Ride 'Em (A Giddyup Novel) (16 page)

They lugged the cooler under the shade tent; Ethan grunted as he lowered his side. “They’ll probably wonder why it isn’t louder, but that can be part of the mystique, I guess.”

“I am a little worried one of Chet’s deputies might miss a memo and try to hassle these guys.”

“Logan. Chill. Things will be
fine
.”

“Yeah, but,” he suggested, “what if they
aren’t
? This whole thing is still kind of crazy, and if it goes wrong, the potential for disaster is
huge
. I’m on board, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sane to worry.”

Ethan opened the cooler and selected a water bottle, twisting the top off and emptying a third of it in one gulp, then wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “You’re a naysayer.”

Logan closed the cooler firmly. “I’m not a naysayer.”

“You just said . . . that was just naysaying, what you just said. You’re being one
right now
.”

“So anybody who harbors a reasonable concern is a—who
says
that, anyway? Nobody calls people naysayers anymore, this isn’t the freaking eighteen-nineties, Ethan.”

His brother grinned. “Reckon I’ll call folks what I want to call folks, dagnabbit.” He pretended to hawk and spit, making a
ptooie
sound as if he’d slung chaw at a spittoon.

“It’s really a shame you’re too late for the vaudeville circuit.”

Bloodworm reached past them to open the cooler and pull out a Dr Pepper. “Ah, brotherly love. Change of subject, Doc, but after our shift here, you’re gonna help me tie up Mrs. Bloodworm, right?”

Ethan nodded. “I am, indeed, if she’s still interested. I cheated and blocked out a ten o’clock slot on the sign-up sheet in the old barn. On one of the side beams. That’ll give you plenty of time to get some dinner, shower, whatever.”

“Perfect.”

Logan checked the time. Two o’clock. Details flooded his brain, and he bounced on his toes, trying to drive some of the stress out.

A car drove up, the driver’s window rolling down as it slowed to a stop. Logan vaguely recognized the driver from his usual club in Houston, and waved a greeting as Bloodworm checked him off a list and Big Gerry let him through the gate, directing him up the campsite driveway. A couple of volunteers from the MiniKinkFest planning group, who’d arrived an hour or so earlier, would help him out from there, getting him to his assigned parking spot and tent pad.

A truck with a trailer in tow pulled into the spot the car had just vacated.

Logan snagged the walkie-talkie and gave Diego and Robert the heads-up that their guests were starting to arrive.

A wasp nest was reported on the side of one of the rented Porta-Johns. Logan investigated, found it was just dirt daubers, but knocked the mud nests off anyway.

A dead snake was found near one of the tent pads. But it was dead, and it was just a small brown grass snake, so it wasn’t a big deal.

Robert broke down in tears when he thought he’d ruined one of the giant pots of slow-simmering venison stew with too much salt. But he pulled himself together, threw a few extra potatoes into the mix, and soon pronounced it fit to serve to dignitaries and heads of state. Logan assured him that if he ran across any heads of state, he’d send them straight up to the buffet line at supper time.

Logan kept his phone firmly in his pocket. He had been good all day—all two weeks, really—trying to play it cool. Not make any assumptions about Mindy’s plans once she arrived at the ranch. To say they hadn’t parted on good terms was the understatement of the century, and no definitive plans had been made on their subsequent calls and Skypes, so he had no idea what would happen during the Big Kinky Weekend of Kinkiness; he just thought it was a good sign she’d planned to attend. A show of good faith, and a guarantee, as she herself had pointed out. She could hardly point a finger at anybody else if she was there, too, getting her freak on. Naked. Hopefully.

He told himself she could get her freak on with any number of people; there would almost certainly be volunteers to help her with that. It was wrong to want to kick those volunteers out of line and demand she let only Logan play with her. They were both adults. They could have a professional relationship. They could even let bygones be bygones, and just be old friends who knew each other from way back. It didn’t have to
mean
anything.

At three o’clock he texted her. Knowing she was driving and probably couldn’t reply, knowing she was likely only half an hour away at most anyway, it was only a smiley-face emoji. Let her take it as she would.

Half an hour later, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

She’d replied with a sad face.

He was still puzzling over it when his walkie-talkie hissed at him. The security gate’s channel. He toggled the switch, icy fear seeping from his heart to chill his veins. “Logan.”

“Boss? Yeah, I think you need to get down here. We have a problem.”

* * *

From the moment Mindy’s day had started, it had been heading downhill. She should have never gotten out of bed. No, she should have never checked her email after waking up, that was really the turning point.

Or maybe it was deciding not to replace her car when she got the raise. Another possibility.

She refused to draw the self-blame line back any further. She wouldn’t say she should have never gone to Hilltop Ranch in the first place. And she wouldn’t say she should have never helped plan this so-crazy-it-just-might-work weekend to help Logan save the place.

Although those choices certainly hadn’t made her current life any easier.

That morning’s nine o’clock meeting, called at the last minute via email, had been the final nail in the coffin of her career hopes. Bud and her assistant had both known she was planning to go out of town that morning, so she’d assumed the meeting had to be an emergency; she’d thought, foolishly as it turned out, that she might even be needed at the office for her expertise.

When she’d dashed into the conference room at nine fifteen, hair still slightly damp, wearing a too-warm blazer to hide the fact that her wrinkled dress needed a visit to the dry cleaner, she’d pulled up short at the sight of Bud, two of Mindy’s “team” members, and her assistant, clearing the agendas from the table and gathering up their coffee cups.

“Oh, we’re done, Mindy,” Terry had said perkily. “Didn’t you get the follow-up email?”

“We didn’t need you for this one after all,” one of the land men added. “Sometimes faster to cut out the middleman.” He seemed to realize what he’d said, after his mouth was closed. He ducked his head and sped from the room, mumbling something about a call he needed to make.

Bud hadn’t said anything until the rest of them left. Then he’d smiled his most pleasant, avuncular smile before speaking. “Taking a trip over your long weekend, right?”

“Yep.” And she could have been on the road already. “Did you really get me in here for nothing?”

“Oh no.” His smile turned nasty. “I just wanted to remind you, before your little junket, that you dance to my tune now. Have a nice drive, ballerina.”

Then he’d nodded at her and gone on his way. He hadn’t needed to say anything more to make his point; he controlled her. He’d orchestrated the whole meeting to rub her face in that fact.

She’d gone to her office, closed the door, and sat for at least twenty minutes, willing tears of anger and frustration not to fall. She’d fingered her cell phone, fighting the temptation to text Logan. She didn’t need to look outside for sympathy; she needed to quit her job and let her mother know what a conniving tool she’d married.

Her mother would not want to believe that of Bud. And Mindy might fuck up their relationship permanently. But she’d been silent long enough.

Monday, she’d finally decided. She would quit and talk to her mom on Monday, after a weekend of stress relief. Or at least of a different flavor of stress.

Then she’d gotten into her car, not bothering to change because she was starting the drive so much later than she’d expected. She could change at Hilltop.

The noises had started right outside Waco, after she’d stopped for gas. The noises, and the slight shiver of the steering wheel. An alignment problem, possibly. She turned the radio up a notch louder and ignored it. Sang along to all the classic country she could find, tuning the radio occasionally as local stations faded in and out of range.

Up until the outskirts of Bolero, she did a great job of fooling herself that the rattling wasn’t getting any worse. But the second she hit the intersection to turn either toward town or up toward the hills, and tried to make the turn, the steering wheel shimmied so hard she could hardly grip it. Straight ahead one mile or so was a gas station at the edge of town. Instead of turning, she headed for that instead, checking the time on her phone and noticing she’d missed a text.

It was nearly three thirty. The text was a smiley face from Logan from a half hour earlier.

The wheel shook again and she tossed the phone back into the passenger seat, using both hands to guide it down the road. She could see the gas station up ahead.

A horrible ratcheting noise filled the car, and she yanked the wheel to one side, steering sharply for the shoulder. Something caught and scraped against the pavement, as if the car was dragging some piece of machinery along under it. The noise ended in a heavy, metallic
clunk
as the car shuddered to a halt.

Heart pounding, Mindy turned the ignition off and gasped for air; until then, she hadn’t realized that it wasn’t just the car shaking, it was
her
.

The chassis ticked and settled for a few seconds. Stillness fell. A truck drove by, slowed, but didn’t stop.

The gas station was still at least a quarter mile down the road.

Mindy cursed and banged the steering wheel, then cursed some more as pain shot up from the heel of her hand.

“Fuck, fuck,
fuck!
”

The pain and outburst cleared her head enough for resignation to set in. She picked up the phone first, texting a sad face to Logan. She tapped a finger on the screen thoughtfully, reaching for the proper wording for an apology.

Nope, shouldn’t focus on the kink, he might not have that in mind right now. Delete, delete, delete.

Too impersonal.

She tried another few things but had arrived at nothing good when a knock on the window scared the phone right out of her hands. She fumbled for it, but dropped it into the foot well, as she turned to see who the
fuck
.

Chet.

She was either the most mortified or the most grateful to see him that she’d ever been to see an officer of the law.

She tried to roll down the window, but the key was turned all the way off. Holding up one finger, she flicked the key halfway, and pressed the button.

He was staring at her through the cop glasses with his judgy frown clearly visible below the mustache.

“Miss Valek.”

“Sheriff Garcia.”

“It was my understanding you were due at Hilltop by no later than three thirty this afternoon.”

She sighed. “Your understanding was correct.”

Chet looked at his wristwatch—Mindy found herself faintly surprised he didn’t carry an old-fashioned pocket watch instead; it seemed more his speed. “It is three thirty-five. I have also received a distressed text message from my cousin regarding an unwelcome visitor to the ranch.”

“What?”

“Explain why you are not where you said you would be. And why you are dressed for business. What are your intentions?”

Just one contraction. She would have thanked him for just a single, solitary contraction, or at least a kind look at that moment. “Well, Chet, it seems that after getting called in to work this morning unexpectedly, only to decide to quit my job because I’m being completely shut out and everything is terrible—and that may end up meaning my mom is gonna disown me—I spend five hours on the road trying to make it to the one place I actually want to be, and ten minutes before I can get there, my car completely falls apart. That’s what it felt like, anyway. I tried to turn up the farm road to get to Hilltop, the car wouldn’t turn, then it seemed like the whole damn thing fell out a piece at a time and it sounded like I was leaving it all in the road for about a hundred yards or so, and then I pulled over so I could say some curse words at the car because it wasn’t
going
anymore, and here you find me. This hasn’t been my best day.”

His frown deepened. After a second he removed his hat, and bent out of sight. Mindy leaned out the window to see what he was doing. He hadn’t gone far, and he didn’t stay down long before standing up again and replacing his hat.

“Your story checks out. As least as far as your car is concerned.”

“
Ya think?
”

Chet gave a heavy sigh, and his jaw flexed. “You didn’t leave any car parts in the road. However, your CV joint is, I believe the mechanical term would be, entirely fucked.”

“That sounds bad.”

He opened the door for her. “Roll up the window, gather any valuables. I’m driving you to Hilltop.”

W
hen the cruiser rolled up at the back of the short line of cars,

Logan didn’t even
think
about Chet.

What he thought was,
Great, and now a cop
.
Just what this get-together needed
.

It was all over. He might as well start packing his bags.

Derek Larch wasn’t a bad guy. Not actively evil. He had even been nice enough to come visit Logan in person, because he felt the emails were too impersonal, and Logan had consistently declined to meet with him.

Logan hadn’t had time. But Larch didn’t know that. And hey, he’d gone to school with this guy. They’d eaten hundreds of lunches in the school cafeteria, eyeing girls and talking about sports. Been on the academic decathlon team together. Even been in the same group to rent a limo for Senior Prom.

Rough as the situation was, Logan almost felt bad for Derek, because more than anybody currently up at the ranch, Derek’s hands were pretty much tied. Bud Jameson had him over a barrel—and wasn’t that an image Logan wished he’d never conjured.

Bud had been nothing but pleasant to Derek. But Derek knew what Bud was. Everyone did. Everyone knew exactly what Bud wanted, and Derek didn’t have a leg to stand on as long as Logan wasn’t 100 percent solid on his loan. He’d given Logan all the slack he could, but he wasn’t willing to lose his job over it. The time had come. He was selling it off. And he was pretty damn sure the loan service company who was buying it was absolutely in Jameson’s pocket.

And those were the breaks. Business was business. And wouldn’t Logan rather go up to the house and discuss this in private, rather than out here where these . . . large gentlemen were listening in on every word?

Logan assured Derek this location was just fine. He pretended to listen, and nodded as Derek spoke. His ears were full of static. Because Mindy hadn’t shown. And if Mindy hadn’t shown, and Derek had, that either meant the whole thing really was a setup, or that Mindy didn’t want to be a part of his life after all. And it was clear Bud knew
something
was going down at Hilltop this weekend, or he wouldn’t have sent Derek at that particular moment on a Friday afternoon, right?

So ultimately, what Derek said didn’t matter nearly as much as the larger question—which would show up next, the law or the press?

He scanned the skies, half-expecting helicopters with cameras.

Up the hill, they’d already started setting up the pony derby area; when he’d last seen the main corral, somebody was already long-lining a pair of nicely matched ponygirls, while two other handlers were gearing up their ponies for a turn in the ring.

They were all so screwed, and he’d allowed it to happen.

And then the police cruiser drove up, the top light clearly visible behind the other waiting cars.

Sure. Of course. Inevitable
.

When he recognized Chet, he was a little confused. When he saw Mindy get out the other side, he gave up trying to make sense of any of it.

She was in a suit—or a jacket with a dress or something like that, he couldn’t really tell—not dressed for the ranch.

“Your backup’s here,” he told Derek, interrupting whatever the guy was trying to tell him.

“My what?”

Derek looked where Logan pointed. Mindy walked toward them, waving hesitantly at the giant biker who stepped in her way.

“Name?”

“Mindy Valek. I’m on the list. Logan, what . . . ?”

He considered telling Bloodworm to keep her out, but figured there was no point. Chet was coming in anyway. None of it mattered now.

When she’d been checked off and waved through, she jogged up to him and Derek, doing the awkward high-heel run. He hadn’t seen her in work clothes before; she looked a little disheveled, not nearly the crisp office look he would have expected.

Mindy opened her eyes wide at him—pleading, trying to say something without words, he didn’t know what. Then she turned to Derek. “Mr. Larch, I’m so sorry you drove all this way. I think my stepfather has been trying to reach you, but your office seems to be closed for the day?”

“We spoke around ten this morning . . .” Larch loosened his tie, looking even more uneasy. “Was there something after that?”

“Yes,” Mindy said with a brisk nod. “He found out I was en route and gave me some directives. He wanted to set up a meeting with you for Monday afternoon.” She inclined her head toward Logan. “I can’t really share the particulars right now. I’m sure you understand. I also have some details to discuss privately with Mr. Hill. About the potential lease agreement they discussed this afternoon, after my stepfather spoke with you?”

Logan held his hand up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I never—”

“Right, right.” Mindy smiled at them both and shook her head. “There
is
a confidentiality issue, right now, because there’s another potential buyer. You’re right, Logan, I apologize. We can discuss it at our four-thirty meeting. So glad I made it in time, my car broke down. But the sheriff happened by and was kind enough to offer me a lift.”

Chet had walked up behind her. He tipped his hat. “She’s going to be needing a new vehicle.”

Her car had broken down.

The sad face. It was because
her car had broken down
.

The fog in his brain started to clear.

“Derek, we’re hosting a private group here this weekend, as you can see. But I’ll be there Monday to discuss the loan with you and Jameson. And Mindy. Right, Mindy?”

“Absolutely.” She turned a gorgeous smile on Derek, who smiled back like a man hit with a Cupid’s arrow. “It was so great to see you, Derek. So sorry for the mix-up! I’ll let Pop know I got ahold of you, so he can stop trying to reach your poor secretary.”

Then she said some more things, and eventually put her arm through Larch’s and walked him to his car, still grinning and nodding and being all kinds of charming.

Laying it on a little thick, possibly. But the guy seemed to eat it up. So Logan didn’t care.

By Monday afternoon, he’d have all the receipts in order, everything accounted for—or at least enough to bring his payments current and then some. Because things actually did seem to be going according to plan after all. Better than plan.

Mindy had come to the rescue.

* * *

“I’m rethinking best practices for how to run a business,” Logan said, as he ran the bullwhip over his hand then flung it wide, letting the full length uncurl.

Mindy swallowed and turned her head away, trying not to think about where the whip might land first. “This is probably not the best practice, honestly, sir.”

“See, that’s where I think you’re wrong.” He flicked the whip softly, letting it wrap around her calf in a gentle caress. The leather scuffed at her skin as it coiled away again.

She shivered, but not from the cool night air.

“What do y’all think?” Logan asked the small group of onlookers. “Responsible business ownership right here?”

“Responsible some kind of ownership, all right,” called a latex-clad top from the row of burlap-covered straw bales serving as a bench.

Mindy and Logan chuckled at the same time. She gripped more tightly at the ropes around her wrists. “Oh, he doesn’t own me.”

“That reminds me.” Logan came up behind her, pressing against her bare back. Rough denim against her butt, his belt buckle a cold note in the small of her back, his chest warm and firm under the thin cotton layer of his plaid shirt. He looped the whip somewhere, possibly over his shoulder, and dug in his pocket for something. “I have something for you. I forgot all about it earlier, with all the . . . excitement.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?” She tried to press back against him harder, but couldn’t get a purchase with her hands secured over her head, limiting her range of motion.

“Shh. Here.” He held something in front of her—a black cord with a jewelry clasp. A small cardboard tag hung off it on a ring, cream tag stock with a brown reinforcement around the hole, like something you’d see hanging from a lamp in an antique shop. On one side, it read
Ariel
. Logan flipped it after a second so she could read the other side.
Under the protection of Wildcat
.

His scene name—the term for oil wells that weren’t in a big oil field. When he’d told her, she’d laughed until her sides hurt.

He undid the cord and fastened it around her neck, where it hung at the level of her collarbone, with the tag hanging over her sternum.

“Robert said you don’t do the leather household thing,” she murmured, leaning back to press her cheek against him. The angle was awkward but she needed the contact. “Or collaring.” Protection meant different things to different people, but it was still a big commitment, and not one she’d expected.

“Robert doesn’t know everything.” Logan reached around and fingered the tag, then let his hand drift down to tweak her nipple until she squeaked. “And it isn’t a collar.” He brushed his lips against her shoulder. “Yet.”

She sighed, relaxing into his touch, letting in the pain, but also the affection. Letting in all the possibilities. Her life might be in utter turmoil, but it turned out that this, this one thing, she hadn’t fucked up entirely. And it was not a small thing. Only one element was needed to make her night complete.

“Will you whip me with that thing now, sir? Or do I have to beg?”

He chuckled, the vibration running through her whole body. “Let’s get this party started.”