Once Tasted: A Silver Creek Novel (9 page)

Perfection
. It was hard to think of the Knowleses’ ranch linked with the Bodells’ much smaller and, with the exception of the vineyard and the winery, far more
ramshackle property. It was equally hard to imagine her family, rife with dysfunction and heartache, allied with theirs.

As she approached the carved wood door to the lodge, a voice called to her. “Mia!”

She turned. Adele Knowles was walking up the gravel road that led to the corrals and barns. She wore jeans and a button-down Liberty print shirt covered in pale-blue flowers that matched her eyes. Her cowboy boots were an equally stunning color of deep blue.

The boots were incredible. But there was no point in being envious. Mia knew she would never be able to pull off a look like Adele’s. Of course, it helped that in addition to being tall, blond, and a successful businesswoman, Adele was a cowgirl, too. She’d ridden all her life. According to Quinn, her mother had won numerous reining competitions before she and Daniel married.

Mia’s throat was still raw from her conversation with Thomas. Even attempting a “Hi, Adele” was painful.

“Mia, I’m so pleased to see you!” Adele clasped Mia’s hands in hers. “Thank you for agreeing to give the talk today—” Her eyes, so similar to Reid’s, scanned Mia’s face. A worried frown replaced her smile. “Are you all right, dear?”

The sympathy only made Mia’s throat ache more.

“Yes, of course,” she replied tightly. “I’m sorry I didn’t arrive earlier. Do I have enough time to make sure the wines for my presentation are ready?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Everything’s set up. Reid gave George Reich the list. The bottles have been opened to allow the wines to breathe. Why don’t you head down to the corral? Reid, Ward, and our foreman, Pete, are giving our guests roping lessons. The women have been having such a good time, they’re still practicing—”

“That’s okay, I can wait up here—”

“Go on down,” she urged. “You can meet the guests and join the fun, Mia. And it’ll give the men the perfect excuse to let you take center stage.”

Center stage, where she least liked to be
.

“W
OO-HOO
!”

Mia cringed. She wanted nothing more than to turn around and march back up the drive to the main lodge’s parking lot, where she’d left her pickup truck. But she had too much pride to pull a disappearing act now that Adele had seen her.

Another round of whoops pierced the air, this one followed by laughter and applause. A crowd of women—many more than she’d expected—had congregated in the corral nearest the horse barn. In the center of them, three men—Reid, Ward, and Pete Williams, the ranch’s foreman—worked their lassos. The ropes danced, twirled, and jumped like live things.

At a signal from Reid, the three ropes came together, each twirling, one directly below the other. Mia had no idea how the men kept them from becoming entangled. The “oohs” from the guests showed she was not alone in being impressed. Pete reeled in his rope first, Ward followed next, while Reid kept his in the air. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he caught the loop. Applause erupted. The three doffed their Stetsons.

Settling his dark-beige hat on his head, Ward addressed the audience. “Thank you, ladies. Now, we’ve
gone over the basics of roping, and tomorrow we’ll practice some more both on the ground and in the saddle, but we thought we’d end our session with one last demo by Reid here. You ready, Reid?”

With a nod, Reid sent the rope into the air again. It circled above him like a spinning wheel.

“So this next trick is in honor of my fiancée, Tess, and her friend Anna, who’s come here from New York City. Say hi, Anna,” Ward instructed with a grin.

A woman stepped forward and waved. “Hi, everybody,” she called cheerfully.

Cheerful “hi”s echoed back.

Ward resumed speaking. “Now, there’s a story behind how my lovely Tess came to Silver Creek Ranch. It involves a blindfold Anna tied over her eyes before Tess placed her finger on a map of California. Anna made Tess promise that wherever her finger landed would be her destination.” He grinned at the “aww”s that resounded. “So you all can imagine how pleased I was when Anna presented me with the very scarf she’d used on Tess.” From his back pocket, Ward pulled a black-and-white-patterned silk scarf.

“So how about we put this blindfold over my little brother’s eyes and see how well his roping skills hold up. Do you mind, Reid?”

“I’d say I stand a better chance than you of roping something, Ward,” Reid replied, adding with the supreme cockiness Mia knew so well, “blindfolded and with both hands tied behind my back.”

Ward flashed a smile, and Mia bet most of the women wished this tall, dark, and handsome cowboy wasn’t engaged to be married. Of course, with Reid standing next to Ward and looking like a sun-kissed god, their disappointment was probably short-lived.

“Strong words, bro. Let’s see whether you can back
them up.” Ward quickly folded the scarf over itself until it was a wide band. “Ready?”

Reid looked at Ward and flashed a grin. “Always.”

Placing the scarf over Reid’s eyes, Ward made a show of knotting it behind his head. “Can you see anything?” he asked.

“Not a damned thing.”

The words were a catalyst. Despite how hostile Mia felt toward Reid and his new role in her life, knowing that he couldn’t catch her staring was too great a temptation. She looked her fill.

He stood easily and confidently, a smile playing over his lips, as if it didn’t matter that he was blindfolded in the middle of a corral, surrounded by a group of women, all of whom were staring as avidly as she. The wind toyed with the ends of his hair, causing them to brush against the collar of his light-tan shirt. He was still twirling the lasso in the air, and she saw the corded muscles beneath his sun-burnished skin flex and jump. The rest of him was just as leanly and beautifully sculpted, she thought, her gaze traveling down the length of his body.

Ward’s voice startled Mia out of her absorption. “Ladies,” he said. “We’ll need four volunteers for this demonstration. That’s right. Don’t be shy. Want to round ’em up for us, Pete?”

Pete Williams was someone Mia knew from perusing the wire selection at Wright’s Hardware, from waiting in line at the bank, and from their shared love of Spillin’ the Beans’s Colombian roast. Pete walked over to the semicircle of women, every last one of them waving her hand in the air, eager to volunteer for anything that included Reid.

With the skin around his brown eyes creased with devilish mirth, Pete took care to prolong the communal excitement by spacing his selections out. He hadn’t even
gotten to “three” by the time he reached the far end of the horseshoe formation, where Mia waited for the demonstration and for the entire blasted evening to end.

“And how about you, miss?” he asked a woman standing a few yards from her.

The woman’s response was identical to that of the two others Pete had selected: unfettered glee. After hopping up and down like a game-show contestant—a hop that made her truly impressive breasts bounce beneath her rhinestone-studded shirt—the woman sashayed into the inner circle of the corral, in jeans so tight Mia wondered how she could breathe, let alone sit in a saddle.

Preoccupied with observing the woman’s progress, Mia didn’t realize that Pete had moved closer. “And how about you for number four?”

Mia looked around and then realized with horror that he meant her. “No, I really don’t—”

A chorus of women’s voices went up, drowning her out. “Come on, it’ll be fun!” And “You go, girl!” A hand even gave her an encouraging shove.

A stunned Mia found herself stumbling forward. Then Pete was herding her into the center of the ring as if she were a wayward sheep. Pete had always seemed like a nice guy, ready to shoot the breeze about the week’s weather forecast as they waited for their java fix, so this struck her as an unexpected betrayal.

There was a lot of that going around today.

Ward acknowledged her presence with a grin and a nod. But before she could plead to be returned to the audience, he spoke to Pete. “Let’s get the ladies in position.”

Since Mia was closest to Pete, she was the first to be escorted—or, rather, marched—to her designated spot. Hers was directly behind Reid. She had no idea what this game entailed, but she figured that hers might be
the best place to be. The thought made her breathe a little easier.

Reid’s nose had begun to tickle, but he wasn’t about to scratch it. He had his dignity to consider. He felt foolish enough already. What the hell was Ward thinking, egging these women on with some last-minute trick involving him and a blindfold? They hardly needed encouragement. A number had already taken pains to let him know which cabin they were staying in—as if he or anyone in his family would ever get involved with a guest. That path led to a manure pile the size of Mount Everest.

Tomorrow he’d figure out a way to sic the women on Ward. It’d be satisfying to turn the tables on his brother and see how much he enjoyed being chased around the guest ranch by females looking for a roll in the hay with a cowboy. Of course, Ward had cleverly preempted any overenthusiastic overtures by mentioning his fiancée a couple of hundred times.

From the bursts of high-pitched giggles, he figured Pete and Ward were having a fine time with the women. He didn’t know what Ward had planned. Didn’t care at this point. He only wished they’d pick up the pace. Mia would be arriving soon. He didn’t want to look like an idiot standing with an Italian scarf wrapped around his head.

“All right, Reid. The ladies are in their places.”

It took you long enough, Reid retorted silently.

“You’re a lucky guy to be surrounded by such beauty. Now, Pete and I have placed the ladies at twelve, three, six, and nine on the clock. Each one is standing about twenty feet away from you. Your job is to see whether you can lasso one blindfolded.”

Tricky but doable. Sometimes Reid, Ward, and their
father would get into competitions—pissing contests, really—with the ranch hands. They’d used bandannas on occasions to up the ante. But it had been ages since he’d last tried to lasso anything blindfolded. Luckily, he was good with a rope.

“So, Reid, what’s your favorite hour?”

He caught a giggle in front of him and equally annoying titters to his left and right. Behind him, though, nothing, just blessed silence, even when he strained his ears. Yet somehow he sensed the woman’s presence more strongly than that of the others. Interesting.

“You know, I’ve always been partial to the midnight hour. Crazy magic happens then.” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than Reid spun on his heels and, picturing the distance in his mind’s eye, let the lasso fly. He felt the weight of the rope in his hand as it descended and waited an extra millisecond—damned if he was going to catch the woman by the neck—before giving a quick jerk of his wrist.

He was met with solid resistance. Oh, yeah, that was a body caught snug in his rope. Satisfaction pierced him as a round of hearty applause went up. With a grin, he pulled off the blindfold, all set to make an extravagant bow to the captured lady.

Instead, he froze.
Oh, fuck
.

Pete had had the bad judgment to include
Mia
, of all the women in attendance, in this roping stunt? Of those four, Reid had had the atrocious luck to pick
her
? Usually he was the kind of guy who rolled with it, able to see the humor in life’s little jokes. He wasn’t laughing.

Neither was Mia.

Torso and arms bound by the lariat, she stood as stiff as a board and half as fun. If looks could kill, he’d be dead and buried. And if Mia had her way, she’d see that he spent an eternity rotting in hell.

He was accustomed to her looking down her nose at
him with her nostrils pinched, as if he’d stepped in a cow patty. She wore that signature look now. It was no surprise she was annoyed that he’d had the lousy luck to catch her in his lasso. The feeling was mutual. But there was something else, more than just condescension or even outrage in her expression.

Her face was drawn and pale.

Damn
. So Thomas had delivered the news that he was leaving Acacia for France.

He didn’t want to feel sorry for her.

Aware that there were far too many pairs of eyes on them, he forced a grin. “Mia,” he said loudly. “So nice to see you.”

He was met with stony silence. Oh, man, this didn’t bode well. Any longer with her standing there looking like a grim priss in her tan skirt and olive top and clogs—Mia was the only woman he knew who would wear
clogs
to a cowgirl event—and these paying guests would be demanding their money back.

Best get this over with. He resurrected his grin—a miracle—and kept his gaze fixed on her chin. This was not the time to be caught checking out her breasts. A pity. With the rope tight about her, this was a rare opportunity to actually
see
them.

Determined to turn an awkward moment into an entertaining one, he gave the rope a yank and began to reel her in. Mia, being Mia, performed perfectly and predictably. She resisted him every step of the way.