Make Me Yours (Bridgewater County 5)

“Gods? Nah. We might dominate her in the bedroom, but she’ll have all the power. The minute she realizes we worship at her feet, she’ll know the truth.” We were just men, a pair of cowboys who knew what we wanted and possessed the determination to go after it.

CHAPTER THREE

Lacey

“Oh, here’s a good one. Ahem. ‘Lacey and Chris on the Rocks’. But the best part is the visual. They did this stupid stylized O and made it look like a guitar is splitting the O in half. Hang on, I’m texting you a picture.”

My phone pinged as my sister delivered on her promise. Tapping the speaker function so I could still talk to her, I pulled up the photo of the tabloid headline and groaned out loud. “Don’t these so-called journalists have any self-respect? This is so bad.”

“It’s barely even the tip of the iceberg,” she continued, and I could hear papers rustling through the phone. “I have a stack right here, and every one of them is crammed full of frantic exclamation points and question marks. The type is enormous, like World War Three is starting, not an actress going on vacation. I don’t know how long you’re going to be able to hide out before some reporter tracks you down.”

I stepped out the open back door of the cabin and onto the covered porch. It overlooked the meandering creek that led toward the main lodge. Everything was green, lush. Quiet. Except for the creek, which I listened to all night—at least for the three minutes I stayed awake when I climbed into the plush king-sized bed. It was the best background noise ever. The air was warm now, but the night had been cool. Perfect weather. Heck, perfect everything. No one knew where I was, I had no commitments, no cameras pointed at me. No fans screaming at me. I had a cabin in Montana meant for my sister.

“Fortunately, everything out here is booked in your name. Thank you again, for all of this,” I told Ann Marie. “I can’t believe you gave up your honeymoon for me.” Deleting the text and the awful headline, I went back inside and crossed the small cabin to gaze through the window that looked out over the valley and Hawk’s Landing Guest Ranch.

“Oh, don’t even thank me. I should be thanking you. While Mama flipped her lid over me eloping instead of going through with that big fancy to-do she planned, she’ll stop short of actually killing me when I return from Hawaii once she finds out I did it all for you.”

I shook my head, laughing for the first time in days. Our mother wasn’t the insane woman Ann Marie made her out to be. She wanted her first child to have the perfect wedding and might have gone a little nuts over it, but to me, none of it was as crazy as some things I dealt with. A few extra guests—and a groom’s cake shaped like an armadillo—did not a disaster make. No, a disaster was a supermarket magazine rack full of lies about yourself. I took a deep breath, let it out. I was in Montana where no one could find me. It was too dang pretty to do anything but enjoy the views. I was going to forget about the shit storm waiting for me when I returned to reality and hope the dark hair dye made me a little more incognito.

“So that’s the story you’re going with?” I asked. “You knew two weeks ago I was going to have a personal breakdown and I’d need a place to hide out for a week? And because of this, you and Gabe decided to hop a flight to Hawaii and get married there in order to free up the rustic retreat for me? You know if you try to run that story by Mama, she’ll demand to know when you’re due.”

I leaned down to sniff the fuchsia and white flowers in a glass jar. Sweet peas, I thought.

“Oh crap, you’re right,” Ann Marie replied. “I didn’t even think about her grandbaby fever. Hold on a sec.” My sister’s voice grew distant. “Hey hon, we’re going to have to put in a few more hours of baby-making time to make my mother happy.”

Gabe rumbled something in the background, followed a moment later by my sister’s breathless squeal and a thud that sounded like the phone being dropped.

Okay, that couldn’t be any clearer. They might have relocated their honeymoon from this idyllic cabin to Hawaii, but they were still behaving like newlyweds. Fortunately, whe

n I called my sister after being picked up in front of my house—the sex-filled party house—she’d had the perfect place for me to hide out. A week earlier, she and Gabe had eloped to Hawaii, where they were still enjoying an extended honeymoon. Their original trip was supposed to have been at Hawk’s Landing Guest Ranch—my mother’s choice, not my sister’s. Since they’d decided to elope so close to their wedding date, they couldn’t cancel and get a refund from the ranch. Not that it mattered to my brother-in-law, whose number of zeroes put my own to shame. He just wanted my sister to be happy, and if ditching a paid-for wedding and honeymoon in order to escape to a tropical getaway made her happy, then no price was too high.

Gabe’s indulgent attitude toward my sister worked out in my favor. She’d insisted I take their honeymoon cabin. It was perfect. A quiet place booked under someone else’s name, and not even my assistant knew anything about it. After hearing what had happened, how he’d fucked a blonde groupie in my bed, my sister, bless her, had taken charge of the situation as I tried to recover from my life’s implosion. She’d made arrangements for a rental car, again in her name, and shortly after our conversation ended, I was on my way to Montana.

It had been less than twenty-four hours since I walked out of my LA house without a word to anybody. In that time, Tessa had sent nearly two hundred messages between the texts, emails and voicemails. Part of me felt bad for leaving her hanging. Another, bigger part—one egged on and enabled by my sister—clung to the fact that Tessa, as nice as she was, was my employee, not the other way around. I didn’t owe her or anybody else details of my whereabouts. Until the next professional engagement, which was two weeks away, my time was just that. Mine. And I wasn’t going to share it with anybody.

Even if that meant Ann Marie called me first thing stunned by the latest faux news and the claims that Chris had broken things off with me instead of the other way around.

“Shit, sorry!” My sister’s breathless voice came back on the line. “You’d think my man would learn some self-control.”

“Or that you’d learn the limits to his control,” I teased, laughing. Yeah, I was totally jealous of Ann Marie. Not because of Gabe. He was great and all, but he was perfect for her. Not me. No, I wanted my own Gabe, a guy who was my best friend and also my lover. A man who wanted me—no, needed me—with a desperation and longing that only came from love. I wanted a guy to grab me while I was on the phone because he couldn’t help himself. “I was just about to hang up and leave you two to it.”

“No, no. I’m not finished with you yet,” she continued. “But I do have to be quick. Room service is here right now but as soon as they’re gone, I have another round to go with the giant cock monster.”

“The giant…okay, I’m not even going to address that.” I had my hand up as if she could see me showing her I wanted her to stop.

My sister laughed again. “Sorry, I had a few too many mimosas with breakfast. Okay, so listen. No more tabloids. Relax. Enjoy yourself. I emailed you a copy of the itinerary we had planned, but there should be a paper copy somewhere in the cabin. Since we didn’t cancel, everything’s still on. Massages, horseback riding, all of it.”

“Yep.” I spun on my bare feet and went over to the small dining table, picked up the piece of paper with the schedule on it, the Hawk’s Landing logo at the top. “I found it when I got here. While you’re enjoying your fabulous Hawaiian resort sheets and hottie husband’s giant cock monster, I’m going to be riding a horse in the Montana backcountry. No wonder you eloped.”

Why Ann Marie wanted to ride anything on her honeymoon besides Gabe was lost on me. I walked back to the window, watched a hawk cut through the blue sky.

“Mama thought it would be romantic…or something.” She spoke in a tone that made me think she was also rolling her eyes. “I don’t know. She suggested we go camping, too, but I vetoed that one. Maybe she thought if she sent us on a honeymoon in a small tent, she’d get her grandchildren even faster. That cock monster and all.”

“Okay, you need to stop putting those two words together. Mama and cock monster? How am I going to face her or Gabe at Christmas? Speaking of, call her for me and tell her I’m alive and that nothing in the papers is true.”

“Sure.”

Movement in the distance caught my eye and I forgot all about my brother-in-law’s dick as a long-limbed, swaggering cowboy came into view, leading two horses.