Looking for Trouble. Victoria Dahl
It had been a much larger ranch twenty-five years ago. Thousands of acres leased and deeded. Not a lot of the acreage had been flat, but the hills had been good summer grazing. Then Greg Heyer’s wife had disappeared. His kids had needed tending. He’d let things go that summer. The next year, beef prices had plummeted. He’d sold off land and leases and cattle. The year after that, a drought had hit hard. It hadn’t let up for three years. He’d sold off more. Now he was down to a tenth of what he’d owned before, and he was almost seventy years old and hired out some of the rougher work.
Sophie finished balancing the account and reached for the basket that held the bills. This part always made her chest tight, but it was okay. Her dad was fine. With her help, he could keep this place going for another decade if he wanted to. He didn’t seem to want to sell, and she wasn’t going to try to talk him into it. As hardscrabble as it was, this place was his life.
“Before I forget,” her dad said, his voice just behind her in the doorway, “your mail is in the bedroom.”
“Thanks.”
“You should really change your address.”
“I’m not going to stay in Uncle Orville’s house forever, Dad. I don’t want to bother changing my address just to have to change everything back again.”
“It’s been a year, Sophie. I think you’re plenty settled into town now. Why in the world would you want to come back out here?”
Because this was her home. Because he was her family. Because she took care of things for him and she always would.
But living in town did have its advantages. Privacy, namely. Granted, on those occasions when she met a man who seemed to push her buttons, she preferred going back to his hotel room. It was less conspicuous that way. No neighbors to notice and comment. No lifelong acquaintances to realize who Sophie really was. Only tourists and seasonal men. Just the way she wanted it.
Sophie opened the credit-card bill and noticed that her brother had been making a lot of ebook purchases again. It felt strange to resent the way he spent money on books. She was a librarian, after all. But it wasn’t that her brother was overspending on books, it was that he spent his time getting obsessed with learning some new skill he was convinced would make him successful. Gaming online auctions or selling Western crap on websites or starting his own sales lead business for web courses or a hundred other things that he’d purchased books about and then lost interest in. God knew what it was this time. Two years ago, he’d decided to sell mail-order tumbleweeds for people in the East throwing cowboy-themed parties. Then he’d realized he’d actually have to go out in the heat or cold and search for tumbleweeds. They were never around when you wanted them.
“Where’s David?” she asked, thinking if he was around she’d at least ask what he was up to.
She glanced back to see her dad’s mouth flatten. “Sleeping.”
Still asleep at 10:00 a.m. That was practically blasphemy on a ranch. But even their dad was starting to realize that David was never going to take over the ranch. It was hard for him to accept that the remaining land would be sold someday, but there it was. David could do all the work, but he didn’t love the land. Sophie loved the place and she could stumble along well enough, but she was too indoorsy for ranching. Dresses and kitten heels had no place in a corral. Not unless a big, rough man had her pinned up against a fence and—
Damn. Alex was going to haunt her for a long time.
“You want me to wake him?” her dad grumbled.
Sophie flashed him a smile. “Only if you want an excuse to get his butt out of bed.”
He laughed. “I need his help later with the yearlings. I’d better let him get his beauty sleep or he’ll be grouching around here all day.” He leaned a hip against the counter and sipped his coffee.
“You know, you don’t have to keep me company. I’m not a guest.”
He shrugged one lean shoulder, and Sophie wondered if he was getting thinner. “It’s nice to talk to you. Gets a little lonely out here these days.”
“I’m off today. Why don’t I stay and make a big lunch?”
Her dad huffed. “That’s not what I meant. Go shopping. Go have lunch with your girlfriends. Don’t spend your day off with an old man, Sophie.”
“I like being here.”
“Well, I’m afraid I’ve got a busy day later. I can’t hang around all day for lunch.”
She narrowed her eyes and watched him for a long while, trying to read his face. Was he lying just to stop her from staying around? But he gave away nothing. He just looked back at her with those pale blue eyes framed by familiar wrinkles from spending too many years in the sun.
“Okay,” she finally conceded. “But I’ll make something good for dinner before I leave. I’ll throw it in the Crock-Pot and it’ll be ready by five-thirty.”
“Thanks, pumpkin. You take good care of me.” He came over to give her a kiss on the crown of her head, then headed for the back door. “I’ll see you next week.”
“Bye, Daddy.”
Sophie tried to ignore the embarrassing amount of pride she felt at his words. She did take good care of him. She’d been doing it since she was five, and she’d be doing it until she was sixty. He needed her. She was never going to walk away from that.
With the house quiet now, Sophie was done with the bookkeeping in no time. Next week it’d be time to take stock of supplies and order in anything they needed for winter, but today’s work was pretty simple. She tidied up the desk and headed to the kitchen to throw some meat and veggies into the slow cooker. She wouldn’t be around to make gravy, but she set out a jar of premade. That man loved gravy. Hopefully, he’d clean up the leftovers with a few slices of buttered bread while no one was looking and put a few pounds on his skinny frame by next week.
Once she’d tidied up, Sophie went to her dad’s room, gathered up his dirty clothes and started a load of wash. She ignored her brother’s closed door. He’d have to learn to fend for himself if he was ever going to live on his own someday. But he probably never would. He’d gotten too used to being taken care of, and Sophie knew she had to take a lot of the blame for that. Something else to feel guilty about.
Speaking of...even the thought of the word guilt led her back to Alex Bishop.
Would she see him again? He’d seemed awfully sure that she would. And he’d been right about one thing. She did want more. A lot more.
She wanted to be near him, wanted to feel the way her skin prickled at the very sight of him. And the way she felt small and submissive when his big hands touched her. God, the man had gorgeous hands. And arms. And tattoos.
She wanted to lick him. Wanted to fuck him. She wanted to call and keep lying about who she was so she could see him again and do everything they hadn’t done yet.
She was a terrible person, but she tried her best to keep it to herself. It didn’t matter as long as no one knew, as long as no one was hurt. But this had the potential to hurt Alex, herself and both of their families.
Not worth the hot sex, she scolded herself. But the terrible person inside her disagreed. Strongly.
She checked over the house one more time before leaving, slamming the door in the hopes that her brother would get his lazy butt out of bed. But by the time she got into her car and started for home, she wasn’t thinking about her brother. She was thinking about Alex. Again.
With her car window rolled down, the wind reminded her of the cool air against her body the night before. Just the ride on his bike had been a turn-on. The feel of his body guiding the beast beneath them, the way he’d fitted between her knees, the scent of his leather coat, the rumble of the engine. Then the speed. The power. The wind. The shimmering, sizzling knowledge that the ride was dangerous. Even deadly. It had all added up to the most arousing