Chapter 8
Jules
Bonnie takes over watching Genie while I tend to the business side of things.
That’s how we always operate, and it’s a relief when she swoops in to grab my daughter before Ivy and I follow Oak, Cash, and Sawyer back to the larger house for paperwork.
The larger, main house is a cozy, decent sized house with a wraparound porch.
The entire thing is painted a light blue with accents of white and honestly, it looks exactly like the kind of thing a dairy farm should have.
If they had a commercial for this place, the house would make total sense.
As much sense as the black and white cows wandering around out in the pastures.
“You said there’re five hundred cows?” I ask, watching the cows in question graze. Five hundred is a big number. It’s hard to imagine there are that many out in the pastures.
“Five hundred and four,” Cash repeats, “and they all have names.”
My eyes widen. “All five hundred of them?”
“Yep.” Cash grins. “Oak had the bright idea to start naming them after Shakespeare characters, so a lot of them have names like that. In fact, most of our milking girls right now have proper Shakespearean names. Wait until you meet Ophelia. She’s a spitfire.”
I can’t help but laugh at the idea that there’s a whole heard of Shakespearean dairy cows in Steele, Wyoming that no one knows about. What a wild fact.
“Why Shakespeare?” Ivy asks.
Cash grins and glances at Oak who doesn’t answer. So, he answers instead. “Oak likes to feel cultured.”
“But not you?” I ask curiously.
His grin widens. “Oh, girl, there’s no such thing as culture here. I’m as feral as they come.”
Considering the man in question fits no stereotype of a cowboy that I can think of, I’d say he’s probably right.
I’ve never seen a goth cowboy aesthetic, but he pulls it off so well, it’s not jarring.
Every item he’s wearing plays into the cowboy vibe, and he speaks like he’s from here, but then all the black and metal he wears is almost too much.
And yet somehow, it’s also just right. He’s a walking contradiction that never feels like one. It only makes me want to find out more.
Oak on the other hand, is exactly what I’d think a cowboy would look like.
He’s tall as fuck, like, tall enough his high school basketball team would have been chomping at the bit to get him to play.
Not only is he tall, but he’s big all around, a bear of a man.
Broad shoulders, thick arms and legs, and barrel-chested, the man looks like he could tackle a bull and not break a sweat.
His body type is “Strong Man Competition.” He’s not the thin wraith-like body type of Cash or the honed muscle of Sawyer.
His strength comes from daily heavy lifting, his forearms wide enough to make me think he could throw me around like a sack of flour if he wanted to.
I’m kind of curious to see what that’s like.
Alternatively, Sawyer is muscled in a way that tells me he spends regular time in a gym.
It makes sense if he wants to work out to do so in a room where the machines are always the same, especially if he can’t see well.
I don’t know how intense his blindness is, but his eyes are cloudy.
I imagine he can’t just go out and lift hay bales the way Oak might.
But his body shows intense lifting, muscles honed like a Greek statue.
He’s wearing the cut-out tank top right now, so I get a good look at his sculpted ribs and stomach when he moves.
He’s built for Hollywood while he works out here in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, the dude looks photoshopped.
Together, the three men make up a strange mixture. The bear, the goth cowboy, and the muscled country boy. I’ve never seen anything like it, which makes it easy to see why their channel, The Velvet Rodeo, is doing so well. I’ve never seen something so well balanced.
“We have our own paperwork if that’s okay,” Oak begins politely as we walk into the house. “Just basic stuff. We try not to spread around who we are.”
“Old Lady Willis would have a conniption if she found out,” Cash offers as explanation. “Word gets around in this town, so we keep it hush hush. Luckily, she’s been concerned with all the Stagborn stuff and the extra people in town, so she hasn’t come snooping like she usually does.”
“Stagborn stuff?” I ask, frowning. “What’s that?”
Cash glances at Oak. “You don’t watch the news?”
“Not often,” I shrug. “Why?”
“Oh, well . . .” Cash rubs his jaw. “I suppose you could say Steele was the setting for an old west shoot out. Sort of.”
“The Stagborn thing is for Valerie Decatur,” Oak offers. “Part of her slogans. Stagborn or Die. Stagborn Strong. It means a lot of her fans are still in town after all the drama.”
My brows go up. I don’t know a thing about what they’re talking about. “And Valerie Decatur is?”
Oak blinks in surprise. “She’s a country singer. Originally from here. She brought some trouble into town and the town had her back.”
“Oh.” I try my hardest not to look as confused as I feel. I don’t listen to country, so it makes sense that I wouldn’t know one of the country singers or anything about what they’re talking about.
“It made national news,” Cash points out. “You seriously didn’t hear anything about it?”
How do I explain I avoid the news unless it’s to keep tabs on what my father is doing in the government?
My dad is running for re-election yet again with the promise of running for president after this next term, so it seems like he’s always on TV being interviewed by the reporters who love to chase down those kinds of people.
I can’t explain any of that, so I just shrug and reach into the folder Ivy hands me for my own papers, trying to change topics. “Anyways, I have a pretty extensive NDA. If you’d like to take a day or so to read it over while I’m here, that’s fine. I’ll do the same for yours.”
Passing them the printed off legal paperwork, a replica of the ones I’d attached to the original email, I watch as their eyes take in the wall of words.
Cash hardly spares it a glance before pulling out his pen.
Oak looks like he’s actually reading the words first to make sure they match the one from before.
Sawyer hands his to Cash, clearly trusting him to tell him if he should sign or not.
“You’re gonna have to read it to me if we’re doing this now,” he murmurs.
“Oh! I have the digital file as well that you can have the AI read to you if that’s easier?” I offer. I hadn’t even thought of that before but I don’t want him stressing about not being able to see it.
“You worried I can’t read?” Cash teases, winking at me. “I’ll have you know I can almost read the whole picture book now.”
I snort, but can’t help but smile. “You said you have paperwork as well?”
Oak’s face immediately goes blank and I stare at him curiously as he reaches for a single piece of paper and passes it to me. Not only is it a single piece of paper, but it’s also literally a single sentence written on it with a line for a signature.
“You will not speak about your partnership with The Velvet Rodeo, nor leak the identities of those participating,” I read out loud. Ivy leans in to check it out, too, her eyes widening. My brows furrow and I look up at him. “That’s it?”
“That’s the only thing we’re worried about,” Oak explains.
“Oak,” I breath, holding it up. “This will never hold up in a court of law. You need limitations, clauses, breach requirements, stuff like that.”
He glances at Cash and then back down at the stapled packet I’d given him for my NDA. “Yours seems to cover damn near everything.”
“It does,” I nod before sitting down on the couch and tapping the extra packet I have. “If you’d like, I can go over the important bits so you don’t think I’m trying to screw you over.”
Oak hesitates while Cash immediately plops himself down on the couch beside me. Sawyer takes a gentler approach and sits on the couch opposite us.
“I promise it’s not ridiculous,” I tell Oak, thinking he’s hesitating because he’s rethinking out partnership.
He shakes his head. “I have no doubt your NDA is ironclad. It’s just . . . we should have known better.”
“You’re still new,” I remind him. “To be honest, I’m glad you haven’t been taken advantage of yet and that I can warn you before you got to that point.
Sometimes, this industry is cutthroat and if someone thinks they can get more views by releasing your identities, they’ll do it. ” I wince. “Ask me how I know.”
It’d been one time, at the very beginning, when someone had tried that with me.
Luckily, I’d had access to enough money to pay them off and my family name has enough weight that they were scared to go further, but it’d been close.
I still live in fear that she’ll talk to the wrong person, say the wrong thing, and reveal my identity.
“That’s shitty,” Cash murmurs, flipping through the paperwork, scanning the bold parts. “I notice the number of sessions and stuff like that have been left blank.”
“That’s so we can fill it in together,” I reply. “I wasn’t sure of your set up, or how I can fit into all that.”
Cash leans back and grins. “Oh, we can certainly explain all that,” he purrs.
“The Velvet Rodeo is set up where we each have a solo session once a week, and then there’s a group session once a week.
In between all that, our subscribers can pay for extras, and so things like that may pop up, especially when we announce your partnership.
That’s our normal set up, and of course, that can all be changed up.
We know that your process is different from ours. ”