She didn’t even attempt to hide her grin and thoroughly enjoyed the way his cheeks reddened through his tan. “If you’re feeling left out of the conversation, you’re welcome to touch. Or come closer. Or just come. I’m flexible,” she said, letting her grin widen even more at the purposeful innuendo.
“Stop,” he growled again. The standoffish, stick-up-his-ass Ryan was back in control. She sat back as they pulled into the clearing. No matter. Eventually, he’d realize that Fate didn’t make mistakes, and he would choose her.
She could wait.
He parked the truck in the growing line of SUVs and dually pickups. A couple of cars, sport and coupes, were parked on the driveway, but otherwise it was Tonka trucks as far as the eye could see. One might make the mistake of thinking it was a guys’ retreat, but just as many women climbed out of the pickups as men.
She slithered out of the truck and crossed the field toward the back porch, where people were gathering around a massive outdoor kitchen set up. Picnic tables were scattered around the lawn. Everywhere she looked, people were laughing. Red-shirt-hottie-in-glasses was standing around with a few other guys. She was close enough this time to see that he was a wolf.
A burst of magick slid across her body and she heard Ryan come up behind her. A devilish plan started to form. “You said that guy’s a VonBrandt, right?”
“What?”
“Red shirt and glasses?” she asked, nodding at him.
“Yeah. He’s a VonBrandt.”
“Adam VonBrandt?” Kate raised a brow and her insides tingled as a jealous look passed over Ryan’s rugged features. She loved watching him get all growly like that.
Gods, he was hot.
“Well…” Ryan paused, and looked back and forth between her and Glasses Guy.
“Yeah, you can’t hide him from me, Ryan. Just because you don’t want me to get the horse.”
“Kate…” There was a hint of something dark his voice. Probably just annoyance that he was sending her off to flirt with another man when he’d much rather have her for himself. Too bad. So sad.
She approached the little group of men and Glasses Guy made eye contact with her. His gaze slid up and down her body. He looked like he was about to say something, but she could feel Ryan looming over her shoulder.
The VonBrandt man nodded at her, then returned his attention to his friends. Another one of them eyed her, but one look at Ryan was enough to make him avert his gaze.
Dammit. She was going to have to get Ryan to leave her alone if she was going to be able to do any real flirting. He was a cock-block of magnificent proportions.
“And you saw Allan come back with that chick from New Orleans? Shit, she was hot,” one of Glasses Guy’s friends was saying as Kate turned around to tell Ryan to leave her alone.
“Maybe the real action is at Joe’s Bar tonight, then,” said another of the friends.
“Why don’t we head over there after the summit meeting?” said another. “Aaron said it’d be a short night.”
Ryan’s eyes were on the group of men, and Kate watched his face go darker and darker. There was something going on behind his eyes. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but she wanted to handle all this junk with Glasses Guy—with Adam—before she started back in on Ryan.
For now, she just needed him to vamanos.
“Kate,” a familiar female voice called from behind her. Kate whirled around to find her cousin Gretchen walking across the drive toward her. There was a clear resemblance between all the Quades, but Gretchen was widely acknowledged to be the most beautiful of the young female wolves. She even managed to make the all-black-all-the-time look hot. Their cousin Helena Quade followed Gretchen, only a few steps behind, her arms filled with notebooks. That girl never went anywhere without her planners.
“Hey girls,” Kate called and waved. “Where’s Jessa?”
“In the last car. Chica, you got here wa-a-ay faster than us,” Gretchen said, enveloping her in a big hug and giving her a hard squeeze. “When did you leave?”
“Really early,” she said, hoping her cousin wouldn’t push for more.
“We left at 7 a.m. How early could you possibly have gotten up?” Gretchen noticed Ryan and smiled. “Hi, I’m Gretchen Quade. I better introduce myself since my cousin has failed to do so.”
Ryan shook her hand and nodded. “Nice to meet you. Ryan Travis.”
“I knew you looked familiar,” Gretchen said, giving him a wide smile.
Kate’s cheeks heated. A little with embarrassment and a little with jealousy. She didn’t like the assessing glance her very pretty cousin was giving Ryan from behind her bright, toothy smile. Gretchen was known for sinking her teeth into anything and everything she set her sights on. But she needed to pick a different target this time.
“Dibs already,” she whispered into Gretchen’s ear.
“No prob, cuz,” Gretchen said, keeping her voice very low. Gretchen stuck out a pinky finger and Kate couldn’t help the giggle that rolled from her throat. She wrapped her pinky around Gretchen’s and they shook on it. Just like they’d been doing since they were twelve.
Movement on the porch caught Kate’s attention. Red shirt—Adam—was on the move. He and his friends were on their way inside the big house. Dammit. This wasn’t going to be quite as easy as she’d thought. But if she could get to the bar before him…and then be waiting…hmmmm…
“Hey, Kate,” Helena said, finally having made it across the drive with her stack of notebooks.
“I have to go inside. The meetings are starting soon.” Ryan walked off, not pausing for even a second so Kate could introduce her other cousin. Rude.
“Hey, Helena.” Kate hugged her with a smile. “You doing okay?”
Helena nodded. “I need to head inside, too. I’m sure Grandfather will want me taking notes for him during the meetings.”
“Okay, I’ll check on you later.”
Helena nodded and hurried past them, leaving her and Gretchen standing together alone.
“So what’s the plan, Chica? I know we are not going to just wait around while all these men gab about unbonded wolves and how it’s going to wreck our pack culture if they don’t fix it.”
Kate laughed. “Actually, I need to talk to a man about a horse.”
“Grandfather wants to buy a horse from the VonBrandts? He usually gets all his stock from the Hiltons.”
“Nope. This horse is for the Trewitts. And the man I need to see about it is planning to whittle away the night at a cowboy bar in town called Joe’s.”
“Mmmmm, been planning some plans?”
“Just a few,” Kate said. “I can’t really say right now.”
“No worries. You had me at cowboy bar.” Gretchen laughed and pulled a set of keys from her jean pocket. “Go find Helena and drag her out of that boring ass meeting so we can go have some fun. I’ll get the car.”
“Now that sounds like a good plan,” Kate said, giving her cousin a wave before heading for the patio door.
Chapter Seven
Ryan saw Dee before he was ready to leave Kate’s side. He didn’t like the way the VonBrandt boys had been looking at her, but at least her cousin was with her now. He felt like he could leave, and he had to get to Dee.
“I have to go inside. The meetings are starting soon,” he said as another girl joined Kate. The other Quade women would be able to keep an eye on her, just fine. He had to get to his cousin before she did something monumentally dumb.
He ran across the drive toward Dee, just as she was about to head into the house. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her aside. “Do you know where Adam is?”
Dee shot apologetic glances to the big guys in black who were all around. “No. I haven’t seen him. You said—”
“I asked you not to talk to him yet, but if you see him, you’re not going to have much of a choice. I need to find him.” He gestured down at the group of girls around Kate. “I need to get to him before she can.”
“Wh
y?” Dee narrowed her eyes at him. “What did you do, Ryan?”
“I need to convince Adam to sell the horse to me. And I need to do it now.” He pressed his lips together, not wanting to tell her about the rest of his plans. Dee glanced around the yard again, but it was dark, so it was fairly hard to see. Everything out here just looked dark.
“Ryan.” Dee’s voice dropped to a low-low warning growl. “What. Did. You. Do?”
He waved a hand. “I sent Kate after the wrong guy.”
“Ryan!”
“He’s harmless. He’s the professor one. I’m not even convinced he has a dick, let alone knows how to use it.” Ryan put his hands on his hips, wishing he had some alpha magick to push at her. Make her obey him. “Now. Tell me where Adam is.”
“I cannot believe you did that.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m related to you.”
“This is important, Dee. If I don’t stop her from finding Adam—” He couldn’t say the rest of the words out loud. She’s going to be around me every day was almost as bad as I’m going to have to see her all the time. No, it wasn’t about that. I won’t be able to be the alpha.
There.
That was the real problem. If he didn’t get Kate to lose this job opportunity, he wouldn’t be able to be the alpha. There was just no way he’d be able to have her in his pack. Now that he’d spent more time with her, he knew that his first thought—segmenting the job so he wouldn’t have to spend as much time with her—simply wouldn’t work.
He couldn’t be in the same vehicle as her…
He couldn’t be in the same room as her…
Hell, he probably couldn’t be in the same town as her…without constantly thinking about her. Without obsessing over how much he wanted to climb between her legs—or, for that matter, obsessing over who else might be climbing between her legs.
Nope. No good thinking about that.
Instinctively, he glanced around. The professor had gone inside with his buddies, and Kate was still outside. Thank God.
Okay, let’s be honest, buddy. You can’t even be in the same state as her.
No, he could not.
“Knowing Adam, he’s either out at the barn, or up in the library.” Dee’s smile was brief, like she was entertained by the memory. “He’s got a bottle of Scotch in there he thinks his brother doesn’t know about. Of course, it’s ridiculous to think anything happens on this ranch that Aaron VonBrandt doesn’t know about.”
“Okay, I’ll check the library. You check the barn.” Ryan moved out of the way while Kate’s brunette friend stalked by, her arms full of planners, her nose buried in a notebook that looked like it was full of lists.
“You said you weren’t ready for me to talk to him,” Dee said.
“Don’t approach him.” Ryan put his hands on her shoulders. “Just text me if he’s out there. Go.”
He hurried inside before Kate saw him, heading straight for the library. Adam wasn’t there. He stuck his head inside the hallway that led off the library. Some voices drifted toward him, but none of them were familiar.
The little beep in his pocket brought a smidgen of hope, but Dee’s text reported that she hadn’t had any luck either. Ryan walked through all of the accessible first floor rooms, still not finding Adam. Everyone was gathering for the big meeting in the dining room, and Ryan saw cousins of his and plenty of shifters he didn’t know yet. Wolves all.
But no Adam VonBrandt.
He texted back to Dee. Meet me in the kitchen.
Like it or not, she had just become an accomplice to his mission. The kitchen was empty, save for two pretty middle-aged women doing the dishes and having a polite conversation that didn’t interest him in the least. One of them looked up when he made his presence known. A brunette with big, bright blue eyes.
“Can I help you?” she asked. “Actually, it’s easiest if you tell me who you’re looking for.”
“Adam,” he said, keeping his voice down.
“He’s around here somewhere,” she said, drying a big blue plate and putting it in the cupboard. “He was just at the family meeting, so I imagine he’s around.”
“I saw him with Matt and Julian earlier,” said the other woman, and Ryan’s stomach clenched. Julian. The professor.
Dee came in through the mud room, and smiled at the women. “Tonya. Laura. Good to see you.”
“Oh, Dee,” said the one with sharp blue eyes, “it’s great to see you again.”
“You, too, Tonya.” The smile was tight, and Ryan knew why. Tonya. That was Aaron’s wife. Adam’s sister-in-law. No wonder Dee was pulling at the cuffs of her sleeves.
Ryan grabbed his cousin’s arm and led her out toward the dining room and then past the library. The hallways were on the dark side, and they passed a couple of people. None of them were Adam VonBrandt.
“Where else do you think he could be?” Ryan asked, but then he heard a familiar voice in the distance, carrying out of one of the little rooms. Kate.
“Helena, what are you doing?” Her voice sunk its teeth into his heart. She wasn’t even talking to him—hell, she was at least thirty or forty feet away—but it was like he could feel her presence pressing on him.
He stopped, putting a finger to his lips. Dee punched his shoulder, whispering, “What the hell, Ryan?”
“Just wait,” he hissed back, listening closely. He needed to know if Kate had found Adam.
But no, she was saying something about ovaries, and a female voice answered back. Dammit. Why the hell are they talking about ovaries?
He didn’t like the idea of Kate discussing her ovaries with anyone else.
No. Not anyone else. Just anyone.
Come on, man. Get a grip on yourself.
“What the hell are we doing?” Dee whispered, staying close. “Who is that?” But before he could even attempt to answer, she made a long, quiet, “aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” like she was singing a children’s song under her voice. “Kate.”
“Shut up.” He glared at her, trying to force a warning into his gaze, but he didn’t have the alpha magick yet, so she just smirked at him, shaking her head.
“You are so predictable, cuz.”
“Where is your new mate, by the way?” he whispered, like that would put her in her place. But Dee kept smiling.
“I can text him if you want. I was trying to keep a low profile. Alpha’s orders.”
“Shut up,” he repeated.
Kate’s voice filtered back to him as he focused his attention on her. “Let’s go dance with some cowboys and get you drunk enough to make you forget about feeling sorry for yourself because you had to stop working for one itsy-bitsy minute.”
Ryan’s palms hurt and he looked down to find he’d been squeezing his hands together so tightly, his knuckles were white. So, he didn’t like the idea of Kate dancing with cowboys. Or getting drunk.
But frankly, it was better than her sticking around to find Adam.
“Did she just say they’re going to go get drunk?” Dee whispered. She was speaking softly, but he couldn’t hear anything in the room over her talking.
“Stop it, Dee. I’m trying to listen.”
“How about we just go in there and you kiss her, like you want to, and we can mate bond the pair of you and get it over with.” Dee huffed out a breath. “I swear, you’re worse than Bracken sometimes.”
“I can’t mate her,” Ryan ground out. “This isn’t about her. I’m just trying to figure out if she’s found Adam or not.”
“Well, he’s not in that room, or we’d be able to hear him.”
“Will you just shut up, so I can listen?”
Kate’s laugh caught his attention as she continued talking to whoever was with her. “Yes, they will. But we’re not focusing on that right now. Right now, we’re going to go find alcohol and single guys you can flirt with.”
Shit. He pushed Dee into a dark room off the hall. Kate was on her way out. He could hear her movements. He shook his head when Dee opened her
mouth to talk.
He didn’t want Kate to hear them—didn’t want her to know he’d been spying—but that was the least of his worries. He couldn’t think about anything now, except for images of Kate gyrating around some cowboys. Cowboys were notoriously loose when it came to sexual morals. If a girl who looked as good as she did went to a bar full of cowboys, odds were good there’d be some kind of action. At the very least, plenty of men would be after her.
Fuck, no.
But he had a choice. Either he could find Adam and try to talk him into selling the horse, or he could follow this annoying blonde who couldn’t seem to make up her mind about what she wanted to do.
Dammit. Women.
Kate’s footsteps echoed down the hall beside them, and he grabbed Dee’s arm, pulling her after the pair of girls.
“Where are we going?” Dee asked. “I thought we were going to look for Adam.”
“Change of plans.” Ryan yanked her along. “We’re going after them.”
“Ryan. You can’t.” She stopped, pausing them both in the middle of the hallway. “Stop and think straight for two seconds. You’re here for the summit. You have to go in, future alpha.”
He shook his head, like he was waking up out of a dream. Shit. He’d been so focused on Kate…on Kate and Julian…no, on Kate and the sale of the horse.
She was right.
Where the hell is my head?
The girls were getting away, but he’d have to let them go. He had a job to do. Ryan backed up against the wall, trying to slow his thoughts for a few moments.
“How about this,” Dee started, watching the hallway. “I’ll go after them.”
“You can’t. You should really be in the summit with us.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Damn, I can’t believe I lost my focus so bad.”
“That’s what happens when you find your mate, cuz.” Dee’s smirk was pissing him off.
“Quiet, you.” Ryan pushed off the wall. “All right. Let’s go to the meeting.”
He was not happy. He didn’t want to let Kate loose in a bar of cowboys, but there was no reasonable excuse for him to follow her. It was idiotic. He had to get his shit together. Start acting like the potential alpha, and not like some jealous teenager.
Rodeo Wolf: Fated Mates of Somewhere, Texas (#2) Page 5
