Spurred (Steele Ranch 1)

“Too much wind?” Riley asked. “I can shut the windows.”

I glanced at him, shook my head. “No, the breeze feels nice. I can’t believe how beautiful it is here.”

There were only a few random trees to get in the way of the gorgeous view. Nothing but flat green prairie split in half by the straight two-lane road now that we’d exited the highway. In the distance were snowcapped mountains. Purple against the bright blue sky. And all of it seemed to go on and on and on.

“You teach second grade?” Riley asked.

I had a feeling he knew that already—they knew so much about me because they’d had to track me down—while I hardly knew a thing about them. But, he was trying to make small talk and I appreciated it.

“Yes. School ended last week for the summer. I get eight weeks off. I thought I’d be spending it tutoring out of my house, not in Montana.” I turned my head to look at Riley’s profile. “But you knew all that since you arranged my travel.”

He took his eyes off the road for just a second, and that pale blue gaze had me sucking in a breath. Blond, blue eyed. Tan. Laugh lines around his mouth and his eyes. I guessed him to be around thirty. Not the sixty-five with white bushy eyebrows as I’d expected. We’d exchanged emails, phone calls, but I’d imagined him to be more the fatherly-type than the fantasy-type. How could he make me all flushed and flustered if I was attracted to Cord? How could I find them both to be so different and yet equally appealing? How could I want both of them?

I wasn’t here to get it on with my lawyer and his friend. I was here because of the ranch, the one that was—holy crap!—now mine, at least part of it. Along with a big chunk of money. From what Riley had said, if I maintained a reasonable lifestyle and was smart with my inheritance, I never had to work again. No more tutoring multiplication tables or parent-teacher conferences at the fancy private school. I could work with kids who needed it, in school districts whose budgets only paid their teachers a pittance.

“Tell us about yourself,” Riley suggested after we’d driven about twenty minutes.

I shifted in my seat to face him directly, and with a turn of my head, could see Cord as well. “You’re the private investigator,” I said to Cord. “You know everything about me.” I glanced down at my lap, a little worried that was the truth. “Probably what kind of toothpaste I use.”

“Brand? No, but I take you for a gel kind of gal.” Cord’s grin accompanied his words, and I had to smile and catch my breath. He was still rough around the edges, but that smile softened him in a way that had my ovaries jumping for joy. And that was just a smile. If he kissed me, I’d—

“I run a security company,” he continued. “We deal with corporate and personal protection. When your father died—”

“Michael Parks,” I said, cutting him off. “My father was Michael Parks, not Aiden Steele.”

He studied me for a moment with those dark eyes. “That’s true. Let me see if I have it correct. Your mother married Michael Parks when you were two and he adopted you and gave you his name. He was your real father. Aiden Parks had just been a sperm donor.”

I was so glad he understood that tears sprang to my eyes. I blinked and willed them back. I was not going to cry now, not in front of these two. “Yes, that’s all correct,” I finally said.

“When Aiden Steele died, your—and your half-sisters’—existence was brought to light. It seems Aiden knew about you, kept track of you, but didn’t get involved. Only put you all in his will. As the estate’s lawyer, Riley needed to notify all of you as his next-of-kin, as the only heirs to his fortune, his land. He had me look into tracking all of you down. With five of you, I hired investigators. The one you met, Johnson, was just a contractor.”

“Right,” I said, tucking my hair back again. While the red curls were never tame, they were flying about all wild from the breeze. “Still, he sent you reports. You’ve been on target about me so far, including the toothpaste.”

He gave a slight shrug, prompting me to look at the thick bulk of his muscles. “I like to learn about a woman’s toothpaste preference a different way.”

Heat flared in my cheeks at the thought of Cord standing in my bathroom first thing in the morning, squeezing out gel toothpaste, wearing just a pair of boxer shorts. Or nothing at all. Because that meant he’d spent the night and done all kinds of dark and dirty things to me.

The grin hadn’t slipped. He was riling me up on purpose. No, not riling. Flirting. And it was working, dammit.

“As for the rest of your story, I’d like to hear it from you,” he said, eyeing me levelly. “You aren’t words on a piece of paper any more. You’re all gorgeous hair and pale skin. Green eyes and a little bit of fire.”

I glanced away again. After those words, I couldn’t look at him any longer. “I-I was born in Philadelphia. My birth certificate has Aiden Steele listed as the father even though my last name at birth was Seymour, my mother’s maiden name. I’m sure that made it easy for you to find me.”

“It did.”

Riley stopped at a light, winked.

They were both charmers.

“My mom married when I was two and she had my sister, well, my half-sister, Beth, three years later.” I shrugged. “I had a normal childhood, except I never knew my dad really wasn’t my dad. Dinner at six. Band practice and braces. Vacation at the beach ever

y Labor Day weekend.” I paused, felt the ache that never really went away. “When I was twenty-three, my parents were killed. Car crash. My sister eighteen.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Riley said, reaching out and gently sliding his fingers down my arm before putting them back on the wheel. The light changed and he turned, heading west and into the sunshine. “That must have been—still is—hard.”

I missed them every day, but the sharp pain of it was gone. I missed the hugs, the love, the sense of family. Belonging. “Yes. I…adapted. My sister struggled worse than me.”

“The report said drugs.”