Herd That ARC Read online

  My eyes were all for the massive bull that was really pissed off.

  In fact, I was nearly on top of Mr. Valentine before I knew it.

  Glancing up quickly at the closeness of the man, I stopped at his side without ever taking my eyes off the massive bull.

  I felt more than saw his head turn to survey me, but I couldn’t keep my gaze from the black beast below me.

  “Jesus,” I breathed when that bull pawed the red dirt underneath his feet. “Jesus.”

  The man at my side didn’t say anything as we both watched the animal stalk the cage like a large cat instead of a bull, and it was only when the announcer above us informed the arena that the bidding would start in twenty minutes, and that all entering animals should enter them in the next ten minutes, that I became unstuck.

  “Oh!” I cried. “I need your help!”

  Finally, I turned to the man beside me, and my breath stalled in my chest when I got my first good look at Mr. Valentine.

  He wasn’t an old man.

  Far from it, in fact.

  He was gorgeous.

  Beyond gorgeous.

  “Are y-you Mr. Valentine?” I asked for confirmation when the man didn’t reply to my outburst.

  Please don’t be him. Please don’t be him.

  The man’s beautiful head nodded, his brown cowboy hat bobbing with his ascent.

  And those eyes of his.

  They weren’t brown.

  They were like glowing orbs of amber lit with something shimmery and darker golden. Like lions’ eyes.

  I’d never seen anything like them before.

  “I am. You Spears’ granddaughter?” he asked.

  I nodded mutely, unable to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

  “You got the cows dropped off yet?” he continued, not bothered in the least by my proximity like I was to his.

  I shook my head.

  “Let’s go get it done, then,” he said, leading the way.

  His long legs ate up the distance, and I had to practically run to keep up with him.

  I idly wondered if me falling from this height would kill me, and then nearly laughed when I decided that even if the fall didn’t kill me, the bull in the pen I fell into would.

  I’d just made it about halfway when Mr. Valentine made it to the end.

  Almost as an afterthought, he turned to see where I was and scowled when he realized I wasn’t right behind him.

  See, I was five foot nothing. In fact, if you asked my doctor, I was four feet eleven inches. I rounded up to five because I could.

  My legs were about half the size of Mr. Valentine’s, and I would never be able to keep up with that man even when he was walking slow.

  He waited almost impatiently at the end of the walkway, then held his hand out to me the moment I arrived at him.

  “Keys,” he snapped.

  I quickly foraged for my keys in my back pocket and handed them to him.

  He frowned at the huge set of keychains I had on my keyring, then rolled his eyes and walked away.

  I watched him go, wondering whether I should try to go with him or not.

  When he stopped about halfway to the truck and turned to see where I was, I decided that most likely I was supposed to follow.

  Running now, I caught up to him, and immediately stopped once I reached him.

  “They’re gonna need your signature,” he muttered when he walked me to the passenger side of the truck.

  I nodded and got in, using the step on the side of the truck and the OS handle (oh shit handle) to climb in and plant my booty in the seat.

  He slammed my door shut, quickly walked around the hood, and hopped in. I breathed deeply at the smell of him that permeated my senses due to his proximity and turned to survey him settling into the seat.

  He had drops of rain gathered on his hat, and his hands were also wet.

  The white shirt he had on became transparent in the spots that the rain hit him.

  I tore my eyes away and looked out the window, trying to ignore the way the muscles in his arms bunched and lengthened as he turned the wheel.

  “Thank you, Mr. Valentine,” I whispered.

  He turned to me before hopping out of the truck and said one word that changed my life. “Ace.”

  I followed him, thankful that the portion of the loading dock that we were now in had a covered area where we could unload the cows into the chutes without drenching ourselves.

  Except once I’d signed the papers, I didn’t have to do a damn thing. Ace wouldn’t let me.

  “Go stand over there, out of the way,” he ordered angrily.

  My brows furrowed.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked.

  “You should’ve never put that bull that close to in heat cows,” Ace chastised me. “He could’ve really hurt himself or them.”

  “I didn’t have much choice,” I said. “Granddad made me do it this way. He was worried if I had to make two trips, the truck wouldn’t make it.”

  Ace’s eyes flared.

  “Could’ve called me, I would’ve come and taken it. Stubborn bastard,” he growled.

  I bared my teeth. “Don’t call my granddad names.”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re pretty mouthy for such a small thing,” he said.

  My mouth dropped open.

  “You should really not talk. It’d help you stay sexy,” I muttered darkly.

  His white teeth flashed. “Is that so?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re done, Valentine,” a man called from behind us, handing Ace a slew of papers, which Ace immediately turned over to me.

  “These are yours. They have your numbers on them,” he informed me.

  I nodded and took them, tucking them into my bag.

  “Can you get the trailer from here?”

  I nodded my head. I could.

  I had no clue where to go, but I could do it.

  He must’ve followed my thoughts, because he sighed and took my hand, once again leading me to the side of the truck and helping me into the passenger side.

  He took us both around to the same spot I’d been in before, expertly parallel parking it into the exact same spot I’d been in previously.

  I had to say, his skill at backing a trailer was extremely impressive.

  Not that I would actually say that to him. He didn’t need to know.

  “You know where to go now?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He handed me my keys, then got out of the truck, leaving me without another word.

  ***

  I raised my card, bidding on the brute.

  Why, I didn’t know. Maybe because of the way Ace had looked at him earlier, as if he was a stone-cold killer and he was one of the finest specimens he’d ever seen.

  Or, maybe it was just because I had this feeling. One that said, ‘Do it. Bid on him.’

  He didn’t look like much, but I knew with one look he’d fucking kill.

  I’d not seen anything like the animal since Shaggy was a small baby.

  A baby I helped Granddad birth.

  This one, though. I shook my head. This one, this one was breathtaking.

  To the casual eye, he would appear to be on the small side. He was about six or seven months at most, and not yet to his full size.

  He would be one day, though, and when that day came, he’d be a monster.

  The men around me turned to see the dumbass that paid that much for a bull that, according to the announcer, was a ‘baby.’

  He wasn’t. I could see that, and as I looked across the room at Ace who was nodding to himself as his eyes stayed locked on the bull, apparently Ace felt the same.

  Somewhat mollified with spending that much for a bull, I sat back and held my breath, waiting to see if I’d win the bid.

  And thirty secon
ds later as the announcer yelled, “Sold!” I fisted my hand as a wide smile overtook my face.

  Which quickly disappeared twenty minutes later when I realized that what I was bidding on wasn’t for the entire bull, but by the pound.

  “One more time?” I asked the man at the front desk.

  “Fourteen thousand, five hundred, and eight dollars.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  With shaking hands, I wrote the check and prayed that they wouldn’t go cashing it immediately so I had enough time to go transfer my life savings into my checking.

  With the ticket that I’d paid in my hand, I practically ran out of the building, uncaring about the rain this time.

  Which was why, instead of looking where I was going, I had my head tucked down and watching where I was stepping instead of watching in front of me.

  Meaning when I bounced off of Ace’s big body, I was jolted so hard that I couldn’t stay upright.

  Lucky for me, Ace was quick with his hands and caught me before I could fall to the muddy ground beneath my feet.

  “Whoa.” He caught me and set me on my feet again. “Where are your keys?”

  I had them in my hand already, so I instantly pulled them up in front of my face.

  He plucked them from my hands and repeated the process of driving us around to the side of the chutes where we could pick the bull I’d just purchased up.

  “Scooby?” the lady at the gate asked.

  I blinked in confusion at her name for Ace.

  “What?” I asked.

  She snatched the paper from my hand, nodded her head, and handed the paper back to Ace.

  Rude.

  “Your name is Scooby?” I asked him.

  A tick at the corner of his mouth made me think he was going to smile, but he turned his face away to stare at the bull they were urging down the chute with a cattle prod.

  “No,” he said. “That’s Scooby.”

  ‘Scooby,’ better known as the bull that I had just spent a shit ton of my savings on, started padding at the earth again, then charged forward, slamming into the trailer so fast and hard that I gasped and prayed that he didn’t hurt anything.

  “I hope I get my deposit back,” I breathed as the men shut the gates.

  The bull slammed his large horned head up against the side of the trailer, and I visibly witnessed the metal bending.

  “Jesus.”

  “I think you can kiss that deposit goodbye,” Ace replied helpfully.

  Yeah, I thought I could, too.

  Chapter 2

  I run entirely on caffeine, chocolate, and inappropriate thoughts about Ace Valentine.

  -Codie’s secret thoughts

  Ace

  “She paid how much for Scooby?” my brother, Banks, asked.

  “Fourteen grand,” I replied as I tore my wet shirt off over my shoulders.

  “Is she fuckin’ crazy?” Banks asked no one in particular.

  I shook my head.

  “I think she didn’t realize what she was doing. I saw her face when Frank told her the price. She thought it was by the head, not by the pound,” I responded.

  “Well, let’s hope she has more sense than that,” he muttered. “I’ll bet Old Man Spears is going to fucking love hearing how much she paid.”

  I agreed. Somewhat.

  I’d looked at Scooby for a long time, wanted him almost as much as my next breath, but there was no way I could pay what he’d be worth. I was still trying to get our ranch in the black even now, years after getting back to Kilgore.

  We were getting there, but we weren’t there yet. Maybe in a few months, once our foals were born, we would be. However, until then, I couldn’t afford a fourteen-thousand-dollar bull despite knowing for certain that he would make it big if given the chance.

  “Honestly, Spears took a risk with Shaggy two years ago, and look where that got him. Farm paid off, fancy horse trailer. Brand new house,” I told my brother.

  “Heart attack,” Banks offered up as he walked to the kitchen door.

  I snorted.

  “That was likely due to his love for cheeseburgers that he had every fucking day for fifty years,” I said, following my brother to the door.

  Banks opened it and walked out, leaving it for me to close, which I did.

  However, I quickly opened it back up again and grabbed my phone off the counter in case my sister called.

  I was supposed to be watching her kids tonight, and I wanted to make sure she could reach me in case she needed me earlier than she’d originally said.

  She and her husband, Nico, were going out for a date, and I was to go over there somewhere around seven.

  I’d tried to pass the duty off to Darby, my baby brother, but he’d had to work.

  I wasn’t going to argue with that. I was just fuckin’ happy that he was making something of his life.

  Darby was our problem brother. He was troubled and had been the one most affected by the death of our parents.

  It’d taken Nico, a cop and SWAT officer for Kilgore Police Department, to straighten him out. And thank God he did. Darby had been caught up in some fucked up shit, and I despaired that he’d ever find his way out.

  No matter what our family said to him, it hadn’t gotten through. Then one night, Darby decided to be a dumbass and throw an unopened Coke at Nico’s head.

  Instead of pressing charges, Nico had brought him home, and scared the absolute shit out of him in the process.

  It was Nico’s near death, though, that had Darby turning his life around.

  Now he was in his final semester of college and working forty hours a week on top of that.

  “What’s that goofy look on your face for?” Callum, my other brother and Banks’ twin, asked.

  I flipped him off.

  “I was thinking about asking Darby to watch Georgia’s kids today.” I grinned.

  Callum snorted. “You know they’re fuckin’ crazy.”

  I agreed. They were fucking crazy. They were cute, too.

  “Anyway, what was this I heard about Scooby as I was walking up?” Callum asked, his arm flashing out to catch a horse that tried to slip out of the fence as we walked in.

  “Old Man Spears’ granddaughter bought Scooby,” Banks offered up as he walked to his horse’s stall to saddle him up.

  “Sheeee-it,” Callum said. “Spears’ going to hemorrhage when he hears that.”

  I grinned.

  “I kind of want to go over there and watch him flip out,” Banks threw in his two cents.

  “We have to ride right by their back fence to get to the herd,” I suggested.

  My brothers smiled.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Thirty minutes later found us hitting the dividing fence between the Spears acreage and our acreage.

  I couldn’t see anyone out in the pen yet, but I did see the bull still in the trailer.

  “How long ago did y’all get him?” Banks asked.

  I sighed and dismounted my horse, Bee, and opened the gate that separated our land from theirs.

  “Go on,” I said to my brothers.

  Both grinning, they crossed through the fence, Banks taking Bee for me so I could close the gate.

  Once it was shut, I remounted Bee and tapped her flanks, causing her to rush into a gallop.

  The ride from our fence to their house wasn’t long.

  The Spears used to rent our land out, giving the four remaining brothers of the Valentine family constant income over the last decade. Which had immediately stopped the moment we arrived back on Valentine land and stopped renting it out.

  Once we entered the pasture that led straight to the house, I started to look around to see what’d changed over the years since I’d been there last.

  The corrals were painted, a bright white now instead of the rusted yellow they used to be.

  There was a new barn with a couple of stalls to the back right of
it used for likely housing unruly guests that didn’t want to be there.

  Such as one of those broncos that I’d considered buying off of him.

  One of which was pacing the fence, staring at us as we made our way up to the Spears’ two-story house.

  It, surprisingly, hadn’t changed. Not one bit.

  It was exactly the same color and condition it had been in when I’d first seen it all those years ago when I’d been just a boy running fences.

  The moment we arrived at the house, I could hear the yelling, and I immediately winced.

  “They won’t take him back, Granddad!” Codie yelled loudly. “I already told you that!”

  “I have nowhere to put him. Shaggy is in our pens, and there’s no way in hell I’m fencing him in with my heifers!” Spears yelled. “Find somewhere else to keep him!”

  Codie’s growl of frustration could be heard by all three of us.

  “Who exactly do you think is just going to allow me to store my bull there?” Codie shot back. “No one, that’s who. I might as well go out back and shoot him.”

  “Well, serves you right,” Jacob Spears said stubbornly.

  “I don’t know what Grandma ever saw in your old stubborn ass, anyway.” She stomped across the room and threw open the door. “Oh, and by the way. I told Noreen not to come back. They’re going to be sending Gary from now on. You’re welcome.”

  With that parting comment, Codie slammed the front door to her house and was nearly all the way across the front porch before she realized she had company.

  The moment her eyes lit on mine, she stopped, freezing.

  “Who are Noreen and Gary?” I asked.

  “They’re his home health nurses,” she replied anxiously.

  God, she was breathtaking. Especially mad. With anger flaring in her big brown eyes, she was stunning.

  Codie wasn’t just the girl next door.

  She was what I used to classify as ‘all that and a bag of chips.’

  My more grown-up self would call her hot.

  At five foot nothing, she didn’t look like she’d be much more than a nuisance.

  However, once you got past her short stature, a very nice, proportional package awaited you.

  Curvy bottom, shapely hips. Large breasts, brown hair braided down her back, and honey brown eyes. Like mine.

  Smooth white, milky skin that had a sprinkling of freckles over all the inches I could see.