Rancher's Wild Secret

She’d never felt anything like this before.

This, she supposed, was chemistry. And she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why it would suddenly be this man who inspired it. She had met so many men who weren’t so far outside the sphere of what she should find attractive. She’d met them at parties all around the world. None of those men—including the one her father wanted her to be engaged to—had managed to elicit this kind of response in her.

And yet… Holden did it effortlessly.

“Ask away,” she said, resolutely fixing her focus on the scene around them. Anything to keep from fixating on him.

“Why the hell did you wear that knowing we were going out riding?”

She blinked. Then she turned and looked at him. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”

“I have never seen anyone get on a horse in something so impractical.”

“Oh, come now. Surely you’ve seen period pieces where the woman is in a giant dress riding sidesaddle.”

“Yes,” he said. “But you have other options.”

“It has to be photographable,” she said.

“And you couldn’t do some sexy cowgirl thing?”

Considering he was playing the part of sexy cowboy—in his tight black T-shirt and black cowboy hat—she suddenly wished she were playing the part of sexy cowgirl. Maybe with a plaid top knotted just beneath her breasts, some short shorts and cowgirl boots. Maybe, if she were in an outfit like that, she would feel suitably bold enough to ask him for a literal roll in the hay.

You’ve lost your mind.

“That isn’t exactly my aesthetic.”

“Your aesthetic is… I Dream of Jeannie in Mourning?”

She laughed. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. But sure. I Dream of Jeannie in Mourning sounds about right. In fact, I think I might go ahead and label the outfit that when I post pics.”

“Whatever works,” he said.

His comment was funny. And okay, maybe the fact that he’d been clever a couple of times in her presence was bestowing the label of funny on him too early. But it made her feel a little bit better about her wayward hormones that he wasn’t just beautiful, that he was fascinating as well.

“So today’s ride isn’t just a scouting mission for you,” he said. “If you’re worried about your aesthetic.”

“No,” she said. “I want to start generating interest in this idea. You know, pictures of me on the horse. In fact, hang on a second.” She stopped, maneuvering her mount, turning so she was facing Holden, with the brilliant backdrop of the trail and the mountains behind them. Then she flipped her phone front facing and raised it up in the air, tilting it downward and grinning as she hit the button. She looked at the result, frowned, and then did it again. The second one would be fine once she put some filters on it.

“What was that?”

She maneuvered her horse back around in the other direction, stuffed her phone in her pocket and carried on.

“It was me getting a photograph,” she said. “One that I can post. ‘Something new and exciting is coming to the Maxfield label.’”

“Are you really going to put it like that?”

“Yes. I mean, eventually we’ll do official press releases and other forms of media, but the way you use social media advertisements is a little different. I personally am part of that online brand. And my lifestyle—including my clothes—is part of what makes people interested in the vineyard.”

“Right,” he said.

“People want to be jealous,” she said. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t spend hours scrolling through photos of other people’s lives. Or of houses they’ll never be able to live in. Exotic locations they’ll never be able to go. A little envy, that bit of aspiration, it drives some people.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Yes. I think the success of my portion of the family empire suggests I know what I’m talking about.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “You know, I suppose you’re right. People choose to indulge in that feeling, but when you really don’t have anything, it’s not fun to see all that stuff you’ll never have. It cuts deep. It creates a hunger, rather than enjoyment. It can drive some people to the edge of destruction.”

There was something about the way he said it that sent a ripple of disquiet through her. Because his words didn’t sound hypothetical.

“That’s never my goal,” she said. “And I can’t control who consumes the media I put out there. At a certain point, people have to know themselves, don’t they?”

“True enough,” he said. “But some people don’t. And it’s worse when there’s another person involved who sees weakness in them even when they don’t see it themselves. Someone who exploits that weakness. Plenty of sad, hungry girls have been lost along that envious road, when they took the wrong hand desperate for a hand up into satisfaction.”

“Well, I’m not selling wild parties,” she said. “I’m selling an afternoon ride at a family winery, and a trip here is not that out of reach for most people. That’s the thing. There’s all this wild aspirational stuff out there online, and the vineyard is just a little more accessible. That’s what makes it advertising and not luxury porn.”

“I see. Create a desire so big it can never be filled, and then offer a winery as the consolation prize.”

“If the rest of our culture supports that, it’s hardly my fault.”

“Have you ever had to want for anything in your entire life, Emerson?” The question was asked innocuously enough, but the way he asked it, in that dark, rough voice, made it buzz over her skin, crackling like electricity as it moved through her. “Or have you always been given everything you could ever desire?”

“I’ve wanted things,” she said, maybe too quickly. Too defensively.

“What?” he pressed.

She desperately went through the catalog of her life, trying to come up with a moment when she had been denied something that she had wanted in a material sense. And there was only one word that burned in her brain.

You.

Yes, that was what she would say. I want you, and I can’t have you. Because I’m engaged to a man who’s not interested in kissing me, much less getting into bed with me. And I’m no more interested in doing that with him.

But I can’t break off the engagement no matter how much I want to because I so desperately need…

“Approval,” she said. “That’s…that’s something I want.”

Her stomach twisted, and she kept her eyes fixed ahead, because she didn’t know why she had let the word escape out loud. She should have said nothing.

He wasn’t interested in hearing about her emotional issues.

“From your father?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I have his approval. My mother, on the other hand…”

“You’re famous, successful, beautiful. And you don’t have your mother’s approval?”

“Yeah, shockingly, my mother’s goal for me wasn’t to take pictures of myself and put them up on the internet.”