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

by Karen Mercury

  “Ex-husband,” Violet corrected him. As a concession to the rodeo, she had donned a lavender-fringed shirt elaborately bedazzled with sequins shaped into roses and skulls. Her wide sun hat didn’t match her flouncy country and western skirt and her obviously brand-new cowboy boots. “Yes, he clarified for me that you’ve only barely met Bryan a few times. That reassured me that you weren’t some sort of spy for him. It’d be just like him to send a spy to gather dirt on me. This divorce is very bitter and nasty. Both of our children are over eighteen, so that’s not an issue. He just doesn’t think I deserve any of his money. I’m giving it all to charity, of course, but I think that riles him even more. He hates donating. Oh, look, there’s Harper sitting on that fence, waiting his turn to go again.”

  A twinge of jealousy in the pit of Sinclair’s stomach told him that Violet wasn’t as casual about the cow boss as she tried to make out to be. Sinclair wanted her to stare at him, so he took her hand as they waited in line for a hot dog. She had no choice but to look at him now—and plus, now Sinclair could look over her shoulder and watch Harper on the fence. His rose-colored shirt and white-fringed red leather chaps made him stand out from the others. He would have done that anyway by his sheer beauty. When he laid his cowboy hat on his thigh to watch the other performers, his hair tightly pulled back into one ponytail, his pupils were pinpoints of concentration, yet the cock cradled between the chaps pulsated with life.

  “Ooo, look at that one,” Sinclair heard some girls say. He was shocked when he turned around and saw they were teenagers. Harper had fans.

  But Sinclair didn’t want to concentrate on the seductive cowboy. “I know you donate a lot, Violet, but there’s one charity I completely recommend. They have a great track record of the money actually going to the cause and spend relatively little on admin.”

  “Oh yes? I’d be interested. Tell me more.”

  “It’s to benefit women who are abused by their husbands. We build safe houses all over the States. I’m on the Board of Directors. It’s extremely valuable, the work they do.”

  What had he said wrong now? She yanked her hand from his and took a step back, her eyes flashing. “Mr. Nieman. I resent the implication. I’m sure it’s a worthwhile charity and all, but to single me out because you know I was abused by my husband is beyond tacky.”

  Sinclair truly hadn’t known that. Drake had just told him they were splitting due to irreconcilable differences, the usual reason cited. They had grown apart or whatever people usually claimed. Nobody cared anymore—cheating wasn’t grounds for divorce any longer. Sinclair’s hands hovered over Violet’s shoulders. “God, no! I had no idea, Violet, really, I didn’t. Why would Drake mention such a thing to me? I do it in honor of my mother.”

  Violet appeared taken aback. “Oh. I’m sorry. Ah, one foot-long monster please. And where can I get a Bud? Oh, okay.”

  “Are you sure you want a foot-long?”

  Sinclair stood so close to her that when she twirled to face him, she nearly stood on his toes. She smiled radiantly now as though he hadn’t just made an enormous faux pas. “I was going to split it with you. You do eat meat, don’t you?”

  “Of course. I’m surprised you do, being such an animal lover.”

  Violet shrugged. “What can I say, Sinclair? It just tastes really good. Do you want relish or ketchup?”

  “Both. And onions if you don’t mind.”

  Violet was really loading the condiments on the long dog. “I am glad you brought up a charity, though, Mr. Nieman. The Palm Springs Modern Committee will be having the benefit for that Bee Line Bowling Alley at the Kupka House. I’m sure you’ve either been there or have heard of its historical significance. Anyway, it’s a rare treat to get inside the Kupka House. Would you like to accompany me to the event?”

  Sinclair would like nothing better. He tried to contain his excitement as he said, “Sure. Only answer me one thing. Will you then donate to my women’s shelter program?”

  The tip of the hot dog was at her mouth, but instead Violet smiled mysteriously. “We can certainly discuss that, Mr. Nieman.”

  “Sinclair.”

  “Sinclair. But look. That board says that Mr. Davies is on deck and will be riding next.”

  Sinclair was excited beyond all reason. He shouldn’t be excited over that stupid prick who did seem to be a domineering asshole. “Look. We can sit on this fence. It’s not blocking anyone.”

  Sinclair held Violet’s gigantic hot dog as she clambered on the five-foot-tall fence. She awkwardly spun around and had to use both hands to clutch the top rail as she perched precariously, her brand new boots wobbling on the lower rung, so Sinclair climbed up and kept a hold on the dog. He pointed. “You can see his pink shirt. He’s standing on a rail, see?” He tried to feed Violet a hot dog bite, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off the gate. She wound up biting sideways like one of the Lil’ Rascals, wide-eyed.

  The bite of meat nearly fell from her mouth as she lifted a finger to point. “Oh! Oh! There he goes!”

  Harper’s gelding burst forth like a dervish from the chute. He kept his spurs on the mount’s shoulders, the white fringes of his chaps whipping wildly this way and that. The crowd got to its feet and roared—Harper was obviously a favorite of the people, fans who seemed to be suspiciously made up of young women and maybe a few leather chaps-clad guys, maybe some outsiders who had followed the circuit. Then it hit Sinclair that maybe the leather guys were denizens of The Racquet Club. Dear God.

  “He’s gonna make it! He’s gonna make it!” Violet bounced up and down, yelling with her mouth full.

  Sinclair chucked the dog into a nearby trash bin because he, too, wanted to bounce up and down and yell. “Stay with ’em! Ride ’em!” Sinclair yelled, echoing the calls of other spectators.

  “He made eight seconds!” shrieked Violet. In her excitement, she clung to Sinclair’s thigh, her fingers digging in painfully.

  It was thrilling beyond measure to see Harper whipped around on the horse’s bare back like that. People were flinging popcorn from their buckets, spraying beers, and yee-hawing to beat the band. Harper’s hat was the first thing to go but he clung on with one hand, his entire spine being whiplashed like a furious snake. The horse bucked violently yet gracefully past banners extoling Wrangler, ESPN, and Coors. Rodeo clowns even had to bodily restrain a few fans from jumping into the ring.

  “Oh my God!” shrieked Violet, clapping a hand over her mouth. “He just goes and goes!”

  “Harper Davies!” clanged the announcer. “The horse’s name is First Time, but it sure doesn’t seem like the first time these two have ridden together! Come on, Harper!”

  First Time was all over the place, bucking frantically in a style that would earn him high points. Harper synchronized his spurring with the horse’s bucking. It seemed like way more than eight seconds before the buzzer sounded and Harper’s ride was over. Harper leaped free of the animal and even executed a couple of show-offy, dramatic somersaults.

  Violet jumped off the fence so she could hop around in excitement, so Sinclair jumped down, too. Violet caught him by the upper arms and allowed him to twirl her around. When they crashed together, Violet giggling uncontrollably, it seemed natural to kiss her. She was looking right up at him, her breasts under the bedazzled yoke of the cowgirl shirt pressed to his chest. They were carried away with the excitement of the moment.

  As crowds churned around them, Sinclair kissed Violet. It was as though he held a delicate bird in his arms, and he didn’t want to crush her. She was sturdy yet breakable at the same time, and he wasn’t sure how to hold her. So he gripped her upper arms, and at first she stood stiffly like a doll.

  But the excitement swirling around them, the announcement of what must have been a high score in the nineties, everything contributed to the moment. When Sinclair tickled Violet’s lips with the tip of his tongue, they parted and she surrendered to him.

  Once her initial shock was over, Violet embraced him like a lover.
It felt incredibly natural, as though they’d been intimate for years. Sinclair held her jaw in his hand and even broke the kiss to pepper her chin and the corners of her mouth with loving, tender kisses. She repaid him by ardently pecking at his close-shaven chin while uttering little moans that about broke his heart. When Sinclair plastered his mouth over hers again, she accepted his tongue even eagerly, and they twined their tongues together, snorting against the sides of each other’s faces.

  “Dude!”

  Sinclair broke away groggily. He suddenly felt as though he’d drank a whole six-pack, yet they hadn’t purchased their first beer yet. He gazed at Violet’s blurry face in a haze. She was so radiant she almost glowed. Some idiot was interrupting them, yanking at Sinclair’s arm.

  “Dude! You’re wanted by the catch pens.”

  Sinclair actually had to shake his head to get rid of the cobwebs. “Catch pens? Who wants me?”

  “You’re Sinclair Nieman, right? Harper wants you.”

  Harper? Sinclair mouthed the name as the cowhand wove through the crowd.

  Violet gave voice to his question. “Why would Harper want to see you? Do you even know him?”

  “Barely.” To cover up this half-lie, he hurried on. “I wonder what he could want. Well, can you get yourself back to Drake? I don’t want you wandering around alone in this crowd.”

  Violet waved him away. “Oh, I’m used to this horse crowd. Find out what Harper wants. He’s the hero of the day. Maybe he wants you to sponsor him.”

  That was probably what Harper wanted, and Sinclair made his way around the back of the grandstand, past the catch pens where bulls were kept for more rough stock events later in the day. Fondness for Violet surged through his chest as he went around the last corner, and as he turned for one more glance at her, he saw she was talking intently to some greasy-looking guy in a business suit. He gave Sinclair a vaguely creepy feeling, but the teenaged cowpoke was waving an arm at him to hurry up.

  Rodeo stars apparently waited for no one.

  Chapter Six

  Harper had just won the purse and was rodeo champion, but he paced around behind the catch pens like an irate chute fighter.

  Pickup men, clowns, hazers, and buckle bunnies swarmed to congratulate him after the ride, but all Harper saw was red. That bastard Sinclair Lewis or whatever the fuck his name was, he’d been groping that lovely Violet for an hour now. No, wait, she’s not lovely. Who cares what she looks like? He’d been manhandling her and gushing all over her like some vanilla moron, and Violet gave as good as she got. No doubt trying to make Harper jealous, she had her hand wrapped around Sinclair’s beefy thigh. The first thing Harper had seen when he’d popped up from his bailout was that suave bastard enveloping the woman in his stupid arms and going in for the smooch.

  Harper was livid. He knew right away they were doing it for his benefit. Violet did it to make Harper jealous, and Sinclair did it to make Harper jealous. She’d been turned on watching him jack off in the river the other day and she was using Sinclair to work off her heat. Harper sent that kid out to fetch Sinclair and went around the back of the catch pens to pace off some of his anger. It occurred to him for a flashing of a second that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t the main incitement to the couple’s passion.

  That idea pissed off Harper even more. He grabbed a length of rope and whacked the metal bars of the alleyway with it, but the thwack only made him angrier. He was madder than a puffed toad. He knew deep down that Violet had been right on the shores of the Noname River. His dick was erect because he knew she’d been watching him. The idea that she’d been fingering herself while doing so turned Harper on so heavily, the past couple days he’d whacked off while thinking of her, not Sinclair. He kept mentally trying to push the naïve, sunny woman out of his head, not wanting to associate her in any way with sex or desire. Hell, he didn’t want to associate any woman with those things. Or affection, admiration, liking, or anything that might lead to a deep attachment and pain.

  It was easier just to have rough sex with other men. Harper had been doing that for three years until that rich snob Violet had appeared, messing with him in all sorts of ways. He was always inundated with buckle bunnies at rodeos but he’d always been able to shove them aside. They all looked sort of the same to him, as though he was one of those strange people without the ability to recognize faces—face blindness. He was grateful for that because he didn’t want to be affected by any woman, so when he’d first seen Violet in the kitchen it had thrown him for a loop.

  It had only been three years since Morgan had been sliced up by that whackjob—much too soon to even be entertaining the idea of another woman. For the billionth time, Harper forced his brain back to the dimpled stallion, Sinclair, now striding through the dust behind that hand Harper had sent. The hand pointed unnecessarily—Harper was obviously the cowboy with the white-fringed leggings and the pink shirt, although he’d hung his hat on a post.

  He jammed his hands onto his hips as Sinclair came forward, friendly. Harper wasn’t friendly. He pointed at the ground with a stiff forefinger. “All right. Maybe you want to fucking explain what just went on.”

  Sinclair looked perplexed, tilting his head. “Excuse me?”

  Harper took a step closer, now jamming his finger into Sinclair’s chest. “You know what I fucking mean. That little display with Miss Stinson. That was all for my fucking benefit.”

  Sinclair laughed incredulously, looking at the sky. “Excuse the fuck out of me. Arrogant much?” He spread his hands wide and didn’t budge an inch. “Did it occur to you that I might be attracted to Miss Stinson? Have you looked at her lately, or is your head too busy stuck up some cow’s ass?”

  Harper had been waiting for an excuse to grab the jetsetter’s shirtfront, and this was it. He rattled him like a maraca, banging his ass against the alleyway’s bar. Sinclair seemed to take it passively, maybe limp with surprise. Realistically, Sinclair could probably have beaten up Harper under certain circumstances. Sinclair was wider, buffer, had stronger weightlifting muscles. Harper’s strength was from actual work. “In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t give a rat’s ass about women. Why the fuck would your making out with her piss me off?” He released Sinclair’s shirt violently, tossing him back against the bar.

  “But…” Sinclair sputtered. “You just said you were pissed about it! What sort of claim do you have on her that I don’t know about? Talk to me like a man.”

  Harper knew he’d talked himself into a corner. Instead of replying, he swept his irate gaze meaningfully up and down the length of Sinclair’s body. Sinclair hadn’t donned a cowboy shirt as so many greenhorns did during their annual pilgrimage to Amadeo Barbieri’s rodeo. He’d just worn his Lacoste shirt with the alligator perched above his erect nipple. Harper hitched a thumb into his belt, his fingers caressing the ridge of his hard cock. He jutted his lower jaw. “You want man talk? All right. You know I’ve wanted you bad since I laid eyes on you at The Racquet Club. Now I’m here to thank you for not running and spouting that information to the world. It doesn’t…set right in the rodeo world.”

  Sinclair talked reasonably, as Harper knew he was not doing. “You don’t need to thank me, man. I’d stand to gain nothing by advertising that I came in my pants because some other guy rubbed my dick.”

  Harper drank in Sinclair’s full form. Maybe the playboy’s dick was plumping inside his jeans because he’d been kissing Violet Stinson. But the merest memory of handling that well-hung limb inside The Racquet Club, and all reason was yanked from Harper’s mind. Lust had gotten him into nothing but trouble his entire life—he never would’ve fallen in love with Morgan, for instance—but he had yet to tame it. He hitched his chin at Sinclair. “Then you might want what’s in store for you in the tack room.” He turned on his heel and stalked off.

  Amadeo’s setup was a permanent one there on Lone Palm property. Inherited from his dad, as Drake had inherited Shining Lands, the arena was constantly maintained. So there was a
decently clean tack room that Harper had been thinking about since noticing that Sinclair was in the audience.

  It was up to Sinclair to follow him or not. The hustle and bustle of the rodeo drowned out any feeble footfalls in the dirt, but Harper didn’t give the other man the satisfaction of looking back over his shoulder. It never helped to let anyone know how badly you wanted them. If Sinclair didn’t want him back, that was Sinclair’s loss. Harper had oodles of star-fuckers connected to The Racquet Club—he didn’t need to seek out anyone in particular. He’d even taken over Joaquin’s spacious house five miles away from Drake’s, where he had three bedrooms to himself, to romp with any pickup to his heart’s content.

  Maybe it was the challenge of turning a straight guy that appealed to Harper. Lord knew, that attraction had driven him before at The Racquet Club. Maybe that force was driving him now. He didn’t want Violet Stinson, but he didn’t want anyone else to have her, either.

  The tack room door opened inward—Harper had already scoped out that much. He strode right in and yanked a latigo strap from a wall hook. Facing the door, he flexed the strap between both fists, stretching it, breaking it in. His cock twitched and pulsated against his thigh as he anticipated Sinclair’s arrival.

  Sinclair’s shadow appeared in the doorway before he did. Full of trepidation, as though looking for another kid playing hide and seek. Sinclair peeked around the corner of the doorjamb first. His eyes probably couldn’t adjust to the darkness, so he stepped fully into the tack room.

  Not wanting to startle him, Harper moved fluidly to the door and closed it. He wedged the two by four just right under the latch so it effectively acted like a lock.

  He knew Sinclair’s eyes were adjusting as he walked toward him. Sinclair’s eyes flickered down to Harper’s hand, where he brandished the strap.