Page 54 of The Rancher’s One and Only

“Jax is nice.”

Jax felt offended. In fact, if he’d had a set of pearls, he might’ve clutched them. “I’m nice?”

“You are,” Dakota and Rowdy said together.

“I’m a motherfucking MMA fighter!”

“Yeah. You are. You get paid to fight, which is why you never do it in the streets. And you always treat people with respect.”

“I…” He realized it was a weird thing to protest. “I like to think that I do.”

“You are decent. You’re the kind of guy it would be hard to be mad at even if you were like…sleeping with my sister or something. Not that I have a sister.”

None of them were unburdened by loss.

“So now that we’ve established you didn’t sleep with my friend,” Rowdy said. “Are you gatekeeping hot women?”

“I’m not gatekeeping anything.”

“Oh shit,” Dakota said. “You slept with the little scientist. The little bone scientist.”

“Don’t call her that. And don’t…don’t say that. She… It would embarrass her.”

“Why? Was it bad?”

“It was not bad.”

“This is the kind of thing that gives me trust issues,” Dakota said. “Because this is exactly what you aren’t supposed to do with guests. And she’s the only guest we’ve had and you’re already knocking boots with her.”

“She’s technically not a guest. She’s not in our reservation system.”

“She’s paying to be here.”

“Kind of. We didn’t even give her an official rate or anything. I just took all that grant money she was offering. And anyway, she asked me to sleep with her.”

“Well, that’s not new for you,” Rowdy said. “You’re going to have to be fortified for when our guests ask you to sleep with them. And it will happen.”

“We did agree,” Dakota said. “That if they’re really hot we can.”

“I don’t think that’s what we agreed on,” Jax said.

“Close enough,” said Rowdy.

“Not close enough,” he said.

He shook his head. “You guys are ridiculous. Let’s go do the tents. You can quit worrying about where I’ve had my penis.”

They all grimaced and growled. “Well, that’s what we’re doing. We’re standing here talking about my dick. And you’re the ones who brought it up. So if you don’t like it, maybe don’t ask questions like that.”

“I don’t like it,” Dakota said. “I don’t like it at all.”

“Then mind your own business.”

They piled into the truck, and went over to the Oregon Trail campground, where all of the materials had been dropped off for the tents. They got out of the truck, and surveyed the scaffolding, canvas and other construction items. “Y’all are just mad because I got to her before you did,” he said.

“Hardly,” Dakota said.

“Why not? She’s pretty?”