Page 6 of Wrangle Me, Cowboys

“So you’re babysitting me?” I asked, my humiliation building. My heart was flopping around down there like a fish out of water, just begging him to pick it up or at least put it out of its misery.

“Call it what you want,” Waylon said. “You knew we were doing our parents a favor by taking you in.”

“I didn’t know you were getting paid,” I said. “I thought we were supposed to get to know our new family a little. That I’d come out here and help out, and you’d let me stay.”

“That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t realize I was such a pain in the ass that you had to get paid to get to know me.” To my horror, I felt my lip trembling. My heart was coated with dirt and grime like someone was kicking it along the dusty tractor trails through the ranch.

“You’re not a pain in the ass, Princess,” Waylon said, stepping around the open hood of the car. But I could tell he was just saying it to make me feel better. He didn’t sound or look like he meant it one tiny bit.

I gulped against the sting of salty tears and stared at anything but his eyes. He had a grease smear on his bare, tan arm. I wanted to freaking lick it. How had I fallen so hard for someone who had to get a paycheck to spend time with me?

But hell, if they were my gigolos, shouldn’t I be getting more action?

Waylon took the sandwich from me and took a bite before handing it back. “I didn’t ask for money,” he said. “I didn’t ask for you to come stay here. Our father offered us a deal. Keep you out of trouble, and he’d lend us some money to help keep the ranch going. That’s all.”

“I just wish I’d known to begin with,” I said. “I thought you were all so keen on honesty and openness and not keeping secrets.”

“From each other,” he said.

Those words stung even deeper than what he’d already said. I wasn’t one of them. They were a family who looked out for each other, trusted each other, cared about each other. And I was their stepmother’s out-of-control daughter.

“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said.

“Amber,” he said, his voice gruff. “What happened with Holden shouldn’t have happened. He’s my brother, but I’ll be the first to admit, he’s got a weakness when it comes to good-looking women.”

“So you think I’m good looking,” I teased, desperately trying to sound like I wasn’t about to burst into tears.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “If you weren’t my stepsister, I’d bend you over the hood of this car and fuck you until you screamed loud enough for every neighbor in the next ten miles to come see who was making such a fuss?”

“Oh,” I whispered, my thighs quaking at that image.

“That doesn’t change the fact that you are my stepsister.” He finished the sandwich and picked up the grease rag to wipe his hands again. “Keeping an eye on you means keeping you out of trouble in town, or with the law, but it also means protecting you. Out here, the rules are a little different than what you’re used to in New York.”

“So you’ve said. But they don’t seem so different to me.”

“People see something they want, they take it,” he said. “Ranchers came out here to claim land. There’s a little of that spirit left.”

“Good to know,” I said. “I guess you haven’t seen anything you wanted in three years?”

His mouth twisted into a smirk. “Sometimes we want something for a night,” he said. “But nothing we’ve wanted to keep.”

I took that as a challenge.

5

Amber

After talking to Waylon, I decided not to tell my stepbrothers about their creepy ranch hand. They would do anything to save their ranch, and I didn’t want to be a reason they failed. After all, if they fired Grimes, the whole ranch would fall apart. They’d told me that themselves. And besides all that, he’d been here for forty years, and I’d been here less than a month. He belonged there. If I told on him, he’d probably do something worse than calling me a whore.

So I went back to the house and had a glass of wine. Okay, maybe it was two. And they were pretty full.

When a car drove up, I got up from the table and peeked out. A gold Cadillac sedan sat in the gravel area in front of the house.

Great. Another neighbor.

A woman with frosted blonde hair and a puffy parka climbed out of the car and tottered across the gravel in heels. She looked to be in her forties or fifties, and from her car and her bag, comfortably living but not extravagantly wealthy. I opened the door before she could knock.