Taking a deep breath, Lane turned on his boot heels and followed Hope out to the stable. They’d tasked three of the temporary wranglers with getting the geldings ready for the ride today. Late last week, a rather large group from a local bank had scheduled some sort of team building event. They thought that horseback riding would be an appropriate way to get to know each other better apparently, and they were to arrive… Lane consulted his watch. Shit, they were going to be there in half an hour and he had no clue whether the horses were going to be ready or not.
Catching up to Hope, he tried to force Grant and Gracie out of his head. Easier said than done considering he’d been thinking about the two of them for the last few months. Ok, so that was a damn lie. Lane had been thinking about the two of them for the last two years. Or more. But, until Friday night, he’d also been under the impression that he was the only one who was interested in a little more than seeing who could get a date with Gracie first.
The bottom line: Lane needed to get laid. Pure and simple.
It’d been… Fuck, it had been almost three months since that last fucked up encounter with the bar bunny whose name he couldn’t remember. Just like Friday, credit for that little clusterfuck could be given to a case of beer and no dinner. The perfect blend of mess-your-mind-up-optimism.
Yeah, Lane had sworn off that whole get-drunk-to-pretend-otherwise shit and he’d been doing a damn good job of it until last Friday.
Dumbass.
“Come on, Lane. Get your head in the game. We’ve got shit to do,” Hope hollered.
Yeah, he definitely needed to get his head in the game. Because otherwise… He was going to find himself in way over his head.
Chapter Two
Lane was starving. He’d had the day from hell and at the moment, he just wanted something hot and then maybe a cold shower before he fell into bed. At this point, he wasn’t even going to bother with trying to find Grant.
For the better part of the last six freaking hours, Lane had pretty much entertained a group of horny women all by himself. Oh, yeah, after about ten minutes with the women, Hope had bowed out gracefully, telling them that something had come up but that they’d be in Lane’s very capable hands. At that point, his very capable hands had wanted to throttle her. Those women were worse than a horde of kindergartners with their constant questions. “Have you always been a cowboy, Lane?” “Do you ride horses every day?” “How many cowboys work here?” “Are they all real cowboys?” “Are you currently riding anything else, Lane?”
Yes. Yes. A lot. Yes. What?
Those were his answers. It had been a long day of single word responses and now he was all talked out.
But that had just been the introductory discussion. From that point on, the ladies had pummeled him with more outlandish questions. And by the end of the ride, he just wanted to sneak off by himself which was a first for him. Lane always enjoyed taking the guests out, spending time with them. Sharing dinner afterward. He’d even been known to take a few of the hotties on midnight rides – without the horse.
“Have you seen Grant?”
Lane spun around to see Gracie walking toward him at a fast clip. The anger radiating from her was palpable, yet it didn’t mar the perfection that was her face.
Goddamn the woman was pretty.
They all were. Grace, Hope, Trinity, Mercy and Faith. All five of the Lambert sisters had been blessed with beauty beyond reason. They took after their mother, thank God. Good ol’ Jerry wasn’t a bad looking man, but he’d make a damn ugly woman.
“No,” Lane told her as he braced himself for impact. She looked like she was ready to throw down with him right there in the dirt. She didn’t seem to care that he was at least twice her size.
“Well, you tell him…”
Gracie didn’t finish her sentence, but he could tell she had a few choice words for Grant. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides and she was biting her bottom lip. And damn it all to hell, Lane’s cock was paying attention.
“Tell him what?” Lane asked, curious as to what the problem was.
“Never mind,” she bit out.
When she went to stomp away, Lane found himself doing something he’d rarely ever done before. At least not intentionally. He actually touched her and it wasn’t just an innocent brush of his arm against hers either. As if in slo-mo, Lane reached out and placed his hand on her arm, her warm skin so much softer and smoother than he anticipated. When she turned to face him, he jerked his hand back as though he’d been burned.
Ok, so he had always been attracted to her, but then again, what man wouldn’t be? She was gorgeous. Long blonde hair, perfect bow-shaped lips, a tight, compact little body, and those smiling eyes. Yes, even when she didn’t want to, her eyes seemed to smile. No matter how angry the woman tried to be at him or Grant, she always seemed to be secretly thinking about something else. Something that amused her.
But right now, her eyes weren’t smiling. They were wide as she stared back at him, glancing down briefly to look at the place where he’d touched her arm and then back up to him.
Did she feel it too? Whatever that weird electrical charge was? Surely not. That was only something they spouted about in those racy books Gracie’s older sister Hope liked to read.
“What’s goin’ on?”
Oh, hell. Lane looked up to see Grant making his way over and he knew that the shit was about to hit the fan.
And this time he was going to be the one to sit back and watch the action.
???????
“Grant Kingsley, you are a first-class asshole!” Grace shouted. She hoped like hell her daddy wasn’t around because he was going to be pissed at the language she used, but she couldn’t help herself.
After what Grant did… The nerve!
“What’s wrong?” Grant asked, looking sincerely perplexed about her outrage.
“How dare you write something like that on that paper?”
Grant’s face contorted from worry to amusement right before her very eyes. “Did you like that?”
“My sister did! She found it quite amusing, thank you very much.”
The blasted man had the decency to blush.
“Oh, shit.”
“‘Oh, shit’ is right,” Grace spat back at him. “Now Faith thinks we’ve got something going on and she won’t leave me alone about it.” Upon reading Grant’s clearly vulgar list of things he needed from town, Faith had a field day giving Grace shit about it.
“What did it say?” Lane asked, a huge grin on his too handsome face.
“You don’t want to know,” Grace told him snidely as she turned her attention back to Grant. “How dare you do that?”
“You were supposed to be the one to read it, Gracie. Not your sister.”
“Well, she was more than happy to read it to me. Let’s see if I remember it correctly. One: condoms. Two boxes, please. And the please was underlined. Two: chocolate syrup. And you even gave me delivery instructions. What was it? I was supposed to deliver those items to your cabin. Naked,” Grace huffed before she continued, “Was that all? Did I leave something out?”
“Wine.”
“What?”
“You forgot the wine. That was the first thing on the list. The condoms were number two.”
Grace stared at him incredulously. Did he really think this was funny?
“Come on, Gracie. It was supposed to be a joke,” Grant told her as he once again looked to be trying to hide his smile.
“So not funny,” she told him.
“Why didn’t you read it before you gave it to her?” Grant asked.
“Because I didn’t expect that!”
“If you had, would you have read it?” Lane asked.
Grace turned her attention to him. “No. I wouldn’t have.” Ok, so maybe she would have, but they didn’t need to know that. In truth, she had forgotten all about the list until Faith told her she needed to run into town. It was then that she remembered Grant’s morning request, so she’d ha
nded off the letter not realizing it was going to come back and bite her in the ass.
She was so pissed. Mainly because Faith had gone on and on about the fact that Grant Kingsley wanted her in his bed. Grace had endured the atrocious “Gracie and Grant, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” from her twenty-five year old little sister.
It had been one of the most embarrassing moments of her life. Luckily, it had been Faith who had volunteered to go into town and not her dad. Christ, she didn’t even want to think about what that would’ve been like. Her father would’ve skinned Grant alive and strung him up on the front gate as a warning to the rest of the cowboys on the ranch.
Unable to look at either of them any longer, Grace turned and stormed off. She wasn’t hungry anymore. Not that she’d come looking for food in the first place. She’d been in search of Grant. And now that she’d found him and given him a piece of her mind, she was done.
So done.
“Gracie, wait!” Grant called.
“Dude, let her go.” Lane’s voice sounded far away.
Good, maybe he’d keep Grant there with him.
At least one of them had some common sense.