Arielle and the Three Wolves (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (14 page)

“There she is,” he told Luke. “Time to stop worrying about if she likes us or not and start winning her for ourselves.”

“How’s my hair look?” Luke asked him. They both got up from the table and hurried down the corridor to the front door.

“Your hair always flops over like that. She’s going to love you, Luke.” Kyle gave his last words of assurance to his brother.

Both men came outside the house and onto the veranda. They waited until the Suburban pulled to a stop in front. Then they ran down the front steps. Kyle was the first one there. He got the door for Arielle who stepped out of the passenger side of the vehicle.

“Welcome to the Wildback Ranch, Arielle,” Kyle said to her.

“Thank you, Kyle. It’s good to see you again.” She reached up to him. She had to stand on her toes because he was almost a foot taller, and placed a kiss on his cheek. Kyle wanted to take her in his arms right then and do more than kiss her, but he restrained the lusty shifter side of his nature. He didn’t want to scare her off when she had just arrived. He gave her a peck back on her cheek.

“I want to take you inside and show you around our home,” Kyle said to her, and chanced a hand on the small of her back as he led her up the front steps.

“This is a fantastic home you have, Kyle,” she told him. He thought she was genuinely impressed. He hoped she would be. He and Luke had worked hard enough to get it cleaned.

He held the front door open for her, and she entered ahead of him. A glance over his shoulder told him Luke and Jason were only a couple steps behind. Kyle didn’t wait for them and entered after Arielle. He had a chance to check out the designer jeans she wore while her back was to him. She had a knockout figure. If they succeeded with her, they would truly be lucky men.

“This is an old home,” Kyle explained to Arielle. Their footsteps echoed off the twelve-foot ceiling. “Our family has lived here since the eighteen nineties. Our great-grandfathers built it. Over the years each generation has added on to it as time and the good fortune of the ranch allowed. Our grandfathers built the north wing around the time of the Great Depression, and our fathers added the south wing back in the seventies.”

“It’s magnificent. I love that spiral staircase,” Arielle told him.

“Would you like to see the upstairs?” Kyle asked her.

He watched as she looked back at Jason. He thought he read a moment of trepidation on her face. But Jason nodded for her to go with him. Kyle wondered if he laid it on too thick for her, but decided he didn’t know any other way to do this but to give it his all.

“I’ll have Luke bring in your bags,” Jason said to her. He came up to her and put his arm around her. Kyle looked at them with envy. He hoped one day he would be able to do the same with her, and a whole lot more. “You go with Kyle and let him show you around.”

“All right,” she answered Jason. She looked up at him. A silent communication appeared to pass between them. Then she smiled at Kyle. “I’d really like for you to show me around this beautiful old home,” she told him.

He knew he had to get involved with this woman the moment she smiled at him. Her smile put a hook into his heart. She had him captured. Now if only she wanted him, he thought.

Again he chanced a hand at the small of her back as he led her up the winding staircase. “It seems like a big place at first,” he explained to her. “But after you’ve had a chance to live here for a couple of days, it won’t seem so big anymore. You’ll start finding your way around, and it’ll seem homier. That’s the way it seems to us.”

“True, but then again you’ve lived here your entire life,” she countered him.

“That we have,” Kyle admitted.

“It may take me more than a few days to find my way around this place. It’s huge. How many rooms does it have?”

“Well, let’s see,” Kyle made a quick mental count of all the rooms in the house. “I guess about twenty-five.”

“My goodness. You guys could have quite a party here.”

“We have friends over a few times each year. Other ranchers who live in Shifter Valley mostly.”

He led her down the long corridor of the north wing on the second floor. He tapped on the hardwood floor with his cowboy boot and pointed it out to her. “This is calamander wood. They brought it over all the way from Asia. It’s the toughest wood you can make a floor out of.”

“The house certainly seems well put together for such an old place,” she told him. “And everything is so clean and well taken care of. Do you have anyone to help you with the household chores?”

He gave her a smile and tipped his hat to her. “Arielle, thank you for noticing that. Luke and I spent all week, after we found out you were coming, getting this place spick-and-span for you.”

“You shouldn’t have gone to that much trouble, Kyle.”

“Oh, you’re wrong there.” He looked down into her eyes. She had beautiful brown eyes. “There’s no trouble we wouldn’t go to for you.”

“Thank you,” she said, and favored him with another smile.

“Do me a favor?” he asked her. “Let Luke know that you noticed the cleaning. He worked hard on the entire house. He was up all night with the minivac.”

“Of course I will.” He thought maybe she was nervous, by her actions and tone of voice. He wanted to put her at ease, but then realized he was just as nervous as she was.

He took her to the end of the hall and opened a door. “This is your bedroom,” he said.

He watched as an uneasy blush suffused her face. She took a quick glance in the room, but didn’t even walk inside. “My room?” she asked him, and cleared her throat. “I wanted to ask you, Kyle, what are the sleeping arrangements going to be like here?” She was crimson with her blush and looked down onto the floor, and fiddled with a thread on her jeans. “I’m sorry, Kyle, this is really embarrassing. I’ve never been in a relationship like this before, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

At first Kyle was taken off guard. He didn’t know what she meant. Then he realized this was about sex. Jason had told him she didn’t have much of a history on this ground and was apprehensive about it.

“This is your room, Arielle,” he repeated. “My room is across the hall. Luke’s is next door, and at the end of the hall is Jason’s. We have seven bedrooms in this house. So there’s room enough for everybody. No one has to feel out of sorts.”

She still looked down and still blushed. “Thank you, Kyle,” she said. “Sorry if I embarrassed you. This is all so new to me. I guess I’m still nervous about everything.”

She was so vulnerable when she was like this. He wanted to touch her, but didn’t want to scare her and kept his hands off. “That’s all right, Arielle,” he told her. He knew she needed reassurance. This was strange, he thought, because he had just reassured Luke on some of the same issues a few moments before she arrived. “This is a new relationship for all of us. I’ve never been in one like it before either. I guess we’ve all got a lot to learn. But I’m happy you’re here.”

“Okay,” she said, and cleared her throat again. “Thanks, Kyle.”

She still didn’t make eye contact with him. He could practically feel the tension in every bone of her body as she walked down the hall at his side. This unique situation had her positively scared. He would have to find a way to put her at ease. He knew he was the best of the three brothers to do this. Jason dominated people but wasn’t good at encouragement. Luke meant well, but had too many emotions of his own to deal with, a quick temper foremost among them. Kyle resolved to have a talk with Luke and tell him to take it easy on their new mate until such time as she adjusted to her new life.

Kyle showed Arielle around the rest of the house. She seemed impressed. In spite of her nerves she was able to ask him a few questions and become genuinely interested. He thought this was a good first step. By the time the tour was over, she was a few degrees more relaxed than she had been when she entered the house.

“Tomorrow I’ll take you out onto the range and show you around. We have almost nine hundred acres out there, so there’s a lot to see. Maybe we can take a tour of the valley, too.”

“That would be great. I can see this is an exciting place to live.”

“It’s going to be more exciting now that you’re here.”

He left her off with Jason in the parlor. Jason had his injured leg propped up on the couch and nursed a lemonade that Luke had poured him. The alpha could take care of Arielle for a while that afternoon and wasn’t good for much else on the ranch since his leg still hurt him. Kyle still had the ranch to run, so he excused himself to his office for a few hours.

The last several days had been spent in preparation for Arielle’s arrival. Kyle had left the business of the ranch mostly unattended in his office. It was a headache, but he had to get back to it and find a way to get his mind wrapped around matters. It wasn’t easy. As soon as he sat down at his desk, his thoughts kept straying back to Arielle. The way her hair fell just past her shoulders and always seemed to be a little out of place. Her smile and the way her eyes lit up. Her constant bout with nerves and fear, and the way she apologized for the way she felt all the time.

Kyle daydreamed as he sat behind his desk. What would it be like to take this woman to bed? What would it be like to totally possess her body?

He rubbed his hands over his face and forced himself to forget Arielle for five minutes. He looked back to the website on his monitor on top of his desk. It was a price chart of the August cattle futures contract. The market was oversold. He had detected price patterns that told him the market was due for a big bounce in the next few weeks. Also, his knowledge of the cattle business gave him an inside advantage. He had attended a ranchers convention in Chicago in the spring, and every rancher he had spoken with indicated they were about to draw down herd size this summer. Those reports would hit the market this week. When they were coupled with the oversold condition of the market that meant there was money to be made in cattle futures. All they had to do was buy contracts, and they could make enough profit to buy the land for sale to the south of their ranch. It would be a major achievement. Each generation of their family had added acres to their land. Kyle wanted to do the same.

The problem was Jason. He wouldn’t let him invest the family money in the cattle market. He thought the electronic futures were too risky. Jason was conservative by nature. A couple of years ago when the Stockton ranch that bordered their land to the south first came on the market, Kyle had negotiated a deal to buy the land. Jason had vetoed the idea, and the deal had fallen through. Now the price had gone up and they could no longer afford to buy the land in cash. They would have to take out a large loan from the bank, and no one wanted to do that. But Kyle knew if he placed the right trades in the cattle market over the next couple of weeks, he could still raise the money and they could still buy the new land.

Jason had held firm to his principles and still refused to let Kyle invest the money. Kyle sighed and turned off his PC. He resolved to have a long talk with Jason now that he was home.

Kyle made dinner for them that night. He was the chef in the family, although the brothers mostly made their own food when they were alone. Now that Arielle was here, Kyle had told them he wanted to take over in the kitchen. Neither of his brothers had objected.

After dinner Kyle got Luke to go out to the kitchen and clean things up and put the dishes away. This gave him a chance to find Jason and have a talk with him.

Jason was in the parlor. He and Arielle were alone. Arielle paced the large room in front of the fireplace, and Jason held his broken leg propped up on the end table next to the couch. Kyle thought he had interrupted an uncomfortable moment between them as soon as he barged in. The brothers entered any room they wanted in the house without need for formality, but with a woman in the house now, things would have to change.

“Jason, we need to talk, brother,” Kyle said, and gave a polite nod to Arielle.

Arielle gave him a frown. “Excuse me. I’m going to bed,” she said and left the room.

“You’ve got lousy timing,” Jason told him. Kyle knew the mood Jason was in. He was angry.

“What happened?” Kyle asked him.

“We had a fight. It’s nothing. She’ll get over it.”

Kyle looked at the angry, pained look on Jason’s face and looked down the hall in the direction Arielle had gone. He sighed. He had too many worries.

“The news on the herd drawdowns is being released this week,” Kyle started.

“We’ve been over this before. I don’t want to talk about it again.”

Kyle approached his brother. “I can make us some money this week if you’d just trust me.”

“We don’t need it. We make enough money without your crazy schemes.”

“We need it if we’re going to buy the Stockton land.”

“We don’t need to buy the Stockton land.” Jason picked himself up off the couch. His face contorted in pain. Kyle noticed sweat on his brow. Jason limped over to the bar with his cane and poured himself a Scotch.

“We need to buy the Stockton land if we’re ever going to increase our profits.”

Jason took a draw out of his glass. Then he turned his anger on Kyle. “How in the hell many times do I have to go over this with you, Kyle. We don’t need your ideas. Just work hard and do the job you’re told to do. Your job isn’t to think on this ranch, so stop it.”