Wrangler (31 page)

I’m still shocked every time I go to the accountant and I see just how much I make every year.  Son of a dirt farmer like me.  Who woulda thought?

The kids are excited to give Dove the gift I got her.  I let them help me design it, too.  She’s not big on jewelry, but she’ll like this, I can guarantee it.  It’s a bracelet, make out of platinum, with a tiny dove shaped from inlaid diamonds. Eight of them in all, one for each of our kids, and there’s still room for more.

She’ll cry. And, yep, I will to.  Not much has changed.

We miss Jessie, she passed away going on three years now.  Just didn’t wake up one morning.  I had it set up that her house had all sorts of monitors and we had a gal living there to help her out, but she just died in her sleep. When we got there after the call, we found her with a little crooked smile on her face and I imagined she must have been having an awfully good dream when she went. That’s the best way to go if you ask me, I think we all hope for the same.

The kids are anxious now, they’re running up and down the hall trying to get our attention. 

I walk over and wrap my arms around my girl. “How do you get more beautiful every year?” Leaning in, I pull her tight into my chest.

“You are a cornball, you know that?”

“I just tell the truth.  You ready?  The kids are excited.”

“Yes, I can hear.”

They’re outside the door now, talking in loud voices and fussing with each other.

“Here’s to the next fifteen.”  I capture her lips as her hands come around my waist.

“And fifteen more after that.”

My heart thumps into my chest.  I’m still amazed I was able to grab the brass ring and hold onto it so long. 

“Amen.”

I smile as I hug her into my side, and we walk together toward the door.

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CHAPTER ONE

RYDER

––––––––

I
felt like I was going to puke. The way they treated my Chloe was nauseating.  What a fucked up family, sitting there, slobbering all over themselves. If they thought that their little princess—Chloe’s older sister— was about to snag me like a little bitch and use me to turn them into some kind of second rate, trailer trash royalty they’d be wrong.  If they only knew what they had coming, they’d be running as fast as they could for the tin can where they came from.

Don’t get me wrong; I grew up in that same trash heap down at the bottom of Eight Mile.  Yeah, there was a movie about it. Don’t make a big deal about it, but that’s where I grew up, and that’s where Chloe and her family still live. Only, they don’t have any fucking idea what I know about their precious Theresa, a.k.a. Trixie. And it’s about to go viral.

“Why didn’t you wear a suit?  This is a special night.”  Trixie Whitehouse sat there like a smug cartoon queen with her strapless orange nightmare of a dress barely holding up the weight of her third round of silicone implants. 

“I don’t wear what you tell me to wear.”  I lean back in my chair, my eyes unable to stay off the ultimate prize, who sat there like a demure china doll next to her parents.  I wore my fatigues. I knew Trix hated them, and I also knew my babygirl loved me in my camo, and she’s the goddess I serve
.

“Chloe, go get us two more Bud’s.”  Edgar Whitehouse is too lazy to go get his own beer from the bar, so he sends his youngest daughter to do his dirty work. 

“Sit.”  I growl at Chloe inches her chair back to stand.

“No, it’s okay. Let me go.”  She smiles and I see the wheels turning in the beautiful head of hers.  She’s so scared of her family knowing about us. The pleading look in her eyes breaks my heart.

What a fucking evil piece of shit her father is. I want to jump across the eight top and smash the ten teeth he has left down his throat.  But I know that would be too much for my little girl, so I roll my eyes and swallow deep, counting the seconds until I get us the fuck out of here.

My gut told me to steal her away from them the day I got home.  But, she wasn’t ready and my plan wasn’t quite pulled together but it is now. 

“Why aren’t you listening to me?” Trixie looked like a ten-cent whore, and her breath smelled like a trashcan filled with ten kinds of cheap liquor and a hundred ashtrays.  She made my stomach turn. 

My voice caught in my throat.  “Trix,”  I took a deep breath before continuing.  “I told you I would come here, but lay the fuck off.”

Even the thought of pretending to be her friend sets my teeth on edge, but I’ll do anything to stay close to Chloe.  Just a little while longer and this whole charade is over.

It was one of Trixie’s skanky friend’s getting married, and she was in the bridal party.  I was thankful because it meant she was sitting at the head table and not with the family.  She’s staring at me.

“What?”  It was all I could do not to push her face away from me and flatten her on the ground.  In her condition, it was only a matter of time before she ended up on the floor, but I didn’t want to be the one to put her there, at least not in front of my angel.

“Why are you such a grump?”  Trixie pouted, maintaining a distorted fantasy that somehow I might think looking at her bratty face was cute.

“I’m not a grump, but you
are
drunk, and if you don’t know by now how I hate...”  I let my voice trail off.

What the fuck did I care?  She knew how I felt about drinking, and she chose to throw back as many shots as the bartender would serve at once along with the other Orange Crush contingent standing next to the bride.

She wasn’t going to listen anyway.  Her attention span made a flea look focused.  I looked over at my girl walking back from the bar, her hands gripping two brown bottles with red and white labels. She set them down in front of the toothless wonder and his lovely bride who applied her eyeliner as thick as her lipstick.  Besides her raccoon eyes and smeared red lips, there wasn’t a bottle of peroxide left at Walmart from the looks of her hair. 

“Mom!”  Trixie screamed across the table. 

I took a deep breath, all I wanted to do was grab my baby’s hand and get her the hell out of here.  She looked so lost and out of place with this circus sideshow.  How the fuck she came from the same place as the rest of these freaks is beyond me. 

I was only here for Chloe; she had begged me not to be to brutal with Trix.  We hadn’t been together since the day I met Chloe.  I wasn’t even sure why her sister wanted to be friends with me.  I hadn’t touched her in years, not since those first months in high school when we got together. Before I met her family.  And Chloe.  In fact, my dick would turtle up if Trix even made an eyelash bat my way. 

Truth is, I know why Trix wants to maintain our friendship. She’s thinks I’m about to provide her winning lottery ticket.

As long as my baby was still in that house with these freaks, I would try to keep her life from getting even worse by playing along.  Being gone overseas, I needed to know she was at least under a roof, such as it was. I couldn’t back out on my contract, so we had to make a deal with each other. We stuck to it, but time’s up.  I’m done with hiding and pretending. It’s time for me and my babygirl to be together for real.

“Yes, princess?”  Elvira’s twin leaned her elbows on the table, taking a deep draw from the long necked, brown bottle, and then wiped the back of her hand over her chin when she couldn’t even manage to keep the beer from dribbling out of her lips.

“Don’t you think Ryder looks older?  I think he got older while he was sitting in that desert for so long.  Did you get older?”  They both laughed. 

“Yep. Older and wiser,”  I spat back as my gut clenched.

Trixie leaned over, her hand on my leg and her triple D silicone popping out the top of the cheap cream-sickle dress.  It felt like acid was burning through my pants where she rested her hand, and I couldn’t breathe for another second with her so close to me.

I jerked my leg sideways and kicked my chair back so hard it almost fell over.

“Where are you going?” 

“To get some water.” 

“There’s water right here silly.  Come on, let’s dance!”  She looked up, leaned on the table and tried to stand up.  The tendrils of her intricate up-do falling in highlighted streaks across her face.  What a train wreck.

“No.  I’ll be back.”  I looked over at Chloe, sitting there with her eyes low, her teeth biting on her lower lip.  Jesus, if she knew what she was doing to me, sitting there looking like that.

I threw my head back and cracked my neck, trying to release some of the tension from watching the freak show. My cock screamed for my babygirl.

Just knowing she was sitting there thinking about me was almost more than I could take.  I needed to take a walk and try to tame the beast that was quickly growing in my pants. 

Of course, I should have broken it off with Trixie long ago, but I stuck around and played nice with the family.  Chloe was less than legal when we met, and I’d never have gone near her then. But I knew.  I knew our day would come and I needed an excuse to stay close, so I played the friend game with Trix.. Chloe actually felt so bad, like somehow she’d done something wrong when we had our first kiss.

Trix thought I was her ticket out of the trailer park even before word of my inheritance began to circulate. I hated myself for a long time for this, but when I laid my eyes on Chloe when she was only thirteen. I knew even then; she was the only one for me. I would’ve never done anything back then with her, but I think I stayed loosely bound to her sister just to keep an eye on her until it was our time.  In fact, I never touched Trixie after that day.

Fuck, it shocked the hell out of me when I put us in the friend zone and Trix took it as well as she did.

Chloe begged me not to bring us out in the open before I deployed, and after she explained it to me, there was no way I wanted to make her life any harder than it already was.

Her fucked up parents had some twisted idea that their little blond princess somehow was more valuable than the sweet smoldering angel that had her fingers wrapped unwillingly around my heart, and soon, around my cock, but not yet. Chloe was worth waiting for. 

She was
the one,
and I was going to do it all right for her.  It was killing me not being able to feel the insides of her curve around my cock as I entered the first time, but we had to do it like I planned, for her benefit.  Even in high school I kept my eye on her.  She was the little sister, the jail-bait, but looking back, even then I knew. I just didn’t want to admit it. 

“Hurry back, and bring me another...”  Trix waved her empty glass in the air.  There was no way in hell I was getting her another drink, and the fact that she asked me to was just another nail in her coffin.

I gave my girl a quick nod as she looked up at me, careful not to let anyone see.  She was so sweet, even when those bottom feeders treated her like a piece of shit, she still didn’t want to hurt them.  She was a better person than me; I would have firebombed the whole table if I had my way.

I got a hold of my hard on and took about a hundred deep breaths. Thank fuck when I got back to the table, all the garbage crap were on the dance floor falling all over each other.  I slipped down next to my girl, careful to sit next to her, not on top of her like I wanted.

“They’re going to see us.”  Her sweet, glossy, rose pink lips looked so beautiful, all I could think of was what they would feel like around my cock.

“I don’t give a fuck anymore.  I’m ready to blow this whole shit show up right now, babygirl.”

I slipped my hand down and my head felt like it was going to explode as I felt the sweet soft skin just above her knee.  Of course, I couldn’t stop there, and found my way slowly upward, under the hem of her skirt, listening to her breathing get faster.

“Ryder...
oh my god
.”  She lowered her head, whispering, looking like she was praying, and I almost lost my shit knowing she liked what I was doing to her.