Passion's Dream (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 1) (15 page)

“How do you know how exquisite my clothing designs are?”

“Burke sent me photos of them.  If they are all as wonderful as the ones I saw, Leah, then they’re just the thing to lend a bit of class and elegance to our little town.  The Bed and Breakfast is nearly completely booked through October, and they’re planning to offer a Thanksgiving special.  With Jesse and Adam’s BDSM club just up the road and the boutique shopping mall they’re creating out of the old, Civil War-era cotton mill, the high-end clientele they attract will flock to your gallery.  We already have people driving here from Richmond, Petersburg and Williamsburg, and we expect Passion Lake’s particular brand of whimsy will go over bigtime in D.C.  Caleb’s brother Ash has been working on two brochures which will go in all the Visitor Welcome Centers and Tourist Information Centers, not just in Virginia, but in all the neighboring states as well.  They’ll also go in hotels, motels, and restaurants.”

“Wow.”

Clay smiled.  “Yeah, wow.  Passion Lake is not a normal town with a mayor and town council.  It’s a corporation with a CEO, a Board of Directors, and stockholders.  Caleb’s official title isn’t Sheriff, it’s Chief of Security.  The original investors are the board members and we hold sixty per cent of the shares.  Any new investor would have to be approved by the Board of Directors, but I can pretty much guarantee you’d be a shoo-in.”

Leah turned her head to look out the window. 
Yeah, but where would I live?  If it’s not with you, I don’t think I would want to stay.

“The Passion Lake Lodge is down that road,” Clay pointed out as they passed the carved wooden sign advertising the place.  “Like I said, it’s owned by Nik Rostov and Jay Gillespie.  Nik is Russian, six feet eight, and very intimidating, but he’s really a teddy bear, especially with women.  He loves women.  He was wonderful with all the hostages our SEAL team rescued, getting them to talk about their ordeal when no one else could get through to them.”

“What’s a Russian doing on a SEAL team?” Leah asked, curious.

“He was a member of the Russian Special Forces.  He suspected his superior officer of corruption and taking bribes, nothing unusual in the Russian army, and true to form his commanding officers told him to leave it alone.  But he couldn’t leave it alone.  So, when he caught his captain in the act, he turned him in.  Unfortunately, no action was taken except to move Nik to a post in Siberia.  This roused his suspicions, so he conducted an unauthorized undercover investigation into all of the officers.  The information he compiled on the entire chain of command nearly brought down the Russian Special Forces.  They all faced court martial, including Nik for disobeying direct orders.  But he had planned for just such a contingency and sneaked out of the country, carrying a flash drive with all the incriminating information on it.  When he walked into the Naval Air Base in San Diego and demanded to speak to the base commander, he turned over the flash drive and was placed on our team less than a month later.”

“I can’t wait to meet him,” Leah said.  ‘He sounds fascinating.”

“I figured we’d have dinner at his bar tomorrow night, so you can meet both of them.  And quite possibly most of the rest of my former teammates.  We’re a pretty close-knit group.”

They quickly left the town behind, and began to climb through a pine forest.  Off in the distance, through the trees, Leah caught occasional glimpses of blue water.  A road to the left led, according to the sign, to the Passion Lake Airfield.  Then they emerged from the cover of the trees into rolling farm land, until they came to white-fenced paddocks with several horses grazing placidly.  The sign over the entrance proclaimed it to be Nighthorse Ranch.  Some of the horses looked up disinterestedly as Clay turned into the driveway, rattling over the metal grate designed to keep the animals from leaving the property.

“This isn’t the most direct route to the house,” Clay was saying as the driveway meandered between enormous oak trees whose branches met across the road, providing a leafy canopy overhead.  ‘But it’s the most scenic, so that’s what I went with.”

“It’s beautiful,” Leah acknowledged, taking it all in.

“There are very few places in Virginia that aren’t beautiful,” Clay confided, reaching up with his right hand to rub the back of his neck.  As tired as he was, he was eager to get home and show Leah around.  The woods opened out into rolling green meadows watered by a wide stream that was so shallow they didn’t even need a bridge to cross it.  They just drove right through it.  As they rounded one last turn, the house came into view.  It was a large, traditional, two-story Colonial style house, painted a pale, buttery yellow with black shutters, white trim, and a wide, columned porch that swept around both sides.  “The porch goes all the way around the house,” Clay said as he pulled up to the front steps and parked.  “That way you can either seek the sun or avoid it, depending on the time of day.”

“It’s beautiful,” Leah whispered.  “And not at all the one-story, stucco ranch house I pictured you in.”

“My grandmother’s house looked like this,” he confided, bending forward and craning his neck to admire his house.  “It was the only place I felt safe growing up.  My Dad wasn’t around much and my mother was a drunken nightmare, so I would escape to
shiichoo
’s house.  Rosemary usually came with me. 
Shiichoo
had a big, sunny kitchen with an old farm table in the middle of it covered with a lace table cloth that reached to the floor.  She would give us cookies or a brownie or a butterscotch bar—whatever she was baking at the time—and Rosemary and I would crawl under that table to eat them.  Then we’d just sit cross-legged on the floor and talk quietly about what we wanted to be when we grew up.  Rosemary wanted to be a princess rescued from the evil troll by a handsome prince and carried off to his castle.  I guess she saw Everett Burke as an acceptable substitute for her handsome prince.  And I now know that her brother Franklin was the real evil troll in her life.”

“And what did you want to be?” Leah asked.

“A warrior,” he said simply, opening his door and unfolding himself from the car seat.  On the way around to open Leah’s door, he popped the trunk.  She accepted his hand-up from the low-slung seat and got the large box of food from Katie’s BBQ out of the back seat as he retrieved the luggage from the trunk. 
Geez, it’s still hot! 
And even though she had just eaten, the mouthwatering aroma of Katie’s sweet and spicy barbecue sauce made her tummy rumble.  She followed him up the wide wooden steps onto the shady porch, looking around while he unlocked the front door.

Off to the right of the house, across the driveway, was a white-fenced paddock with five horses standing around grazing quietly.  A little farther up the driveway was a neat white barn with a wide central aisle.  Through the open doors, Leah could see a long row of empty horse stalls.  Beyond the barn was an even bigger two-story house, also with a wide porch and a long row of rocking chairs.

“Who lives there?” Leah asked.

“That’s the bunkhouse.”  He chuckled.  “See those men standing around in front of the barn pretending to be busy?” 

\She turned to look and four of the five men hastily turned their heads away, all of them suddenly intensely interested in doing various things—coiling a piece of rope, repositioning a bale of hay a couple of inches, scraping imaginary mud off their jeans, inspecting their fingernails.  The fifth man, caught ogling Leah, merely gave her an unabashed grin and a wink.

Clay and Leah both laughed.  “Come and get it!” Clay yelled as he hefted the luggage and pushed the door open with his foot.  “Katie’s!”  Leah followed him into the cool interior of the house, chuckling at the whoops and hollers of joy from the hands as they came running toward the house.  Clay had to yank Leah back behind him to keep her from being trampled by the men, who stopped so abruptly, they crashed into each other.

“Beg pardon, ma’am,” they muttered, removing their hats and shuffling their feet awkwardly.  “Here, ma’am, let me take that.”  One of them put his hat back on and stepped forward.  “It’s much too heavy for you to carry.”

“Oh, but—” Leah started to protest, then thought better of it.  “Thank you,” she said, studying him as he took the box from her arms.  He was quite handsome, with the broad chest, thick neck, and powerful arm and shoulder muscles of a linebacker.  He had rich mahogany brown hair, hazel eyes, a snub nose, and a smile that revealed even, white teeth.

“Leah, that’s Mark Austin.  He’s my foreman here at Nighthorse Ranch,” Clay said.  “Mark, this is Leah Stanhope.  Doctor Leah Stanhope.”

“Pleased to meet you, Doc,” Mark Austin said with a wide grin.  “Got anything for a rash?”

Leah laughed.  “I’m not that kind of doctor.”

“No problem,” he said as he turned and walked the food toward the kitchen.  “You brought Katie’s pulled pork.  For that you can be any kind of doctor you want.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Leah,” Clay said, lifting his hand to indicate the first man to Leah’s left, “this is Ray Sadler, Mitch Thompkins, Al Eaglefeather, and Rusty Madison.”

“Ray.  Mitch.”  She shook each man’s hand in turn, murmuring his name as she did so.  “Al.  Rusty.  It’s lovely to meet you all.”

“Same here, ma’am,” they said in unison.

“Please, call me Leah.  Or Doc, if you want to.  Anything but ma’am.”

“Sure, ma’am,” “Whatever you say, ma’am,” “Of course, ma’am,” they all chorused at once.

Leah just laughed.

“Glad we got that straightened out,” Clay said wryly.  “C’mon, let’s go eat.  We can get everyone introduced over lunch.”  He led the way into the kitchen, where Mark Austin was busy unpacking the food and setting paper plates, plastic forks, and napkins on the butcher block table in front of each chair.  The men all slapped their dusty hats against their thighs and hung them up on a hat rack just inside the kitchen door.  Then they washed their hands at the sink.  But their boots were still dusty.  Hay clung to their clothes and they all had serious hat hair, matted and damp with sweat.  They smelled like leather and hay, dust and horses.

“Oh, none for me, please,” Leah protested when she saw seven places set.  “We’ve already eaten and I can’t eat another bite.  Really.” She added at Mark’s quirked eyebrow.  “I’m stuffed.”

“I’ll have some,” Clay called out as he walked toward a stainless steel door.  “Leah, could you grab a soda while I get the beers?”  She followed him to the refrigerator, holding the door open and reaching around him for a cola while he grabbed a case of Bud.  “The cola’s for Ray,” he said as he plunked the carton down at the far end of the table and ripped it open, grabbing two cans and putting one at his place at the head of the table and the other at Leah’s place just to his right.

She watched in total astonishment as he proceeded to load his plate with pulled pork, French fries and Cole slaw.  “Excuse me, aren’t you the same man who just demolished five slabs of ribs and a mountain of fries?  How can you even
think
of eating all that?”

Clay grinned.  “It’s fuel to keep up my energy.  I’ve been told I’m going to need all the energy I can get.”

Leah looked around at all the men seated at the table.  “Do you guys all eat all your meals together?” she asked.

Clay chuckled.  “Don’t worry, baby, you won’t be expected to cook for these guys.  Or clean up after them when they’re done.  I have a couple, Hector and Grace.  Hector was a cook on the aircraft carrier
Carl Vinson,
until he retired.  He does all the cooking and cleaning for the boys, while Grace looks after me.  They’re on vacation this week, but Hector stocked the freezer with enough frozen casseroles to feed everybody for the next five days.  You’ll meet them on Monday.”

While the ranchers were all busy wolfing down Katie’s delicious food, Leah sipped her beer and took advantage of the opportunity to study them.  Ray Sadler was sitting directly opposite her.

Noticing the direction of her gaze, Clay said, “Ray just started with us this month.  His dad was a member of our SEAL team.  He was killed six years ago in Afghanistan.  We’ve all just kind of adopted him.  Ray only works week-ends right now, because his Mama insists he keep his grades up and get his chores done before he can work at any outside job.  He wants to learn the horse breeding business from the ground up so that when he gets his own spread he’ll know how to make it work.”  Clay sounded as proud of Ray as if he were his own son.

It figured Ray Sadler was still in high school.  He didn’t look a day over sixteen.  He was around five-eleven and bean-pole thin, with hands and feet that were much too big for the rest of his body. He still had at least one more major growth spurt that would allow him to catch up. 
And then, ladies, you’d better watch out.  He’s going to be a heartbreaker
.  When he spoke, which wasn’t often, his words came out in a deep, southern drawl.  He had a baby face and was trying, without much success, to grow a beard.  A thick lock of his long brown hair drooped over his forehead, partially obscuring his brown eyes.  And even though the other men teased him enough to make him blush, he was pretty good at holding his own.

“Mitch Thompkins is a former Green Beret, ex rodeo champ, and our resident Romeo,” Clay continued, moving on to the man who had been eyeing her so unabashedly.  Mitch was perhaps in his mid-thirties, with dirty blond, chin-length hair and light blue eyes.  His smile revealed the deepest dimples Leah had ever seen.  Most women probably thought he was the sexiest thing on two legs with that two-day growth of stubble, the twinkling mischief in those eyes, his cocky attitude and the swaggering arrogance of his walk.  And they would be right, Leah though.  He had every reason to be smug and arrogant.  He was handsome as hell with charm and charisma up the wazoo.  As a rodeo star, he’d probably had to fight women off in droves.

“Do you miss the excitement of the rodeo?” Leah asked.

Mitch just grinned.  “I miss the ridin’,” he confessed around a bite of pulled pork.  “Don’t miss the fallin’.”  He shook his head, chewing thoughtfully, before going in for another bite.  “Definitely don’t miss the fallin’.”

“Mitch was a real crowd pleaser,” Clay said.  “A real favorite with the buckle bunnies.”

“Buckle bunnies?”

“The women who follow the rodeo circuit,” Mark said, “and, ahem”—he cleared his throat—“make themselves available to their favorite stars.’

“For sex,” Rusty chimed in.

“Watch your language,” Mitch chided, reaching over and covering Ray’s ears with his hands.  “There are children present.”

Ray shrugged the hands away, swatting at them like they were particularly annoying mosquitos.  “I’m not a child,” he retorted, his face turning beet red.  “And I know what sex is,” he added beneath his breath, “In theory, at any rate.”

“Yeah, well, we’d better not hear about you applyin’ theory to practice for at least another two years,” Al said.  “And certainly never—”

“Without a condom,” everyone chorused, including Ray.

Leah laughed.  Obviously this was a conversation that happened often.

“So we’ll move on to Al, down at the end there,” Clay picked up where he left off.  “He’s been working on ranches since he was a boy, until he ran off to join the Navy.  Tell Leah how long you were in the Navy, Al,” Clay suggested.

Al gave a sheepish little smile.  “Three days.”

“Why did you leave?” Leah asked.

“Seasick.”

“But surely, in the first three days, you didn’t have to go out to sea,” she exclaimed.

“Nope.  I got seasick just standing on the shore
lookin’
at the sea.  Bein’ from New Mexico, I’d never seen so much water all in the same place before,” he confided, “and it was all…
movin
’”—he started gesturing with his hands—“up and down, up and down.  It made me so dizzy I nearly passed out.  So I transferred to the Army instead.”

Even though everyone but Leah had heard this story many times, they all laughed.  Al Eaglefeather was a stocky, barrel-chested older man, perhaps in his early fifties, with a creased, leathery face, long, graying black hair which, like Clay, he tied at the nape of his neck with a leather thong, and prominent Native American features—broad nose, high, flat cheekbones, thin lips.

“And last, but not least, you’re sitting next to Rusty Madison, former SEAL, former Homeland Security, now ranch hand.  He’s been called ‘Rusty’ for so long he’s practically forgotten his real name.  What did you say it was, Rusty?  Elmer?  Norbert?”

“Nah,” Mark chimed in, “I’m pretty sure he said it was Cornelius.”

“He told
me
Percival,” Al said.

“You’re all wrong,” Mitch said, “It’s Arbuthnot.”

Rusty just snorted around a huge bite of his sandwich, pulled pork, French fries and Cole slaw piled high between two slices of garlic bread.  A true redhead, Rusty was certainly an appropriate name.  Like Mitch Thompkins, he was probably in his mid-thirties, although his hair was short all over.  He had brilliant green eyes.

All five men were deeply tanned from long hours spent in the sun, and powerfully muscled from long hours of difficult, back-breaking work.

“And now we come to Leah,” Clay said, his voice softening noticeably as he took her hand and placed it on his thigh, covering it with his.  “Did you all get the photo I emailed you this morning?”

“Yeah.  We been on the lookout for him, but haven’t seen him,” Mitch said.  “Who is he?”

“Richard Gordon.  Leah’s ex.”

“So she’s the assignment you took on two days ago?” Mark asked.

“Yeah.  Our location was blown, so I figured the safest place for her to be was right here.”

“You got that right.  We won’t let that fucker anywhere near her.”

“I’m counting on it,” Clay nodded.

“You send Caleb a copy?” Al wanted to know.

“Yeah.  As well as Simon, Ash, Nik, Jay, Tool, Solo, and Ben Cobb at the B and B.”

Leah jerked straight up in her chair.  “You
did
tell everyone!” she accused.

“Not yet,” Clay assured her.  “But they’re all gonna know by the end of the meeting tonight.”

“What?”  She was aghast.  “You’re going to go blabbing all about me in front of a meeting?  What kind of meeting?”

“The shareholders’ meeting,” Mitch contributed.  “You’ll love it.  Especially the cake.”

“Really good cake,” Al added.  “Made by our very own Cakes ‘R’ Us Bakery.  Laura really has a way with lemon curd filling. I had three pieces at the last shareholders’ meeting.  Mm mm mm.”  He shook his head in remembered pleasure.

“Assuming your ex is even able to find you, the more people who know your story, the more witnesses we’ll have to anything he tries to do,” Mark explained.  “Clay and Caleb will make sure that everyone knows to be on the lookout for him and arm themselves with phones and notepads so they can document his every move.”

The sudden image of white-haired, ninety-three-year-old Granny Grace, dressed in a trench coat, lurking behind trees and popping up out of bushes, taking pictures and frantically scribbling down notes struck Leah as so funny, she began to laugh hysterically.  All of the men joined in, even though the looks they gave each other told her they had no idea what they were laughing at.

Finally, gasping for breath and wiping her eyes, she described her vision.  Which made them all laugh again, because they agreed that the old woman was totally apt to do just that.

“Then part of me hopes Richard actually does find me, because he’s never going to believe what’s about to happen to him.”

“Okay, guys,” Clay said, standing up and pushing his chair back with his legs.  ‘Back to work.  Leah and I are going to make a grocery list and I’ll need someone to volunteer to go into Marshall’s Creek.”  He held up a set of keys, jingling them temptingly.  “You can take the Beemer.”

Mark was the closest and the quickest, snatching the keys out of Clay’s hand before anyone else was even out of their chairs.  He was still gloating when Clay added, “The winner also gets to clean up the kitchen while I show Leah around the ranch.”  He held out his hand, which she took, letting him pull her to her feet.

“Thanks, Mark,” she said as Clay put his arm around her waist and drew her against his side.

“Don’t worry, Mark, I’ll help,” Ray said, picking up his plate and his empty soda can and walking it toward the trash can.

“We’ll all help,” Al said, picking up his own debris.  They all followed suit and had the table cleaned off and the trash disposed of in no time.  While Mark walked the remaining beers back to the refrigerator, the others all walked to the back door, retrieving their hats from the hat rack and putting them back on.

“Okay, Raven,” Mark said, heading for the back door himself.  “Just text me when the grocery list is ready.  And Leah?  Don’t worry about a thing, y’hear?  We’ll keep you safe.”

“Thanks, Mark.”

As soon as the men were gone, Clay released her.  “C’mon, baby, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

He led her through the dining room and a living room with a rock wall fireplace and comfortable furniture, where he picked up their luggage.  The furniture was leather, wrought iron and dark wood, whose hard, sharp masculine edges were softened by colorful cushions, glass vases full of flowers, and other decorative accents.  The landing at the top of the stairs split left and right, each side with a central hallway, each hallway with a bedroom off to each side and one at the end.  Clay entered the hallway to the right and stopped between the two bedrooms, setting the suitcases down.  “You can have your own bedroom if you want.  Or you can share mine.”

Leah looked up at him, biting her lip.  More than anything she wanted to be in his bedroom, sharing his bed.  But she had a life back in San Francisco.  She had friends, a job she loved.  She couldn’t stay here forever.  Could she?  If she were honest with herself, the prospect of owning her own gallery for her one-of-a-kind clothing and fabric art pieces was tempting.  More tempting than she would have ever thought possible.  But could she take the risk?  Not just with her career, but with her heart?  Would this…
thing
with Clay work out or was it just sex for him?  She already knew it was much more than just sex for her.  How that could even be possible after only two days, she didn’t want to speculate.  Because Clay had been right.  It wasn’t just two days.  The foundation had been laid during that brief encounter on the beach three years ago, and had been building ever since.  They were meant to find each other.  And if they weren’t, would she survive the fallout?