River's End (River's End Series, #1) (2 page)

“So any idea where I could find Chance? Or am I interrupting you too?”

Joey shrugged and waved a hand off towards the barn. “Nah, Jack and I were just working with one of the horses. He can handle it. Chance is supposed to be down near the river, working on a busted sprinkler pipe.”

Erin didn’t miss the “supposed to be.” Obviously, Chance rarely did what he was supposed to be doing.

“You want me to take you to him? Does he know you’re coming?”

“No. Has he ever mentioned me?” She could have earned an acting role for how easily she smiled and charmed Joey.

“No. Sorry. He’s never mentioned you.”

“I came to visit him for a couple of weeks, bringing bad news from our family. I thought I could stay with him and take a break from school while I’m here.”

“You’re a student?”

Why did Joey sound so surprised to know she was a student? Was that so out there? Why couldn’t she be a student? Although she was most definitely not in college, how could Joey know that?

“Yes. Wazzu.” Washington State University was her school, she decided, because she heard most kids east of the Cascades went there. It was located in Pullman, on the border of Idaho. She bit her lip and pulled on her sweater so the front dipped just above her bra line. Joey’s eyes followed the subtle adjustment. “I’ll just get a room somewhere closeby. He can come visit me there.”

Joey’s eyes rose from her chest to her eyes. “There’s no need of that. No big deal, really. Chance stays in that trailer over there. It’s his business who he lets stay with him. We sure as hell don’t care.”

Turning, she followed Joey’s finger and repressed the groan of dismay. Chance made it sound like he had his own apartment over the Rydells’ barn, when instead, it was no more than a travel trailer. An honest-to-God trailer with wheels beneath it. It was parked five hundred feet from the main house with three other trailers lined up beside it. Must have been the place where all their ranch hands stayed.

She turned to Joey with a smile. “Are you sure? I don’t want to impose. Maybe you’d better check with Mr. Rydell.”

She played on a nerve. Whatever big brother, Jack, was to Joey, Joey didn’t want to do as Jack bade. “I don’t have to ask permission. I can give it to you, same as Jack. Sure. You’re staying. In fact, now I insist on it.”

She sagged with relief and her breath nearly hitched. She wasn’t homeless. At least, for now. She pilfered some time to figure out what to do next and where to go. Now, all she had to do was make sure Chance didn’t tell the Rydells he wanted nothing to do with her, and would never have invited her to come there and see him.

Jack watched the entire episode from the shadows of the barn and nearly groaned with chagrin. Could his brother really be such an idiot as to fall for the act this girl was so obviously playing on him? How could Joe not see it? The pretty smiles, the subtle flash of bra and legs?
Shit. Poletti
. Just what he needed. Another pointless, worthless Poletti on his land. And this one might just be worse still, judging by how her tits seemed to put Joey into a trance.

Joey was the one who insisted that Chance work there. And look how well that turned out. Chance Poletti was lazy, shiftless and could only do a crap job at any task he was assigned. Jack always ended up fixing most of Chance’s work. Chance cost him extra money and increased his workload. But he let Chance stay because Joey needed that. Joey thought he owed Chance, and was constantly trying to prove to Jack that he was his own man. Jack wanted to inform his little brother that his judgment in people sucked, but the more he tried to tell Joey anything, the more Joey rebelled. So for now, he had to let Chance stay if only so that Joey could learn this lesson. Joe trusted people at face value. He was naive to people like Chance, whom he saw as a friend he owed a debt to. 

Chance was a polished manipulator and used Joey’s youthful innocence and belief in goodness to get what he wanted. What Chance wanted was something that Jack hadn’t nailed down yet. But he knew it was something. And to date, he just let it go, hoping Joey would wise up before Chance’s real reasons for befriending Joey became known. Joey had to toughen up if he intended to work on and run the ranch, so it seemed better to do it now rather than later.

Jack just never considered having the female version of Chance suddenly show up and screw Joe over.

Erin Poletti
. Funny how she showed up out of nowhere, unannounced and unwanted. She was so unprepared for and inappropriate to the ranch, he wondered why Joey couldn’t see exactly what she was about: herself.

And Joey was a prime target to whatever trap Ms. Poletti and Chance were plotting.

Like any red-blooded, straight man, Jack first noticed her body. He glanced over at where she stood, still mooning up to Joey. She was slim and small, with shapely legs that she showed off with a skirt that flounced around her thighs, offering a peek-a-boo effect that could drive any man crazy. And what else could Erin’s goal be? Especially since it was not even fifty degrees out today.

She had narrow shoulders and a small frame with small breasts, which she did her best to highlight with the strip of hot pink bra she allowed to show over the top of her shirt.

If a guy could manage to look past all that, ignoring her clothing, which seemed to wink at him, her face could have stopped a plane dead in the air. She was that pretty. Her big green eyes, which even from a distance, Jack could see she knew exactly how to use, by making them even bigger and wider eyed, so she looked more vulnerable. It was a guise for idiots like his brother who wanted to slay whatever pretend dragons someone like Erin Poletti feared. Her hair was pushed off her forehead by a black headband, and hung around her shoulders in twisting black curls. She had a mass of ringlets that must almost reach her waist. It was too bad such a pretty face was wasted on someone like Erin. He wondered what she usually did. Or did she just latch onto people, like a parasite, until she moved on or was figured out?

The car, however, gave Ms. Poletti away. It sorely revealed a need for money. Money, no doubt, she and her scoundrel brother were planning to coax out of Joey. Did Chance bring Erin in on his ongoing scam?

Joey’s eyes never quit following Erin Poletti’s clothes. Yeah, she was the perfect shiny object to distract Joey with, now wasn’t she? What the hell was she doing here?

Visiting her brother who worked on a horse ranch? Yeah, sure. He believed that. Wearing little flip-like shoes with heels that would twist an ankle if she planned to walk past the rim of her car. There was no room on a place like the Rydell River Ranch for a piece of fluff like Erin Poletti.

Jack smashed the shovel into the horse manure he was cleaning from Augusta’s stall. Hauling back a full load, he dumped it into the large trailer behind him, which he had to drag out to the larger pile of even more manure, beyond the barns.

Augusta, grazing in the pasture now, was the Rydells’ most prized horse. His horse. Augusta was a full-blooded Nokota ranch horse. More importantly, he was Jack’s heart; although, of course, he didn’t tell anyone that. It was just between him and his horse. Augusta read Jack as if she were Jack’s own arm. When they were together, they were that synchronized and in tune. Jack had never experienced anything like it in all the years he trained and bred horses.

His brother was supposed to be helping him clean the enormous barn that housed many of their horses. Some were boarded here, some were there for training or care; and a few dozen belonged to the Rydells. Jack glanced over his shoulder. Joey was leaning into Erin Poletti’s car and dragging out a duffel bag. His jaw clenched.
Damn it, Joey, what are you doing? Unloading another untrustworthy Poletti to live with them?
Couldn’t Joey ever see past his own nose? Or, in this case, his own dick?

Jack threw the shovel down and kicked at the stall. He didn’t have time for that. Not to watch Joey get his ass handed to him by a pair of experienced tits. He didn’t have time to protect Joey from whatever blunder Chance Poletti was setting him up for. He had enough on his plate just making sure Chance didn’t actually cause any real damage to the ranch, or the Rydell reputation.

He had the ranch to run, two sons to raise, and dozens of horses to care for, as well as many to train. Not to mention the endless hours of work outside of the horses that still had to be done. He really didn’t have any time for this crap. Joey opened Chance’s trailer and took Erin inside.

****

Erin held her breath, then let it out of her mouth before taking another breath back in. The trailer stunk. It was putrid. It had garbage overflowing the trash can and littered all over the counter. Dirty clothes and shoes were everywhere. This was the trailer in which she was to live? It wasn’t very big and had a door near the back, which turned into a small kitchen, with a half-sized fridge, sink, stove and countertop. With one step, she was in the living area, a small square of couch with a two-seater table across from it. A small hallway with a sink on one side and a door on the other lay beyond that. The toilet? Well, it looked about as big as a two-foot closet. At one end was a bed that took up the front of the trailer. It was wedged between the walls with barely six inches of room to walk around.

She gulped audibly, never imagining her brother would be living really nice, but this? No, she wasn’t prepared at all for this. He was so dirty. It wasn’t just the trailer, which, in comparison, wasn’t so bad. It was the gross state her brother left it in. Noticing small black bits on the counter, she shivered in revulsion; they were mice droppings.

“He doesn’t exactly clean the place.” Joey looking around with a frown. She turned and smiled to cover up her growing disgust.

“Oh no. It’s fine.”

Joey’s eyes twitched, and he found it gross. “Oh. Okay. Then I guess I’ll leave this here.”

Erin turned and stepped outside. She had to get out of there. She couldn’t stand the rancid smell. Inhaling a deep breath of fresh, cold air, she sighed at the clean scents of dirt and pines. When she lifted her eyes and looked past the trailer, she could see behind it was a sloping meadow that trailed off towards the river. The water flashed and sparkled under the stark sun. Further beyond laid an orchard that rose above the river and disappeared into the brown mountains beyond. God, it was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

Goose bumps had long ago broken out over her skin. Her feet were so cold, it hurt to wiggle her toes. Stepping off the metal stair that led with little fanfare into the trailer, she dropped onto the packed dirt below it. Her small heel sunk into it and she pulled it loose before moving towards the grass nearby. Not five feet from her brother’s trailer was the next trailer, which blocked the view towards the driveway. It would be like living in a parking lot.

Only the views that surrounded her reminded her that she was far from anything familiar.

The faint rumbling of an engine was approaching. She walked along the trailer until she could peek around it towards the rest of the ranch. Beyond the house, a road led towards a group of barns, shops, and outbuildings that were lined up along the road in neat parallel rows, like a parking lot of buildings instead of cars. Jack was driving a tractor, going down the dirt road with its front end held up high, and full of something brown. He disappeared around the furthest barn.

Jack Rydell. He didn’t like her. From one glance, he knew she wasn’t whatever she said she was. There was no bullshitting Jack. She saw that in his single glance. The thing she didn’t get was why he let her stay. Or why Chance was there. It was so unlike the kind of place she pictured Chance living in. She didn’t know what to do. Who cared if she lied to the kinds of people Chance regularly associated with? They were usually creepier and more dishonest than Chance. But the Rydells? They weren’t.

Jack could intimidate the shit out of anyone. Even Chance. He was lean and tall. His body, shoulders, and demeanor suggested that he was in complete control at all times. And that he had all the answers. All the power. And no one bullshitted him.

He wasn’t hot like Joey was. Joey looked like he was the star in a western film that was being shot today. Jack looked like a real honest-to-God, old-time cowboy: rough, tough, and worn. He was much older than Joey. She simply had to avoid Jack at all costs and maximize her attention on Joey. That was her only chance for remaining there.

Joey came up beside her, his gaze following hers as the tractor came back into sight.

“Jack’s going to ream my ass. I’d best get back to work.”

“Sure. Of course. I shouldn’t have shown up like this and disturbed you. I didn’t think it out. To be honest, I’ve never been on a ranch before.”

“No? Where you from?”

“Where did Chance say we were from?”

Joey thought, then frowned. “Don’t know that he ever said. I got the impression he was from lots of places.”

She nodded.
Sure he was.
Chance had a warrant for his arrest in Seattle after skipping out on his bail for a series of shoplifting charges. He’d been in eastern Washington ever since. Yakima. Ellensburg. Spokane. Now at River’s End. He deliberately made a huge detour from all the small towns and was now out in the middle of nowhere.

“We’re from Seattle. I haven’t seen Chance in over a year or so.”

She hoped she could get Chance alone before everyone figured out he had no idea she was coming, and would never have asked her to visit him. The tractor rumbled to a stop near the side of the biggest barn. Jack stood up, then turned and jumped down with the grace of a cougar. He stared across at them, his eyes glittering cold as a smirk hovered over his lips. Finally, he walked towards them.

Her breath hitched.
Shit.
He was like a cop catching her stealing. He seemed to know she was everything but what she claimed to be.

“Chance will be up in a minute.”

She twitched in surprise. Jack found Chance for her? Why? And what was Chance’s reaction? Jack’s dour face gave no indication. Was he setting her up? Did he figure out by Chance’s lack of reception towards her that she wasn’t all she claimed to be?

“Did he… did he say anything?”

Eyes as blue as the sky behind Jack stared at her. “Say anything? Like what?”

“I don’t know. Just asking.”

Jack nodded his head to the trailer. “You’re staying here.” It wasn’t a question.

Joey stepped forward. “I said it was okay. We don’t own Chance. Or whoever wants to visit him.”

Jack’s gaze landed on Joey and his lips twisted into an ironic smirk. “Of course, you gave her permission.”

“It’s my ranch too.”

Erin tensed up at what she sensed in the undertones between these two men.
What was it?
Jack eventually nodded, and smiling at Joey, said, “It is, Joe. You’re right.”

That was it? Erin almost swooned with relief. She thought for sure Jack was about to make her leave. He was staring only at Joey, who smiled and nodded. What did Joey think he’d done? Proven his masculinity and leadership to his brother? He hadn’t. Jack had all the power here. It was so Jack’s ranch. She almost turned and explained that to Joey. Whatever… Jack seemed to be offering Joey a few crumbs here today. Crumbs like letting her stay. She felt nothing but relief. And gratitude. And she couldn’t spoil Joey’s little bit of control by explaining that to him.

“It is you. I thought Jack was mistaken. What the fuck are you doing here?”

Erin whipped around on her heel in surprise. Chance was walking up from the behind the trailer, his lips curled cruelly in disgust. He came up through the field that was hidden by the trailer. Her heart picked up. This was it. She’d be discovered. Chance would refuse to help her and the Rydells would kick her off their land. And then what would she do? Sleep in her car along the river somewhere?

She meant to ease Chance into all of this; and intended to talk to him alone and lay out a convincing case about why she came and why he had to let her stay with him.