Unleashed: Volume 1 (Unleashed #1) (2 page)

But word on the street
was that Declan could help. Apparently he’d made a pile of money
over the past six years. He’d taken some of those big ideas he’d
had back when he was nothing more than a 21-year-old ranch hand
without a penny to his name, and somehow he’d made good on them.

I still hadn’t
thought to turn to him for help. It hadn’t occurred to me until
Dot, my boss at the diner where I worked, had suggested it.

“You should go see
Declan Hunt,” she’d said out of nowhere about a month ago while
punching in receipts. She still used one of those old, black
calculators as big as a football.

I’d nearly dropped
the plates I was carrying. Hearing Declan’s name had that effect on
me.

“About the ranch,”
she’d continued, like we were talking about the blue plate special.
“See if he’ll help you out.” She hadn’t even looked up as she
said it. Dot wasn’t big on shows of affection. Six months ago when
my father died of cancer she’d told me I could drink as much coffee
as I wanted on the house. That was about as touchy-feely as she got.

The next day, before I
could talk myself out of it, I typed his name into the browser on my
phone and everything popped up real quick and easy. Declan Hunt, CEO
of Obsidian Investors, phone number a click away. I clicked. His
secretary scheduled me an appointment on a Friday at eleven o’clock.
To discuss a business proposal.

At 10:49 I crossed a
street, now only one block away. I caught a glimpse of my reflection
in a window: long hair pulled back in a ponytail, t-shirt and jeans
like I was still at the ranch, shit-kicking cowboy boots stomping
their way along the sidewalk. I wasn’t going to dress up for him.
He might have made himself a fortune, turned himself all city slick,
but I hadn’t changed. Not one bit. And I’d be damned if I put on
airs for him. I had my pride, even if it felt like I was swallowing
it all down like a big, fat horse pill with no water, coming to him
hat in hand asking for help.

Shoulders back, chin
up. I could do this. I had to do this. I’d ask for a loan, one I
fully intended to pay back. I’d work hard to do it, and if he had a
job for me, I’d take it. I didn’t know all the details about how
he’d made his fortune. Hell, I’d deliberately blocked my ears
when it came to Declan. It hurt too much to hear about him. But I
couldn’t completely avoid the gossip. You didn’t rise from ranch
hand to real estate mogul without people talking. Apparently he now
owned and operated properties all over the state, maybe all over the
country. So he must need people to help, right? I knew about running
a ranch. Our foreman Bill could keep things going if I had to spend
some time away. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I’d take
any job he offered, do anything to save my family’s ranch.

The sun beat down
fierce in the clear blue June sky. I ran my wrist up and across my
forehead. It had been like that the summer we’d been together,
every day soaring into the 90s and sometimes beyond. Declan would
take off his shirt in the heat. I supposed some of the other ranch
hands did as well, but I never really noticed. Declan was all I could
see, his shoulders, broad and roped thick with the kind of real
muscle you earned from hard labor. His chest, glistening with sweat,
cut, defined pecs with a couple of tattoos that made me seethe with
jealousy, the way they got constant access, pressing and licking
their way along his skin. The way his flat abs rippled, all leading
down to a tantalizing, flat V.

A car horn beeped. I
guessed in this town you needed to look both ways before crossing the
street. I needed to get my head in the game. Focus.

I strode up the
imposing steps of what had to be the largest office building in the
city. A glass revolving door swept me into a gleaming, cold entryway.
A uniformed man behind a desk asked where I was headed and directed
me to the bank of elevators. Obsidian Investors owned the top floor.
Figured.

Breathe in, breathe
out. I waited for the slowest elevator in the history of all
elevators and tried to keep my knees from buckling. I wondered if the
man behind the desk could hear my heart pounding.

Why hadn’t I written
myself notes? Or a script, even? I could have printed it out on big
sheets of paper. Then, when I met with Declan I could have held them
up between us. Win/Win. I could have read straight off of them and
prevented myself from having to look directly at him at the same
time.

Or at least I could
have brought myself a few motivational reminders. A copy of my latest
bank statement: overdrawn. Or some other paperwork threatening
foreclosure.

I guessed instead I
could conjure up the mental image of the one person who had made me
an offer on the place. Lymon Culpepper. What a name, and he had to be
the creepiest guy I’d ever seen. He’d missed his calling. He
really should have gone to Hollywood. He could star as the villain in
any James Bond film. With a bloated, round face and shiny, beady eyes
he looked exactly like a toad. Always mopping the sweat off his pale
forehead with a handkerchief, always with that 250-pound goon next to
him. Anyone who traveled around with a bodyguard in sleepy, rural
Montana had to be up to no good.

His offer had been so
low I figured I’d find more in loose change under the couch
cushions. But worse than his low-ball offer was the way he looked at
me, slimy, beady-eyed like a toad. I got the feeling he wasn’t just
talking about buying the ranch. No, I wouldn’t sell to him, not if
I could help it.

The elevator finally
arrived. Inside, the only thing not fancy and polished was me. My
boots had gone from defiant and proud to filthy and ancient.

When the doors parted I
saw a bathroom and ducked straight into it. Breathing hard, hand to
my stomach, I looked at myself in the mirror. Strands of blonde hair
had escaped my ponytail and flew wispy around my flushed cheeks. My
white t-shirt suddenly looked thin and flimsy. Why hadn’t I worn a
power suit, black and angry with big buttons down the front? Maybe
because I didn’t own anything even remotely like that.

Shit. I couldn’t
believe I was about to see him again. Even worse, I was going to ask
for him for money. I hadn’t seen or heard a word from him in six
years. A lot could change in six years. It should change. I should
have moved on, for one. At 24 you should be well and good over the
man you’d loved at 18.

That was another thing,
I had to stop thinking of it as love. Infatuation or obsession, that
was more like it. Sure, it had felt like love back in the day, but
over the years I’d tried to talk myself out of that storyline. It
felt a hell of a lot easier to dismiss a summer of pure lust. Didn’t
that describe most summers for most teenagers? It felt a lot easier
to live with that than the idea that early on I’d met the love of
my life and he’d turned his back on me. Left one day without
warning, not so much as a backwards glance. He hadn’t even left a
note.

I’d sworn off men
afterward. Around town, guys knew better than to try anything with
the ice princess. And when truckers passing through stopped at our
diner, I had no trouble saying no. It was easy to stay the virgin up
in the tower when you honestly weren’t motivated to climb down. No
one interested me like Declan, even though Declan hadn’t been
interested in me.

I didn’t know what I
feared more, him refusing help or offering it. If he didn’t help
me, I’d have to go to the toad man and I couldn’t imagine doing
that. But if he did help me, what would he ask for in return?

He’d be back in my
life. And he might drive a hard bargain. He’d shown me he could be
ruthless.

But now wasn’t the
time for thinking about that. Now was the time for me to bring it,
tough, driven, all business. This was an investment opportunity for
him. I’d pay him back with interest. I needed nerves of steel. I
couldn’t let him get to me, even though he was the one man who’d
gotten to me like no other.

Through giant glass
doors, I entered Declan’s gleaming, high-ceilinged office space. A
woman sat behind a huge desk, a picture window behind her overlooking
the city of Billings. Spotless and sparse, not a thing was out of
place. I guessed it was his waiting room, like a doctor’s or
dentist’s, only Declan’s had no old magazines, dog-eared issues
of
Good Housekeeping
with the best recipes torn out or
American
Cattlemen
with all the latest farming and ranching news.
Two leather armchairs and a coffee table sat beneath a large polished
gold plaque embossed with “Obsidian Investors.” It might as well
read: “This Place Makes a Shit-ton of Money.”

The tables sure had
turned. Back in the day, I’d been the spoiled, sheltered girl
living up in the big house on the hill. He’d worked for my daddy,
without a dime to his name. But now Declan held all the cards. He had
the upper hand. And I was walking right into his den, the lamb
leading itself to slaughter.

As I approached, the
woman behind the desk gave me the ‘one minute’ sign with her
index finger. On the phone, I realized. She had her hair pulled back
into a severe bun and wore a crisp, white button-down shirt. All
business. I should take notes, somehow channel her cool demeanor.

“May I help you?”
she asked once she was free. She maintained her cool composure,
neither rude nor dismissive, yet at the same time I could tell I
looked nothing like Declan’s typical business meeting.

“I’m here to, um…
I’m 11 o’clock?” Off to a great start.

She murmured something
into her headpiece. I stood there trying not to think about the fact
that just a door and a wall separated me from Declan Hunt. My knees
shook. I felt like one of those small, vulnerable animals whose only
defense is to puff up and try to look big. A tiny bird could fluff up
its feathers and play pretend, but it wasn’t fooling anyone.

She put down the phone
and gestured to one of the leather armchairs. “Just a moment. Wait
right here.”

In his office,
surrounded by his wealth and power, I felt so vulnerable. I was at
the mercy of this man whose memory still woke me up at night. This
many years later I still had nights when I’d open my eyes with a
moan on my lips, panting, yearning, sheets twisted around me, on the
brink of an orgasm from a dream about him.

I sat down and waited.
Even though everything in me told me I should run.

Declan

Kara Brooks. I stood,
tense, looking out the window of my office. On the sidewalk below
people passed each other by like ants. She might be one of them. Had
she driven in this morning from the ranch? Was she still hauling
around in that broken-down pickup truck? Bessie, she’d called it.
So sentimental about an old heap of junk.

Kara never met
something broke that she didn’t want to fix. Including me. I’d
washed up on the shore of their ranch when I was 21, a long list of
foster homes plus some time at a youth correctional facility as my
references. But just about any man who’d grown up in Montana knew
his way around a ranch, and I was no exception. I’d heard from some
guy who knew a guy that Harlan’s ranch needed seasonal help. The
rest, as they say, was history.

Why the hell was Kara
coming to see me? Why now? I could have found out, picked up the
phone and saved her the trouble of driving up all the way to Billings
to talk to me. I could have checked in on her, asked how she was like
an old friend. But I wasn’t an old friend, now was I? I was a
bastard who liked the idea of her driving all those miles to come see
me, up in my office, on my turf, on my terms.

It had always been the
other way around, back in the day on her family’s ranch, working
for her daddy. He’d made it clear right from the start, I was good
enough to work his land and tend his cattle, but not good enough for
his daughter. She’d been the princess up in the house on the hill,
the golden girl I could never have. Out of reach, always tantalizing,
but never mine.

Now I could show her
that I’d made good. My hunch about the money in wilderness tourism,
or “Rustic Luxury” as we called it, had been dead-on. The more
people got wired into their laptops, iPads and iPhones, the more
they’d pay to get away from them. We made it part of our ad
campaign: unplug. Of course you could still get wireless access at
all of our facilities if you needed it, and they all did, but
escaping it all was the grand façade. It turned out that the
ultra-rich—L.A. movie moguls, New York finance guys, Palo Alto
techies—they were all pretty much the same. They wanted to be
pampered and surrounded with every comfort and more, while made to
feel as if they were authentically roughing it. My resorts offered
exactly that. And I made money hand over fist.

Now I had a chance to
show her. Six years ago I’d left her ranch with a massive chip on
my shoulder and a burning desire to prove myself, show what I could
do. She’d been too good for me back then. Now, I’d get to see her
face as she realized my success. Would she feel nervous? Intimidated?
Turned on?

My cock pressed hard
against the seam of my zipper. She’d always done that to me, the
thought of her lush lips, the sensuous swell of her full breasts, her
mile-long legs. I shifted and strode over to pour myself a glass of
water.

What really pissed me
off was that all it took was the mention of Kara, her name on my
calendar, and that was it. For the past two weeks I’d had no
interest in anyone else. That was a long dry spell for me, especially
when I had a good sub. I’d enjoyed my most recent playmate, seeing
her arousal heighten through submission, watching her reach the
intense pleasure she could only access through my discipline. But she
no longer captured my interest. The moment I thought of Kara,
everything else seemed dull and boring.