Hard Luck Ranch Read online

  But the stories Wes told about the ranch, they always involved Everett. Without the man there, it was as if the ranch wasn’t quite home for her husband.

  Emma decided it was about time she did something about that.

  * * * *

  “Sheriff?”

  Everett was feeling pretty rotten, sick and hung-over, so it wasn’t surprising that at first he thought that sweet feminine voice was a figment of his imagination. But when he looked up from his plain wooden desk, a lovely vision matching the voice stood before him.

  Pristine and perfect in a flower-like pink dress, complete with layers of luxurious ruffles and edged with lace, the woman standing in the dusty sheriff’s office was an incongruous sight. Her heart-shaped face glowed above the demure neckline while a wide straw hat sheltered it from above. Still, he could see curls of blue-black hair escaping from beneath the hat’s brim and blue eyes gleamed from under its shade.

  Only one woman in Desert Rose was that bandbox perfect.

  Emma Miller. Wes’ wife.

  Everett got to his feet as courtesy demanded, although he took his time doing so. His guest seemed to realize that as well for her lips tightened momentarily.

  Odd, how that tiny telltale gesture caused his crotch to tighten. He’d been attracted to women before—Lord knew it was difficult enough finding another man in these parts who was willing to admit to the same predilection—but something about this one’s city sheen made him lustier than he’d ever been for a member of the opposite sex.

  He had to swallow hard before he could speak.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs Miller?”

  Instead of responding right away, Emma Miller strode across to his desk then snatched a piece of paper from it.

  “You can read this and answer it, to start with,” she said.

  He recognized the heavy piece of card without any difficulty—the invitation to Hard Luck Ranch. How it had stuck in his craw.

  An invitation to Hard Luck. For him. Him, who’d grown up there, who’d never really wanted to leave until it became obvious that it would never do if he stayed on with Wes. Two bachelors living together, Wes had hinted, wouldn’t be too seemly.

  So he’d left—and a part of his heart had remained behind on the ranch.

  Now Wes and this woman—this, this stranger!—wanted to invite him back to his long-time home to celebrate their marriage.

  It was absolutely the last thing Everett ever intended on celebrating.

  “I’ve got your answer,” he drawled, striving not to betray the depth of his emotion on the subject, “and I can give it to you right now if you’re in such a rush for it. I respectfully decline, Mrs Miller. Please let your husband know.”

  Amazingly, those blue eyes flashed sparks at him. “I will do no such thing,” she insisted. “I will not go back home and give Wesley such a hateful, hurtful reply.”

  Everett tugged at his hat. “Suit yourself,” he told her. “Good day, madam.”

  It was time for a drink anyway. A drink at the tavern then a pleasurable hour in Kenneth’s room. His groin tightened just thinking about it. Not Emma. No, those blue sparks weren’t the reason he was feeling so horny.

  When he glanced down, she was still there. Still flashing away. Due to their differences in height, he could see down her bodice, despite the modest style of her dress. Lush pale curves rose up to fill out the gown.

  With the slightest of movements, he could hook his fingers into the lacy edge and pull the entire bodice down.

  What would her nipples look like? Would they be big and brown or small and pink?

  He looked back into her face. It was getting red. He’d stared too long at her breasts and they both knew it.

  “If you want to refuse Wesley’s invitation and break his heart,” she said, too loudly in the empty office, “then you can very well do it yourself. After all these years of friendship, you owe him that much.”

  Everett pursed his lips in a silent whistle. The lady had some nerve. He owed Wes, according to her. He owed Wes.

  “As if Wes don’t owe me for making love to me then adamantly withholding his love afterwards.”

  “What did you say?”

  Everett tried to focus on the woman again but he could make no sense of her wide eyes and the hand she clutched to her chest as if he’d dealt her a blow. It was the liquor. He could barely think.

  “What did you just say?” Emma demanded again, her voice hushed and unbelieving. “D-did you and Wesley m-make—have relations?”

  Then he knew his mistake. He’d spoken his thoughts out loud and betrayed the secret that he and Wes had shared for nearly a decade. To Wes’ new wife.

  Wes would kill him.

  “It was one time,” Everett heard himself defending. “That was all.”

  A short silence followed, broken only by Emma’s sharp burst of laughter.

  “And here I thought you were jealous of Wes,” she said, her voice rising on a hysterical note, “for getting married and putting a wife before your friendship. When all along, in truth, you were jealous of me for having Wes. Isn’t that true?”

  “I had him first,” Everett spoke again in a sulky, angry voice. Why was he saying such things? He knew he was only making it worse for himself but he couldn’t seem to stop the words.

  Fortunately, Emma barely seemed to mark his words. She was clearly following thoughts of her own.

  “Is that why he chose to marry me in such an unusual way?” she asked him. “Because the two of you couldn’t be together?”

  Everett flinched. She was so far from the truth that it hurt.

  “No,” he said. “The time we were together, it was a real long time ago. I don’t even know if Wes rightly remembers it now. Wes married you because he wanted to get married and he liked you well enough from your letters to think that you were the one for him. I think he fell in love with you in those letters.”

  However painful, he knew it was the truth. He’d seen how Wes’ eyes would glow every time he read out a snippet of Emma’s letters. He’d been in love with her before he even laid eyes on her.

  “I fell in love with him as well,” Emma admitted, her pretty face flushing. “But you love him too.”

  Everett inclined his head but said nothing. He’d already spoken far too much to this woman. He’d put his very safety in her hands. What would she do with his secret?

  Emma bit her lip. “Is there nothing that can be done?”

  It took Everett a moment to find his voice. “Madam—”

  “Emma,” she corrected him. “We are in love with the same man so, like or not, we have much in common. The least you can do is recognize our connection to one another.”

  A connection, born of their love for Wesley. Everett had never contemplated such an idea before.

  He began again. “Emma, there is nothing to do. Wes chose you.”

  “But he misses you,” she cut in. “Terribly. Now that I know of your past, I can better understand why.”

  Everett cast his eyes away. “It is just that—the past. We’ve never spoken of it since shortly afterwards. Wes made it clear that he wasn’t prepared to take the risk that it would mean to be together, even in secret.”

  “Yes,” Emma agreed, “it would be a great risk to live together as two lone men, two very handsome men at that.”

  Everett smiled faintly. “Thank you.”

  She regarded him with a critical air. “Oh, no one can mistake that you are unjustly attractive, Sheriff. It is too bad that you don’t care for women—”

  “Who said that I don’t?” Everett asked.

  This time, she looked astonished. “But, I thought—”

  “I’ve lain with women,” he told her. “Granted, not many, and not meaningfully, but I have needs that are often met by women.”

  “When no men are around,” she said with the lilt of question in her voice.

  “Even when there have been willing men about,” Everett contradicted. “If they are no
t to my liking.”

  “That is strange,” she said. “I thought, being as you are, you would only want men.”

  And Everett thought she knew very little about sexuality in general, despite her recent tolerance.

  “Some men do only prefer men,” he told her, “but others can take either. My preference is for a man but I would take a woman, just as Wes’ preference is for you, but he was once willing to take me.”

  He saw the way her eyes widened with sympathy and it occurred to him that, of all the people in the world, she was the only one who could understand what he was going through simply because she loved Wes as well.

  “Wes loves you,” Emma said. “I know he loves me and wanted to marry me but his life is emptier without you, Everett.”

  “I don’t believe it,” he said, speaking quickly to cover the burgeoning hope suddenly springing in his breast. “He had any number of years to accept me in that way. He chose not to.”

  Emma shook her head, causing the feathers on her straw hat to bob vigorously. “I cannot explain why that is so except that I can only say what I see now. He loves you and he misses you, Everett. Do not stay apart from him due to your own pride or jealousy, for I am not a reason for you to be jealous. As much as I love him, I can share Wesley—if it means that he will be happy.”

  Everett wanted to say something, to compliment her, to thank her, but the words stuck in his throat. For the first time in his adult life, tears threatened to unman him.

  So it was probably a good thing that Emma left before he could recover from her devastatingly generous statement.

  Chapter Four

  “You did what?” Wesley stared at his new wife as she calmly withdrew the pins from her hat. “Emma, you had no right!”

  Her eyes met his in the mirror. “I had every right,” she said in her firm quiet voice. “I am your wife.”

  “You offered to share me,” Wes sputtered, “with a man!”

  “With your former lover,” she said, causing him to flinch. “Have you yourself not taught me that love can take many forms?”

  Wes’ face grew hot. He’d taught her a damn sight too much, it seemed.

  “Taking me up the ass,” his sweet little wife carried on, “would seem unnatural to many people. Certainly, it seemed unnatural to me until we tried it and then I found it was very, very pleasurable. Why not try this as well?”

  “Try what?” Wes nearly shouted. Now his bloody cock was getting hot too, hearing her speak that way.

  “Try having your handsome friend’s cock up your ass!” Then, when Wes only sputtered in reply, she tempered her words. “Try kissing him. Try holding him. Try loving him…as you once did.”

  Would she be forever casting that up against him? Damn Ev. What had he told her?

  “That night was a drunken mistake,” Wes said. “I woke up and Ev was beside me in the bed. I didn’t know how he got there or even how I had. When he told me what happened, I was shocked.”

  But that wasn’t the whole truth. He hadn’t remembered the night they’d spent together at the time but he’d later recovered the memories bit by bit, the way he sometimes sewed together the stitches of a wild night from flashes of memory.

  He remembered reaching for Everett as they slept beside each other. He remembered their mouths meeting hotly then he groped lower to find Everett’s throbbing dick.

  He remembered getting onto his knees so his best friend could enter his asshole and sweating and grunting with the sheer bliss of the incredible fucking that followed.

  He remembered all of it too late…after he’d pushed Everett away. After he’d threatened Ev that he would never speak to him again if he ever brought that night up.

  Everett had listened. He’d apparently done exactly what Wes had ordered and forgotten that they’d ever fucked.

  But Wes had never forgotten.

  Just thinking about that night caused his cock twitch into semi-erectness. Damn it if Emma didn’t know that too.

  “You weren’t too shocked,” she said as she advanced toward him, stretching her hand out to cup his crotch through the thin material of his trousers. Since he’d gotten married, he’d dressed to match his wife’s lovely city fashions but he often missed the worn comfort of his denims.

  Wes squirmed away from her knowing hand—but not far enough to dislodge her grip entirely. She unerringly found his shaft head with her fingertips, sliding around its bulge until the rest of his dick stiffened in her grasp.

  The combination of her sure fingers and amused half-smile caused the blood rush to his face—and his penis.

  “I wasn’t too shocked,” he admitted, barely hearing his own words through the buzz of excitement streaming through his veins.

  “And neither, dear husband, was I when I heard,” Emma told him. “I knew that there was more between you and your friend from the very beginning. In my innocence, I felt it might be resentment over your positions in life—with you being the owner of this prosperous ranch and he having to toil for his living.”

  “Ev loves his job,” Wes gasped when she squeezed the shapely head of his cock between her knuckles, just tightly enough to make his buttocks clench in anticipation. “At least he did at first.”

  “Until he realized how much it would take him away from you,” Emma guessed. “But after the way you rejected him, what else could he do but stay away?”

  Wes started to buck his hips under her expert manipulations, driving himself crazy with the friction of cloth against his covered shaft.

  “I miss him,” he moaned, shoving his pelvis into his wife’s tender grip. “God, how I miss him!”

  His mind was suddenly filled with images of Ev. Tall and blond and masterful in a way that made them equals despite the differences of their birth and station.

  What if Ev was standing behind him at that moment, his firm grasp on Wes’ waist, pushing him forward, his cock pressed into Wes’ ass? And Emma, sweet Emma, would go to her knees before them both, using her mouth to suckle Wes’ dick while working her hands between the two men to cup and caress Ev’s golden balls?

  “Ugh!” Wes moaned as his wife’s other hand nearly spanned his member around its middle, frigging him with her fingers while she continued to squeeze his head with the other hand. “I’m going to spill—”

  He barely got those words uttered before she whipped out his dick and dropped to her knees before him. She continued to milk his shaft while her mouth covered the tip of his twitching cock just in time to catch the first spurts of his thick juices. Her cheeks hollowed prettily when she drew upon him, drinking his spunk.

  He loved watching her intentness, her greed. He’d taught her this particular hunger—the need for his manly juices. Whether it was to take his dick deep inside her pussy or simply swallow his spunk as she was doing now, his Emma was always thirsty.

  After his body had finished its exertions, he let his head fall and watched as she licked up every stray drop of his fluid

  She was amazing, this woman who he had made his wife. A true lady with a voracious appetite for sex. She was too good for him. Far too good. But he prayed that his treatment of her, his loving care and attention in the years to come, would make him worthwhile in the end.

  Wes reached down to caress her flushed cheek, damp with the spunk that had escaped even her eager mouth.

  “I love you, Emma.”

  He’d said it since the day she’d arrived. He’d loved her before he’d even met her. Yet, for the first time now, he felt that he truly meant it. His love for her reached the depths of his soul, of his very being.

  She let his cock leave her lips with a soft pop then came to her feet. “And you know that I love you, Wesley. Enough, even, to share you with another.”

  Share him…with another.

  “Emma, what do you mean?” In his haste, his voice was sharp.

  His wife tilted her head up to kiss him. “I mean, my dear husband, that we should shortly expect a visit from the sheriff.”

&
nbsp; * * * *

  Everett slid down from his horse, tethered it, then stood awkwardly in the yard.

  Hard Luck Ranch. His home for so many years, it was still the place he thought of first when he pictured ‘home’.

  Tugging his hat from his head, he held it, playing with the edge of the worn material and working it around in a circle between his fingers.

  Lord, he was sweating. It wasn’t even that hot.

  Why had he come?

  Half of him wanted to mount again and turn tail back to Desert Rose. Back to the same and comfortable existence he’d been living for the last several years. Back to Kenneth.

  But he didn’t love Ken. He loved Wes. And it was that thought that kept him from returning the way he’d come.

  He’d never turned tail in his life. Now wasn’t the time to start.

  Before he shifted his boots more than a pace from their original spot, the front door opened and a dark head peered out from it.

  “Mr Montgomery!” Emma Miller called. “How lovely that you could join us. Won’t you please come inside?”

  By now the whole of her filled the door frame—small and pretty and perfect.

  He swallowed hard. He could barely keep his wits about him to deal with the wife—how would he ever cope with a newly married Wes?

  “Thank you for inviting me,” he managed to croak out.

  As he neared the house, he could see that Emma had extended her hand to him in a gesture of welcome. After a moment’s hesitation, he took her fingers in his, carefully, as if it were made of glass. He needn’t have worried. She gave his own broad paw such a squeeze that he could feel it all the way up his arm.

  “Thank you for coming,” Emma said as she retained possession of his hand into the house. “I’m so glad I had the brainstorm of inviting you here on your own. It’s so much more intimate, isn’t it?”

  He swallowed again at the look she gave him from beneath those long black lashes.