Hitched (Steele Ranch 4)

“What?” she squawked. “The door was unlocked. We’re old friends!”

Archer raised a dark brow and I nodded.

“Ma’am, since you’re family and all, I’ll give you five minutes to get dressed or I’ll have to take you in like that.” Archer crossed his arms over his chest, already bulked up by his bulletproof vest.

All casualness slipped away and Beatrice’s mouth thinned, her eyes narrowed. “Sarah, tell him off.”

“No. I’ll get your clothes.” She walked to the stairs, turned her shoulder to pass by her mother. “I assume they’re in King’s bedroom.”

Wilder hissed and Archer cleared his throat.

We all stood there, uncomfortable as fuck until Sarah came back, a clump of clothing held against her chest. She went to her mother, dropped the pile at her feet. “Be sure to call Karl to bail you out.”

She turned on her heel and went back up the steps, taking them two at a time. I heard a door slam and I knew I was screwed. At least she didn’t get in her car and leave.

As soon as Archer took the woman away, I knew I had some groveling to do. I didn’t know what Sarah thought, whether she believed I’d fucked her mother, not just today—which looked pretty damning—but in the past as well. She was hurt and it was my job to make it right. Our marriage was being tested and she had every right to flee. It had only been three days and I was about to discover how strong our love was.

13

SARAH

* * *

I leaned against the door of the bedroom Wilder had claimed—there was no way I was going into King’s room until I had the sheets burned—took a deep breath and tried to will the tears away. It didn’t work. My feelings bubbling to the surface were too much and I couldn’t help but cry. My mother. My mother!

Oh. My. God. I looked up at the ceiling, put my fingers over my eyes. Pressed and physically tried to hold the tears in.

I wasn’t sure if I should be mortified or angry. Mortified that my mother had tried to seduce King. Angry for well…the exact same thing. She had the gall to come all the way to Montana and hop in King’s bed, and his shirt. And she’d said she’d done it before.

I hadn’t seen a car parked in the driveway, so Karl must have dropped her off. That meant one thing: It hadn’t been spontaneous. They’d planned this.

Had King turned her away or had the seduction just started when I’d arrived? Of course, he had. She hadn’t gotten him to marry her and the disgust on his face now was indication enough. King wasn’t a cheater. I knew it in my bones. Glancing down at the rings on my finger, I blinked against the tears, knowing they meant something. Not the tears, but the rings. King and Wilder both had pledged themselves to me even knowing my family.

But what did King think of me after what my mother had said? While she’d talked about me ‘bagging’ Kingston Barlow on our last phone call, it had been just that, talk. But she’d spun the truth into something nasty, making our marriage into something fake. Something exactly like every one of my mother’s marriages.

Like mother, like daughter. I pushed off the door and went to the window, stared at the snowy field, the steel-colored sky.

I whimpered, realizing King now thought I’d gone after him because of his money, because of his land, doing Mommy’s bidding. If she couldn’t get him, then I would. And did. I was just like her, bagging a millionaire. And she’d been pleased! For the first time in my entire life, she sounded proud of me. And what was absolutely ridiculous was that she’d done it while standing in his house in just his shirt. Like we’d been a team who had ambushed him. I’d gotten him over the weekend, but she hadn’t known that, so her attack had come today.

God, she didn’t care which of us got in his bed as long as one of us did.

I wanted to vomit.

I didn’t want her praise or approval, I wanted King’s. What was I going to do? King surely hated me. Hated both Gandry women. Now he was stuck with me. I rubbed the rings with my thumb.

I had to try to tell him the truth, to make him believe I wanted him. Not his land. Not the Barlow name. I wanted King.

How could I do that? How could I get him to listen after what my mother had just shared downstairs? I had to bare all to him and get him to forgive me, to get him to believe.

It came to me with a clarity that made my heart skip a beat. There was only one way. I just had to hope it would work. I’d bare my soul to him and hope he took it, kept it. Treasured it.

* * *

WILDER

* * *

“What the fuck, man?” I asked, shutting the front door as Archer’s SUV headed toward town with Sarah’s mother in the back seat.