The Substantial Gift [The Sunset Palomino Ranch 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  “Is that your paint hitched up outside?”

  Spinning around, Harper splashed bottled water all over his forearm. He must’ve looked like a regular moron standing in front of the open fridge like that, just staring, and now he was just staring at a stunning woman.

  She was radiant, as though lit up from within. Her streaked brown hair flowed over her shoulders in gentle waves. Harper was most struck by her piercing eyes, the pupils like pinpricks of intensity.

  “My paint?” he stuttered. “Why…yes.” As though there were another horse hitched outside.

  This seemed to please her. She came closer. A practical pantsuit didn’t flatter her figure, but Harper could tell she was very athletic and vigorous. “I think I recall where the stables are from when I was a kid. Are you heading that way? There’s an ATV I could follow you with.”

  Harper was confused. “Did you…want to ride, or something?”

  She looked abashed. “Well, I’m not used to the stock saddle, so it might be weird at first.”

  “Which saddle are you used to?”

  “The English saddle. I’ve been riding mostly in Europe.”

  She said “Europe” as though it were a squashed frog or something disgusting, and Harper instantly warmed to her. He slammed the fridge and went closer to her, too. “The big difference is the English has no horn. You’re used to that posting trot?”

  She looked ashamed of it. “Exactly. Which is ridiculous because I was raised in California. I’m sure the western way will come back to me naturally. But I’m afraid I might rise to the post at first.”

  “You’ve been on this ranch before? You don’t look familiar.”

  “Yes.” The woman stuck out a hand for Harper to shake. “I’m Violet Hunt—Violet Stinson.”

  “Drake’s sister.” Harper got genuinely excited. The old ranch manager Joaquin had often mentioned Violet in reverent tones. While Drake was a dissipated old reprobate living the high life overseas, Violet had made her family name proud. After Joaquin had been bodily escorted off Shining Lands due to some bribery racket, Harper had been invited to move into his office at the stables. There were old photos of Violet on the walls, competing in various horse events, looking very pert and vivacious.

  But the more excited Harper became, the more fearful. He didn’t want to be interested in a woman. She must be at least five years older than you. The protective shield his ego had erected automatically translated her characteristics into flaws. She’s a bit chunky, isn’t she? You could balance a serving tray on that ass. He hardened his tone. “Well, then, you remember where the stables are. Go on down any time. Any wrangler can saddle you up a mount.”

  Harper noted that she looked disappointed. “I thought I could follow you. Someone pointed you out as being the new manager since Joaquin was fired.”

  “I’m the cow boss, yeah,” Harper allowed. He didn’t really like the paperwork and the hiring and firing that went along with being the manager. He kept telling himself someone else would fill that position soon and he’d be left out on the range fulltime again. In the meantime, the stupid paperwork suffered. “But being cow boss, I’ve got to get back out to Edge Arroyo, chase down some fugitive cows.”

  “Edge Arroyo? That lets out onto Clayton Valley, doesn’t it, where all the big Joshua trees are? Or used to be, anyway.”

  “Right,” Harper allowed.

  “That’s not even Shining Lands property. That belongs to—”

  “Amadeo Barbieri, yes, I know,” said Harper, and made to brush on past her. However, as he tried to pass by, the scent of cinnamon bloomed in his nostrils. It was such an unexpected, arresting scent, he stopped dead in his tracks. He found himself looking down into her piercing eyes, holding her gaze. She smiled shyly from under a curtain of hair.

  “Lone Palm Ranch,” she repeated, softer now, looking at the kitchen island. “There was a boy named Troy Washburn I used to play with. I think he was Amadeo Barbieri’s manager’s son.”

  “Play with?” Harper repeated dully.

  Violet seemed to wake from her reverie, jumping a little and clearing her throat. “Yes, ahem, play with. You know how children play sometimes.”

  “I really don’t,” Harper said truthfully. His childhood had been such a clusterfuck he preferred not to recall it in any way, shape or form. It was nice in a remote way if other people had pleasant memories, like viewing a Disney film. “How do you mean?”

  She was back to being shy, practically toeing an imaginary mark on the tiles. “Oh, you know. Playing doctor.”

  Harper had to chuckle. “I’ve heard of that. I didn’t think it was a real thing. Did ol’ Troy actually get out a stethoscope?”

  “Yes! I mean, it sounds completely silly now, of course. But I think those memories may have been responsible for my interest in biology. Animal biology, of course. I’ve got skeletons of all kinds over at the Water Buffalo Lodge. I’m moving out of my husband’s house in Switzerland.”

  Harper was touched that she’d trust him, a stranger and only a cow boss, with this information. She seemed very naïve and more than a little innocent in the ways of humans. Maybe too much time with the animals. “So you’re moving all your skeletons to the Water Buffalo Lodge? That’s where Jesse lived when he was decorating this house, before he moved in—”

  “Moved in with Drake, yes, I know.” Violet faced him head-on again now, her jaw set firmly. “I know he’s the lover of my brother and my brother’s wife. I have no problem with it, if you’re trying to goad me.”

  Harper was confused. Had he been trying to goad her? Maybe so. Maybe she wasn’t that naïve to human ways, after all. “Sorry. Forgot you’ve been living in Europe, so you’ve seen that sort of thing everywhere. Most cowhands do have a problem with that sort of thing, but I don’t either.” In fact, Harper had been vastly attracted to Jesse before Jesse had been scooped up by the master of the estate. Harper had fantasized often about toying with the biracial former male model. It was thinking of Jesse’s sublime cheekbones that made Harper’s prick stiffen and lengthen between his chaps, not the proximity of Miss Violet and her cinnamon scent. He felt compelled to make it known that he swung the other way, just so she didn’t get any ideas about him. “I’m all for it. Jesse’s a smoking hot—”

  The slamming of the big, cavernous front door put a stop to the suggestive conversation. A wave of relief washed over Harper when Rose stormed into the kitchen, going straight for the fridge, yanking the door open. Rose jammed her hands onto her hips, clearly not really looking for anything in specific. Her anger must have gotten the better of her, for she burst out with,

  “Fuck! Can you believe it, Violet? Oh, hi, Harper. You’re never going to fucking believe what someone did. You know that vintage menu that was in the lobby at the Searchlight? You were sort of standing close to it when I came to get you for lunch the other day. It’s a menu of sexual positions, or things the old bordello used to offer. Well, someone stole it! Yup, just took the entire fucking thing off the wall, can you believe it? What the hell would anyone want something like that for?”

  “To collect?” suggested Violet naively.

  “Yeah, but how are they gonna sell it? It obviously belongs to Willow. She found it stuck into a file cabinet when she was remodeling and it’s awesome because it’s a part of the Searchlight’s history, you know? It’s worthless to anyone else, anywhere else. The only time it’s valuable is when it’s hanging on the Searchlight’s wall!”

  Now that Rose had interrupted, Harper took this opportunity to bail. He really did have to go find those cows that were on the lam, but Jose or Smack could always do that if he just radioed them with Amadeo’s approval.

  No, he knew he wanted to get away from Miss Violet Stinson. In the few minutes he’d talked to her, she’d gotten under his skin. Harper Davies didn’t want or need that. He’d been entertaining the idea of maybe taking a genuine male lover, but a woman? No, that was beyond the scope of his endurance. Too much, too soon
.

  He’d violently shove Miss Violet away if he had to, though he doubted he’d have to. Women like her should be out posting the trot in their English saddles, drinking tea, and banging—banging the cow boss!

  Angrily, he realized she’d been flirting with him to pass the time, because she wanted to fuck him—the stable boy! She wanted to slum it, take a vacation from her high standing, have a rowdy little hookup with a cabana boy.

  He slammed the sliding glass door shut with more force than necessary just as he heard Violet say in her haughty upper-class tones,

  “I did see a strange guy in the Searchlight’s lobby. He seemed overly interested in that old bordello menu.”

  Overly interested, my fucking ass. Harper would show her “overly interested.” He wouldn’t even come back to the Shining Lands house if a hundred cows went missing. He could easily send someone else.

  Chapter Four

  Violet had been riding for about two hours before she realized she was heading down into Edge Arroyo. As a teenager, she had enjoyed riding in this part of the Mojave. Belonging to Lone Palm Ranch, this arroyo was simply choked with the flamboyant yucca trees. Violet had loved to ride down here as a kid. Today, in some silly, unrealistic haze, maybe she was hoping to run into Troy Washburn again. She rode down the wash anyway. At this time of year it was resplendent with wildflowers, and Violet strove to recall their names.

  Lanterns on the paper bag bush were in bloom, barely moving in the almost nonexistent breeze. Desert senna bushes dotted the desert walls with splashes of corn yellow. There used to be a stream here, and disgusting, fascinating red-spotted toads used to crawl around after heavy rains.

  It hadn’t rained in the week Violet had been in town, but the silvery ribbon of the stream appeared as a reflective strip once the arroyo opened up into the pastureland where Harper’s cows had vanished. It occurred to Violet she was coming here in the hopes she’d see Harper. After all, it was only several hours since she’d spoken to him in the house, when she had thought they had gotten along so well. It was strange how he’d suddenly gone blazing out of there when Rose had come in. Maybe he had something against Rose.

  Their suggestive conversation had rejuvenated Violet. She’d been in a morbid funk since—well, for years really. It had been years that Bryan had been throwing her around like a handball and treating her as though she were transparent. Their marriage had become so beyond repair that on several occasions, Violet had stood there talking to him while another woman cavorted on his lap. That was how much her feelings meant to Bryan—if she even had any of those feelings anymore.

  Once a split had become irreversible, the angst had given way to apathy about men in general. That Sinclair Nieman had been the first man to stir her, until she had discovered he was butt buddies with Bryan and had even most likely been sent by Bryan to keep an eye on her. Bryan was probably looking for the tiniest thing to use as ammunition in their acrimonious divorce proceedings. Although California was a “no fault” state, he could contest it and probably come away with a better deal the more slander he slung her way. She wanted nothing to do with Sinclair Nieman. He was probably already texting Bryan that she’d been flirting with the devilishly sexy cow boss.

  And why not? They both obviously had a love for horses, and Violet thought cows were hugely underrated as far as intelligence went.

  She was proud of Drake for stepping up to the plate and taking control of the cattle ranching aspect of Shining Lands. She’d been wondering what she could do to help. If she was going to establish residency in California, she had better do more than design decorations for the Bee Line Bowling Alley soiree. She had always balanced the books for her and Bryan’s expenditures—maybe she could learn the cow accounting system.

  The stream was flowing well, fed by the far-off Sierras that were a cream-colored border in the distance. Violet knew she should water her mount. As she took her sketch pad from the saddlebag, she thought some more of the delicious Harper Davies. With his long, soft hair pulled back loosely like that and his facial hair, he could easily pass for a nineteenth-century vaquero. His cowboy boots, spurs, and gun belt didn’t set him in modern times, and the sight of his rounded ass framed by the chaps wasn’t lost on her when he’d gone striding manfully out the door. She had casually asked around the household help—he wasn’t married or even spoken for as far as anyone knew. Although one maid dreamily recounted that she’d seen him down on Barry Manilow Avenue, going inside that bondage club near the bowling alley.

  She would sketch her horse, and she found a nice flat rock to settle down on. She usually sketched from photos or mounted animals, like Audubon. Audubon had actually hired hunters to shoot most of the specimens he’d drawn. Nowadays that would be an appalling activity, and unnecessary with photography, but Violet liked to think about how back then, it was the only way. She liked to think about the artists who sailed with Captain Cook, sketching the first specimens of enormous tortoises and iguanas, Joseph Banks on the Endeavor sketching in the Great Barrier Reef. She often lamented that everything had been discovered already. Even when she herself had sailed to the Galapagos to sketch, seeing the other neophytes doing the same had irritated her. Out here, she wasn’t likely to see anyone, not even Harper’s fugitive cows. Out here—Shut the front door!

  There was another horse downstream, also drinking from the stream. Her jaw falling, Violet slowly set down her pencil and pad and got to her feet. There was a slight rise of the desert down there, a bluff, and the owner of the horse must be behind it. She walked slowly, numbly like a zombie. A leather scabbard was cinched to the saddle with the rifle still in it, so Violet wasn’t terribly afraid. But as she neared the rise, she got to her knees and crawled like a common criminal. She didn’t know why—it just seemed the thing to do.

  She was glad for the foresight when she peeked over the top of the sandy knoll. She had probably subconsciously recognized Harper Davies’ pinto, which was why she’d instinctively crawled. For he certainly wouldn’t have wanted her to be spying on him bathing in a deep pool of the river. No sirree, Franklin Delano.

  Harper would not want to know that she was admiring the long, sexy slope of his abdominals when he waded naked into the icy water, his long penis bobbing against his thigh. His pelvis and upper thighs were white as the motionless cirrus clouds overhead, but the rest of his skin was browned to a burnished sheen. When he bent backward at the waist to get his hair wet, he stretched those tan, quilted abs until they shimmered, and Violet got so weak she leaned forward on her elbows, barely breathing.

  It wasn’t wrong to watch. Far better than letting him know I’m here. The cow boss was lost in his own little world, swirling his long unbound hair underwater, eyes squeezed shut. When he surfaced, he walked underwater to snatch up a white dot, a bar of soap on a rock. His rippling back was to Violet as he rubbed the bar against his skull, splashing more water on his head in order to work up a lather. Her pussy lips bloomed with craving as she watched the muscles undulate, the nut-brown skin sliding over their mass like a strong riptide.

  She could just see the rise of his gluteus where the water lapped at him. Such a juicy, delicious ass. It had been years since Violet had been this affected physically by another man. Of course she’d had dozens of opportunities in her travels—hundreds, even. She was a wealthy woman who traveled alone, and it was even known in her European social circles that she’d been basically estranged from Bryan for years. Many, many men had made passes at her, but she’d rebuffed them all. It just wasn’t right when she was technically married to Bryan. She’d even turned down perfectly legitimate marriage proposals from monarchs of small kingdoms in Africa and the Far East, using the excuse that she was already legally married to someone else. Truth was, she hadn’t been attracted to another man in…forever.

  Until meeting Harper Davies in the kitchen. He made it look easy, being such a handsome, sinewy specimen that he seemed unconcerned with his beauty. He didn’t know anyone watched him, yet h
e twisted his torso as he soaped his hair in exactly such a way that the sun cast deep shadowy ridges of muscle bound to his vertebrae. Cowboys must work every single muscle in their body between the riding and the roping. Violet was becoming so highly aroused just watching Harper soap his hair, a trickle of juice trickled uncomfortably down her labia.

  She didn’t even normally masturbate all that much. It just wasn’t her style. Now, however, she didn’t stop her hand from moving to her crotch and pressing the jean fabric against her pubic bone. She was out in the wild, like an animal admiring the physicality of the opposite sex. Harper again bent backward at the waist to rinse his hair, and Violet actually whimpered with desire. Just the upper fringe of his dark pubic bush was in view in sharp contrast against the white skin. She squirmed, rubbing her thighs together as she mentally urged him to step back toward the bank. Eddies of soap flowed around his flank as he pressed water from his head like a sleek seal.

  Then he soaped his torso, socking the bar of soap into his armpits as he stared distantly at the San Jacinto Mountains. He was probably thinking about branding or calving or some other cow-related thing, and he did deep knee bends to rinse the soap from his torso. Violet sighed steamily.

  When he stood again, his long cock stood out at half-mast, even in the numbing iciness of the melted snow. Violet’s mouth watered to view the long, thick tool bobbing against his thigh, the vacillating eddies of the stream reflecting on the underside of it. Sex on the beach… Violet licked her lips as Harper slid the soap bar over his pubic mound, scissoring his fingers as they squirmed over the wiry hair, capturing his thick meat between his fingers. It seemed an afterthought when he cupped his big balls in one soapy palm, wagging the big phallus in the air. Violet exhaled, crumpling to the sand like a deflated balloon.