Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Avery
I get up and I’m vaguely ashamed about what I did the night before, which is stupid. I don’t have baggage about masturbation. But I am mixed up in a lot of shame around my desires and the fact that I’m even considering hooking up with a stranger to express those desires. It just isn’t me.
But I’m also about to lose my mind with everything going on with the ranch, and this is about the only thing I can think of that quiets the panic in me.
I put it to the side now, and make myself a very strong pot of coffee before getting in my truck and heading up toward Caleb’s ranch.
If you can even call it that. He has horses—beautiful horses—and an absolutely glorious facility, but it’s not like ours.
Not a real, working cattle ranch with work that actually has to be done.
I do my best not to admire the view as I drive up the long, dirt road that leads to the top of the mountain where his house sits. The stunning valley below, bathed in golden light. My own ranch which looks idyllic and pristine and not like hard work and grit, when I’m all the way up here.
He wouldn’t know anything about that. About the hard work that it takes to run a ranch, about everything I do, and have done since I was sixteen, to keep it running. I’m twenty-four now and feeling older and also desperately behind on everything and too tired to pull ahead.
He doesn’t know anything about that.
The guy is a billionaire. He’s playing at being a cowboy.
I tell myself that as he walks out onto the front porch, the spitting image of every cowboy fantasy anyone’s ever had. Stetson firmly in place, broad shouldered, tight black T-shirt, and painted on jeans. My mouth is dry, and I have to remind myself that he is not a fantasy. He’s the enemy.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Not really,” I say.
“I’ve got an offer for you,” he says. “Work for me and that work can go toward your dad’s debt.”
I am shocked by the statement. Immobilized. I cross my arms and tilt my chin up, trying not to look surprised like I feel. “There’s not any work to do here,” I say. “And I’m busy.”
“With your ever-shrinking ranch?”
“ You –”
“Your dad is in deep, Avery. I know you don’t want to hear it. Least of all from me. But I don’t make myself a presence in your life for my own entertainment.”
“Then why do you do it?”
He shrugs. As if my survival is a casual gesture for him. “Worst case scenario I end up with the land next to mine and it doesn’t become a whole subdivision.”
“How benevolent.”
“I never said that I was benevolent.” His eyes connect with mine. “Everyone wants something.”
The way that he looks at me sends a shiver down my spine. I’m suddenly aware that I’m alone with him. Like I was that night that I tried to light his barn on fire. That he could do whatever he wanted with me.
“You can work for me by cleaning my house.”
The comment sends me back down to earth with a thud. All he wants from me is for me to be a cleaner. All he wants is to humiliate me. I get it. Kind of. I did something to him, tried to sabotage his ranch six years ago, and I suppose this is a way of him getting some back. Even just a little bit.
It makes him a dick, though. I was eighteen when I did that and there was no real damage. But he’s just the kind of man who holds a grudge while holding all the power on top of it.
“You want me to be your maid?” I ask.
“Functionally. Would you take the money for nothing?”
I stare at him. “What?”
“If I just decided to write the debt off, as a gift, would you take it?”
I stare at him. At that sculpted face, the lines by his eyes, the deep grooves by his mouth. The angular shape of his jaw. He’s hard. All over. Set in his ways and brutal, which is a strange word to apply to a modern man, though he feels more like a relic to me.
In my way, making proclamations about what we were supposed to do with our land. Invading my dreams, my fantasies.
“No,” I say.
Because I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t trust a gift from Caleb Flynn, not for any reason at all.
“I didn’t think so. So I’m offering you a job. An official way to work the debt off. Your father hasn’t signed any papers yet. You and I can. The money will be considered paid back to me.”
“Just for some housework?”
“Yes.”
This is a game, and I don’t like it.
I’ve never fully had him figured out. Hell, I don’t have him figured out even a little bit. I don’t know why he’s here in this small town if he’s everything that people say he is – and according to the internet he is. Wealthy beyond the scope of my comprehension and able to live anywhere he wants.
Yet he chooses to be here. And play with me, apparently.
He’s probably a sociopath. Playing experimental games on the little people, trying to see what they’ll do. If they’ll jump when he says.
“I still have chores.”
“Get them done early. Come over here in the afternoon. You can do my laundry, dishes, and meal prep. Your dad says you’re a pretty good cook.”
I grind my teeth together. “You’ve talked to my father about me?”
His face goes hard. “Whether you believe it or not, your dad loves you. In fact, he’s damned proud of you. He knows you’re the reason that the ranch is staying afloat.”
“I would never know that based on how he acts.”
He shrugs. “Well, I wouldn’t know how dads usually behave. Given that I don’t remember my own.”
If that’s supposed to humanize him, make me feel something for him, then he’s an idiot. It doesn’t. It won’t.
“Come inside,” he says. “I’ll show you around the place.”
He opens up the door and I’m ushered into a modern, rustic masterpiece.
The tall windows in the living room are floor-to-ceiling, and look out at that same view I was just admiring on the drive up.
He can see my house from here. My ranch.
My every move. My chest goes tight, along with my throat.
I am quite literally under his eye all day, every day, if he so chooses.
It’s a creepy way to look at it, I grant, but I’m not really sure how else to look at it at the moment. I curl my fingers into fists and fight against the strange, throbbing feeling between my legs and the way my heart is beating faster in my chest.
The house is beautiful and tidy enough that I question why he needs help with anything. He gestures to the right. “This way’s the kitchen.”
The kitchen is even more spectacular than the living room. Massive with smooth appliances. All kinds of modern technology that we certainly don’t have. Our house could probably fit inside his living room.
He moves me through the kitchen into the dining room, then gestures up the stairs. “Bedrooms are up there. Bathrooms. There is a laundry room down there. I’d appreciate help with the folding and washing.”
I can’t escape the feeling that I am a child being given busywork.
That he’s patronizing me. Well, he is. He made it pretty clear.
He knew that I wouldn’t take the money back without some kind of real deal in place.
Some kind of real trade. It’s a sop to my ego, and even though I know that, I’m still going to take it.
Which is annoying as fuck. But I don’t trust him.
Nor do I have any reason to. But he seems to know that too.
“You can start this morning, since you’re already here. I’ve got the ingredients for roast, if you wouldn’t mind putting it in the crockpot.”
Somehow, I have a feeling that he knew that I would agree to this, that those ingredients are in the house because he anticipated my acquiescence, and that makes me want to punch him in that proud jaw.
But then, I always want to punch him in that proud jaw as much as I want to have him wrap his hands around my wrists and pin me down.
God. I have to stop thinking things like that while I’m here. Not in the relative safe space of my room.
“Do all the laundry, fold it. You’ll find my room easy enough and I have a feeling you’re smart enough to figure out where things go with context clues.”
I open my mouth to argue back.
“Do as you’re told,” he says, his voice hard. And it’s that same response that I had to him last night. That part of myself that goes quiet underneath those ice blue eyes. That commanding tone.
He stares at me, like he sees something inside of me. Like he sees the shift that has occurred deep within me.
Like he knows.
I can think of nothing worse. Nothing worse than Caleb looking at me and knowing my secret fantasies. These things that call up so much sick shame inside of me. So much fear. These things that I want in spite of myself.
No. Those are my secrets. Mine. And maybe I’ll share them with The Duke. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe it’ll only ever be a chat in an app and nothing that actually happens in my real life. But him seeing it— the very idea of that makes me feel exposed, raw and naked in front of him, and I want to hide.
“I’ll be back this afternoon.”
I realize that he means to leave me alone in the house. I don’t know why, but it feels like a test. Like a strange power game, and I can’t quite grasp onto why or what it could mean.
But before I can, he’s gone. And I’m left to my own devices in this huge, sprawling place.
I’m angry as I dig into the refrigerator, take out the roast, and stick it in the crockpot. Furious as I begin to prep the potatoes and the carrots.
I’m angry that he knows I can cook. I’m angry that he knows anything about me and that my dad sold me out like this.
I don’t understand why he do that.
Why he would ever speak my name to this man that he knows I don’t like.
Though, Dad has never cared how I feel about Caleb. He’s always done business with him and given him all this input on the ranch, whether I wanted him to or not.
The trouble is, there’s something soothing about working in the house and I’m irritated that it quiets some of my rage.
Very irritated.