Tycoon's Tryst (Culpepper Cowboys Book 10) (9 page)

“Though it was Allen who pulled it together, if you ask me,” Faith said.

A round of agreement and short comments followed. Rachel would have joined in, but her phone buzzed. She pulled it from her pocket and frowned when she saw an email from her assistant marked “Urgent.”

She tuned out of the discussion of where the tug-o-war should take place to read the email.
“Small problem, boss. Four of the models who were supposed to take part in the photo shoot for the Fall collection didn’t show up. I’ll research and get back to you. Just thought you should know.”

Rachel’s frown deepened. She couldn’t help but think that Bev had her grubby fingers all over this. She typed a quick response to her assistant, telling him she would wait to hear what he discovered, then tuned back into the conversation.

“You want to have it near enough to the arena that people will have an easy time finding the tug-o-war so they can watch,” Faith was saying.

“Of course,” Sly agreed. “The more people we have watching this the better. We need a place for the camera crews to set up too.”

“Camera crews?” Rachel sat straighter.

“Yep.”

“We get to be on TV?” Cooper laughed.

“This could get really interesting.” Angus grinned as though he was about to go into battle.

“I’ve always wanted to be on TV,” Chastity said.

The discussion continued, but Rachel couldn’t pay attention. Her mind was spinning. Why was Sly planning on televising this whole event? It was just supposed to be a quick contest between her and Bev. Well, there was nothing ‘just’ about it, really. The fate of her world hung in the balance. So why did Sly want the whole world to see?

“
R
eady guys
? One, two, three, PULL!”

At Sly’s command, all ten of the guys making up Culpepper’s first tug-o-war squad dug their heels into the ground and grunted. It was just a practice, so Sly had five on one side of the rope and five on the other. He’d tied a strip of red cloth to the center of the rope and marked two spots on the ground to represent the border one side or the other would have to pull the red strip past to win.

“Woot! Go, guys, go!” Chastity shouted from the sidelines.

“There’s a big box of heaven for whichever side wins,” Felicity added to the cheers, referring to her specialty cookies.

Sly focused on throwing his strength in with his side pulling on the rope, but his ears stayed open, listening for sounds of Rachel cheering him on. Nothing would have made him happier than hearing his new wife’s voice raised to cheer on something fun. He’d had a bad feeling right from the start that she didn’t have enough fun in her life, and it’d only gotten worse as the days wore on.

“Tug that rope! Tug that rope!” Elvie shouted her encouragement. She’d come to watch Sly and Doc practice, and to bring them news that Arch was too busy to take part this time.

Unsurprisingly, Chastity burst into hysterical laughter. “That sounds dirty.”

Sly darted a look to the side to see if Rachel was laughing. Not only wasn’t she, her face was set in a stark frown as she talked to someone on her cell phone, a few feet apart from the other women who had come to watch them. She was—

All thought was blown clear out of his head as he was jerked forward, spilling to the grassy ground.

“Aw, come on, Sly,” his brother, Doc, growled at him, panting with exertion. “You’re the one who called this practice. Can’t you pay attention?”

Apparently not.

Sly picked himself up and brushed grass and dirt off of the knees of his jeans. He’d torn a hole in one knee. Not the fashionable kind. “We’re going to need some sort of soft middle ground for this thing or people will get hurt,” he said to hide his frustration.

Because he was frustrated—with his poor performance in practice and with his inability to break Rachel out of whatever shell she was keeping herself in.

Sure, things were great between them at night when the lights went out, but that was only a few hours tops out of some very long days. And as fabulous as sex with his new wife was, he wanted to bring pleasure to her heart too. That wasn’t going to happen as long as she kept getting phone calls that had her beautiful face scrunched up the way it was now.

“Let’s take a break, get some water,” he told the others.

Without waiting for their reactions, he strode over to Rachel’s side.

“Yeah, mmm-hmm, I understand,” she told whoever was on the other end of the call. “Mmm-hmm.” She glanced up at Sly, tried to smile, and held up a finger, asking him to wait.

Sly rested his hands on his hips and did his best to catch his breath. He could wait for the end of the call. He could wait for the end of the world if he had to, but he was going to make Rachel’s life better than it had been, better than she’d dreamed it could be.

As soon as he broke through that shell of hers.

“Okay, Greg, thanks. It is what it is.” She paused, looking up at Sly uncertainly, then went on with, “No, I don’t know when I’ll be back in L.A.” Her eyes focused elsewhere for a second, and she finished the call with, “All right. Bye.”

Sly gave her his best grin as soon as she ended the call. “I like the sound of that.”

She blinked at him. “The sound of what?”

“That you don’t know when you’ll be back in L.A.”

Rachel’s tightened lips relaxed, and she lowered her head with a hesitant smile. “I kind of like Wyoming.”

“Wyoming kind of likes you,” he flirted. “And I have some experience with running a company on the west coast from a remote location like Culpepper.”

Her smile warmed. “Is that so?”

“It is.”

Sly wanted to sweep her into his arms and kiss her silly, but in a couple of days he’d come to know his new wife well enough to know that she didn’t like blatant PDAs like that. He could work with that. Besides, the smile she wore now was a sure sign of cracks forming around the edges of her shell.

“How’s business?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know the answer. Just because he was wearing torn jeans and a t-shirt didn’t mean he didn’t still have the heart of a businessman.

Rachel sighed. “Still no sign of those models. We’ve been trying to use the same ones for the last several campaigns to give buyers a sense of consistency.”

That sparked something at the back of Sly’s mind. “The same ones? How many campaigns have you been using them for?”

“Years’ worth.” Rachel sighed again.

Sly’s expression hardened into a scowl. It suddenly dawned on him what could have happened to the models. There was a Culpepper connection, after all. They could be—

“Well this looks interesting.”

There was no mistaking the shrill, slightly whiney voice of Bev Korpanty, even though Sly had only met her on a few occasions now. Rachel’s sister came sauntering onto the field where they were practicing, Hans looming behind her. Bev wore five inch heels that stabbed into the ground with every step, but in spite of the sneer curling her too-plump lips, she walked on. Her make-up foundation was the wrong color, and at some point in the last two days since he’d seen her, she’d dyed her hair an even more glaring shade of blond. She wore gigantic sunglasses studded with fake diamonds. Bev was the complete antithesis of everything Sly loved about Rachel.

“What do you want?” Rachel asked as her sister came closer.

“I wanted to take a look at the losers my boys are going to crush in two days,” Bev snapped back.

“I wouldn’t be so sure you’re going to win this time.” Rachel undermined her strong words by crossing her arms.

“You should know by now that I always win.” The smug grin Bev gave her in return made Sly seriously reconsider his rules about not raising a hand to women.

“If I were you, I’d start getting used to not getting your own way all the time,” Sly told her.

Bev’s lip curled, and she lowered her gigantic shades to stare over the top at him. “Whatever,” she said, then pushed her shades back into place.

“Why don’t you—” Rachel’s suggestion was cut short as her phone rang. She quickly tapped it and put it to her ear. “Something wrong, Greg?” She took a few steps away.

Sly watched her dive back into work, wishing there was something he could do to help. Sure, they may have started out in the most unconventional way possible, but he fully intended to make as much of a success of his marriage as he had of every other endeavor in his life.

“I know what you’re doing here.” Bev sidled forward, hips swaying.

Sly turned back to her, jaw tight with dislike. “What do you mean?”

She laughed…the way a porn star might laugh before doing something exceedingly distasteful. “The local TV crew coming to film the tug-o-war? Don’t think I haven’t found out about that.”

She stepped so close that Sly had to take a protective step back before saying, “They’re covering the entire rodeo, not just the tug-o-war. I’m not trying to hide anything.”

“Of course not.” Bev raised a manicured hand to her mouth and bit a finger, probably trying to be seductive. “You don’t want to hide any of this. You want it to make as much noise and be seen by as many people as possible.”

Sly’s brow rose. Mostly because Bev had actually hit on the truth. He shrugged. “I may have seen what a stupid idea the lawsuit was, but my deeper mission is and will always be the same. I love my town, and I want it to get enough attention for businesses and tourists to visit.”

Bev inched closer to him, breasts first. “I’ve got you on that one.” She flicked a glance out over the Culpepper tug-o-war team as they took their water break. Angus and Cooper had both taken their shirts off to splash water down their backs. Karlan and Kolby and Marcus were all drenched in sweat and might as well not have been wearing a t-shirt. “That’s quite a lot of eye-candy you’ve got there,” Bev went on.

“They’re married,” Sly said.

Bev laughed. “That never stopped me before.” Her gaze shot back to him, eyeing him like a piece of steak she was ready to barbecue.

Sly writhed with discomfort. He cleared his throat. “Don’t you think Hans might get a little upset to hear you saying things like that?” He nodded toward Hans, who was standing several yards away, deeply absorbed in scraping his shoe across the grass as if he’d stepped in something. A bug dive-bombed him, and he flinched and started flailing to chase it away.

Bev pivoted to watch him, making a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a throaty hum. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Sly snorted in disgust.

That didn’t stop Bev. She leaned in close to him, dragging one manicured nail down his chest. “What my sister doesn’t know won’t hurt her either.”

Sly’s stomach turned. He grabbed Bev’s wrist and pushed her hand away. “It would bother me.”

Undeterred, Bev thrust out her chest. “I could make it worth your while.”

Sly held up both hands and took a step back. “Listen, I’m not interested. Not now, not ever. You’re nothing in comparison to your sister. She’s hard-working and intelligent and far more beautiful than any surgery you could ever get would make you.”

Bev’s sultry look flattened to something downright ugly. “Is that really how you feel?”

“Yes,” Sly answered emphatically.

Bev sniffed and took a step back. “Hans!”

“Ja?” Hans gave up dodging the fearsome bug and marched straight up to Bev’s side. He looked like a giant, dumb, block, and Sly’s opinion of him dropped even further. “What do you want?”

“She wants you to escort her out of here,” Sly spoke first.

Hans looked confused until Bev simpered and said, “Hans, baby, I want you to break his hand.”

“What?” Sly barked, but he was a split-second too late.

Hans glowered and reached for Sly. Sly was too slow to either dodge or fight back. Hans grabbed him by the wrist and twisted his hand until there was a snap. A blinding flash of pain had Sly seeing sparks at the corner of his vision.

“Hey!” Cooper was standing close enough to notice what had happened, and within seconds, the entire tug-o-war team rushed to circle around Sly in defense.

“What did you do?” Elvie came rushing through the others, making a bee-line straight toward Sly and cradling his hand.

“That’s assault,” Marcus barked. “You could be arrested for that.”

“Where’s the chief?” Kolby shouted. He dashed toward the street, searching up and down its length.

“I’m fine,” Sly ground out, though he had a bad feeling he wasn’t.

“Bev!” Rachel shot into the middle of the scene so fast that Bev’s smug expression flashed to something much more like terror as Rachel rounded on her. “What did you do?”

“Your husband tried to hit on me,” Bev squeaked. “Hans had to protect me.”

“You told me to break his hand,” Hans said.

“That’s not what happened,” Sly growled.

“I know,” Rachel answered without even a speck of hesitation. Sly’s stomach turned even more sour as he realized this probably wasn’t the first time Bev had pulled a stunt like this on a guy Rachel cared about. “Get out of here,” she shouted, thrusting a pointed finger toward the road. “I never asked you to come here and interfere.”

“No, I did that all by myself,” Bev grinned.

“Get out,” Rachel repeated.

“I will,” Bev almost sang. “For now. But you’d better get all the paperwork ready. I want to take possession of my company right away, as soon as the competition is over on Wednesday.”

“You’re not going to win,” Rachel told her, back straight.

Through his pain and Elvie’s prodding at his hand, Sly was filled with a burst of pride. He had a feeling that might have been the first time Rachel had ever stood up to her sister, or one of the first.

Bev didn’t look at all happy about it. “I already have a buyer,” she reminded everyone. “And I always get what I want.”

“Not always,” Rachel shot back.

“Not this time,” Sly added, his voice made dangerous with pain.

Bev humphed and turned to prance off on her too-high heels. Hans, looking as confused and mean as ever, strode after her.

“Is he going to be all right?” Chastity asked, leaning against Chris, concern pinching her face.

Elvie continued to prod and turned Sly’s wrist over. “I think so. We’ll need to get you over to the clinic for an x-ray.”

“It’s a veterinary clinic,” Sly said through clenched teeth.

“The x-ray machine doesn’t care that you’re not a dog.”

“I dunno, he’s always been a bit of a dog.” Doc tried to make light of things.

“Which would explain all the howling at the moon,” Cooper tried to pick up the mood-lightener and run with it.

“I don’t know if that’s what all the howling coming from Sly’s house for the past few nights was,” Kolby added to the teasing.

It was a sign of just how upset Rachel must be that she didn’t blush or flinch or react to the off-color comment at all. She just rushed Elvie along as they walked Sly across the field toward the vet office.

“What are we going to do about the tug-o-war?” Karlan asked.

Good point. They couldn’t lose. Not now, not ever. “Arch will have to fill in for me after all,” Sly managed to say to the small crowd following him. “Whether it’s broken or not, I don’t think my wrist is going to help us win this competition.”

“Good point,” Kolby said.

“And as far as I’m concerned, we don’t have any other option but to win now.”