2. Skylar
2
SKYLAR
“Duck face? Really?” Stevie asked, putting her hand on her hip.
“Duck face is and always will be a classic,” I said, snapping yet another selfie. “And your grandmother’s divine pasta deserves nothing less than the best.”
“Whatever.”
Despite the serious eye-rolling, Stevie didn’t complain when I dragged her into a hug. This time, when I held up my phone, we both executed the perfect duck face, and the pic was flawless.
I felt like I was crashing pasta night, but Stevie’s dad had married my best friend’s cousin a while back, and somehow that made me an honorary uncle. It wasn’t the most straightforward family tree, but since my own family refused to acknowledge my existence, I planned on sticking around until someone figured out I didn’t belong.
“Mind if I tag you?” I asked, bopping her nose.
“Go ahead, tag away,” she said, turning toward the oven, where she was baking delicious-smelling bruschetta.
I wasn’t here for the first time she made that appetizer, but I was told her maiden attempt was a bit on the crisp side. Today, however, she pulled a gorgeous pan of bruschetta from the oven, and I stole a piece.
“Thief,” she complained, then winked at me. “Oh! Are you coming to my birthday party on Saturday?”
I grinned. Daddy Big Bucks would pout because I was going to see friends on a Saturday, but this was Stevie’s fourteenth birthday and attention had to be paid.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Stevie-girl.”
She smiled, somehow both effervescent and shy, then threw her arms around me and hugged me tight as everyone gathered to snatch a piece of the fragrant bruschetta.
Pasta night with the best family ever , I posted with the selfies, plus the group picture we all took right before we dove into Dawn’s Pollo alla Cacciatore.
When I checked my messages—after dinner because there was no way I was disrespecting Dawn’s cooking—I had a message from a name I didn’t recognize. I hesitated; a rando DM usually led to some sort of come on and, frankly, I was tired of being digitally drooled on by gross men with no sense of self. Or style, for that matter.
I glanced at the notification again and decided to get it over with. Grimacing, I tapped on the message.
Then laughed my ass off.
TXRANCHER87: HEY, SKYLAR. THIS IS KIT. I SAW THAT YOU JUST POSTED AND SINCE I WAS ABOUT TO CALL YOU I FIGURED I SHOULD DM YOU INSTEAD.
I’d been to Kit’s house a few times over the past several months to deal with his knee situation and had butted heads with him about wearing his damned brace. Unfortunately for him, I had a couple of spies on the ground in the form of Stevie and her best friend Jaxon, who both worked at his dude ranch.
The notification went off twice in rapid succession.
TXRANCHER87: THAT’S WHAT THIS IS CALLED, RIGHT? A DM?
TXRANCHER87: THIS IS MY FIRST DM, EVER BY THE WAY. SORRY IF I SUCK AT IT.
I snuck into the hallway by the bathroom and started typing.
Me: Cowboy Kit! What has your sexy ass been up to? And why are you yelling at me?
TXRANCHER87: I’M NOT YELLING. I NEVER YELL.
Me: TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF YELLING AND IT’S RESERVED FOR THE NEW AND THE ELDERLY.
TXRANCHER87: Oh, Lord. It really looks like yelling, doesn’t it? My son said I had to get with the times, but I’m so bad at it.
Me: You’re not supposed to be good at your first rodeo, Kit. I thought all cowboys knew that. Besides, you’re already a quick learner.
txrancher87: That’s what my momma always said.
Me: lol (that’s laugh out loud) - dare I ask why you’re DMing me?
txrancher87: I DO know what lol means. I have a flip phone and everything.
txrancher87: And I’m DMing you because I kinda overdid it with my knee yesterday.
txrancher87: Today, too, if I’m being honest.
Me: How does the knee feel right now? Where does it hurt specifically?
txrancher87: Stabbing pain in the back of the knee.
Oh, poor baby.
Me: Ouch. Sorry about that, sweetie. I’m guessing you’d like me to come by before I head back into town?
txrancher87: If you wouldn’t mind.
txrancher87: Unless it would put you on the road too late. Then you can stay in one of my cabins.
Me: Take a breath, Kit. I’m happy to come by.
Me: We’re wrapping up here, so I’ll see you in half an hour.
txrancher87: Okay, good. Thank you. That’s real nice of you.
Me: What can I say? I’m a nice boy.
Me: sexy twink gif
txrancher87: I don’t know how to respond to that.
I laughed at Kit’s awkwardness, right as Rowdy found me in the hall. Gesturing to the phone, he up-nodded at me. “Hot date?”
“ No . Guess who just DM’d me, though?” I asked, then answered before he could come up with some horrible reply. “ Kit .”
Rowdy snorted. “Kit messaged you? Like, using an actual app?”
“Apparently.”
“Was he hitting on you?”
Rowdy, who insisted that Kit had a thing for me, had asked more or less the same question every time Kit’s name came up.
I rolled my eyes. “Would you stop? He would never hit on me.”
That didn’t mean I hated the idea—Kit was a successful, sexy businessman after all—but I knew a lost cause when I saw one.
“Then why is he messaging you?”
Rowdy, who’d already seen me work on Kit, knew to keep this next bit to himself.
“He did too much, and his knee is hurting again.”
Rowdy winced. “Poor guy. I hope you can get him to finally go to the doctor.”
“Let’s see if I can convince him to get it imaged this time.” I let out a frustrated breath. “Five bucks says he’s not wearing the brace.”
Rowdy snorted. “No way I’d take that bet. You’d have better luck convincing him to go to bed with you.”
“ Sure ,” I snarked, rolling my eyes. “From your lips to God’s ears.”
I returned to the conversation on my phone.
Me: I do like to leave men speechless.
Me: But please tell me you’ve been wearing your brace.
txrancher87: The brace slows me down too much.
txrancher87: I ice my knee every night though.
I held up my phone and let Rowdy read the screen. “Told ya.”
I put on a very stern expression and took a selfie, then sent it to him.
Me: This is my disappointed face.
txrancher87: Fine. I’ll dig it out.
I sighed and Rowdy hip-checked me. “Take it he’s being stubborn about the brace?”
“Said he’d dig it out .” I wrinkled my nose, annoyed my favorite rancher was in pain and too obstinate to get it fixed.
Rowdy chuckled. “Doesn’t Daddy Big Bucks get jealous when you visit Kit?”
I tossed imaginary hair over my shoulder. “What Rich doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”
Rich was my current and favorite sugar daddy. I had a rule about not double-dipping my sugar daddies, mostly because the last time Rich was in town I’d been heartbroken when he had to go back home early.
When I started seeing someone new, however, he looked up my spicy account and started leaving all kinds of jealous comments.
Hey, sexy boy. What kind of sugar daddy doesn’t have a yacht?
Oof, this one looks old. You need someone younger and more vigorous.
A Mercedes? He might as well be driving you around in a Honda.
When Rich reached out to let me know he’d be coming to Austin for the next several months and asked me to join him, I caved. Hard.
Then dropped that other guy like a bad habit.
Rowdy and I laughed and hugged, and I climbed into my brand-new, fully loaded Porsche 911, a gift from Rich. He wasn’t much as a lover, but more than made up for it with all the shiny things, thus the Daddy Big Bucks nickname. Despite what I’d said to Rowdy—and the fact I thought Kit was hot as hell—I was a loyal whore.
One cock at a time, thank you very much.
I hit the curved highway the locals called Devil’s Backbone and started out toward Canyon Lake; glad I was heading out before it got too dark. The Baker Dude Ranch was off the main highway a few miles, and those back roads were hella twisty.
Before meeting Kit, the only other time I’d seen a dude ranch was when I watched City Slickers on VHS at my grandma’s house, and that ranch had nothing on this place. My favorite part of the drive was always the view as I rounded the last bend. It was the Texas version of that moment in Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth first sees Darcy’s ancestral home.
The main building was a gorgeous piece of modern architecture, made of aged cedar and black steel and lit just right by uplights and the stars overhead. Set a little farther back were two equally sleek houses—one for Kit, one for his ex—looking like they belonged on the cover of Architectural Digest .
Beyond those, cabins circled a man-made lake and a patchwork of paddocks: horses, livestock, even a few exotics. Every inch of it had the same warm, modernist-meets-nature aesthetic.
Rowdy had mentioned Kit’s ex designed the whole thing, and honestly? Brava.
Word on the street was that he’d never gotten over her, and no wonder. It took a special kind of human to pull off a masterpiece on what had originally been, according to Rowdy, a scrubby plot of land with only a semi-decent view.
I turned onto Kit’s private drive and pulled up to his house, loving the way its careful design gave it an organic sense of home. I hopped out, carrying my medical bag and a plastic container with leftovers for Kit, who was waiting for me outside. From the pained look on his face, I could tell I had my work cut out for me.
I shook the container at him. “Dawn insisted I bring you some pasta for you and your son. Even though I told her you have an entire cooking staff, she’s convinced you’re underfed.”
He adjusted his cowboy hat. “I swear, I eat the same as I did when I was eighteen, and same as back then, I can’t keep a lick of it on me. Burns off before I’ve put the fork down on the table.”
“Leather and wire,” I said, repeating my description of him from the first time we met.
Kit was right at six feet tall without a spare pound on him. Based on the light sprinkling of silver along his temples and in the roughish scruff along his sharp jaw, I guessed he was in his late thirties. By that age, most of the men I knew had grown into more comfortable bodies—which I tended to prefer—but Kit still had that strong, rangy sort of build that looked fantastic in Wranglers and boots. A classic cowboy silhouette if ever there was one. He also had the knees of a man who’d ridden rodeo for one too many years.
Focusing on his painful-looking gate, I held out my elbow. “Don’t give me any guff about this, but I’m gonna escort you inside. If you fall on my watch, I’ll never hear the end of it from Stevie.”
His pained grimace showed off the crinkles around his eyes from years of working in the sun. I spent hundreds of dollars of Rich’s money on facial treatments, but I had to admit a little bit of aging looked good on Kit.
“Considering Reed had to nearly carry me inside earlier, I won’t complain too much.”
I cleared my throat but said nothing.
We slowly made our way to his front door, and he used a thumb scanner to let us in.
“That’s new.”
“Some guests get the wrong idea,” he said, then didn’t explain further.
I didn’t want to say, but I knew for a fact that last month he’d walked into his house and discovered a bride-to-be laid out in her full glory on his bed. It turns out he’d helped her get up on her horse earlier in the day, and she took that as a sign to cancel her wedding and start a new life with Kit.
Anyway, he started letting Stevie and the other hands help the less horse-savvy guests, which was how I knew what happened. That girl told me everything .
As I walked from the foyer into the living room, I sighed. His home had soaring ceilings with thick exposed beams in a warm, driftwood stain that was reflected in the gorgeous hand-scraped wood floors. The entire space was welcoming, with low-slung couches and thick area rugs and a limestone fireplace that gave everything a wealthy rancher-slash-hotelier vibe.
“It’s just a house, Skylar,” he said with a low chuckle, responding to my reaction.
“Whatever. I remain grateful there’s no horseshit on the floor.”
“Oh, I’ve definitely stepped in horseshit, then accidentally dragged it through here,” he said, toeing the beautiful wood flooring. “But I’m pretty quick about cleaning it up.”
“I suppose I’m not shocked that you keep a clean house.”
“Thank you. I think,” he said, and it almost sounded like he was teasing me.
Yeah, right.
Rubbing my hands together, I checked out his stance. “I see you haven’t dug out your knee brace yet.”
“I did ,” he insisted, wrinkling his nose. “It’s on my bed. Too painful to put it on quite yet.”
I gave him an epic side-eye, helped along by the barest wisp of a winged liner. “We’ll work on the pain so you can wear it, but none of that works if you’re not consistent with it.”
He shifted his jaw from side to side. “You’re not gonna let this go, are you?”
“Nope.” He swayed, and I stepped in to hold him up. “Now, I know this is gonna sound like a come on, especially coming from me,” I said, gesturing luxuriously at my perfect quiff, full beat of makeup, high-end clothing draped like butter against my skin, and red-soled stilettos. “But with those tight jeans, the best way for me to look at your knee is if you take off your pants for me, cowboy.”
“Thought you might say that.” Kit accompanied this with the most adorable put-upon sigh. “And as much as I hate to admit it, I might need your help getting my boots off.”
I cursed under my breath. “I swear to the goddess, Kit. If you were anyone else, I’d force you into my car and we’d be going to the hospital right now. The fact you can’t even take off your own boots is pretty bad. Just saying.”
“I know, I know,” he said, waving me off. “But I’ve got another big wedding here tomorrow, some actor who starred in something ten years ago. So, if I can make it through this weekend, I promise you—swear on a stack of Bibles—I will go to the doctor.”
Given the lack of religious decor, I didn’t put much stock in that particular promise.
“I’ll hold you to it.”
“I suppose,” he said, removing his cowboy hat, “the best place for me to get down to my skivvies is my bedroom.” He rubbed the back of his head, awkward.
I’d never been to his bedroom before, and bit back a cheeky retort because Kit wasn’t even trying to hide the amount of pain he was in. That was worrisome in the extreme.
He turned toward a short hallway to the left with a quick look over his shoulder, a silent directive. I dutifully followed him, then nearly ran into him, then when he hitched a stop.
I reached out to prevent him from falling. “Kit?”
“Sorry,” he said, breathing heavily. “It’s like the knives being jammed into the back of my knee are on fire.”
I gripped his shoulders. “Honey, the doctor I work for is fantastic. You need to make an appointment with her.”
“So you keep saying.”
“’Cause it keeps bein’ true,” I said, letting some of my Texas slide in there.
He thinned his lips and continued his stroll-limp to the primary bedroom, which was . . . wow. Jaw-dropping and style magazine cover-worthy barely covered it.
I let out another low whistle. “Your living room is inviting and well-decorated, but this? Holy hell, Kit. This is pretty fancy for a cowboy, isn’t it?”
“Shush,” he said, limping toward his California King. While the mattress was plush and beautifully appointed with simple, luxe materials, what stood out was the tall headboard made of intricately carved, whitewashed wood.
“Where’d you get your headboard from?”
He smiled. “Accompanied Cynthia and her new wife on their honeymoon to Bali, oddly enough.”
I set down my medical bag, confused. “Uh . . .”
“It was their idea,” he said with a shrug. “Reed doesn’t do well with change, so it made sense for me to go so he could see them when he needed to, but they could still get plenty of alone time.”
This added quite the layer. I remembered, belatedly, that his son Reed was autistic and nonverbal. He’d also been kinda funny when he messaged me about his wrist a few months ago.
“I see.”
Gesturing to the headboard, he said, “Anyway, my son and I were shopping in a market one day, and he went right up to this piece. It’s from a series of four panels—the three that make up my headboard, and the one hanging in his room at his mom’s house. He likes to trace the design with his finger when he gets overstimulated. It’s part of his meltdown protocol.”
“Sounds like it’s a special piece.”
“Yeah,” he said, pausing to look at it again. “I needed a fresh start in here and it meant a lot that my son helped me choose such an important piece.”
He went quiet, so I switched tactics, pointing to the bench at the end of his bed. “I’m guessing that’s probably a comfortable place for you to sit?”
“Good a place as any.”
“Excellent. Now take your pants off.”