Stripped Down (6 page)

It doesn’t matter.
Can’t
matter.

I need those water rights. Hell, I already
own
half of them. I just have to claim it all.

“She has no fucking clue,” I admit. “You know Rose. She’s not picking up.” Or answering her e-mail or any of the three registered letters I had the lawyer send. Auntie Dee apparently kept her intentions secret. Hell, I had no idea she’d leave me half the place to
thank me for everything I’d done over the years.
Doesn’t matter now. Rose doesn’t know and that gives me one more weapon. I’ll take it. While I’m going to win, Rose is also going to fight me. Taming her will be a fucking battle of wills, but in the end I’ll have my wells, my ranch, and my girl.

Laughter chokes Axel’s voice, his earlier impatience forgotten. Rose has always made him laugh, made him happy. Part of me envies him that casual intimacy. She likes him and enjoys his company. She doesn’t give him shit, push him, or defy him. Of course, the two of them also have no chemistry, which is what makes things simpler for them. I was the only one thinking about having sex on my kitchen table when she was sixteen.

“She’ll get here when she gets here. Our Rose never was an early bird. Plus, if she knows how badly you want her to come, she’ll just take twice as long.”

That’s true shit, right there. Rose is a tease. I considered calling her on it, but even more than the age gap, there was a look in her eyes when she was flaunting her tits and her ass that reminded me of some of the US Navy SEALs I’d served with. Her boobs were weapons she used, and I couldn’t tell if she was setting an ambush or defending her territory. Something happened to my dirty girl before she got to Lonesome, and that something fucked with her head. I’d needed to leave her alone until she got things straight.

Didn’t stop me from fantasizing, though. I fucking wore calluses on my dick whacking off to the dirty thoughts of what I could do to her. With her. The Jordan women were like a master class in how to tie the Mendoza males into fucking knots, because while Rose was tormenting me, her mother proceeded to do a job on my dad.

Honestly, I’m not sure Rose had a clue what she did to me. What I wanted to do to
her
. She saw me as a loaner brother, as temporary, safe, and older. The words bossy, boring, play-by-the-rules, and too-strict also got tossed around a whole lot. The boobs may have been weapons, but I couldn’t tell if she knew that. She could have been reacting on instinct. Later, after shit went down on that second tour of duty in Afghanistan, I understood where she was coming from better.

I have so many lessons to teach my Rose.

“This can’t wait any longer,” I growl. Fuck, I sound like an animal.

“We’ve still got a couple wells left,” Axel points out, laughter gone from his voice. That’s another side effect from Afghanistan, although I prefer pretending it doesn’t exist. I’m not fun anymore. People respect me or they fear me, but Axel is almost the only one left who laughs when he’s around me. That’s one thing I never want to kill.

“Two. We had four.” The prospect of even one inch of the ranch becoming a dustbowl makes me grit my teeth. This place, this land, is
my
family legacy. I’ll damn well hold on to it, keep it together. My cowboys and their families depend on me for a living, and since I’ve come home, I’ve poured myself into building the ranch one acre at a time. No one can take us down because I’ve created a fucking empire. If I could build a wall around the place like the Chinese emperor did, I’d probably do that, too.

The truth sucks, but my father took and took, bleeding cash from the ranch and giving nothing back. After my mom (who was not Rose’s mom, who was the arm candy and bonus woman in my dad’s life) died in a car accident, the levels in our bank accounts resembled the water levels in the wells. For all his whoring around, Mendoza Senior apparently loved my mother, because he threw in the towel after she died, at least ranch-wise. He knocked back beers with his cowboys, pointed his horse aimlessly around the ranch, and didn’t give a fuck what happened next. Rose’s mom was one of those don’t-give-a-fucks. She came, he enjoyed her, and then she left. My dad repeated the whole pattern again. And then again.

The heart attack was one of those blessings in disguise. Afterwards, I came home from Afghanistan and I was in charge.

I held things together.

Axel and J.J. played backup when I asked, but my brothers had their own lives off the ranch. That was okay. Not everyone finds everything he needs on fifty thousand acres or from horseback. I do and that’s enough.

Rose Jordan doesn’t get to undo all that work now.

She procrastinates. She leaves the important things undone, rushing in at the last minute when someone rides her ass. In other words, she’s pure trouble.

“She’ll turn up, Angel,” Axel repeats. “She always did. Eventually.”

“She’d better.”

Just remembering Rose drives me crazy, and I need to be in control when I meet her again. I point the quad toward the closest road. The raw power of the ATV motor matches my mood, the primal vibration devouring the sound of Axel’s curse. Another day, I’d have ridden a horse out to the drill site because it’s easier to feel that connection between the ranch and myself when I’m on horseback.

“Rose won’t like it,” Axel bellows from behind me. Dust puffs up in small clouds as he takes the lead. “She’s always had a thing for that crazy little house.”

Yeah.
I tug my Stetson down farther as the ATV crests a lazy roll of field.
No fucking surprise there.
I’ve ranched all my life, and sometimes that means watching as good men are forced to give up the land their families held for generations because they can’t make the note and can’t force a living out of their place. In her own way, Rose Jordan is every bit as passionate as those men—and the best spot to drill for water on Auntie Dee’s ranch is right smack underneath the house. I’m gonna have to knock it down to get at my water.

Rose will fight me, but she spent just a handful of years living in Lonesome. She ran, first chance she got. Does she ever think about what it takes to keep up a property? This isn’t a game, and she can’t just come back and play house. Ranching is serious business, and it takes a cash commitment she simply can’t make.

She might not want anything from me, even though part of me aches to learn every sweet inch of her, but she’s going to take that damned check.

And then she’s gonna take me. This time, Rose is mine.

ROSE

My VW Bug rattles up Lonesome’s main—and only—street, making it clear that the car is only going this far because I’ve insisted. It’s fortunate parking is never an issue in Lonesome because the engine wheezes to an undignified stop when I spot the lawyer’s office.

There are more than enough spots for cars, although horses are a different story. I’ve never seen so many horses before. Or horse poop. Lonesome could definitely smell better. Picking a place, I park and get out. When I unhitched the Bug from the back of the RV and consulted the trunk earlier, looking for something clean to wear, I’d settled on a purple chiffon sundress that floats above my knees in a tease of airy fabric—make-you-look clothes leftover from my days on the tattoo parlor reality show. The producers dressed me like a living Barbie doll, but I also scored a new wardrobe that I’ll use to my advantage now.

“I know what I want. I deserve it.” Saying the words out loud doesn’t help, so I settle for slamming the car door hard. I’ve never mastered the Zen-ish art of affirmative mantras.

The only thing standing between me and Auntie Dee’s legacy is Angel, and no matter how hot he is, he’s my own personal bad news. Worse, everyone here
knows
everyone else, and not just on a first-name basis or a hi-how-are-ya exchange. Lonesome’s finest know who your parents are, where you were born—every detail spread through the local grapevine. From first word and first tooth right on up to and including first date and firstborn, Lonesome doesn’t keep secrets. Doesn’t need to. Lonesome’s families are born here, die here, and pretty much do all their living either on the surrounding ranches or on the handful of streets.

That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for an outsider girl like me. The label the town’s gossips put on me was
trouble
. That label still isn’t wrong. I came to Lonesome with my mom, and she was trying to put as much distance between us and the L.A. trailer park that was our last known address. We’d been all but broke, one step away from living out of her car, when she’d met Mr. Mendoza at a casino. He’d fallen in love or in lust—the jury was still out on that one—but he’d agreed to move us both into his fancy ranch spread. I hadn’t wanted to leave Los Angeles for good, despite the shit that had happened there, but a sixteen-year-old girl doesn’t have many choices, and I was smart enough to realize, even then, that there are worse destinies than time spent in Lonesome.

After my mom bugged out, I met Auntie Dee. The good residents of Lonesome might not have been sure about me, but Auntie Dee had been. I’d had several good years with her before I’d finally packed my bags and left. I’d headed for college and San Francisco, then made a detour for a career as a tattoo artist.

I hadn’t come back since I’d left—and
that
was intentional, because I’d been avoiding Angel even though he, of course, had no clue how I felt—but I’d convinced Auntie Dee to make the bus ride down to San Francisco, and I’d shown her the city. I should have come back. I shouldn’t have worried about running into Angel or any other member of my non-fan club.

Angel probably would have looked me square in the eye, given me a polite meet-and-greet, and even offered me a cold longneck. I was a friend of his brothers, and Angel valued his family. Me? Not so much. I was the bonus accessory, the free gift with purchase that he accepted because it came with the people he really wanted around. Namely, his brothers.

All of which made me want to plant my brand-new cowboy boot in the middle of his equally fine ass and shove.

I’d never had brothers. The six months I’d spent on Blackhawk Ranch had been educational. I’d
been
one of the boys. Sort of. While my mother canoodled with their dad and tried to work the old man up to a wedding ring (good luck with that), I’d followed the younger Mendoza boys around from one piece of mischief to the next. Naturally, as soon as he came home on leave from some super-secret, really patriotic Spec Ops unit, Angel dogged our heels disapprovingly. He’d never once looked at me and seen a girl. Or a potential girlfriend. And by the time we’d been halfway through his leave, I’d wanted him to look at me. I’d made just one move. Once. One attempt to kiss Angel and make him see me as someone more than his brothers’ friend or an unwanted stepsister. I’d done it because I’d wanted to own him, to take control, and it had backfired on me.

He’d been standing by his truck of his, looking serious and focused as he examined a fledgling olive tree. I’d never been sure why he’d added olives to the ranch but Angel had always had a vision and a plan, so there was probably a damned smart reason behind the change. The ranch looks good these days, and God knows, the economy did a number on too many of my former neighbors. Auntie Dee complained frequently about how tight times were getting.

Angel understood that and he understood the ranch.

What he hadn’t understood was
me
.

“Angel—” I killed the motor on the ATV and coasted to a stop next to him. At sixteen, I was technically just old enough to drive thing as long as I stuck to private property.

“Not now, Rose,” he grunted.

I wasn’t taking no for an answer. “This is important.”

The look on his face said the olive tree was important, too, but he turned that dark gaze on me and the usual butterflies kicked up in my stomach. God, he was something else. All big and remote and so very, very disciplined. I’d never seen him out of control. Not once. He knew exactly what to do and when and how to do it.

He was perfect.

I loved everything about him, from the broad shoulders beneath the sweat-dampened T-shirt to the worn denim cupping his ass. That part of him was perfect, too. The delicious curl of heat low in my belly had nothing to do with the July heat and everything to do with the man watching me so intently. And he was all man. Those seven years between us weren’t too much. Not at all.

“I want to try something,” I announced.

“Alright.” He stepped back from the tree, leaned against the side of the pickup patiently. Waiting for me.

This was it, I told myself. This was the new start I’d wanted for the two of us. He was finally, finally looking at me, and I had a chance. Don’t screw up. Get this right. But the words weren’t coming, were drying up in my throat. He was perfect—and I sure as hell was not.

Palms damp, I swung off the ATV. This would work. I was willing him to me, using that power of attraction bullshit one of my counselors had tried to teach me. She’d wanted me to will good grades and a college education my way, but I wanted this man instead.