Arielle and the Three Wolves (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (17 page)

Ten minutes passed, and Kyle came out of the room and slammed the door behind him. He gave her an apologetic look and headed for the exit. “I’ll be waiting in the truck,” he told her as he passed.

She summoned her courage and stepped back inside Jason’s room. He acted as if nothing had happened when she approached him. She sat down on the side of his bed.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re not going to tell me what you and Kyle were arguing about?”

“It’s nothing for you to worry about. We’re brothers. We fight all the time.”

“I’ve had arguments with my sister before, but never like that.”

“That’s not the same. We’re different.”

“So you’re telling me I’ll have to get used to you guys if I want to have a relationship with you?”

“I’m telling you not to worry about it.”

She let the subject drop. She knew when Jason got like this she would never get anything more out of him. After another ten minutes, she gave him a kiss good-bye and left the hospital.

Kyle was silent on the ride back to Shifter Valley. His face was red and angry, and he honked at a slow car that got in his way on the road. Arielle believed these strong men had little vulnerability, but she watched a human side of Kyle as he drove them back to the ranch in strained silence.

They were halfway back before either of them had the nerve to speak. “I’m sorry you had to hear that, Arielle,” Kyle said.

“Will you tell me what you and Jason were arguing over?”

“I was being a jerk. I apologize.”

“I asked Jason. He didn’t seem to think it was important enough to tell me what it was about.”

“It wasn’t important. Not really.”

“And?” Arielle persisted.

Kyle combed his hair off his brow with his fingers and gave a sigh. “It was ranch business. It’s boring. The three of us are in business together, and sometimes we don’t agree.”

She put her hand on his shoulder as he drove and rubbed her fingers. “Look, Kyle,” she started. “If you want me as a life partner, you’re going to have to trust me enough to let me in on a few things.”

He took his eyes off the road and looked down at her. “You’re right,” he said. “We’re asking you to trust us with your life. I guess we could at least return the favor.”

She waited for him. She could tell it was hard for him to open up. These men kept their emotions guarded.

“I know how we can make money on the cattle futures market. Jason doesn’t trust me enough to let me have the money.”

“Your ranch looks like it’s doing very well to me.”

“We are doing well. But I want to expand our land. The south range is for sale. It belonged to a family who’s moving out of the valley.”

“Why not just finance it through the bank?”

“We could, but I know I’m right about the direction of the market. I could make all that money for us in two weeks, probably sooner.”

Arielle began to see where Kyle came from on this. “You want to prove you’re right to Jason?”

“I know I’m right.” He turned back to her with determination. “I’m thinking of taking the money anyway and investing it when Jason’s in the hospital. I don’t care if he approves of it or not. He’ll never know about it until after it’s over and a done deal. Then we’ll have the money to get the south ranch.”

Arielle looked out at the slope of the mountain they passed. A family of wild horses ran down one of its foothills. It was all beautiful, but she couldn’t enjoy any of it at the moment. She remembered what Jason had told her when he left for the hospital. He wanted her to watch things. She had loyalty to him that was built out of love. But she felt torn. Kyle was right next to her. He was so proud and sure of himself. She had started to care about him. She didn’t want to see him get hurt.

“Jason wouldn’t want you to do that,” she told Kyle.

“You’re right,” he acknowledged. “He wouldn’t.”

“How much money do you want to invest?” she asked him.

He told her. It was a lot. Arielle felt a knot in her stomach when she thought about that much money.

“My dad used to be a stock broker,” she told Kyle. “So I know a little about the markets. They can be very risky. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Kyle turned back to her. There was no doubt in his voice. “I’m positive.”

“How long would you need the money for?”

“The ranch already has a small brokerage account. So all we have to do is fund it. I could deposit the money this afternoon. It would clear by tomorrow morning, and I could start trading it. The market is about to make a big move, and I want to be there for it. I could have it all back in the ranch’s bank account by next week when Jason gets home from the hospital.”

Arielle’s mind worked fast as she thought of a plan. The wheels of her brain turned faster than the truck that sped through the canyon. Her plan was risky, but then so were her relationships with the men. These shape-shifter cowboys seemed to bring out the edge of danger side of her nature.

Kyle looked back ahead at the road, but she knew he was still thinking about the investment. “I want to do this thing, Arielle. In fact I need to do it. I’ve got to prove myself to Jason,” he explained to her. “I won’t do it if you don’t support me on it. But I’m asking for your support.”

“I trust you, Kyle,” she told him. “I believe in you. If you tell me this investment will work, then that’s good enough for me. I think it will work.”

He seemed relieved by her reaction. This is the first test the two of them had to face in their new relationship. “Then you won’t tell Jason about this?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. I can’t do that. Keeping secrets is bad. I’m not ever going to lie to Jason, and I won’t ever lie to you.”

Kyle became confused. “But then how?” he asked. “Jason will never let me invest that money. He’s made up his mind. You know how he is after he’s made a decision.”

“I know,” she admitted. “But I have another way for us.”

“There isn’t any other way. I have to get the money into the brokerage account now. The market is about to move. If I miss the move it will be too late. We could always take out a loan from the bank to buy the land like you suggested, but at this point I doubt Jason will even let us do that.”

Arielle took a deep breath. She was about to take a terrible risk. “Is this really that important to you, Kyle?”

“Yes, it is. It’s not about the money. We’re not rich, but most folks would consider us well off. This is about principle. I love my brother, but I need to prove myself to him so that I can stand up to him sometimes when he needs someone to stand up to him.”

“All right.” Arielle made her decision. Like the decision she made to come up to the ranch and start a relationship with the men, she didn’t look back after she had made it. “I don’t want you to take your family money. That would hurt Jason, and it would hurt you to lie to him. I have a little savings in the Wolf Creek bank. I want you to take my savings and invest it in the cattle market. I believe in you, Kyle. I know you can do it.”

* * * *

Arielle and Kyle went back to the ranch, and they argued over her proposition, and then they argued some more. Kyle did not want to take her money. At first he outright refused. Arielle tried to draft Luke to come to her aid and help her, but he refused to get involved between the two of them. Kyle told her he was not as sure as he thought he was. He told her there was a chance she might lose a sizable portion of her savings account. He said he didn’t want that responsibility. Arielle told him that if she was to be a future member of their family, then she had a right to do this. The money was hers, and it was her decision. In the end Arielle prevailed, and Kyle reluctantly accepted her offer.

“You can log in from here,” he told her. They were in his office in front of his computer.

“I can log into my bank account and transfer the money to your brokerage account from here?” she asked.

He nodded that she could. He still hesitated over the decision. “If I lose that money, I’ll let you down. I’d rather let my brother down than you, Arielle. You’re the most important to me. I don’t want this responsibility. We’re talking about your entire life savings.”

“But you want the responsibility of caring for me for the rest of our lives?” she asked him.

He sighed. She knew she had made her point with him. “Yes. I want that responsibility,” he admitted.

“You won’t be letting me down. I know the risks involved, Kyle. I’m willing to take that risk on you. Family members trust each other, and they believe in each other. If you won’t let me trust and believe in you, then…” She trailed off.

He motioned to the keyboard. “All right. You’ve convinced me. I want us to do this.”

She took her seat in front of the monitor and opened a web browser. The PC was new. It had a lot of memory and a fast processor, but the web page took forever to load. “Do you have Internet access out here?” Arielle asked him.

“We have wireless, but it’s extremely slow, as you can see.”

She waited for her bank’s website to load. Then a thought occurred to her, and she frowned. “You’re planning to trade over the Internet, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Like I said, my dad was a stock broker, so I know a little about it. When you’re trading live like that, isn’t time a factor?”

“Yes.”

“Then how do you expect to trade with this slow of a connection speed?”

He laughed. Now that the decision had been made, the tension between them had been broken. “I’m not going to trade from here. The connection is too slow to support the charting software that I run. There’s a mom-and-pop coffee house next to the Mountain View Inn south of Wolf Creek. Along with the best cup of coffee in the county, they happen to have high-speed Internet access. I’m going to take my laptop down there tomorrow morning and start trading.”

It took her an hour to get the funds transferred across the slow connection. Arielle just clicked submit in time to get the money into his trading account by the start of the next day.

Later that night she talked to Jason on the phone. She didn’t mention anything to him. She made dinner for Kyle and Luke. They were all silent as they ate except for the compliments the two men gave her on the meal. Luke knew what the two of them had done. Arielle could tell he didn’t think it was the right thing. But she knew he would never tell Jason what they had done.

She spent a sleepless night and tossed and turned in her bed.

She heard a wolf howl out in the night from the other side of the range. She wondered if it was a real wolf. In the past week she had become used to Jason’s hard body next to her as she slept. She missed his presence in her bed. Questions bombarded her all night long. Had she done the right thing? Was this what it meant to be a part of a family?

The next morning Arielle was up early and met Kyle in front of the circle drive outside the house. The two of them had agreed that she should come with him and spend the day at the coffee shop. She could not help him, but could be at his side for support.

Kyle’s truck had a tire that was low on air. They didn’t have enough time to fix it so they took Arielle’s Suburban. She drove them down the winding mountain roads and to the coffee shop. It was a foggy morning, and low cloud banks up in the mountains made it hard to see. She took it slow and got them down the mountain in one piece.

“You’re right about the coffee in this place,” Arielle told Kyle as he returned to their table in the corner and set her second cup down on the table. “It is delicious.”

He sat down across the table from her and opened his laptop. “Are you worried?” he asked her.

“No. You know what you’re doing. I just want to be here to see the look on your face when you finally do it.”

“The market may not move yet today. The cattle market moves slow in comparison to the stock market. We might have to come back here tomorrow and do it all over again.”

She sipped her coffee and looked out the window at the little motor lodge across the street. The fog outside cast a chill on the air and made the hot coffee taste even better. “I don’t care,” she told Kyle, and brought her feet up underneath her on the chair to settle in and get comfortable. “This is a pleasant spot. We can keep coming back here all week for all I care.”

He gave her a crooked smile from over the top of his laptop. “You mean you’re not nervous at all?”

She returned his smile. She felt confident and good. Regardless of what happened, she had done the right thing. “Not nervous at all,” she told him.

“I can tell your dad was a stock broker. You’ve got nerves of steel, lady.”

“Not really.” She shook her head and laughed. “This isn’t anything. Agreeing to come up to a house in the mountains and stay with three men as their mate, two of whom I barely knew, took nerves of steel.”

“When this is over you and I are going to have to talk more about the mating part of that proposition.”

She looked back out the window. Everything felt warm and right about this moment. She had to agree with Kyle. “You’re right. I think it might be time we had a talk about that.”