COWBOY ROMANCE: Justin (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 1) (167 page)

Love in Ghost Lake Ranch

Book 6

(Can be read as a standalone book)

By: Amber Duval

Cherished by the Cowboy

Chapter One

“Tell me there isn’t a stripper,” Ethan Boone muttered from the side of his mouth as he grinned at the mass of cheering friends and cowboys crowding the roadhouse.

“Caleb planned this bachelor party,” Robert Boone told his oldest brother as he clapped him on the shoulder. “Expect a whole army of strippers.”

“All right, old man,” Chris Boone said, his giant frame looming over Ethan.  “Let’s get you crowned.”

Rob grinned as family and friends swept his laughing brother off to a throne-like chair.  The men then hoisted Ethan and the chair up and carried him to the center of the dance floor.  Behind a curtain of chicken wire, a local garage band played a funeral dirge.  Rob’s youngest brother, Caleb, switched Ethan’s Stetson for a gold paper crown covered with glittering square foil packets.

“Aw, that’s so pretty with the jewels,” Margie, the bartender said as she offered Rob a dark bottle of beer.  “Why are you snickering like that, boy?”

“Those aren’t jewels, ma’am,” he told her as he took a drink.  “They’re more like, uh, jewel covers.”

She peered and then released a belly laugh.  “Well, at least your brother will have all he needs for the honeymoon.” 

Rob nodded as he leaned against the bar and surveyed the interior of the roadhouse.  All of his brothers and every one of their friends had come, which made him feel satisfied.  When their parents had died, Ethan had given up most of his dreams to come home.  He’d worked tirelessly to take care of his six brothers and help them run Ghost Lake Ranch, the family cattle spread.  Seeing him finally have something just for himself – namely, his lovely fiancée Jessa Cooper – made Rob happy for him.

It would never happen for him, of course.  When it came to girlfriends and love, Rob considered it a public service to run away from both as fast as he could.

When Caleb came over to order some beers Margie leaned her elbows against the bar.  “I know you’re too much of a tom cat to settle down, Cal.  But when will we be hosting your last night as a free man, Robbie?”

Rob nearly choked on his beer, and spent the next minute clearing his throat.

“Rob’s never getting married,” Caleb told her.  “We’ll be lucky if we can find him a date for the wedding.”

Rob glared at him.  “I told you, no dates.  None, zip, zero.”

“Why not?” Margie asked as she lined up four more bottles on the bar.  “You’re just as big and handsome as your brothers.”

“Sure, but he’s the only one who’s cursed.”  Caleb expertly dodged Rob’s half-hearted swat.  “Go on, bro.  Tell her.”  He grabbed the four bottles and hurried off. 

Rob sighed.  “I’m not cursed,” he assured Margie.  “I just have bad luck with dating women.”

The hard-faced rancher sitting on the stool next to him snorted.  “Boy, we all do.”

He took a long drink of his beer.  “Not like mine.” 

“Well, come on,” Margie urged.  “I want hear all about it.”

Rob hunched his shoulders.  “My first date in high school was with Miranda Logan.  We went horseback riding, or tried to.  When she rode out of the barn, a garden snake spooked her horse.    She fell off and broke her leg.”

Margie waved her hand.  “Oh, sweetheart, that couldn’t be your fault.”

“That’s what I thought.”  Rob turned to the rancher.  “My second date was with Sally Makepeace.  We met at the movie theater in town.”

The older man frowned.  “There’s no movie theater in town.”

Rob nodded.  “That’s because it caught fire the night we went there, just as the movie started.  The equipment overheated or something.  Anyway, everyone got out all right, but the building burned to the ground in less than twenty minutes.”

“Coincidence,” Margie said, although she didn’t sound quite as sure this time.  “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Rob sighed.  “On my third date, also with Sally, we went to the bowling alley with her folks.  I thought with them there nothing could happen.  And then her dad’s bowling ball slipped off his fingers and hit Sally in the face.  Broke her nose and knocked out her front teeth.” 

The rancher grimaced.  “Damn.”

“I stopped dating for a while after that, and waited all the way until Prom before I asked out Ruby Stephens.”  He smiled as the bartender gaped at him.  “Thought you might recognize her name.  She was in all the papers.”

To the rancher Margie said, “She’s the girl that had a baby at Prom, in the restroom.  He wasn’t yours, was he?”

“No, ma’am.  I just delivered him.”  He set his bottle down on a cocktail napkin.  “To be fair, Ruby really didn’t know she was pregnant.  She thought her stomach was upset because she’d just broken up with her boyfriend.”

The rancher whistled.  “You have had some awful luck, cowboy.”

“I don’t understand,” Margie said, scowling at him.  “I’ve heard plenty of women talk about you.  They got all kind of stories about how you tear up the sheets with them.  Not a one ever mentioned getting hurt.”

Rob winked at her.  “That’s because I don’t date them.  Excuse me.”  He walked across the bar to intercept the stripper sneaking up behind Ethan and slipped her fifty bucks.  “Keep most of your clothes on, sweetheart, and no lap dances.  Okay?”

She nodded and tucked the bills in her bra.  “Old-fashioned?”

“Yeah, and truly in love.”  Rob returned to his bar stool, where the rancher held out a fresh beer to him.  “What’s this for?”

“Luck,” the older man said, smiling now.  “You never know when it’s going to change.”

#

              “Can I hide out in here with you?”

Malory French glanced at the green-eyed, strawberry blonde who had just come in the restroom.  She leaned against the exit door as if she meant to hold back a tide of demons.  “Sure.  Are you sneaking away from the bridal shower or the baby shower?”

“Bridal.”  The other woman glanced down at the colored dot stickers adorning the front of her pretty lace blouse.  “They’re playing Love Bingo — without the cards.  If I go back out there I’m going to hurt someone.”

Malory chuckled.  “I was roped into the baby shower.  They’re planning to bob for nipples next.  The baby bottle variety.  You know, I think there’s a back door through the kitchen.”

“I love you.  Want to have my baby?”  The other woman grinned and held out a slim, capable-looking hand.  “Jessa Cooper, equine vet.”  She nodded as Malory inspected her small but lovely engagement ring.  “And bride-to-be, I’m afraid.”

“Malory French, head librarian.  Happily unmarried and childless.  Since I came in last in the Diaper Derby, probably for the best.”  She shook her hand and then rolled her eyes as a very pregnant young woman darted inside and closed the door.

“They’re sticking tiny clothespins on me now.”  Becca Boone began pulling them from her collar and sleeves.  “Make them stop.”

The three of them laughed together, and Malory congratulated them both before making her excuses.

“Becca, I am so happy for you and Chris.”  She turned to Jessa.  “That goes for you and Ethan, too, Jessa.  But I have to get up early tomorrow, so I’m going to call it a night.  I almost forgot.”  She reached for her purse, and took out her gift for Becca.  “It’s that book on natural childbirth you couldn’t find at the library.”

“Oh, thank you for remembering.”  Becca gave her a somewhat awkward hug.  “Now I just have to hide it from Chris.  He nearly passed out when they showed the childbirth film at our last Lamaze class.  Then he asked the instructor if
he
gets any anesthetic in labor and delivery.”

As she drove home to her little apartment across town, Malory tried to hold onto her good mood.  She didn’t often socialize, but Becca Boone had become one of her favorite regular patrons at the library.  She also liked her gentle giant of a husband, Chris, who obviously adored his wife.  Thank heavens neither of them seemed to remember her from high school.

“I’m not that girl anymore,” she muttered under her breath.  “I’m just like every other woman in town.”

Once she parked, Malory climbed out of the car, and then staggered a little as her head began to spin.  “Oh, Lord,” she muttered under her breath.  “Did they spike the punch, too?” 

Thankfully her apartment was on the first floor.  When she reached it, however, she felt so dizzy she could barely fit her key into the lock.  Malory managed to get inside, her purse falling from her hand as she staggered over to the phone in the kitchen.  The buttons blurred as she peered at them, trying to remember what number she was going to dial.

As the room tilted, a gloved hand took the receiver from her shaking fingers and hung it back up.

Chapter Two

              Rob slowly woke to the warmth of the naked woman wrapped around him, and sighed as he pulled her closer.  She smelled of wildflowers and had skin so soft and smooth it glided like rose petals under his hands.  He’d never felt so good waking up with a lady in his arms, in fact, and smiled as he imagined how he might best wake her up. 

He shifted her so that she lay fully on top of him and rubbed his hands down the long curve of her spine.  Her sweetly curved, firm buttocks fit his palms as if made for them.

“Mmmm.”  The low, husky sound she made vibrated against his neck, sending a surge of hot blood straight to his groin.

Rob opened his eyes to a dark room, and tucked in his chin to look at a mop of tangled dark curls.  She wriggled against him, the damp folds of her sex grazing the full plum of his cockhead.  For a moment all he wanted to do was work his pulsing rod into her softness and keep it there until she woke.

Only two things kept him from doing just that:  he had no idea who she was, or how he’d ended up in bed with her.

Rob’s head began to thump painfully.  He pushed aside his rapidly-fading desires and inspected his surroundings.  The motel room they occupied looked old and shabby.  Clothes lay strewn over the threadbare carpet.  The ancient television had a hand-lettered note taped to its screen:  BROKE.

He knew places like this, but he’d never brought a woman to them. 

The naked woman on top of him stirred, sighed, and then went completely still.  She lifted her head and stared at him, her drowsy expression turning to wide-eyed, absolute horror.

Rob knew exactly who she was.  Malory French had grown up in Crystal Valley, and she’d been a year behind him in school.  She’d taken over as the town’s head librarian when Ella King had retired three years ago.  She was also known as the most prim and proper woman in town. So what the hell was she doing in bed with him?

He felt her tremble violently and lifted his hands off her bottom.  “Please, don’t scream.”

Malory didn’t make a sound.  She scrambled off him and fell off the bed in her haste to put distance between them.  On the floor she kept crawling backward, stopping only when her buttocks banged into the one rickety chair in the room. 

Rob found his pants and jerked them on before he got up and went after her. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her as she staggered to her feet and turned as if to run for the door.  He held out the rumpled sheet and turned away as she wrapped it around her trembling body. 

“What did you do to me?” she demanded, her voice shaken.  “Where am I?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.  “I can’t remember.   Do you?”

She grabbed some of her clothes from the floor and clutched them to her chest.  She kept darting looks at him until she finally asked, “You’re one of the Boone brothers – Caleb?”

“No, I’m Robert.  Rob.”  That she didn’t know his name only made things seem worse.  “What can you remember?” 

She pulled the sheet around her and averted her gaze.  “I was at Crystal Valley Reception Center.  They had a baby shower there for your brother’s wife, Becca.  I went into the restroom and then . . . .” She stopped and touched her temple.  “Nothing.  I can’t remember anything.”  Her frightened gray eyes met his.  “What about you?”

“I was at my brother’s bachelor party, but I don’t remember leaving the roadhouse.”  Rob saw how she was trembling and felt sick.  “Please, sit down.  I won’t touch you again, I promise.”

“Which roadhouse were you at?” she asked tightly.

“The Cue Ball.”  Rob frowned.  “But that can’t be – it’s at least thirty miles outside town.”

“You mean we couldn’t have met and . . . decided to do this.”  She lowered herself into the chair as if she were afraid it would break her.  “Even if we had met last night, I never . . . .” she stared at the bed, her expression bewildered and shocked.  “Robert, I’m not this kind of woman.”

“Yeah, I figured that.”  He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to think of how to ask the next question.  He decided coming straight out with it was better than tiptoeing around it.  “Ms. French, did we have sex?”

“Under the circumstances I think you should call me Malory.”  She glanced down at her lap.  “And without getting into specifics, yes, I think we were intimate.” 

He muffled a curse and held his pounding head in his hands.

“Robert.”  When he looked up at her, she said, “Could one of your brothers have done this?  Some sort of practical joke that went too far?”

“No.”  He felt that certainty in his bones.  “They have too much respect for women, and too much love for me.”

“I’m sorry, I had to ask.”  She came over to sit beside him, and looked around the room.  “This doesn’t feel like a joke anyway.  It’s too vicious.”

He remembered drinking one beer, maybe two.  “Maybe I got drunk and wandered in here while you were sleeping.”

“I’d never stay in a place like this,” she told him flatly.  “I’d sleep in my car first.”  Her expression changed.  “Date-rape drugs.  Robert, they can cause people to lose their inhibitions – and their memories.  Someone must have drugged us and brought us here.” 

“Well, then after I beat the tar out of them, they’re going to jail.”  He reached for the phone.

“What are you going to tell the police?  That we woke up naked together in a motel room?”  She took the receiver from him and replaced it.  “They’ll congratulate you and smirk at me.  By tonight everyone in Crystal Valley will be talking about it.” 

              “We have to find out who did this to us,” he told her firmly.  “They drugged us, kidnapped us – and what I did to you while I was out of my head–”

“Was not your fault,” she said firmly.  “You’re as much a victim as I am.  But we can’t let this get out.  I’ll lose my job, Robert.”

He hated knowing she was right.  “What do you want me to do, Malory?”

“For now, we agree to forget this.  Go our separate ways.”  She rubbed her temple.  “And I buy some extra-strength aspirin.”

“I won’t forget it, but I’ll keep my mouth shut.”  Rob went to look out through a small gap in the curtains.  “My pickup truck is parked outside.”  He checked his pocket and found his keys.  “Get dressed, and I’ll drive you home.”

“I’d rather call a taxi.”  She tried to smile.  “So no one sees us leaving together.  Would you mind?”

“No,” Rob lied, and then took the cheap notepad from the nightstand and wrote his number on it.  “Just promise you’ll call me if you need anything.”

She nodded, but Rob could tell that was a lie too.

#

              “The book club cancelled again, Malory,” Susan Bartle said as she pulled up the overdue list on the checkout counter computer.  “They can’t agree on a title for June.  I suggested the latest shade of grey, but the coordinator acted like she didn’t know what I meant.”

“Since she’s the Baptist minister’s wife, she probably wasn’t acting.”  Malory peered at Susan’s monitor.  “Call Tommy Dexter’s mother when you get a chance.  Tell her he’s got the entire set of Harry Potters overdue now, and I want them back.  Or I will come over and search his room again.”

“Sure thing, boss.”  Susan made a note, and then gave her a shrewd look.  “Are you feeling bad?  You haven’t been yourself today.”

“I went to a baby shower last night and, ah, stayed too late.”  She flinched as she realized something she’d forgotten and checked her watch.  “Do you mind if I go to lunch early, Sue?  I need to pick up something from the drugstore.”

“No problem.”  Her assistant turned to the older woman who dropped a stack of mysteries on the check-out counter.  “Oh, you’re going to love this Anne Frasier series, Mrs. King.  It’s so elegantly spooky.”

Malory went into her office, retrieved her purse and walked from the library to the nearest pharmacy.  Once inside nearly everyone she saw smiled or greeted her, and her heart sank.  She couldn’t buy what she needed in town; everyone would talk.  She’d have to drive to the city.

Walking slowly to the soda fountain in the back of the store, she ordered a coffee and sat in a corner booth.  Taking out her phone and the notepaper, she dialed Robert Boone’s number. 

He answered on the first ring.  “Malory.  Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”  She drew in a trembling breath.  “I need to tell you something.  I didn’t think of it yesterday, but it’s important.  Last year I had a bad break-up, so I thought I’d take some time for myself.  I haven’t been seeing anyone since then, so I haven’t had to worry about certain matters.”

“You mean, you’re not using any birth control,” he guessed.

“That’s right.”  She waited until the waitress who brought her coffee left before she asked, “Robert, I’m right in the middle of my cycle.  Do you remember using anything last night?”

“I didn’t have any condoms with me,” he said, “and I didn’t find any in the room.  How soon will you know?”

              “With a home test, in about a week.”  She put too much cream in her coffee, and set down the little pitcher to avoid throwing it across the store.  “What are we going to do?”

              “Stick together,” he told her, his voice deep and sure.  “Whatever comes of this, you won’t have to face it alone.  I’ll be right there at your side, no matter what.”

She took a sip of her milky coffee to ease her tight throat.  “Thank you, and I’m so sorry.  I never thought . . . who could have done this to us?”

“A damned coward.”  His tone softened.  “I want to see you, Malory.  Can we meet this afternoon?  Maybe have a cup of coffee and talk?”

A surge of unexpected happiness bloomed in her chest.  “I’ll be at the library until five,” she told him.  “Would you mind if we talk in my office?”

“I’ll stop by,” he said.  “Honey, it’s going to be all right.  I promise.”

Malory finished her coffee and bought some toiletries she didn’t really need before heading back to the library.  Just talking to Robert had made her feel more clear-headed.  Knowing he would not abandon her reinforced her resolve, too.  She would not give into despair or terror.  He would keep her strong.

“A package came in for you while you were out,” Susan told Malory when she returned to the library.  “I put it in on your desk.”

Malory went into her office and picked up the oversize brown envelope.  It had her name and the words “Personal and Confidential” typed on the front, but no return address.  Slowly she opened it and drew out a stack of glossy photos.

The first showed her naked body beside Robert’s.  They were kissing, and he had his big hands on her breasts.  The second showed him with one hand between her legs.  In the third her legs were spread wider, and his fingers were penetrating her.

Malory flipped through the rest of the photos, her teeth biting down on her bottom lip as they became more and more explicit.  Robert’s mouth on her sex, hers on his.  Robert on top of her.  Another of her on top of him, leaning forward, showing their joined sexes clearly. She tasted blood in her mouth when she saw the next, close-up shot of his penis pushing into her. 

Malory sank down into her chair and slowly put the photos back into the envelope.  When her phone rang, she almost screamed.

“Malory French,” she said when she answered it.

“Looks like you had a fine old time with that cowboy, Miz French,” an oily voice said.  “Now if you don’t want everyone else in town to see those pretty pictures of you two, I’m going to need some cash.”