sat nearby. Grace draped a receiving blanket over three-week-old Rose Marie and her shoulder and peeked inside the gift bag. She gasped and pulled the baby quilt from the bag and said, “Did you make this?”

  Emma snickered and said, “Grace, I couldn’t quilt to save my life. I found it at that new baby and children’s store in Divine.”

  Grace laughed. “Aren’t you worried Jane is going to be pissed off if she finds out you bought a blanket instead of making one? Or you could have had ‘the quilters guild’ make you one.”

  The last time she’d encountered one of the members of that group in the grocery store, Tabitha had asked Emma if she’d decided against hiring that “bigamist Warner woman” as an RN at her clinic. Emma had bitten her tongue and politely told her that Maya Warner had graciously agreed to join her staff even though she no longer needed to.

  Emma snickered. “I think Jane’s just about given up on me joining her little group. I can sew on a button. That doesn’t mean I want to quilt. Bunch of frumpy gossips.”

  Grace burst into giggles, and Emma joined her. Her friendship with Jane had been strained lately. Because she was spending her weekends and even some of her weekday evenings in Duke and Gage’s company, she didn’t get to see as much of Jane as she used to.

  Emma had finally nixed joining the quilters group altogether. That was time on her evenings off she couldn’t get back, and spending it with gossips wasn’t her cup of tea. Besides that, she loved Maya and wasn’t about to support an organization that was so unfriendly to other people in the community. She could only imagine how Jane would react when she got word that Emma was dating two men.

  Emma did a double take when she noticed a tiny pair of sandals on the table beside Grace. “Are those what I think they are?”

  Grace chuckled and held them out to Emma to inspect. Small enough to fit in the palm of her hand were a pair of teeny-tiny Birkenstock sandals. Grace said, “My friend Nell Flanders from Colorado sent those for the baby. She’s concerned about Rose Marie’s environmental footprint and said that they were biodegradable.”

  “Wait. Is Nell the one who wanted you to ask me for…”

  Grace bit her lip. “Rose Marie’s placenta? Yes. She promised me that if I buried it at the base of one of the oak trees in the backyard it would grow taller. She said that might offset R
ose Marie’s methane gas output.”

  Emma blinked a couple of times. “Her farts?”

  “She asked us during a video chat. You should have seen the guy’s faces. It’s hard to look someone that sincere in the eye and lie, but they did it. If you ever meet Nell, just remember that I told her you helped bury it…at midnight on a full moon, okay?”

  “You did not tell her that!”

  Grace nodded with all sincerity. “Be glad I didn’t promise her that we would do a dance around the tree afterward. The guys adamantly but lovingly refused that request. Can you imagine those guys dancing around a tree?” Grace burst out laughing and Emma joined her, finally wiping tears of mirth from her cheeks.

  They spent time talking about the baby and getting caught up on how things were progressing with Duke and Gage. Grace marveled that the three of them had gone skydiving together.

  “Emma, I swear I never saw that one coming. You, with Duke and Gage. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

  Emma smiled and replied, “We do have a lot of similar interests. I need to ask for your help with something. Your hands are full, I know, but if you could at least point me in the right direction…”

  Grace’s blue eyes sparkled. “Sure. What do you need?”

  “The guys are planning a big night out. It’s a large step out of our comfort zones for all of us.”

  “The bucket list you mentioned?”

  “Exactly. They’re taking me out and we’re supposed to be going dancing too. I—um. All I wear are these—” She gestured to her scrubs and white coat and zebra-striped clogs. “I hardly ever wear makeup. My closet should be declared a clearance-sale disaster area, it’s so full of hodgepodge and chaos. And don’t even get me started on shoes…”

  “Makeover time?”

  Emma slumped and said, “I stood in front of my open closet this morning after they told me and realized that is exactly what I need. I’m a terrible clothing shopper. If it’s not jeans and a nice sweater or my scrubs…I’m lost.”

  Grace pondered what Emma said for a few seconds as she put Rose Marie over her shoulder to burp her. Somehow Grace Warner managed to look sexy as hell, even in a nursing bra and top. Emma honestly didn’t know how she accomplished it. Grace obviously was losing sleep like any new mother did, caring for an infant around the clock. Emma could only attribute it to the fact that the men were taking turns staying home to help out around the house and with the baby.

  Once Rose Marie was burped and happy, Grace took her to her daddy, who was in the study working on a house plan. Jack beamed at the baby when Grace turned her over to him, and he laid his pencil down and put his boots up on the corner of his desk to cuddle her in his arms while she fell asleep. He pressed a kiss to the top of Rose Marie’s downy little head.

  Emma thought this was where new families sometimes went astray. That moment of discovery and wonder when the baby came quickly turned into reality, when work sometimes had to wait and interruptions happened and a mother and father and other family members had to pull together to make it happen. Mom couldn’t do everything all the time.

  Grace said, “Come on, Emma. I have a website to show you. Thank you, Jack. I’ll be in my office with Emma.”

  Grace bent to kiss Jack, and then he replied, “Okay, darlin’. Y’all take your time. Me and sweet pea got some talkin’ to do about icky boys and how she’s never gonna date.”

  Grace giggled and replied, “Poor girl. She doesn’t have a chance with three protective daddies.” She led Emma across the house and down a hallway to one of the bedrooms on the back side of the house.

  A double bed made up with a plush comforter and pillows rested against one wall, but the room was clearly used as an office, judging by the large oak desk that dominated one corner of the room. Tall windows provided natural light, and books lined an oak bookshelf nearby. A large framed boudoir portrait of Grace hung on one wall, in which she was dressed in a pink nightie and pink satin robe.

  Emma was in awe of the change that Grace had gone through in the last couple of years. She remembered her being shy, downtrodden, and overworked. Unhappy. All of that had changed since she’d met her men. The difference in her was almost miraculous.

  She was now invested in two different businesses, Harper’s Embroidery in Divine and Discretion in Morehead, plus she was a best-selling erotic romance author, writing under the pseudonym Caressa MacFarland. Emma owned all her titles. The same was true for Rachel Wolf, Grace’s friend, who was known in the e-publishing world as Jane O’Malley. Grace and Rachel had introduced Emma to the world of erotic romance, and she was eternally grateful.

  “So this is where it happens, huh?”

  Grace chuckled. “Yup. This is Jack’s bedroom, but he hardly ever uses it, so he had Wes and Evan Garner build me a big desk since the light is so good in this room. Have a seat.” Grace offered her a chair and then pulled up another and opened her laptop. “I want to show you a website. We’ll start there for basics.”

  Grace clicked on a browser bookmark and a web page loaded on the screen. “Hips and Curves dot com. I’ve heard you mention them before.”

  “I love them.”

  “Oh wow, look at that gorgeous model.”

  Grace clicked through various pages showing her around the website, giving Emma an idea of what they offered. All the models were built like her and Grace with curvy hourglass figures. Grace suggested some basic foundation garments and apparel items. With a twinkle in her eyes, she clicked on the Halloween costume page. They both giggled when a naughty nurse costume came up on the screen, and it gave Emma an idea.

  Grace printed out the items Emma was interested in and turned to her with speculation in her eyes. “Exactly how far do you want to go with this makeover, Emma? Are we talking about a new outfit for one night out or do you want to go ‘whole hog’?”

  Emma thought about that for a moment and knew she could do with a full makeover. It didn’t have to mean getting rid of who she was, but she definitely needed help in the style and poise department. “Whole hog,” she replied decisively.

  “All right. I have connections that can help.” Grace slipped her phone out and started dialing.

  Oh, shit! What have I gotten myself into?

  * * * *

  The next day after work, Emma checked the clock in her phone as she pulled up in front of the white house set back amongst thick shade trees in the older residential neighborhood.

  Rachel and Grace had suggested Emma visit their friend Camilla O’Neal, who was an assistant manager at The Dancing Pony. Prior to taking that job, she had worked her way through college as an exotic dancer at a club in Morehead.

  Camilla didn’t broadcast that part of her life far and wide, but she did offer private striptease and pole-dancing lessons to interested women.

  “You can do this, Emma Guthrie. If you can skinny-dip and have outdoor-in-broad-daylight sex, you can certainly handle shaking your booty a little.”

  She stepped from her vehicle, checking her bag to make sure she had all the things she’d been asked to bring. Trying to imagine herself moving like a stripper, she somehow managed to trip over her feet as she walked up the shady sidewalk to the front porch. Who in the hell am I kidding? Heat stole over her cheeks, but she took the last few steps with determination.

  The doorbell echoed inside the house, and a few seconds later a gorgeous, petite strawberry blonde answered the door. She had to be at least nine or ten inches shorter than Emma. Soft music played in the house as Camilla held open the screen door for her.

  “Hi, Emma. I’m Camilla. Don’t look so worried. I’ll have you gyrating and grinding in no time.” She had a twinkle in her eye and an easy smile that helped put Emma at ease as she stepped into the living room.

  Emma said, “Gosh, I hope so because I’m as clumsy as I can be.” Please don’t let me break my ankles wearing the hooker heels in my bag.

  Camilla giggled and replied, “No more talk like that. You just hav
e to find your rhythm, that’s all. You’ve probably been trying to fit into somebody else’s idea of what is sexy. It’s time to find out what works for you. I’m glad you wore something comfy and easy to take off.”

  Emma’s eyebrows shot up at that comment, and Camilla giggled playfully. “What? That’s part of it. You want to learn how to get out of your clothing in a way that has your men’s jaws hanging open and them begging for more, right?” she asked encouragingly, like the only answer to such a question was “Yes!”

  She pictured Gage with his intense green eyes riveted on her, ready to pounce, and Duke’s sensual gray gaze as he watched her peel off each layer. A little seed of confidence began to grow inside of her. “Yes, I do!”

  Camilla beckoned her and said, “Then come on back to my studio and we’ll get started.”

  * * * *

  Late September

  Duke stood at the living room window watching the activity below. “There they go again, Gage. What do you suppose is going on downstairs?” Duke asked as he observed Summer Heston, Maya Warner, Rachel Wolf, and Camilla O’Neal carry another round of full black trash bags to the back of Rachel’s SUV.

  Their apartment complex was built on the outskirts of Divine. A pecan tree orchard was located on one side, an open pasture was on the other side, and across the road was a field used for growing hay. Parked on that side of the street was a faded, blue van. It had been there when he’d seen the girls take out the first load of bags.

  “She just moved in,” Gage said as he looked over Duke’s shoulder. “What could she be clearing out already? Was that blue van there earlier?”

  “Yes. I don’t recognize it. Someone was looking at the vacancy in the other building. Maybe it belongs to them.”

  Emma had been tied up for a couple of weeks working on a special project and had promised that she would be ready for their big evening out, which wasn’t until that weekend. They had asked her in advance so she’d have time in case she wanted to shop for a nice outfit.