The Subject Was Rose [The Sunset Palomino Ranch 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  “Yes!” Jesse pointed at Rose in agreement. “It’s no good living where you work. You get stale. You need to see things with a fresh viewpoint. That’s why I enjoyed painting Willow’s portrait, to hang out at their amazing Desert Modern house and just soak in the vibes from their indoor-outdoor pool.”

  Rose closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. “That place is just incredible, isn’t it? I can’t believe they built the house around that enormous boulder.”

  “Oh, you should see the place I’m at now. Shining Lands Ranch, bordering Joshua Tree Park. Richard Nixon retreated there after he resigned. It used to be called ‘Camp David West.’ Two hundred acres and its own golf course.”

  “Wait.” Rose held a hand out, palm down. “Shining Lands? That sounds damned familiar. Who the hell was recently talking to me about Shining Lands?”

  Jesse scoffed. “Must’ve been another asshole, if he knew this guy. Hey, do you mind if we Xerox this menu? I know it’s Willow’s, but she won’t mind. It might give me some design ideas—it’s perfectly in sync with my mid-century theme.”

  “Sure!” Rose took the frame off the wall and unhooked the cardboard from the back. “She’s got a copier in her office right here. You know the one I really wonder about? ‘The Sybian Scene.’ What the hell is ‘Sybian’? Lesbians? Men love that, when two women get it on.”

  “You’re thinking of Sapphic.”

  The new voice in the lobby intruded on their little party, and both of them twirled around, openmouthed.

  Of course, it just had to be that Drake Stinson asshole, new owner of Shining Lands Ranch. Jesse had seen him earlier in the Cavern eating with some other assholes, which was why he’d retreated to the bar and the comfort of an electric drink. It’s like he’s following me. I can’t even get away from him when I try. “Sapphic?” Jesse asked stupidly.

  “Sappho was a seventh century poetess born on Lesbos. She was known for drinking from the furry cup.” Stinson looked at the glossy black menu in Jesse’s hand. “Stealing memorabilia now, are we?”

  Jesse looked at the menu’s other side and saw that it depicted silhouettes of two palominos humping. “Thanks for Cumming!” it exhorted guests. Oh, Lord. It figures. Lamely, Jesse said, “We’re not stealing it, we’re…”

  Predictably, Stinson’s expression changed when he looked at Rose, giving her the once-over with cartoonish eyeballs about to fall from his head and roll like billiard balls across the linoleum. “Hello again.” Stinson did everything but wriggle his eyebrows suggestively.

  “Hi,” Rose said curtly. “Come on, Jesse. Let’s copy that in Willow’s office.”

  As much as he hated the guy, Jesse couldn’t just stalk rudely out. So he lifted a friendly hand in a half wave. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” sneered Stinson. “And I expect to see that new design for the library. Did you find any better tulip chairs than those pieces of shit you came up with?”

  “Yes.” Jesse was relieved he could honestly say he’d accomplished that. Jesse was a work horse. He’d never be able to sit at a bar with something like that hanging over his head. “They’re shipping from Milwaukee tomorrow.”

  “Remember, I need twelve of them, not ten.”

  “They’ve got twelve.”

  Stinson snorted. “And what about that Steve Reiner chaise longue? Those are next to impossible to find.”

  “Found one.” Jesse narrowed his eyes. The copy machine lit up Willow’s office. Jesse longed to get back to the silhouette of Rose. She looked sexier than ever being industrious. He knew Stinson was just piling on the agony to be a dirtbag. For some reason Stinson felt the need to assert himself over his underlings, which was pretty much everyone. Women of course he didn’t treat so badly. But already, in only a month of living at Shining Lands, Jesse had seen at least four crying or cursing women storming out of the main house.

  “And when will that arrive?”

  “Thursday.”

  Stinson must’ve finally run out of things to bitch about, for he nodded tightly and stalked off through the front door to the parking lot.

  Asshole. Jesse thought about the oft-spoken adage, something about how you only loathed people you secretly loved, people who “pushed your buttons.” If you didn’t have the capacity to really love that person, the adage went, they wouldn’t be capable of affecting you so strongly.

  I call bullshit on that. Jesse went to join Rose in the motel’s office. I just plain old hate the guy.

  Chapter Three

  Drake Stinson was having another god-awful day.

  Although pretty much every day had been horrible since he’d come to this oven-baked desert that was hotter than the door knocker to hell. He did, however, have some friends in the Palm Springs area. Well, they were mostly the children of his father’s friends or people he vaguely remembered riding bikes or playing baseball with as a youth. Out of boredom he’d tried to collect some of them around him again when he’d been forced to return to this shithole, a 200-acre oasis surrounded by a pink concrete wall.

  Drake clutched a gin and tonic and admired the living room’s Persian paradise garden. He wandered down one of the little formal pathways to observe the broad-leaved tropical plants, heavy with mist from the tiny creeks that meandered through the garden. Shining Lands itself was no shithole. With its eleven man-made lakes, hundreds of olive trees, and tennis courts, it was among the top estates in the valley. Drake was just hard-pressed to scavenge the tiniest happy memory of living here for the first fifteen years of his life.

  He knew there were probably hugely repressed good memories. No doubt somewhere in there, he had created some happy memories with Sam Stinson. They had probably gone to a Dodgers game, seen the wax museum in Vegas, or driven out to see Marines blow things up at Twentynine Palms.

  It was just too bad Drake couldn’t recall any of these things.

  Just as well. Drake wanted no part of his father Sam, good or otherwise. His father was a lying, cheating sleazebag, and he’d sent Drake here to manage this fucking cattle ranch, knowing Drake would rather be punched in the testicles than deal with cows. However, some of what he’d learned as a child was coming back to him, and he did enjoy acting like a bigwig with ranch suppliers, bankers, veterinarians, and machinery salesmen. Drake was relying on the ranch manager Joaquin less and less, and more and more on his own memories from thirty years ago.

  Today that damned decorator had pissed him off again. That guy had the knack for irritating the crap out of Drake for some reason. Jesse’s gayness had nothing to do with it. Of course one expected one’s interior designer to be gay. Jesse wasn’t even feminine in the slightest, and some of Drake’s own bon vivant buddies wore diamond earring studs once in a while. In fact, Jesse Factor’s beauty had probably caused many heteros to bat for the other team. He was that stunning.

  No, it was Jesse’s work ethic that got under Drake’s skin. Jesse was the best up-and-comer in the Valley, according to Barry Manilow and Dakota Fanning’s “people.” Jesse was just too damned lackadaisical. That was it. Drake knew that decorators were creative types and creativity was nurtured in bizarre ways that might appear lazy to outsiders. But some of Jesse’s work was just not symmetrical. Swags on matching windows, for instance, might not hang at the same length. Two paintings over a mantel might be hung at different heights. Things like that.

  Today Drake was irritated at the library’s tulip chairs. Jesse had them placed around the conference table, six on one side, five on the other. Why? Because one was needed at the head of the table. Again, not symmetrical! Jesse tried to say it didn’t need to be symmetrical, wasn’t even desirable to be symmetrical, but it irked Drake’s sense of order. He hadn’t had much order in his life, so he liked to control what little he could.

  Now he had a brilliant idea that shoved the tulip chair problem onto a back burner. He’d have a dinner party with some of these rich old friends! They could eat in the formal dining room, and he could catch up with some of these f
riends, fellow cattle ranchers or otherwise rich people—ole Troy Placker was the heir to a dental floss empire, some were the children of Hollywood royalty, and someone else’s dad had invented shoe inserts.

  Troy had liked the idea, so Drake sat on a bench inside the garden, directly under the sun roof’s Mayan dome. He called the Searchlight Motel and asked to speak to Rose Britton, Executive Chef. Drake hadn’t really disliked her soup the other day. One of the guys he was dining with had mentioned that the new chef was a piece of arm candy, and Drake had wanted to see for himself—waiting, of course, till after the bankers had left. He had mentally filed her away for future reference, surprised to see her in the lobby with that irritating Jesse Factor. Well, of course. Women liked having gay men for friends. There was nothing threatening in it.

  Drake knew he had made a positive impression on the buttery, honey-blonde chef, so he was at a loss for words when she told him no.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Stinson—”

  “Drake,” he insisted.

  “Drake. But I work every single day, seven days a week, here at the Searchlight. I can’t possibly take the time to cook for thirty people. Thank you for the invitation, though. I thought you disliked my soup, so I’m surprised you want to hire me.”

  “The soup was fine,” Drake grunted. “You have a certain deft touch with ingredients, an artistic flair that creates a stimulating mélange.” He knew that after spending so much time in Paris his voice was tinged with a slight French accent, and he used that to his advantage.

  Rose sounded a bit passive at his compliments. “Thank you, Mr. Stinso—Drake. But I seriously don’t have a single spare minute. I could recommend a few people in the LA area who’d be willing to drive out and serve you.”

  So Drake got the names of a few idiots who could cook. He wasn’t used to being thwarted. His anger made him realize that his whole intent in having the dinner party had been to lure Miss Britton to his lair. What an incorrigible horndog I am. I can’t even leave the innocent, uncorrupted sex kitten alone.

  Drake sunk his fingers into the pockets of his jeans. He’d taken to wearing jeans and cowboy boots to put him into cowboy mode. He was used to wearing chaps in his not-so-secret European world of bondage clubs. He was a well-known Dom in Europe with a line of eager and willing submissives, and here he couldn’t even get a chef from the sticks to cook dinner for him. He would be paying her well, and he still couldn’t get her to say yes! Was it because he’d insulted her soup? Insulting someone’s soup was just a lifestyle Dom’s way of toying with her, of giving her a hint of Dominant things to come. Obviously, Miss Britton wasn’t a natural submissive. Drake would take care of that.

  He was standing in front of a giant wall of glass that looked out onto the reflecting pool at the rear of the estate. He supposed he could get his aide-de-camp, Stony Curtis, to call these chefs. He’d already told Troy Placker he’d be hosting the dinner, and he couldn’t look like a flake. His international reputation had already taken a beating after the big deal his father had made over the India incident. Sam had instantly cancelled all of Drake’s credit cards and sent him to this shitho—to this fairly decent outpost, like sending a criminal to Siberia. Since when was it a crime to frequent a bathhouse?

  Well, apparently since the bathhouse was a known homosexual haunt.

  Drake had spent years, decades even, patronizing bondage dungeons across Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. He had led a hedonistic, daredevil life ever since barely squeaking out of Yale with an MBA on his father’s dime. Gstaad, Côte d’Azur, Sao Paolo—Drake had blazed through them all, establishing a series of party apartments among the most decadent in the world. Now here he was, forty-four years old, and he’d emerged unscathed. His father hadn’t uttered a word of condemnation about his extravagant conduct until Drake had been photographed blitzed on arrack with his pecker down someone’s throat. Some trendy British moron who normally blogged about tennis had gotten ahold of the photo, and it was all downhill from there.

  He loathed his father, and the only part of Sam’s tirades that Drake agreed with was “You could stand a bit of growing up.” It was true. The past year or so Drake had felt the need to do more with his life. To create something, to be responsible for something—it was difficult to describe. He’d taken to this cattle ranching like a fish to water, probably earning him Sam’s admiration, no doubt. And the past several play partners he’d had here to Shining Lands had just depressed him. The shallow, noncommittal BDSM life was maybe getting old. Maybe Drake was actually ready to have different sorts of relationships. What, though? Many of his friends had found happiness with committed pets or slaves for life. Could it be possible that Drake could do the same?

  Maybe I’m finally maturing. Drake accepted his father’s incoming cell call. His cowboy boots sounded authoritative as he walked across the marble floor. This was the wall where a Monet and a Gauguin used to hang. His father had removed them all long ago for his Central Park penthouse. Drake was working with Jesse to find equally as impressive mid-century paintings to replace them.

  “Sam.” Drake hadn’t called his father anything else in a long time.

  “Son.” Sam reminded him of that constantly. “I just talked to Joaquin.” Drake had been doing excellent work with the ranch manager.

  Work. Heh. Such a foreign word. Now it’s something I actually do. “Did he tell you I’m getting up to speed on CowBucks?” He mentioned the name of the computer program that recorded data about every single cow on the land.

  “What? No, Joaquin told me that John Hartzman doesn’t think you’re managing for growth and average daily gain. He thinks you’re still going for pounds per calf weaned.”

  Drake sighed deeply. Wasn’t that what Joaquin was there for? Wasn’t that part of his fucking job? Joaquin had been successfully managing Shining Lands’ ranchland for over fifteen years without Sam Stinson or anyone else butting in. Drake knew his father was making a nominal effort to shape Drake up, to get him up to speed on calf weaning, just so Drake could say that he’d done it. He knew about culling and replacing heifers. Once Drake proved that, he could probably relax and go back to partying.

  The thing was, Drake didn’t want to relax and go back to partying. He sort of liked feeling useful like this, as though he was actually making a difference at the ranch. The novelty would probably wear off soon, but for now, he actually liked feeling important.

  So he discussed average daily gain for awhile with Sam, and then there was a pause.

  Sam cleared his throat. “Listen, son. You know I paid that British twit a boatload of cash to pull those photos of you from his tennis blog.”

  Drake sighed deeply. Not this again. “Of course. Isn’t it all taken care of?”

  “Well, obviously, it’s the Internet, and a lot of people had seen the pictures before he yanked them. I had to suffer through the mortification at the polo club when Mike Biggs, the damned Styrofoam magnate, ribbed me about my son being a damned anal buccaneer.”

  “Anal buccaneer?” Drake tried to laugh it off. They had been over that incident in Goa a dozen times. Why did Sam keep bringing it up? “Sam, I’m not some fucking pirate.”

  Sam’s voice trembled with rage. “The day when a damned Styrofoam magnate makes fun of me, boy, that’s the day I put my foot down. The day Mike Biggs laughs in front of the entire Andover alumni about my son being a back door bandit, that’s the day I draw the line!”

  Back door bandit? Drake’s voice was tight. “Sam. You know I didn’t know that person was a man. It was fairly easy to be fooled with all the makeup and saris he was wearing.”

  “And all the liquor you’d been imbibing!”

  Drake’s voice rose. “And I wasn’t being a fucking anal buccaneer, Sam. The Indian guy was just—just—”

  “Say it, son! Just say out loud the words everyone on the Eastern Seaboard is calling you! You’re a damned pole smoker and I won’t stand for it!”

  That was it. Drake lost it. �
�At least I don’t cheat on my wife, you low-down sleazeball!” Drake practically broke a thumb jamming it down on the “end” button, and he made a line drive with the phone straight at the blank wall where a Gauguin had once hung.

  “I’ll give him a goddamned anal buccaneer,” Drake seethed. He knew that was part of his reason for never having settled down. When he was fifteen he’d caught his father bending an associate’s wife over his desk and Drake had promptly been sent to, well, the Phillips Academy at Andover.

  “Ah…sir?”

  Drake spun around. He hadn’t realized that Stony Curtis was in the room. That guy could sneak in unawares in the middle of a monastery. Drake tried to compose himself, but he knew his face was red. “I need a new phone, Stony.”

  “I’ll get you a new one right now. There’s a gentleman here to see you. Burt Macklin. I know you don’t know him. He was an associate of your father’s.”

  “What sort of business? Cows?”

  “In a way. I think it has more to do with the leasing of some of your land. I know Burt didn’t have an appointment, but him and Sam had a very close business relationship.”

  “Fuck. Send him into the library.”

  Drake retired to the airy room Jesse had decorated with melon-colored sofas and chairs—and now, the conference table with the uneven amount of tulip chairs. Photos of Sam Stinson shaking hands with Richard M. Nixon, Frank Sinatra, and Truman Capote were scattered arrogantly over one wall. Drake would’ve gotten rid of them but they lent a certain cool and historical aura to the place. He put his hands on his hips and exhaled heavily, this time without disgust.

  Jesse Factor. Jesse was somehow friends with Rose Britton. Drake had seen them in the Searchlight’s lobby examining that old bordello menu. Jesse had probably been drooling over that menu item, the Cock-a-Doodle-Doo. Drake could order Jesse to convince Rose to cook for his party. Drake could lure the youthful and gullible interior decorator here then render him stupid by leaning back against the desk, crossing his legs, and displaying his well-hung package. Drake would wear no undershirt. When he crossed his well-muscled arms, the biceps would bulge under the short, tight sleeves of his LaCoste shirt, and the nubbins of his nipples would stand out like bullets, enticing the poor young thing.