Chapter 12
12
EMMA
I registered the loss of Johnny’s attentive presence the moment he left the kitchen. I… missed him.
Wow. How could it be that I’d already become addicted to being near this guy?
A guy I just met sixteen hours earlier?
I’d have to ask Lyssa if that was how she rolled. Somehow, I didn’t think she got attached to any of her flings. Not if she changed them at the pace she changed her underwear.
I must have been doing this wrong. My pussy was sore from the insanely good sex. No, it was from the hard pounding with his huge dick. He was big and definitely knew how to use it. I wasn’ t complaining. Not at all.
I cleared my throat, realizing I was spacing out and thinking about sex in front of Marina, Willow, and Colton. “So, did Johnny really fall off a horse?” I stuck to a neutral, easy topic. The less I asked about Marina’s work, the less she might ask me about mine. Meaning the job I didn’t actually have.
“He did, actually.” Colton chuckled. The guy was huge, at least six-three or four. He was solid muscle, barely concealed beneath his jeans and t-shirt. His hair was close-cropped and dark, and he needed a shave. “When he joined our–er, came to work for us here at the ranch–he was eighteen. He’d come from a farm in Nebraska and didn’t have much ranch experience. But he was young and strong and followed orders well, so he faked it like a champ. Until he couldn’t. We didn’t realize how green he really was.”
“He’d never ridden a horse before,” Marina supplied in that adorable way couples have of filling in each other’s stories.
He smiled down at her. “Right. Rob told him to saddle Chester to ride, and he did as he was told. The guy was too boneheaded to speak up and say he didn’t know how to put on a damn saddle.”
“Uh oh.” I squeezed my lips together trying not to smile.
“Right. You know where this is going.” Colton grinned .
I nodded. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“So, Johnny makes it look easy,” Colton continued. Marina returned to her cake work but was listening in. Willow quietly sipped her coffee. “He’s watching the rest of us and mimicking our actions. He climbs on without a hitch. He’s young and agile, so he looks like a natural–one foot on the fence rail, the other swung over Chester’s back. All good, right?”
I could tell they’d told this story before. Like it was a favorite of theirs. It showed the camaraderie they had–like Johnny wasn’t just a ranch hand here, he was a member of the family.
God, it was so different from my Hollywood job. Working sunup to sundown, project after project. A thankless, underappreciated grind. It made me ache to have something like this. Camaraderie, kindness, fun, openness.
No job was satisfying if you hated the people you worked with. I’d heard a statistic on the radio recently that saddened me. Fifty percent of workers didn’t have a friend at work. How was that even possible? We, as humans, were meant to live and work communally. To have villages or tribes. To bond together and support each other.
That was what I’d imagined working on a movie would be–a group of people joined together toward the common goal .
Instead of having colleagues who were friends, we were more like war buddies, commiserating with each other about what we had to do for job survival. And, to make it worse, I’d been a doormat to Stan. A few days away, and it was so obvious. Ugh.
Colton wasn’t done with his tale. “We start up along the road, and he’s still all good. Holding the reins like you’re supposed to, feet in the stirrups.”
I smiled, loving this past Johnny. It fit with the image of the guy I already knew. The one who’d come right into Chapman’s mansion and taken the burnt cookies out of the oven then disarmed the alarm. He was a can-do kind of guy. The kind who was right there when you needed him, pitching in with a panty-melting smile.
“And then Rob saw something–I don’t know–a hole in a fence up ahead or something, and he kicked his horse into a canter. Johnny does the same thing–or at least he tries to, but he’d never buckled the saddle in place. So as soon as Chester starts to canter, Johnny’s whole saddle is sliding to the side.
“He hangs onto the saddle horn, which, of course, doesn’t help at all, and the next thing you know, he’s on his back on the ground where he gets kicked in the head by my horse!”
I clapped a hand over my mouth. “Oh, no!”
“Oh yes. He was okay, though. You should know that kid has a hard head. ”
I laughed. “Noted.”
Johnny emerged from the hallway and shot me that signature grin. It went straight to my pussy, and I heated from my core up to my neck. I didn’t know how he made me feel so incredibly sexy. So worthy of his attention. With just a smile.
It wasn’t a feeling I was used to, but damn if I didn’t want it to be.
“I heard about Chester,” I told him.
“All lies.” Johnny grinned, coming over to stand beside me, setting his hand on my shoulder. “Want to meet him?”
I frowned. “Who, Chester?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. We’re best buds now.”
I got down off the stool and set my mug in the sink. “I would love to meet Chester.”
Ooh. Another adventure. It wasn’t Ibiza, but I was with my hot cowboy doing new things. I wasn’t stuck in a cubicle getting shat on for most of the hours in the day.
After saying goodbye to Willow, Colton, and Marina, Johnny held his arm out, and I stepped under it, allowing him to escort me out of the ranch house and down the gravel drive. “Do you ride?” His fingertips rested lightly at my low back–a sensation I relished.
“Me?” I squeaked. “No. I’m telling you now I don’t know how to put a saddle on a horse. ”
Johnny laughed at that. “Noted. But you work on a ranch. Doesn’t Mitch have horses?”
“Oh. Um…you know, I’m not sure, but I definitely wasn’t hired to ride them.” My voice raised in pitch. I was a terrible liar.
Johnny rubbed his forehead under his hat. “It’s okay,” he acknowledged my lie. “You don’t have to tell me the details of the ranch. Did Mitch have you sign an NDA about his business dealings or something?”
I looked up at him in surprise. That would definitely be a way out of answering questions, but I doubted if the property had horses would fall under that kind of document.
He studied me.
I shook my head. I didn’t have a choice but to answer. “No, it’s not that. I just–I honestly don’t know his business dealings. I’m a little embarrassed, but all I do is bring in the mail and take deliveries,” I admitted. “It’s a pretty cush job, to be honest.”
It was, and I hated Lyssa for finding such arrangements, especially if it included going off to Ibiza in the middle of it. Maybe she would get fired for ditching her work, but she’d bounce back and find something else soon enough.
“How’d you end up there?”
“Oh.” More lying. I didn’t love lying to Johnny. And was it really necessary ?
Probably not.
But I’d started down this road of pretending to be Lyssa, and it would be awkward as hell to explain that I wasn’t her now.
By the way, my name’s not actually Lyssa, the one you called out when you came deep inside me last night and this morning. Whoops!
Besides, taking on her name, her job, her persona, lent me the sense of entitlement. Of personal power. Of reckless abandon that Lyssa embodied. Look where it got me. A hot guy, hot sex, and a cool ranch full of cool people.
I didn’t want to go back to being boring old Emma.
Not yet, anyway.
Not when Johnny looked at me like he did. When else would I have a chance like this? To explore my undeveloped wild side? To have a fling with a man I just met? To follow a hot cowboy to his ranch just to get laid a few more times?
It was a dream come true, and I didn’t want it to end.
“The job just kind of fell into my lap,” I said lamely. “My sister found it for me, actually. I’d just quit my job in Hollywood and needed a place to land for a little while.”
All of that was true.
“Nice. Their loss is my gain.” He winked then led me through the open wooden doors to a large stable. It was roomy and clean and smelled of fresh hay .
A dozen horses filled the stalls. Johnny led me past a black stallion and a dapple gray although I didn’t know if those descriptions were adequate. I read a bunch of fun fiction books about horses as a girl and got what I know about the animals from that.
“This is Chester. I call him Chester Chesterfield.”
As expected, Chester was a chestnut stallion–a beautiful red-brown horse with a tail and mane the same color and a white star on his forehead. The horse nickered, lifting his muzzle toward Johnny in greeting.
“Hello, Chester.” I didn’t reach out to touch him–I was too intimidated.
Damn, he was big. I couldn’t believe Johnny fell off an animal this huge. And got kicked in the head by another one!
Johnny reached out and rubbed the horse’s forehead and murmured to him in a deep, soothing voice. “Hey, buddy. How are you? Did Colton feed you this morning? Sorry I wasn’t here.”
My chest squeezed. Listening to Johnny talk to his horse was too sweet. If I’d had any doubt about his character–which I hadn’t–it would’ve evaporated now.
He grinned at me. “You can pet him.”
I drew a breath. I shouldn’t be scared. I supposedly worked on a ranch. Lyssa wouldn’t be scared. I reached out and gently rubbed the white star on the horse’s forehead .
“Want to go for a ride?”
My eyes flared wide. A ride? “Me?”
Johnny laughed. “I wasn’t asking Chester.” He leaned down close to my ear. “I can think of a different kind of ride if you want to do that instead.”
I flushed–and my pussy clenched–at his alternate proposition.
“How about this? Ride horses first, then you can ride me.”
“Okay,” I breathed, liking that idea. “But the horses? Um. By myself?”
He shook his head. “No, silly. With me. You can ride Chester, and I’ll ride Montague.”
It was just a horse. People rode horses every day. And, Johnny wouldn’t put me on an animal that might be dangerous to me or the other way around. I definitely didn’t want to hurt the precious horse, no matter how big he was. “Um, okay.”
I was Lyssa, right? Fearless. Fun. A little freaky. A ride and then a ride.
“Great.” Johnny flashed me a smile and opened the gate to Chester’s stall.
I stepped back out of the way, pressing my back against the far wall to give them lots of room. My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket. It was a text message from Stan .
Call me. No hard feelings about you leaving. I have another project to discuss with you. It involves a big raise.
“Everything okay?” Johnny asked.
“Yeah, my boss.”
He perked right up, eyes narrowing on me.
“I mean, my ex-boss in L.A. Stan.”
Johnny nodded as I shoved my cell away. A few days ago, I’d have jumped at the chance at what Stan was offering. I did miss having a purpose. Knowing what I was supposed to be doing. Being the good girl. Pleasing my boss. I almost wanted to know what new project he had in mind. Finally get that raise. But that would be old Emma shrinking back into the familiar. And I was playing Lyssa.
So, now?
I wanted to ride a horse and then ride a sexy cowboy.