Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 43827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
“Where are you taking me? I don’t wanna go home.” Her shrill voice broke me out of my reverie in time to see her about to start her shit.
“Get your hand away from there, are you crazy?” I had to forcibly remove her hand from the door handle while trying to keep the truck on the road. “Listen, I’m taking you home, your maid is there isn’t she? She can look after you until your daddy or mama gets home.” And take you the hell off my hands because I am so not in the mood for this bullshit. Yeah Grant and you’re full of shit.
“I don’t need taking care of, just drop me off at the Honky-Tonk.” She must’ve lost her damn mind. There was no way I was taking her to one of those places, especially not with her being so vulnerable. Every swinging dick within a five-mile radius would be on her before I even cleared the parking lot.
I took her all in with one up and down glance. Her pretty pink toes in their white stiletto sandals that probably cost more than most people made in a week, the too tight jeans with the lace and satin top in the palest yellow, that made her tanned complexion look lush and vibrant. The rock on her left hand wasn’t half bad, but if she were my woman I would’ve gone with something a little softer. Not smaller, just…rounder I guess. What the hell are you thinking?
This is one of the reasons, the main reason I steered clear of her for the last couple of years. Without fail, whenever I got within shouting distance of her something strange happens to me. It’s like I lose all sense and every brain cell heads south. I knew damn good and well what it was, but like I said there was too much involved for me to even go there.
It was a horror when she was a teenager and I first realized what she did to me. I spent many a sleepless night hating myself for it. It didn’t matter that she was out of high school, or that she was mature for her age. All I saw was the number eighteen. Thank fuck the shit had held off for two years after we first met or I’d have really been in deep shit.
I tried losing myself in others; it was the best thing for me at the time. I couldn’t run away like I’d wanted to. My grandfather had passed away just a couple years back, leaving me his ranch, his whole legacy, everything he’d worked for his whole life. I’d made the commitment to take over the reins, but that was before the change. A change that came totally out of left field and took my ass by surprise. That’s the story of my life when it comes to her though so I shouldn’t be too shocked.
The first time I met her at sixteen, things hadn’t been so bad. She was a kid, beautiful yes, but since I wasn’t interested in teen girls I never paid too much attention to her in those first few years. I was learning the lay of the land, getting my feet wet, as I threw myself into the ranch, trying to learn every aspect of the operation.
I knew my dad had been a disappointment to the old man when he was alive, I couldn’t fail him in death. I’d already given up the cushy top floor office and the seven-figure job to come back west and raise cattle, so I figured I might as well be the best damn rancher in the state.
All in all it wasn’t a bad deal. The money was good and I worked for myself. Gramps hadn’t left me with any debt or uncomfortable loose ends to tie up. I owned the place free and clear, and there was a trust set up for contingencies and another for taxes and other expenses.
It looks like the business mind ran in the family; only gramps was old school. Low risk and high returns, he knew where to put his money to get the most use out of it. Brady had been a big help in those early days, always there to lend an ear or a hand whichever was needed.
In the beginning it didn’t matter that he took his little girl with him wherever he went. In the early days she was just a kid who liked to go visit the horses while her daddy and I talked shop. I had pegged her the hellion early on for some of her hijinks, but other than that we stayed out of each other’s way; that all changed the night of her eighteenth birthday.
I’d been extremely busy the last six months or so before her birthday, going back and forth out east to deal with my sick mother, so I had missed the big change. I happened to be back in town when the invitation to the party came and though I had no real interest in a teenager’s soiree, it had been some time since I’d seen my old friend so I thought, what the hell.