RopeMeIn

Rope Me In

Cerise DeLand

Knights in Black Leather, Book One

In Bravado, Texas, the men are good
and plenty…and lonely.

Not inclined to remain horny
bachelors, the three MacRae brothers devise a plan to find one fine woman and
get the good lovin’ they deserve. One gander at the new gal in town, charming
Cara Ford, and the cowboys decide to do some old-fashioned courting. Then
they’ll offer her a thoroughly modern deal—all three of
them
, just for
luscious, lovely her.

Cara has returned to Bravado to
rebuild her life after cutting the cord to her self-centered husband.
One
man was a pain. Why would she want to tie herself to three ranchers known for
their wildcattin’, no matter how sexy?

Undeterred, Jed, Harry and Will
rope her into their daily lives, sweet-talk her into sharing their torrid
nights, and set out to convince her that three hard-lovin’ men in bed is better
than one.

Rope Me In

Cerise DeLand

Chapter One

Cara Ford hit the brakes as the river of water pushed her
pickup truck sideways into a ditch. Whiplashing forward, she winced at the
sound of the underside scraping against a boulder. The damn rickety truck
teetered for a mind-rattling second, then righted itself. And held its ground.

Cara grabbed a breath. One hand clamped to her wild heart,
she cursed and noticed that the rain made her windshield wipers stutter to a
halt. And
yes
, she realized as she turned the key in the ignition, not
only were they done for, but so was her engine.
What now?

Think fast! Gulley-washers kill people within minutes.

Thunder drummed across the brooding sky. Why had she
believed the weatherman when he said showers today?

She undid her seatbelt, stretching up to peer over the rim
of her car door at the gush of rainwater cascading beneath her.

The flood wasn’t deep enough to sweep her old heap down the
two-lane highway but it was forceful enough to stick her here for the duration
of the storm. And knowing firsthand how spring tempests and flash floods could
wash away entire houses, even whole towns in the Hill Country, Cara realized
she could be here for hours. All night, even.

Hell. Welcome back to Texas, Cara.

No time to fret here. She had to get the two boxes out of
the back and into the cab. She doubted she had enough room for them and her
inside this tiny front seat. Heck, by now the cardboard was soaking wet and
she’d just push until she squeezed them in. She knew delivering the MacRaes
their packages was the neighborly thing to do. And in the best shape possible,
even if the sky had opened up and the rain slanted sideways. Not as though it
was her fault the UPS man had given her the wrong boxes. But if she needed her
silks and laces, the three MacRae men definitely needed their intriguing bits of
leather. And she needed to see the intriguing MacRaes up close and personal.

But if you can’t get inside, your well-laid plans will be
washed away in this deluge.

Glancing once more outside to see how deep the water was,
she calculated that if the flow held steady, it wouldn’t rise over the tops of
her knee-high boots. But would she be able to stand in the water without
getting hurled downstream? And would her little pickup roll over without her
weight to hold it in place?

Only one way to know.

Hand to the door handle, she was primed to spring herself
loose when she froze. There, before her, a broad black animal glared at her
over her hood.

“Damn, buddy! Where’d you come from?” she demanded of the
longhorn bull.

He had run his fence, clearly. Spooked in the storm, she
guessed. And the brand of the Rocking M on his rump told her precisely who he
belonged to.

The MacRae brothers.

She frowned at the handsome hulk, horn span at least six
feet wide, body of about two thousand pounds staring her down. Big and hunky,
just like his three owners. Black-haired too, come to think of it. Obstinate as
well, cuz he was not moving one gigantic muscle.

So much for getting out of this truck.
She’d be a
fool to take a chance he wouldn’t run her to ground. Longhorns could be angels
or devils. True, Cara had lived here in Bravado until age fifteen, but she’d
been a townie and knew
nada
about livestock. For sure, she wasn’t eager
to learn now.

So it’s you and me, Blackie, my boy, out for the
afternoon. As long as the water doesn’t rise, we could stay here, yards shy of
where we should be inside that main gate of the Rocking M Ranch.
She
sighed. She’d get to the main house if she had to swim. She’d get dry and do
what she came for. She’d get those three MacRae men to traipse down here and
grab their own boxes, while she hoped for sunshine. Then, if she could
withstand their legendary charm and their mouthwatering good looks without
mooning over them as if she were a lovesick kid, she’d ask them to help her
dislodge her pickup from this ditch. Afterward, she’d skedaddle down the road.
She just wondered if they had opened her own shipment and admired the contents.

She smiled, reminiscing about how as a pimply teenager she
had drooled over the three young MacRae men. Now about in their mid-thirties,
Jed, Harry and Will MacRae had become the town’s famous bachelors, rich as sin
and, according to local female gossip, heartbreakers to boot. So why they
needed the risqué contents of the boxes now miserably drenched in her truck bed
beat her. But she would love to know, damn her curious hide.
Love to use
some of those nifty items with one of them. Or each of them.

Now you are delusional.

A clap of thunder jolted her in her seat. And Blackie curled
his lip at the rumble too.
Fuss all you want. As long as you don’t charge my
pickup, we’re good.

Another drumroll rent the sky. Lightning struck the earth as
if it were a giant’s steps shaking the ground, her truck and her heart.

She zeroed in on the bull’s unhappy face.

The animal snorted at her. Then he bent his head to her
truck.

She gripped the steering wheel.
No. No, no, don’t charge.

Over the beat of the rain, she heard an ear-splitting creak
and the groan of iron. The main gate with the huge Rocking M logo yawned wide.
From the gathering fog, a lasso whirled into her line of sight. Then another
twirled in the air.

Cara wiped at the vapor on her window, not believing what
she saw. But wow, was she glad she did.

Two big cowboys on huge quarter horses whooped as they each
sank a rope over the horns of their animal. Then they urged it around and away
from her puny truck, through the open black iron gate.

Her truck door swung wide and the rain poured in. Soaked
through in an instant, Cara sputtered, registering two strong arms pulling her
sideways. Suddenly she was ass over teakettle, hair and clothes sopping wet,
eyes dead ahead on the immediate view she had to admire. Had to smile. Rain,
ditch, dead truck and longhorn notwithstanding, she was gazing at a wet,
form-fitting, denim-clad set of the tightest buns she’d glimpsed in years.

Ah. The MacRaes. Her insides bubbled with glee.

Which one?
her mind demanded.

“Does it matter, girl?” her Aunt Bree would probably ask in
this very situation. “They are so easy on the eyes. Such beautiful, horrible
men.”

Whatever that meant
, Cara mused as her captor took to
jogging down the driveway and jarring every tooth in her head.

She beat on his back.

He swatted her behind and yelled at her.

Beast.

What was
with
these three?

She didn’t recall them as mean. Not in any way. In her
tender teenage years, she’d sighed over them for their looks and their
happy-go-lucky ways. Even her old childhood girlfriends still living here had
pretty much the same description for the three tall, swaggering cowboys. Some
just described them with platitudes like “bachelors”. “Sweet treats”.
“Available”. Her best pal, Eva Cordona, had been more specific, calling them
“pussy bait”. But only one would elaborate beyond a few words or a wave of a
hand. Skylar Freemont told a tale of having been propositioned years ago by Jed
to make love with him and his brothers in a four-way. Skylar had given them a
“hell no” and run off, scared out of her wits to try it.

Cara’s imagination tried though. Rich it was too. Hot and
sweaty. Just what a divorcée needed to liven up her pathetic celibacy.

Finally, now, Cara could glimpse the brothers’ lifestyle.
See if that last deliciously decadent rumor might have roots. True, slung over
the shoulder of one of them as if she were some drowned cat was not how Cara
would have pictured renewing their slight acquaintance. She tingled at the
memory of dancing with Harry last Friday night at the local dancehall. Harry,
the second oldest, with his powerful bod had surprised her with his dexterity
on the floor and his statement that he’d call her this week to make a date for
dinner. His younger brother Will had taken her out for the two-step and kept
her laughing at his jokes through the entire tune. She’d met the eldest, Jed,
last week in town. Six inches taller than she and built like a woman wanted a
man, he was a prime piece of Texas male. Built just like his brothers with
shoulders to shelter a girl, eyes to adore her, big hands to hold her and
pleasure her.

Cut that out.
She frowned at herself, getting a sore
tummy and probably bruises too, where she bounced against this MacRae’s
shoulder. How far away
was
their house from the highway?

She’d complain about this. Let them know she was not easily
manhandled. She wasn’t interested in becoming any man’s docile little mate ever
again. But wow did she want to be some worthy man’s bedmate.

That’s why she’d come today.No man in town appealed
to her hungry libido like any one of the MacRae boys.

She had to learn more about the Beautiful Horrible. Why they
still appealed to her after all these years. Why she fantasized about them in
her bed at night. Did each brother have a female interest at the moment? Did
they want one?

And why the “horrible” nickname? Did they run drugs? Guns?
Catch rustlers on their spread and boil them in oil? What was beautiful about
that?

And why was everyone in town in on the secret? And she
wasn’t?

But she was being carried up to the house, wasn’t she?
Rescued by the illustrious MacRae brothers. Reclusive and oh so ornery, the men
of Clan MacRae ran the biggest cattle ranch in Bravado County. Men respected by
the other men in town. And lusted after by the women, married and single.

Sounds like a win-win afternoon to me.

I get my boxes of French lingerie plus a little private
time with the three men I could crave through flood, lightning and hell.

* * * * *

Jed MacRae shoved open his front door with his foot and
upended his burden with a move that had Cara Ford weaving in front of him.

“Whoa, baby!” He caught her by her shoulders, steadying her
as the two of them dripped all over one of his mother’s fine oriental carpets.
“Tough day, huh?”

“Yeah, for me and your longhorn,” she managed, one hand
shoving back her long, blonde hair plastered to her pretty head. “How’d you
know I was out there?”

He chuckled as he preceded her down the hallway past their
home office toward the country kitchen and the fire he and his brothers had
laid earlier this morning. “Surveillance cameras. Batman is afraid of thunder.”

“Batman?”

“Our big fella out there.” He turned, caught her admiring
his ass in the skintight jeans and grinned at her interest in him. “He runs the
damn fences every time he hears a clap from heaven.”

She flushed, caught in the act of sizing him up. But she
smiled, her soft brown eyes as big as chocolate Kisses on him, hands rubbing
her rib cage, looking a little dazed from her journey up the driveway. “You
have cameras on him?”

Well, Jed wasn’t going to tell her the full set of reasons
why they had cameras at all entrances to the Rocking M. He tugged at her arm to
resume their path to the warmest room in the big old house. “He is our prize
boy. Worth about twenty grand, give or take. But in general, we just like to be
able to see who comes calling on us.”

“Smart,” she said as they made their way toward the kitchen.

“Can’t open the gates to just anyone,” he clarified. Their
family business and their fraternal pleasure were not anyone else’s concern.

“You have a lot of visitors, I guess, what with your prize
cattle and insemination programs.”

“We do. Come on over to the hearth and drip on this carpet a
few minutes. I’ll get you a towel, but I’d say you should get out of those
clothes fast. Take a shower.”

Her gaze spanned his chest before she locked eyes with him.
“Thanks for the hospitality, but I’ll just get dry here, Mr. MacRae.”

“Jed,” he corrected her. “And I’ll call you Cara, if you let
me. We know each other from back in the day. And we met at the feed store last
week, remember?”

“Oh I do,” she murmured, her expression dreamy, as if she
were memorizing the shape of his nose and lips.

Good. You’re interested all right. Just like you were
years ago.
“Joel Winthrop introduced us.”

“My cousin,” she added, “on my mother’s side.”

“So I hear.” Jed put up a hand to hold off her objections
before he headed for the recently modernized bathroom off the country kitchen.
He knew more about her and her new addition to her Aunt Bree’s store than he’d
bet she knew about him and his brothers. He and his two brothers had grilled
Joel, among others who had known Cara when she was a kid. But Jed didn’t have
to ask too much to recall how pretty she’d been back then. How young she’d
been.

Now? She was lovelier yet, no longer jailbait and, according
to what he’d learned in the past few days, she’d been insulted and disheartened
by a man who had sought to control her. Jed and his brothers wanted to take a
turn at improving her opinion of men in general, and all three of them in
particular.

If she’s ready. And willing to try new ways to please
him, his brothers and herself.

He grabbed two towels from the bathroom and returned to
stand in front of her. “We’re a tight-knit town here in Bravado.”

“Yes. I keep forgetting,” she told him as she dropped a
towel over her head. “Everyone knows everyone else.”

“Sometimes too well,” he acknowledged. Time to let her see
what he did know about her. “Paris and New York are too big for everyone to
keep tabs on all the neighbors.”

She stopped rubbing her head and looked up at him. Her full
lips parted in surprise that he had learned where she lived for the past few
years. And he nearly went to his knees just imagining how that pretty pink
mouth would feel under his. Lush and giving.
Damn, slow down, man. You’re
tickled she’s here. Thrilled this little mix-up with the packages brought all
of you together sooner than you planned. Just don’t rush her. She’ll buck.