Rancher's Wild Secret

Poor Cricket was a later addition to the family. Eight years younger than Emerson, and six years younger than Wren. Their parents hadn’t planned on having another child, and they especially hadn’t planned on one like Cricket, who didn’t seem to have inherited the need to please…well, anyone.

Cricket had run wild over the winery, raised more by the staff than by their mother or father.

Sometimes Emerson envied Cricket and the independence she seemed to have found before turning twenty-one, when Emerson couldn’t quite capture independence even at twenty-nine.

“Sounds to me like your mother is pretty difficult to please.”

“Impossible,” she agreed.

But her father wasn’t. He was proud of her. She was doing exactly what he wanted her to do. And she would keep on doing it.

The trail ended in a grassy clearing on the side of the mountain, overlooking the valley below. The wineries rolled on for miles, and the little redbrick town of Gold Valley was all the way at the bottom.

“Yes,” she said. “This is perfect.” She got down off the horse, snapped another few pictures with herself in them and the view in the background. And then a sudden inspiration took hold, and she whipped around quickly, capturing the blurred outline of Holden, on his horse with his cowboy hat, behind her.

He frowned, dismounting the horse, and she looked into the phone screen, keeping her eyes on him, and took another shot. He was mostly a silhouette, but it was clear that he was a good-looking, well-built man in a cowboy hat.

“Now, there’s an ad,” she said.

“What’re you doing?”

He sounded angry. Not amused at all.

“I just thought it would be good to get you in the background. A full-on Western fantasy.”

“You said that wasn’t the aesthetic.”

“It’s not mine. Just because a girl doesn’t want to wear cutoff shorts doesn’t mean she’s not interested in looking at a cowboy.”

“You can’t post that,” he said, his voice hard like granite.

She turned to face him. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to be on your bullshit website.”

“It’s not a website. It’s… Never mind. Are you… You’re not, like, fleeing from the law or something, are you?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

“Then why won’t you let me post your picture? It’s not like you can really see you.”

“I’m not interested in that stuff.”

“Well, that stuff is my entire life’s work.” She turned her focus to the scenery around them and pretended to be interested in taking a few random pictures that were not of him.

“Some website that isn’t going to exist in a couple of years is not your life’s work. Your life’s work might be figuring out how to sell things to people, advertising, marketing. Whatever you want to call it. But the how of it is going to change, and it’s going to keep on changing. What you’ve done is figure out how to understand the way people discover things right now. But it will change. And you’ll figure that out too. These pictures are not your life’s work.”

It was an impassioned speech, and one she almost felt certain he’d given before, though she couldn’t quite figure out why he would have, or to who.

“That’s nice,” she said. “But I don’t need a pep talk. I wasn’t belittling myself. I won’t post the pictures. Though, I think they would have caused a lot of excitement.”

“I’m not going to be anyone’s trail guide. So there’s no point using me.”

“You’re not even my trail guide, not really.” She turned to face him, and found he was much closer than she had thought. All the breath was sucked from her body. He was so big and broad, imposing.

There was an intensity about him that should repel her, but instead it fascinated her.

The air was warm, and she was a little bit sweaty, and that made her wonder if he was sweaty, and something about that thought made her want to press her face against his chest and smell his skin.

“Have you ever gone without something?”

She didn’t know why she’d asked him that, except that maybe it was the only thing keeping her from actually giving in to her fantasy and pressing her face against his body.

“I don’t really think that’s any of your business.”

“Why not? I just downloaded all of my family issues onto you, and I’m not even sure why. Except that you asked. And I don’t think anyone else has ever asked. So… It’s just you and me out here.”

“And your phone. Which is your link to the outside world on a scale that I can barely understand.”

Somehow, that rang false.

“I don’t have service,” she said. “And anyway, my phone is going back in my pocket.” She slipped it into the silky pocket of her black pants.

He looked at her, his dark eyes moving over her body, and she knew he was deliberately taking his time examining her curves. Knew that his gaze was deliberately sexual.

And she didn’t feel like she could be trusted with that kind of knowledge, because something deep inside her was dancing around the edge of being bold. That one little piece of her that felt repressed, that had felt bored at the party last night…

That one little piece of her wanted this.

“A few things,” he said slowly. And his words were deliberate too.

Without thinking, she sucked her lip between her teeth and bit down on it, then swiped her tongue over the stinging surface to soothe it.

And the intensity in his eyes leaped higher.

She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what she’d done. She’d deliberately drawn his focus to her mouth.

Now, she might have done it deliberately, but she didn’t know what she wanted out of it.

Well, she did. But she couldn’t want that. She couldn’t. Not when…

Suddenly, he reached out, grabbing her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know how the boys who run around in your world play, Emerson. But I’m not a man who scrolls through photos and wishes he could touch something. If I want something, I take it. So if I were you…I wouldn’t go around teasing.”

She stuttered, “I… I… I…” and stumbled backward. She nearly tripped down onto the grass, onto her butt, but he reached out, looping his strong arm around her waist and pulling her upright. The breath whooshed from her lungs, and she found herself pressed hard against his solid body. She put her hand gingerly on his chest. Yeah. He was a little bit sweaty.

And damned if it wasn’t sexy.

She racked her brain, trying to come up with something witty to say, something to defuse the situation, but she couldn’t think. Her heart was thundering fast, and there was an echoing pulse down in the center of her thighs making it impossible for her to breathe. Impossible for her to think. She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience, or a wild fantasy that was surely happening in her head only, and not in reality.

But his body was hot and hard underneath her hand, and there was a point at which she really couldn’t pretend she wasn’t touching an actual man.

Because her fingers burned. Because her body burned. Because everything burned.

And she couldn’t think of a single word to say, which wasn’t like her, but usually she wasn’t affected by men.

They liked her. They liked to flirt and talk with her, and since becoming engaged, they’d only liked it even more. Seeing her as a bit of a challenge, and it didn’t cost her anything to play into that a little bit. Because she was never tempted to do anything. Because she was never affected. Because it was only ever a conversation and nothing more.

But this felt like more.

The air was thick with more, and she couldn’t figure out why him, why now.

His lips curved up into a half smile, and suddenly, in a brief flash, she saw it.

Sure, his sculpted face and body were part of it. But he was…an outlaw.

Everything she wasn’t.

He was a man who didn’t care at all what anyone thought. It was visible in every part of him. In the laconic grace with which he moved, the easy way he smiled, the slow honeyed timbre of his voice.

Yes.

He was a man without a cell phone.

A man who wasn’t tied or tethered to anything. Who didn’t have comments to respond to at two in the morning that kept him up at night, as he worried about not doing it fast enough, about doing something to damage the very public image she had cultivated—not just for herself—but for her father’s entire industry.

A man who didn’t care if he fell short of the expectations of a parent, at least he didn’t seem like he would.

Looking at him in all his rough glory, the way that he blended into the terrain, she felt like a smooth shiny shell with nothing but a sad, listless urchin curled up inside, who was nothing like the facade that she presented.

He was the real deal.

He was like that mountain behind him. Strong and firm and steady. Unmovable.

It made her want a taste.

A taste of him.

A taste of freedom.

She found herself moving forward, but he took a step back.

“Come on now, princess,” he said, grabbing hold of her left hand and raising it up, so that her ring caught the sunlight. “You don’t want to be doing that.”

Horror rolled over her and she stepped away.

“I don’t… Nothing.”

He chuckled. “Something.”

“I… My fiancé and I have an understanding,” she said. And she made a mental note to actually check with Donovan to see if they did. Because she suspected they might, given that they had never touched each other. And she could hardly imagine that Donovan had been celibate for the past two years.

You have been.

Yeah, she needed to check on the Donovan thing.

“Do you now?”

“Yes,” she lied.

“Well, I have an understanding with your father that I’m in his employment. And I would sure hate to take advantage of that.”

“I’m a grown woman,” she said.

“Yeah, what do you suppose your daddy would think if he found that you were fucking the help?”

Heat washed over her, her scalp prickling.

“I don’t keep my father much informed about my sex life,” she said.

“The problem is, you and me would be his business. I try to make my sex life no one’s business but mine and the lady I’m naked with.”

“Me nearly kissing you is not the same as me offering you sex. Your ego betrays you.”

“And your blush betrays you, darlin’.”

The entire interaction felt fraught and spiky, and Emerson didn’t know how to proceed, which was as rare as her feeling at a loss for words. He was right. He worked for her father, and by extension, for the family, for her. But she didn’t feel like she had the power here. Didn’t feel like she had the control. She was the one with money, with the Maxfield family name, and he was just…a ranch hand.

So why did she feel so decidedly at a disadvantage?

“We’d better carry on,” she said. “I have things to do.”

“Pictures to post.”

“But not of you,” she said.

He shook his head once. “Not of me.”

She got back on her horse, and he did the same. And this time he led the way back down the trail, and she was somewhat relieved. Because she didn’t know what she would do if she had to bear the burden of knowing he was watching the back of her the whole way.

She would drive herself crazy thinking about how to hold her shoulders so that she didn’t look like she knew that he was staring at her.

But then, maybe he wouldn’t stare at her, and that was the thing. She would wonder either way. And she didn’t particularly want to wonder.

And when she got back to her office, she tapped her fingers on the desk next to her phone, and did her very best to stop herself from texting Donovan.

Tap. Don’t. Tap. Don’t.

And then suddenly she picked up the phone and started a new message.

Are we exclusive?

There were no dots, no movement. She set the phone down and tried to look away. It pinged a few minutes later.

We are engaged.

That’s not an answer.

We don’t live in the same city.

She took a breath.

Have you slept with someone else?

She wasn’t going to wait around with his back-and-forth nonsense. She wasn’t interested in him sparing himself repercussions.

We don’t live in the same city. So yes, I have.

And if I did?

Whatever you do before the wedding is your business.

She didn’t respond, and his next text came in on the heels of the last.

Did you want to talk on the phone?

No.

K.

And that was it. Because they didn’t love each other. She hadn’t needed to text him, because nothing was going to happen with her and Holden.

And how do you feel about the fact that Donovan had slept with other people?

She wasn’t sure.

Except she didn’t feel much of anything.

Except now she had a get-out-of-jail-free card, and that was about the only way she could see it. That wasn’t normal, was it? It wasn’t normal for him to be okay with the fact that she had asked those questions. That she had made it clear she’d thought about sleeping with someone else.

And it wasn’t normal for her to not be jealous when Donovan said he had slept with someone else.

But she wasn’t jealous.

And his admission didn’t dredge any deep feelings up to the surface either.

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