Rancher Untamed

I had to leave early to do the morning chores on the ranch. We have a mare coming in to be covered later today and I need to get things ready. I’d love to see you for lunch or dinner. Text me when you wake up. I had your car brought to the house and I’ve laid out some sweats and a T-shirt in the bathroom. Sorry I wasn’t here when you woke.

Diego

“What am I going to do?” she asked the empty room as she fell back on the pillows. Diego was her one-night hookup. Her bit of fun before she left Texas and went back to her real life. She could just say no and never see him again. There was nothing stopping her from doing just that.

But she didn’t want to.

She grabbed her phone to text Kinley and saw she had two messages. The first was clearly from Penny. The four-year-old used the text-to-talk feature on Kinley’s phone all the time. The message just said Pippy, where are you?

Kinley’s message said:

Ignore the scamp’s message. I told her you had the morning off. I assume you are with the hot rancher you outbid everyone for last night. I want deets.

Ugh.

Double ugh.

She tossed her phone on the nightstand without responding, made her way to the bathroom and took a quick shower, avoiding looking at herself in the mirror until she was clean and wearing Diego’s sweats. They were huge on her but super comfy. She took a deep breath. If she had a cup of coffee, she’d start to feel human again.

She went downstairs to find her clutch and found a coffee mug next to the Keurig machine. She made herself a cup and then went back up to the master bedroom to gather her stuff. Diego had even laid out a duffel bag and a pair of flip-flops near the foot of the bed. She had to smile. He’d thought of everything.

Which shouldn’t really influence her decision to see him again, but it did.

Heck, everything about Diego made her want to see him again. It would be easy to say that waiting four years to have sex would have made any partner seem...well, better than they might really be... What the hell was she thinking? She could have had sex a week earlier with someone else and Diego would have wiped that from her memory. Her body ached to have him again. She remembered the way he’d felt between her thighs and craved more of him.

But he wanted... Well, it seemed like he wanted to get to know her. And until she reclaimed her inheritance, she really needed to lie low and stay off her father’s radar.

In Texas...

It had been the perfect spot for her to hide out until she came of age. But now that the time had come, starting something with Diego, all the while knowing she was leaving in a few weeks... Was that a dick move?

She felt like it might be.

She saw a message flash on her phone and went to pick it up. Kinley again.

At the office, stop by if you are still in town.

Pippa knew Kinley would be brutally honest with her about the situation with Diego. Her friend was just always that way with everyone.

She grabbed the duffel bag, her phone and Diego’s note and went downstairs to collect the rest of her things.

She found the alarm code on a Post-it on the inside of the front door and entered it to let herself out. She walked to her car without glancing at the street and got in, sitting there for a moment before starting the engine.

She drove through town to the bridal shop that Kinley ran as a satellite to her boss Jacs Veerling’s Vegas bridal operation. It was through her work that Kinley had first come to Cole’s Hill. She’d been sent here to plan former NFL wide receiver Hunter Caruthers’s wedding. Of course, she hadn’t wanted to come, given that Hunter was her baby-daddy’s brother and said baby-daddy had no clue he had a kid. There had been a bit of a rough patch where Nate hadn’t realized that Penny was his child, and when he found out, he blew up at Kinley. But after the family drama had died down they realized how much they loved each other and got married.

Pippa groaned as she noticed that all of the pull-in parking spaces were taken and she’d have to parallel park. When she was done about five minutes later, she walked into the bridal showroom. It was an elegant space that had been designed to suggest understated opulence. Classical music played in the background. Pippa knew that she’d take some of the design elements from this small bridal shop with her when she returned to London and claimed her place on the board of House of Hamilton. The royal jewelers needed to attract a younger crowd and Pippa was determined to do that.

She sighed, realizing she already knew the decision she would make regarding seeing Diego again.

It had to be a no.

She wanted the chance to prove herself to her family and the world more than she wanted a new lover.

* * *

Diego hadn’t expected his younger brother to be waiting when he got home to Arbol Verde, but Mauricio was sitting in the breakfast room enjoying huevos rancheros that had been prepared by Diego’s housekeeper, Mona. And he was drinking a Bloody Mary, unless Diego was mistaken.

“No need to ask how your night was,” Mo said as Diego entered the room.

“Same. Struck out?”

Mauricio shook his head. “You don’t even want to know. Breakfast or shower first?”

“Shower. I assume you’re going to still be waiting when I get out,” Diego said.

“Yes. It’s business. I have a line on a piece of property on the outskirts of town that is exactly what you’re looking for,” Mauricio said. “Go shower. I’ll wait here.”

Diego started to turn away, but Mo had that look like he’d been rode hard and put away wet, which wasn’t how Diego wanted to see any of his brothers.

He walked over and pulled out one of the ladder-back wooden chairs, spinning it around and straddling it. He reached out and snagged a piece of the maple and brown sugar bacon that Mona always had on the breakfast table.

“What happened last night?”

“Hadley was there,” Mauricio said.

Of course she was. “I thought she moved to Houston.”

“She did. But she came back for the auction,” Mauricio said before he took a long swallow of his Bloody Mary.

“You broke up with her,” Diego reminded his brother as gently as he could. Hadley and Mo had been a couple since high school. He’d followed her to the University of Texas, and when they’d come back to Cole’s Hill, everyone expected them to marry, including Hadley. After waiting five years—longer than most women would, according to Bianca—Hadley had given Mo an ultimatum and he’d balked.

Hadley had packed up and moved out of the town house they’d shared and started dating again. Since then, if gossip was to be believed, Mauricio had had some wild hookups out at the Bull Pen.

The Bull Pen was a large bar and Texas dance hall on the edge of Cole’s Hill. It had a mechanical bull in the back and live bands performed there nightly. It was respectable enough early in the evening, but after midnight things started to get rowdy.