Heated (2 page)

“I don’t know what’s worse, Sweetie. The image of your arm up a horse’s ass or that laugh, Sweetie. You need to, huh, what… work on it, that’s right.”

“Shut up, Mimi,” Bianca said with a deadpan expression. “At least I’m not known for the oh-so-clever sitcom saying “You and me makes we.”

Mimi looked off into the distance—something she did whenever she was discussing the sitcom. “Oh, yes. A better time. And it kept me from being lined up to swallow the scent of horse ass, Sweetie.”

Bianca had to laugh at that one. “Listen, this is fun, but some people got a job, Mimi.”

She rose, sticking her purse under her arm. “Alright, Sweetie, I’m going. I have a save the children or feed the whales breakfast thingy.”

“Isn’t it Save the Whales and Feed the Children?”

Mimi just waved her hand before moving to the kitchen door. “As long as they can cash the check, they don’t care what I call it.”

Bianca shook her head.

Mimi opened the door and paused, turning to look at Bianca. “Listen, Sweetie, is what they say about a male horse’s… uhm, well, you know… jingy-thingy. Is that… is that true, Sweetie?”

Very tongue in cheek, Bianca answered, “Big as my arm,” with a meaningful stare.

Mimi sighed as she patted her perfectly coiffed French roll and leaned a little against the door with a soft smile.

“Mimi?” Bianca said to nudge the woman out of her reverie.

“Just made me think of Vincent, my third husband, Sweetie. Now it’s so hard to say
he
was good for nothing.”

With nothing to say about
that
, Bianca started walking out the kitchen. “Goodbye, Mimi,” she called over her shoulder.

“Toodles, Sweetie.”

The door closed behind her.

Bianca climbed the spiral wrought iron staircase to the second level of her home. As she strolled into her master suite she looked at her watch. It was 9:30
A
.
M
. Just enough time to shower, change, and head to her clinic for a 10:30
A
.
M
. appointment. Her next appointment after that was at 1
P
.
M
., and she was hoping to visit Mr. Sandman as much as she could before then.

Bianca removed the scrubs she kept in her car for emergency vet calls like last night. Dressed only in the beautiful lace thong she originally put on under her evening gown, Bianca took another deep sip of her drink as she moved over to her night table to check her messages. She had a service answer work-related calls and she’d already checked those messages during her drive from Sandy Springs.

“Hi, this is Bianca. Do what you need to do.”

Beep
.

Bianca studied her reflection in the oval mirror in the corner, twisting and turning to see if any new cellulite had moved onto her thighs.

“Bunny… uh, I mean Bianca—”

She paused at the sound of her father’s gravely and distinctive voice. The thought that the days of him calling her by the childhood pet name were gone pained her.

“Call me when you get a chance.”

Bianca lowered her hands from examining the pertness of her breasts—and wondering when a man would touch, tease, and taste them again—to reach out for the cordless phone sitting on its base.

Beep
.

“Bianca—”

Her hand paused just above the phone and her face became confused at hearing her father’s voice… again.

“Never mind.”

The line went dead.

Beep
.

Snatching up the phone she quickly dialed her father’s number.

“King Ranch.”

“Daddy, this is Bianca. Is something wrong?” she asked.

He remained quiet—and that was more telling than anything he could have said.

“Daddy?” she asked with more firmness in her voice—like she was the parent and he was the child. Bianca pressed the phone closer to her face. “What is it?”

“I need your help. You gotta come home, Bianca.”

2

Holtsville, SC One week later

Being in Holtsville was like going back in time for Bianca. Virtually nothing had changed. Even Donnie’s Diner remained the only eatery in the small “downtown” area—thank the heavens it was renovated. Donnie’s was a landmark in Holtsville, but growing up she felt eating from there was like playing Russian Roulette with your digestive system.

Yes, Holtsville was still a one gas station town. As she passed by it, Bianca waved at the grizzly man sweeping in front of the storefront. She smiled as she remembered riding with her father to the small store, anxious to spend her nickels and pennies on candy.

Good memories.

Bianca pushed her oversized shades up atop her mass of straw set curls as she turned left off the main road. Her father’s ranch was on sixty acres, just ten miles away. As she drove, Bianca looked around at the small houses that looked the same as when she growing up. Many of her
childhood memories were tied to those places.

Cutting the models from the Sears catalogs to play with like paper dolls on the porch of her best friend, Patty Ann. Or her first kiss at the Walker property with Lil’ Willie Walker up in the loft of his family’s barn.

Bianca laughed as she remembered screaming and running from the barn when he whipped out
his
little Willie.

Lots of memories.

Now she was back in town.

Last week when her father asked for her to come home, Bianca had reservations, but she set them aside. She knew it took quite a feat for
her
father to ask for help. For him to admit that he was close to losing the ranch was astounding. For him to say he
needed
her was the clincher.

“Well, can you beat that?” Bianca said aloud, her eyes lighting on the wooden sign that read:

KING EQUINE SERVICES
ESTABLISHED 1959
HOLTSVILLE, SC
(2 MILES AHEAD ON RIGHT
)

She clearly remembered the day she helped her father hang the sign that her mother painted with care. And there it remained after all that time. The letters were faded and the corners of the wood was chipped, but her father hadn’t replaced it.

Maybe this trip won’t be so bad after all.

Bianca noticed a large and shiny pick-up truck behind her in her rearview mirror. She paid it no mind until the driver began to blow the truck’s horn and motion out the
window with his hand.

Bianca checked her speedometer. She was doing fifty-five.
Humph
. “Better go around,” she muttered with attitude.

As the truck passed, Bianca noticed a man wearing aviator shades and riding in the back. The man and his pose looked straight out of one of those Ralph Lauren print ads—even done to the chocolate lab sitting dutifully at his side.

The man made Bianca want to do something naughty, like suck her finger or blow him kisses.

Ruggedly handsome, his salt and pepper smooth hair was cut very low. His beard and mustache was more a five o’clock shadow. She knew his hair was prematurely silver because there was no denying the youth and vitality of the man. She figured him to be in his early thirties, and his deep bronzed caramel complexion perfectly suited that beautiful hair. He had strong features. A lighter version of that male supermodel, Tyson.

Bianca wished his shades weren’t in place.

Her eyes took in the black tank he wore and the way it snugly fit his chest and emphasized the steely muscles of his arms.

Just before the truck accelerated and left her behind, the man waved at her before setting his arm atop his bent knee. The move drew her attention to the large tattoo of an eagle on his upper right arm.

“Ooh, come here, you,” she said to herself, waving back with a beguiling smile and a little toot-toot of her horn.

Good girls
always
loved bad boys, and there was something untamed and wicked about the man that drew her in. “Sexy silver self,” she said in a low voice to herself.

Did he like what he saw as well? She couldn’t help
but get excited at the thought that he did.

Moments later the truck became a spot in the distance.

“Whew, he was fine,” Bianca moaned, just as she decelerated the car to turn it down the long and winding dirt road leading to the ranch.

The grove of trees lining the road offered enough shade to make one think it was suddenly late evening and not early afternoon. As a child Bianca would play among that blanket of trees, feeling like a princess in her own secret garden. Even when it rained the tree’s branches were so densely intertwined that nary a raindrop broke through to touch the ground.

Then the trees ended. Before her sat her childhood home, the King’s Castle as her father used to call it. The two-story home was an impressive structure. A huge wrap-around porch and so many windows that the sun glinting off the glass looked like the twinkle of diamonds. The navy blue shutters crisply contrasted off the white of the home with the underskirt of the home trimmed in red brick.

The mahogany front door opened and her father stepped out onto the porch, his arms already opened wide. Bianca flew out of the car and ran up the stairs to him. He enveloped her. She clung to his large impressive frame and to a past when there was no distance between them.

Although Bianca hadn’t returned once since she left college.

Although she owned a house in Atlanta just as large as this.

Although she swore to never return if things hadn’t changed.

Her first thoughts were,
I’m home
.

As Kahron Strong stood in the doorway of his bedroom and looked at the naked woman lying there like she was posing for
Playboy
, he wondered who he’d have to pay to get a housekeeper on whom he could rely.

This woman laying before was Erika—the fifteenth housekeeper/cook he hired since he moved to Holtsville, SC. He tried everything from the old to the young, male, female, and a few that could swing either way. He always got the same result—they did
something
to get on his last nerve.

Whether it was stealing, or being disrespectful, or watching more of his digital cable than actually working, or foolishly trying to seduce him—Erika was the fourth such to try that route—or just plain couldn’t cook or clean to save their lives, Kahron went through housekeepers quicker than tissue. He wondered if he was cursed.

Because she was laying out the goods he gave her a quick perusal. He shook his head. When a man has a naked woman lying before him and he notices that the furry mound between her legs is starting to grow
down
her legs—well, something just wasn’t right.

“Ma’am, please go on and get dressed,” he said, his voice raspy and filled with his Down South accent. He reached into his back pocket and pulled two twenty-dollar bills off the knot of money. “Your services are no longer needed.”

“What?” she exclaimed, actually opening her legs wider.

Kahron diverted his gaze and tried not to laugh at how ridiculous she was.

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“You
ain’t
all that, Kahron Strong.”

“Yes, ma’am, I know.”

He heard the rustle of the sheets and the squeal of the bed springs as she rose. He started to tell her to take the sheets with her, but refrained—he’d just throw them out. He felt sheets were almost as intimate as underwear and, well, it just wasn’t something he wanted to randomly share.

Kahron looked at wall until she snatched the money from his hand and slammed out of the room.

“Well, another one bites the dust,” he said, as the front door slammed soon after.

After a long day at the livestock auction in Chesnee, Kahron had just wanted to eat lunch and help his crew out with repairing the fence on the northeast portion of his one hundred acre spread.

A strip show hadn’t been on his “to do” list—especially from a woman whose crotch looked like she had Buckwheat’s head trapped between her legs.

He made himself a cheese sandwich—there weren’t any cold cuts in sight—before heading back out of the house. His dog, a chocolate lab aptly name Hershey, immediately rose from where she was lazily lounging on her favorite spot on the porch. Kahron paused to give Hershey the rest of his sandwich and he stroked her coat as she lapped it up with ease.

“Good girl,” he said, with one last pat to her side.

Kahron could have driven one of the four battered work trucks or three four wheelers parked in front of his single-level house, but he decided to ride his stallion, Midnight, instead. With Hershey at his booted heels, he walked the distance over to the steel barn that housed his ten horses.

“
Hola
Paco,” Kahron greeted the ten year old as he walked up. Paco was the son of Kahron’s stable manager, Carlos Santos.

“
Hola
Mister Strong.”

Kahron mussed his wild cap of black hair playfully, quite fond of the child. “Will you get Midnight for me?”

Paco didn’t even bother to answer. He just dashed off to do as he was asked.

As he waited, Kahron looked around at all the activity on his ranch. He loved it. All of the ranch hands within his sight were busy with a task, be it shoeing a horse or cleaning up the constant animal droppings. Since buying the ranch six years ago, Kahron had improved the water availability and distribution with better grazing management, increased the size of the herd by nearly three hundred heads, and increased the staff to thirty men—twelve of whom resided on the property in the bunkhouse. His goal was to expand further.

The ranch currently dealt mainly with livestock, but Kahron was looking into possibly expanding into dairy, like his brother Kaleb, who farmed in Walterboro just twenty miles away. That would come in due time. Right now his focus was getting ready to drive his herd to the south pasture of his land in a few weeks.

“Here he is, Mister Strong,” Paco said, carefully leading the horse to him. “I groomed him for you.”

Kahron pulled five dollars from his pocket. “Best brushing job I ever seen, Paco.”

The little boy’s mouth formed into an circle and he went running off. He stopped after a few feet. “
Gracias
, Mister Strong. Come on Hershey,” he shouted back before dashing off to the back of the stable, presumably to find his father.

Hershey, who was particular about what action she chose to partake in, just stood there and watched the little boy run off before she trotted over to her pile of
blankets in the corner of the tack room.

“Lazy girl,” Kahron teased, as he walked into the tack room to retrieve his custom made black leather saddle.

Hershey just settled deeper into her blankets.

Kahron laughed as he walked back out to Midnight. He grunted slightly as he saddled his horse, stroking the deep ebony of its powerful neck, its mane long, flowing, and just as black. Moments later, comfortably mounted on the horse’s back, Kahron went trotting off to help the set of men repairing fence, his thoughts heavy on how ideal the King property would be ideal for expansion of his business.

“Whassup, Bianca.”

Bianca stiffened in her father’s arms at the sound of her stepmother’s voice. Giving her father’s wide expanse of body one last hug she step back to look around him at the second Mrs. Hank King… Trishon.

Fifteen years later but still young at thirty-five, Trishon was an attractive woman. A bit fuller at the waist, hips, and breasts, but only three years Bianca’s senior. Still, she and Trishon had never been close friends growing up. They ran in different circles, but both knew of each other well.

“Hello,” Bianca said, barely forcing civility into her tone.

Bianca didn’t miss the diamond cluster ring sparkling from the woman’s fingers or the casual designer clothing—things Trishon never had until she met and married Hank King.

Kanye West’s song “Golddigger” suddenly played in her head.

Trishon’s eyes glittered, but she smiled nonetheless.
“Hank is so excited about your visit,” she said, stepping forward to stand next to him and stroke his arm.

Bianca knew that being a woman would mean giving this woman respect. As much as she hated it, this was Trishon’s home—she was the lady of the house—and that meant giving her at least
that
much respect.

“I’m glad to be back, Trishon. Thank you for your hospitality,” Bianca said, forcing a smile to her full Angie Stone–like lips.

Bianca looked up at her father, thinking it was good to see his wide handsome face again, and wishing she didn’t smell the faint scent of Crown Royal. “I’ll have to make you a pot of my homemade stew that you used to love, Daddy.”

He smiled. “I would like that.”

“I cook for him but he doesn’t eat very much,” Trishon said, her tone clearly defensive.

Bianca felt irritation nip at her. “We’ll just see if both of us can’t nag him into eating,” she offered lightly.

“Right now I’m headed to run an errand,” Hank said, pulling Bianca to his side for another quick hug. “I’ll be back later.”

Bianca was confused and her face showed it. “But, Daddy, I just got here and don’t you think we need to talk?” she asked, even as he continued down the stairs.

“We’ll talk when I get back. You and Trishon visit or go shopping or something.”

Hank climbed into his battered pick-up truck and Trishon flittered down the stairs behind him.

Bianca watched as he leaned over to pull his wallet out his back pocket and handed some bills into her eager hands.

As he drove away, Bianca felt like that same teenager whose father ignored her all over again. The first time
he saw his daughter and already he was off with something else—anything else—to do. She released a breath as if to release the pain and disappointment she felt.

“Trishon, I’m just going to head up to my room,” Bianca said, jogging down the stairs to pop the trunk of her vehicle to remove her suitcase.

“Actually, I, uhm, converted your old bedroom into my dressing room years ago,” Trishon said, folding the money he gave her to push into her brassiere.