Ride 'Em (A Giddyup Novel) (14 page)

Logan caught her by the hand when he was ready to start the fire, positioning her next to him. “Okay, let’s light this baby up. The inaugural run of the Hilltop Ranch fire pit.” He lit the long fireplace match, touched it to the bundled newspaper in a few places, then tossed it into the gathering flames and stepped back, putting his arm around Mindy’s shoulders.

Everybody clapped as the fire flickered and spread. When the applause died down, Mindy slowly slipped her arm around Logan’s waist, giving him a subtle squeeze. When he looked down at her, she smiled back and hoped her expression told him she was proud of him. It had been a good week. He might not be able to make the ranch a going concern in the long run, but everybody’d had a good time, and that was worth something.

And maybe all hope wasn’t lost, after all. There were always new ideas, new possibilities for him to try.

They could try. That was all they could do, but it seemed like enough.

The fire was really crackling when a crunch of boots on gravel caught Mindy’s attention and she glanced off toward the path that led down to the cabins and the parking lot.

A balding, silver-haired man in a dark suit was approaching the fire, his features shadowed. He scanned the small crowd, his eyes finally landing on Mindy the moment he stepped close enough for her to recognize him.

She whispered, “Oh, it’s . . .” at the same time Logan dropped his arm from her shoulders.

It was Bud Jameson.

* * *

Logan put his hand behind his back as he watched Jameson step into the ring of firelight, and he pinched himself hard. He was that convinced he must be having a nightmare.

His stomach tightened ominously around the rib dinner as Jameson reached out for Mindy, pulling her into a hug.

“How’s my girl?”

She’s not your fucking girl
. Hot and pure and absolute, that was his first instinct, and he wanted to slam that truth into this asshole’s face with his fist and lay him out cold with it. Mindy didn’t reciprocate the hug; she stood stiffly and endured it, and Logan’s only impulse was to get the guy off her.

But then the truth slammed back, worse than any punch. Of course she was Bud Jameson’s girl. She had been all along. Had probably been reporting to Jameson the whole time.

Logan’s skin started crawling, and he bit the inside of his cheek hard to keep from saying the first several things that popped into his mind after that realization.

“Mr. Hill!” Bud released Mindy and turned toward Logan. Mindy just stood where her stepfather had left her, staring down at the fire like the life had been sucked out of her. Possibly because her job was done now, and she didn’t need to pretend anymore. What an exhausting fucking week it must have been for her.

Swallowing bile and barbecue sauce, Logan forced a grin and stuck his hand out to meet Bud’s. “Mr. Jameson.”

“Oh, call me Bud, call me Bud. Nice little hideaway you got here. Hope you don’t mind my party-crashing.” Jameson chuckled, looking around at the guests, who seemed puzzled by the visitor but willing enough to be charmed. “I was having dinner with a friend down in town and thought I’d stop by and check on Mindy. See how the vacation went.”

Mindy turned around as though she realized some interaction would be appropriate. “Fine until now,” she muttered, staring off toward the house.

It was obvious she couldn’t wait to get away. Logan didn’t blame her. He couldn’t wait for her to get away, either.

“Oh, now,” Jameson dismissed her. His folksy charm grated on Logan’s nerves.

Robert and Diego started passing out marshmallows and long sticks, diverting the rest of the group’s attention away from the tense scene playing out between Logan and Mindy and this new, too-friendly stranger. Chet shot Logan a questioning glance, but accepted a shrug-off—though he frowned and immediately fell into an equally tense conversation with Ethan.

Something pricked at Logan’s mind—the fact that Jameson had even bothered with making a flimsy excuse for being in the neighborhood. “Dinner with a friend down in town?”

“Sure. Derek Larch.”

The name sounded familiar . . .
Oh
. “My loan officer.”

Jameson nodded, then shook his head with a heavy sigh. “You know, that boy has too much on his plate right now. And I told him, you know Derek, I’ve been in this business a long time. And when you have a heavy load, sometimes the only thing you can do is to pass along some of your riskier ventures.” He lowered his voice, so the guests couldn’t overhear, though he kept the same jovial tone. “Like bank loans you’re afraid might be defaulted on, because the business concern doesn’t seem too sound, and the proprietors have already been in for several talks about extending payment periods.”

“
No
,” Mindy said.

Bud patted her arm. “Pumpkin, you’ve given this one a really good shot, and frankly done more than I could’ve ever asked for, but it’s time for you to go roast some marshmallows and leave this to Pop and Mr. Hill to hash out. And text your mother, she’d like to hear from you.”

Mindy’s upper lip flexed, and the skin around her eyes went taut as she stared at her stepfather. She swallowed, and raised her balled fists to the level of her waist before lowering them along with her eyes.

In that few seconds, Logan would not have been surprised if Mindy had plucked one of the marshmallow sticks from the stack and skewered Bud Jameson in the heart with it. Then puked on his corpse, because she looked as ready to hurl as Logan felt. But then Logan remembered Mindy’s role in all this. She might not like her stepfather, that much was clear, but the woman obviously knew which side her bread was buttered on.

Mindy exhaled, trembling with whatever emotion gripped her. When she spoke again, her voice was a rasp, a scoured whisper without hope. “I wasn’t talking to you, Bud.” Then she lifted her eyes to Logan’s. “I didn’t do this.”

He couldn’t answer her. His brain and mouth and heart didn’t have enough organization to get out a coherent thought. After a moment she spun and walked away. Down the gravel path. Out of sight between the trees. Probably to her cabin. Possibly only to gather her bags and leave right that instant.

Now was not the time he could think about that.

“Sometime in the next few weeks, I propose we have a sit-down,” Jameson said, pivoting slightly to take in the people, the fire, the silhouetted hills, the last scraps of red at the edge of the darkened sky. Everything Logan held dear and was probably about to lose. “We can still do this the easy way. I can make you a rich man. Trust me, sport, it’s better than the hard way. You are not cut out for the hard way. And neither is that poor fella down at your pissant bank. You can keep what you have and enjoy it with some wells on it. Or I will own all this and I will fucking destroy you in the process.”

“You—”

Jameson turned around and held up a hand. “Part of the easy way includes me pretending not to care whether you’ve been fucking my damn stepdaughter.”

Enough. Logan closed his eyes, shook his head. He only had one more question in him. Anything else he’d have to deal with tomorrow. “Did she call you and tell you to come here after she’d softened me up enough? Was that the plan all along?”

Jameson snorted. “I’ll be on my way, Logan. Expect some correspondence from Derek Larch and my office in the next few weeks. You have a good night now.” Through some psychic power, or possibly just a business sense honed beyond anything Logan could have imagined possible, he craned his neck and nodded at Chet and Ethan. “Y’all can come have your talk with our boy here now. We’re all through.”

He strolled off, smiling to the curious guests, and disappeared through the gap in the trees. Logan’s hope that he would trip in the dark was dashed when a flashlight gleamed into life, then bounced out of sight down the hill.

D
allas was a nightmare.

It had always kind of been a nightmare. But before, Mindy had always been able to push that to the background, excuse it away based on circumstances. Of
course
she hated it. She’d had to move there after her parents’ awful divorce, had to share a crappy apartment with her mom instead of moving into a dorm for college like she’d always expected she would. Then she’d had to work and study and worry ... until her financial worry had been wiped out and replaced with the fear that her mother had compromised herself for financial security with Bud Jameson.

Dallas was the place she’d lost her illusions, and told herself that was progress. The place she’d learned to talk about her hometown with a thin veneer of fondness over a thick base of scorn. Oh, Bolero ...
bless its heart
.

She’d texted her mother from her cabin at Hilltop, only to learn there was some sort of surprise in store for her. A surprise at work. She’d find out Monday, Mom had told her. The texts practically vibrated with ill-concealed excitement.

She had started to reply that she’d just seen Bud. That he’d just viciously crushed the dreams of a good man, then told her to run along and roast a goddamn marshmallow. But she didn’t want to start saying things she’d regret, not when she was angry. Not when every fiber of her being wanted to march back up that hill and kick Bud Jameson in the nuts. She would find a way to broach the subject after she’d calmed down.

Monday morning at the office, she’d walked in to learn she’d scored that promotion after all. Just as her newly assigned assistant was peeling the cute wrapping paper off the shiny new nameplate outside her shiny new office—no more cubicle for Mindy—Bud texted her.

Her new job was basically Bud’s latest gift to her mom—just another tennis bracelet. He’d figured out a long time ago that his wife wasn’t that rewarded by diamonds, but she was incredibly gratified when her only child did well and got another step closer to the financial security that she, Amelia Smith Valek Jameson, had spent so many years without.

It was diabolically clever. Mindy had to hand it to her stepfather. In order to decline the money, the job, the promotion, Mindy would have had to hurt her mother brutally. Bud knew she never would—and now she was caught in his web. A gilded cage.

By Tuesday, she’d already called a friend and made a date. And Wednesday night found her at the kink club, half-wishing she’d chosen any other activity for the evening.

“I’ll use the waxed leather on you, but nothing harder,” Miss Vixen had said once she saw Mindy naked.

“V,
please
.”

“No.” The petite Dom had shaken her head firmly, black curls bobbing around her chin as she leaned over to drop her favorite tawse back into her toy bag. “Somebody beat me to it, girl. I’m not layering over all that, you’ll end up with blood blisters or worse. You know that isn’t my jam. Use common sense.”

“Ugh. Fine.”

“Can I get some damn respect,
please
.”

“Ma’am.” It just didn’t feel as good as
sir
at the moment. Especially not the
sirs
she’d laid on Logan when she was flying. “Sorry, Miss V. I’m just in a mood.”

“You think? We could do a slapper. Lotta noise, at least. I have one other trick up my sleeve, too. I won’t leave you hanging. Now let’s . . . get you hanging.”

So within a few minutes Mindy was naked under a scaffold, wrists cuffed and chained above her, body stretched so only her toes reached the ground. She did her best to let her mind float free as her partner laid into her with the flogger. Miss V tried to concentrate on the unmarked spots, but every so often she’d overlap one of the many lingering bruises and welts. Each time, Mindy winced with a flood of pain and accompanying emotions she didn’t want to examine.

“Ten more,” Miss V finally snapped at her. “Count ’em off!”

Mindy counted. It kept her in the pain, kept her from getting too spaced out, but she didn’t want to feel
present
. She wanted to forget. When she got to ten, Miss V patted her on the ass. “Good girl. You need to relax, Ariel. You aren’t singing for me tonight. You want to talk about it?”

“No, ma’am.”

What was there to say, really? That she’d found the perfect Dom, perfect lover, possibly also a boyfriend rolled in there somewhere . . . then everything that had happened in her life up to that point had conspired to make their relationship impossible and fuck it all up? That just when she’d found somebody amazing, she’d realized she was doomed to be the instrument of his destruction? Too much to convey, even to V—who was also her friend Jamila, with whom she enjoyed shopping for overpriced shoes and binge-watching
Project Runway
on the rare weekend when neither of them was working or at the club.

V walked around in front of her, slapping the flogger into her free hand. “Is this about that dude ranch guy? What’s his name, Landon? Logan?”

“V, come on.”

“All right. Changing it up.” V walked out of sight again, to rummage in her toy bag.

Whack!
The slapper had more bark than bite, but Mindy would take it over conversation. She fell into the rhythm, sagging against the chains and closing her eyes, shutting out everything but the pain.

A lull came, and she wasn’t expecting the next hit to be on the front. A sharp
crack
to the top of one thigh, forcing her eyes wide open. V chuckled. “That woke you up.”

“Evil.”

“Mm-hmm.”

V didn’t
look
evil. She looked kind of like Glinda the Good Witch some nights, but tonight it was more jewelry box ballerina. Pale pink tutu, pale pink brocade corset, pink toe shoe–inspired stilettos. Her dark skin and hair were a startling contrast to the outfit, as always— she favored icy pinks, blues, and pure whites, and she loved the attention her look earned her. Except when new Doms to the local scene mistook her for a submissive. Then her head exploded while she set them straight.

She was the best kind of evil, though. The kind with a heart. She popped the slapper across one of Mindy’s nipples, then the other, alternated between them a few times, then smacked the noisy leather strap without warning against the still-flowering bite-mark bruise. Mindy cried out, needing more. V obliged with one more slap at the spot before disappearing again.

This time, she came back with the evil stick. Concentrated doses of sting, carefully targeted to all the bare spots V could find. The outer thighs, a few safe zones on Mindy’s lower back and mid-torso.

When V grazed the slender, springy rod over the bite mark, moving her other hand in preparation to pull it back for a strike, Mindy shook her head, surprising even herself. “No, don’t.”

She kept aiming, pulling back on the stick.

“Red.”

V jerked her hand away, clearly startled, and caught herself on the chin with the edge of the stick. “Ow! Fuck!”

“Oh no! Are you okay?” Mindy rattled the chains, but she didn’t have enough slack to get herself free without a lot of effort.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” V tossed the stick down next to her back and stepped to the side of the scaffold, grabbing a folding step stool. She propped it next to Mindy and climbed up to unhook the safety clips. “Are
you
okay? You’ve never safed out on me before. Did I fuck up?”

“Oh, God no.” Mindy hugged V, taking advantage of the stool while V was on it. Usually Mindy was taller, but she knew V enjoyed the illusion of height. “You were great. I’m just not in the right headspace today. I’m sorry, I should have suggested dumb movie night instead.”

“I was worried I’d really hurt something on one of those overworked spots. I
told
you. You should listen to me, I’m a doctor.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Just glad you’re okay.”

They cuddled for a minute, reassuring one another, then signed off the hug with “
let’s wrap this up
” pats.

V wobbled off the stool. “To be honest, dumb movie night probably wouldn’t have gotten me out of the house. I think you need to talk, though. You wanna go out to the lounge?”

The club wasn’t a huge space, and the lounge was even smaller. Bodies would be jostling together, many of them funky after vigorous scenes. Claustrophobic.

“I wish we could go somewhere outside.”

V zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Yeah, I wish that, too, but neither of us is dressed for it. I drove here in this. Your tits are hanging out of that shirt if anybody looks close.”

Mindy fingered the light jersey of the sleeveless yoga shirt she liked to throw on after a scene. It was comfortable and didn’t press on any welts while she drove home, but without a sports bra under it, it was a public indecency citation waiting to happen. “What we need is a kink venue with a ton of open space, and a hotel right there so people can spend the night if they’re too loopy to drive home after a scene.”

In her mind, a bell chimed, and an image sprang to life. Later, she would always recall that the idea literally came to her with the clear, sweet tone of a single church bell.

“Oh my God,” she said. “
V, I
know what Logan can do to turn a quick profit at the ranch.”

“What?” The bell chimed again, and V pulled her phone from the pocket of her bag and checked the screen. “Hang on, gotta look at this. I may need to call back.” She was already wending her way toward the door to the lounge. She couldn’t speak on the phone inside the playroom—though an exception would have probably been made for her, if she’d explained it was work-related. V was a clinical cardiologist, and she was almost never
not
in touch with her office staff.

Mindy followed V at a more leisurely place, feeling better than she had since she’d seen her stepfather walk up to Logan at the fire pit over a week earlier. The fact that the bell had actually been V’s new message tone mattered not at all. Mindy’d had a vision, and she finally knew how to help Logan. Now all she had to do was convince him to trust her.

Easy-peasy.

* * *

“Well, she’s fucking nuts.”

Logan nodded sadly at his brother and continued typing in his listing information. “Should we start the description with the distance from San Antonio or Austin, do you think? Having both seems too wordy.”

“San Antonio,” Ethan replied with a wave of his hand. “Sounds more old-time Texas-style. People coming from inside the state will know where it is, anyway. You’re just trying to pull Yankees.”

Logan sighed and backspaced, changing the first sentence for the tenth time. He wanted to be done with this, so he could get some sleep, so he could have some sort of energy tomorrow when he talked to that weekend’s too-small group of guests. It was hard to razzle-dazzle folks when he was barely able to keep his eyes open. “Once we hit Send on this, we have maybe two weeks to clean out the main house. Assuming anybody wants to rent.”

“Put in something like
ideal writing retreat
. Talk about the view.” Ethan stalked across the office, still staring at the email Logan had forwarded him. “Absolutely fucking psycho wacko nutballs.”

“Gee, Ev, don’t hold back . . .” Logan hadn’t actually decided quite how to feel about Mindy. Or the fact that she’d emailed him—since he hadn’t accepted her calls. Or the idea she’d proposed in that email.

“This is what happens when you put your dick in evil.”

Logan stood, shoving the rolling chair back so hard it hit the far wall. “
Dude
.”

His little brother’s eyes went wide. “Is that not where we were with this?”

“I don’t
know
.”

“Fuck.” Ethan slipped his phone back his pocket and laced his hands behind his neck. “Sorry, man. I thought that was—I’m really sorry.”

Sighing, Logan retrieved his chair and flopped back into it. “You didn’t see her face when he talked to her. Or when she claimed she didn’t do it. I’m pissed as fucking hell and I’m sick about the whole situation, but I do not know what to believe about her right now. Whether she was reporting back to fucking Bud Jameson the whole time, or looking at my spreadsheets and distracting me while Bud figured out the bank thing, or called him out to close the deal or what.” And he couldn’t stand to hear anybody bashing her until he knew it was justified. Things had been so much simpler when his biggest frustration was that he couldn’t parade Mindy across the stable yard naked on a leash . . .

Huh
.

“Do you want me to write the description thing, so you can get some sleep? You look wrecked.” Ethan leaned over the keyboard. Logan hardly noticed him.

A sudden vision danced before his eyes with the strength of a hallucination. Mindy, in just a collar and a pain-face, suspended from the rafters in the old barn. Other subs disporting themselves around the hay bales. Doms strolling across the lawn, finding wide-open spaces to throw bullwhips. A pony derby . . . taking place in an actual corral. Kink
rodeo
.

“We’d have to make the horse barn strictly off-limits . . .” he murmured. “And find some way to keep Lamar away.”

“What? He’ll be up like usual to take care of the horses. Renting out the main house won’t change that. You’ll just be down in the cabins, you can police the horse barn during the day. Do we need to get you some better Wi-Fi down there, by the way?” Ethan started typing.

“It wouldn’t even have to be every weekend, we could do it like a mini-convention once a month or something.” Logan sat up and tapped Ethan’s shoulder, trying to nudge him away from the computer. “Charge for the weekend or just the day, people could wear those wristbands. We already know the sheriff isn’t gonna raid the place, right? He’ll be up here playing as soon as he’s off-duty.”