Accidentally Matched (Leashed to Love #1)
Chapter 1
Chapter One
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C OLTER
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R olling hills, verdant pasture, cows, bulls, shit, a hundred angry mustangs to the east, and right before us an angry heifer with a thorn in her hoof, then there in the middle of it all, a pink fucking eyesore in heels coming straight toward us.
Tierney Vaughn.
Looking as out of place as a ballerina in a pigsty. In fact, she has no business even being within a mile of the several thousand acres of the ranch I run with my best friends and business partners, Nolan Spears and Jace Hamilton.
Collectively, Nolan, Jace, and I come from families with old money, billions and billions of dollars of old money that we inherited as soon as we graduated from university. We might still oversee our family businesses remotely, but this ranch, The Lone River Ranch, which has been jointly owned by our families for generations, is where we want to be. Nothing compares to the cold, crisp air, the green open spaces, just the hum and bustle of nature.
So the only reason we know heiress and hardcore city girl, Tierney at all is through her father, who has a passion for Arabians, and we happen to be the biggest sellers of the noble breed of horse.
We’ve seen her a couple of times when we’ve had meetings in Desmond Vaughn’s palatial home and the occasional barbecue her mother would invite us to, but we ignore her. We have zero business to do with her.
But here she is, coming toward us, teetering on her heels.
“What the hell is she doing here?” I ask, adjusting my Stetson, narrowing my eyes against the glinting sun behind her.
“Don’t know, but she’s going to get herself killed in those heels falling into shit face-first,” Nolan says.
“Who is she waving at?” Jace asks, and we all three turn around to look at our ranch hands amid attempts to subdue a diva of a cow so we could remove the thorn stuck in her hoof.
We’ve never met a more high-maintenance, drama queen of a cow than Alice before. As pretty as she is, the heifer sure did put on a show, mooing in sheer agony, swaying about the place, and upsetting the bulls, which is never a good thing. I’d put up a lot of money that the thorn in her hoof is as tiny as a thumbtack, but she’s carrying on as if she’s dying.
Is the high society heiress trying to get the attention of one of our ranch hands?
All our men have stopped what they’re doing, their gazes transfixed on the girl waving both her hands in the air, while looking as if she were traipsing an obstacle course and saying something we can’t hear.
The cockiest ranch hand, Wade, whistles as she gets closer, and all we can see are her tanned bare legs. Brody removes his hat and straightens his hair. Jack tucks his thumbs into the loops of his jeans and strikes a fucking pose. Chad and Gunner remove their shirts and puff out their chests. Eli, the youngest hand we have, looks at her as if she’s Aphrodite.
There’s a scrap of very rocky, unforgiving land we have on the southern boundary. No one goes there. Perfect to hide a few six-foot graves.
“Hello, woo hoo, hello, Mr. James, Mr. Spears, Mr. Hamilton. Hellooo.” She finally reaches us, puts her hands on her hips, and takes a few breaths.
“Whew. That was quite the walk. Good thing I found Marcia coming out of your office on her way to lunch. If she didn’t set me in the right direction west and told me to walk in a straight line across the pasture, I would have ended up in Timbuktu.” Without taking a breath, she continues. “May I?” she asks, going to Eli and taking the water bottle from his hand.
She takes a dainty sip and then hands it back to him. The young prick does nothing but stare at the place where her luscious pink mouth touched.
Nolan beats both me and Jace to it. He grabs the bottle from Eli and empties the contents into his mouth, his lips exactly where hers had been, before he hands the bottle back to the lad, who looks as if he lost his fucking puppy.
“Oh, hello,” she says to the rest of our men, waving at them.
That land can definitely hold six graves. No. Fuck. I scratch those thoughts right out of my head. What the hell is wrong with me? Was I seriously considering burying our ranch hands for looking at her? I don’t give a flying fuck which poor bastard falls for her. And neither do Nolan and Jace.
And no, we’re not having a meeting to discuss our response to her either. We didn’t the last time.
But Jesus fucking Christ, what is she wearing? Never mind. Not my fucking business.
“What do you want, Vaughn? We’re in the middle of something, and last time I checked, we do business with your father, not you,” I say, a little too abrasively. But I want her off our fucking land, and I 100% know Nolan and Jace want the same thing. Growing up closer than brothers mean we’re always in sync with each other.
From the little we know about her, she runs some sort of dating matchmaking love site thing with her friends and their dogs. It’s all too fucking frivolous for us, and besides, we don’t date.
“I want you, Colter. I want you, Nolan, and I want you, Jace,” she says, tapping her finger against our chests.
The fuck she does.
“I have a business proposition you won’t be able to refuse. Just wait until you hear it.” She claps her hands together, and her face breaks into a brilliant smile that rivals the sun, is more blinding, and has enough power to ignite a fire under my skin. Fuck that.
There is no way in hell we’re doing any kind of business with her. Ever.
“Can we talk in your office?” she asks, batting her eyes at us and broadening her smile even more. We need to get her out of here before she starts a cult of worship with our men. Best to hear her out and send her on her way.
“Get that thorn out,” I tell the men, using my tone that indicates no further questions are necessary. We walk toward our offices, removing our gloves and stuffing them into our jeans’ pockets. Miss Pink follows behind us.
At the rate she’s weaving over the terrain, hopping a bit here and there, going oh, oh, when she comes across a heap of dung, we’ll reach our offices by nightfall tomorrow.
We play a silent game of tag; you’re it . Jace loses. He groans, turns around, bends his knees, and scoops the pink bundle up, tossing her over his shoulder and then using his hat to cover her ass. Her skirt is so fucking short, she’ll be flashing the rest of the staff we pass along the way.
Jace sets her down the instant we’re in our office, which is a barn just outside of the house. Nessie—Lone River’s housekeeper during our fathers’ and our grandfathers’ eras and now housekeeps for us as well—refuses to let us use the offices in the house.
We’ll be messing up the house with our big filthy boots and stinking the place up with our sweat. She wasn’t having any of that in her old age.
Tierney takes a seat on one of the plastic chairs, her face red, but she ignores how flustered she is. We stand and face her, leaning against a massive oak desk.
“What can we do for you, Ms. Vaughn?” Nolan asks, always the polite one.
She crosses her legs and opens her mouth, full pink lips probably ready to deliver a verbal storm on the way we’re handling her, since she hasn't uttered a word about being tossed over Jace’s shoulder yet.
If she brings it up, our defense is time constraints. Instead, she bursts into another dazzling smile that makes her golden-brown eyes sparkle like gems.
Kill us fucking now.
“I would like to embark on a short-term corporeal expedition with the three of you.”
Either she’s not speaking English, or we misheard her completely. Probably the latter since there is no way on god’s green fucking earth, we’re going to embark on anything, long or short term, with the pink heiress that involves anything corporeal, and if by that she means fucking, we’re definitely not doing that either.