Ride 'Em (A Giddyup Novel) Read online

  “I understand,” she said, when what she meant was, It’s so good to hear your voice again. “I’ll be the safeguard. I’ll be there myself. Naked the whole time, if that’s what it takes.”

  Logan coughed, a harsh note over the iffy cell connection. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well . . . yeah, kinda.” She squirmed in her too-soft executive leather chair. The office was as quiet as a tomb; she always felt too loud when she spoke on the phone in there, but never more so than when Logan Hill was making her think about strolling across his ranch naked. “Especially if I had a collar on.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Mindy.”

  “Right. Sorry, sir.”

  She’d hit Send on her email on Friday night. He hadn’t called her until Monday morning. It had been the longest weekend of her life, following the longest week of her life. When she’d seen his number on her screen, she’d almost passed out from anticipation. And when she’d realized he wasn’t calling to yell at her, but to tell her he was running with her idea . . .

  She put her head down on the desk, anchoring the phone between her ear and the mahogany. She didn’t know where Bud had come up with the office furniture, but it was all beautiful. Not Mindy’s taste—her mom’s. She wondered if he’d let Amelia decorate the office as part of the surprise.

  “You’re on KinkBook, right?” Logan asked. “Do you have friends in Dallas who were planning to go to the MiniKinkFest two weeks from now?”

  “They canceled it,” she mumbled. “Everybody was so pissed. My friend Jam—Miss Vixen only gets about one weekend off a century. That was her big plan. And all her fangirls and fanboys were probably going to follow her down there.”

  “There was a fire at their venue.”

  “I know, but it was still disappointing.” Why did he care so much about the cancelled MiniKinkFest anyway?

  “Can you get on KinkBook or do whatever you do, and get those folks to sign up to come to the ranch instead that weekend? It’s short notice, but there’s this existing pool of people who’d made plans.”

  “Oh my God.” She sat up, flipping the phone to the desk; she fumbled to recover it. “That’s brilliant. Where will you put everyone, though? The main house rooms aren’t ready, the cabins won’t hold nearly that many people, and there’s no way the kitchen could handle that kind of capacity, even if Robert had half a dozen helpers.”

  “We probably won’t get very many people, even with the cancellation.” Logan sounded excited nevertheless. “But we think we can do maybe two dozen if we get the campsite cleared out. Remember, we passed that area on the low trail rides? It’s not even a hundred yards from the house as the crow flies, the riding trail just takes a roundabout way to get there. There’s a straight-shot trail buried in grass and shrubs. Robert and Diego are helping me find that later today. Used to be gravel, but it’s probably mostly dirt now. Eventually we’ll want maybe some compacted pea gravel or something easy on bare feet. Not that bare feet are a great idea in the hill country in the dark, but you know, people aren’t going to want their subs in boots, and a lot of folks will want to be in heels. So just thinking ahead.”

  “Making sure the horse barn is off-limits is important, too.”

  “Already on it.” He sighed into the phone, causing more noise overload. “So, how are you?”

  Awful. “Oh, I’m fine. How are you?”

  “I am also fine.”

  If she didn’t keep him talking, the call would be over soon. “I got a promotion? But it’s . . . weird.”

  “Hmm. Weird how?”

  “Well. It’s a bigger title than I asked for. And a lot more money. But I don’t actually have any authority.” She flicked her gaze around the office nervously as if people might be listening in at the door or windows. “I’m basically the best-paid rubber-stamp wielder in the city now. Supposedly I jumped up a step and now supervise a bunch of landmen. But literally all I do is receive their reports and contracts, read them, sign off that I’ve read them, and forward them up the food chain. That’s it.”

  Some rustling noises came over the line; it sounded like Logan was either outside in the wind, or doing something with his hands. “Okay. That is weird. That doesn’t sound like a real job.”

  “I don’t think it is. I think he just wanted to get me out of the way and make my mom happy by giving me more shopping money and free time. And I hate it. And I hate him.” Saying it out loud was such a relief she nearly cried. “And, Logan, he keeps making these digs about his friends at your bank, and playing golf with Derek Larch’s father-in-law. I think he’s planning something. More of something, I mean. Something specific.” She’d tried to ask around surreptitiously, but had gotten nowhere. Only her assistant, Terry, talked to her anymore, and that was mostly wondering when the actual work would start.

  Never, she was tempted to say. You may feel free to play computer games and shop online all day long. She made assignments up instead. So far, Terry seemed happy enough with the busywork. Eventually, though, Mindy would run out of tasks. For her part, she resisted the urge to change her spending habits. She kept nursing along her clunker of a car. She avoided the truly outrageously expensive shoes. She put the infusion of extra cash straight into savings. Just in case.

  “Can you tell me anything in particular?”

  “Not yet. I’m not being cagey, I just don’t know anything.” She sighed and plunked her head down again. “Tell me what I can do to help you get ready for the big event. Please give me something to do.”

  He laughed. A miraculous sound, a rainbow after a storm. “A job where you’re not helping anybody, and you’ve been doing that for a whole week? Okay, you’ve been tortured enough. I’ll send you a link to the shared to-do list, you can pick whatever strikes your fancy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Oh my God, thank you.”

  Logan laughed again, then the golden sound tapered off into a sigh. “And you’ll be here next Friday by no later than four in the afternoon, right? To help greet people and get their paperwork signed and all that?”

  “Three thirty sharp,” she promised. “I won’t even go in to work that morning. I’ll leave straight from home. Since apparently I’m also on a flex schedule now.”

  “Okay then. I’ll see you a week from Friday. And talk to you before then, I guess.”

  It would have to do. “Got it, sir.”

  “Get to work.”

  “Giddyup!”

  “Wait . . . say that again.”

  “Giddyup?”

  He whooped, and Mindy held the phone out from her ear for a second until it seemed safe. She could hear jostling, air rushing past, as if he was running with the phone. And then, slightly muffled, “Giddyup! There’s your name!”

  “Oh . . . oooh,” said somebody wherever Logan was calling from. “Yeah, that could work. I’ll update the thing. That’s good. Nice work, bro.”

  “No, not me.” He breathed into the phone again. “Nice work, Mindy.”

  She’d named the event, apparently. Which made her feel ten times more responsible for the outcome. But it was good to feel responsible for something. “Thank you.”

  “And I’ll see you a week from Friday.”

  “You will.”

  “Okay. Well, ’bye for now.”

  Oh God. It was bad high school dating. Hopefully they wouldn’t get stuck in a good-bye loop. “Okay. ’Bye.”

  “Later.”

  She didn’t reply; she was strong and ended the call before she could say anything stupid. End on a high note, that was always the best plan.

  Mindy allowed herself a slow count of ten to do nothing but breathe. Then she slid her personal laptop out of her briefcase, booted it up, and got to work.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Planning a last-minute weekend gathering for a few dozen kinksters, complete with camping, barbecue, and a “rodeo” feature event, turned out to be like playing organizational whack-
a-mole. Drunk. While attempting to win at chess.

  Solving one problem created ten more little problems. Any one of which might blossom with unseen ramifications. And that was even ignoring the baseline issues of legality and privacy, which Chet was always willing to bring up just when things seemed to be calming down.

  “I cannot recommend hiring off-duty officers or deputies to secure entrances and exits. Even the kink-aware.”

  Ethan had clapped him on the shoulder. “Got it covered, cuz. Bikers.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Bikers. Well, not real bikers, I don’t think? A bunch of ‘motorcycle enthusiasts’”—Ethan air-quoted the term—“who are also members of the club in San Antonio that was organizing the MiniKinkFest. They usually all take shifts as dungeon masters at MKF and a bunch of local clubs. Plus, they love Bolero, they come every year for the bike rally. And when they found out about Giddyup they volunteered to help with the entrance security in rotations if they can get half off on admission and we waive the camping fee. The beautiful part is, two of them have big RVs, and they plan to park at the KOA down the road and bike in and out from there. We won’t even have to house them.”

  Chet had frowned and said, “I’ll require their bonafides.” But apparently he’d been satisfied by whatever he’d learned, because that was the last Logan had heard of it.

  Calculating the optimal number of portable toilets to reserve when the crowd size kept growing led to a few conversations that were as frustrating as they were disgusting. Robert finally stepped between Logan and Ethan when their verbal shit-slinging started heading down memory lane and the whole scene got too heated for him to take.

  “Boss. And baby boss.”

  Ethan had given him the side-eye. “Never.”

  “If I take this over and promise to have enough crappers there on the day, will you both promise to stop talking about this, please? Because this shit ain’t healthy.”

  “People pissing out behind the house when Mom isn’t looking is what’s not healthy, Ethan.” Logan had seethed.

  “I was four.”

  “You were old enough to throw me under the bus and say I made you do it. Multiple times.”

  But they’d eventually let it go, and Robert had gotten them to shake on the agreement to never talk about portable toilets again.

  Mindy had been Skyped in when the food problem was discussed, and Diego had fretted about having time to construct a platform in the old barn and some seating for a shibari demo. Logan had also been bemoaning the lack of temporary stalls for staging the ponies at the rodeo/derby.

  Ethan had cracked up when he realized Logan was worried about it. “Dude . . . and you didn’t ask the large animal vet with a practice thirty-five minutes away? I already marked the stalls off on the spreadsheet, didn’t you check?”

  Then Chet had pointed out that he had a year’s worth of perfectly fine venison already butchered and stored in his deep freeze that he was willing to donate for at least one evening’s feast. “It would make an excellent hearty stew.”

  Mindy had said, “Oh God. Y’all. This is . . . you know, that old movie, with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland? Except instead of making costumes, it’s, ‘My cousin has some deer meat we can use for stew.’ ‘My brother knows how to make stalls for human horses.’ ‘My grandpa has an old barn where we can make a stage.’”

  And in unison, they’d all shouted, “Hey, kids! Let’s put on a show!”

  Logan kept the Skype connection open after the others left his office, reluctant to let Mindy out of his sight. She was patched in from home, it looked like—she was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and seemed to be sitting on a couch or large chair of some deep red velvet or suede. The bottom edge of a painting was visible behind her head at the top of the camera frame. Abstract art in warm tones . . . or possibly the limited view only made it seem abstract.

  With her strawberry hair against the reds, browns, and golds, it was like looking at a fire. Or possibly the warmth Logan perceived had nothing to do with the visuals.

  “So how’s the non-job going? Still . . . non?”

  She shrugged. “The other day I got called in to a meeting with Bud and some of the landmen who theoretically report to me. I didn’t get a word in the entire time. I guess I’m just lucky they weren’t asking me to get them coffee. And after the other guys finished up and cleared out, Bud gave me this look like, what was I still doing there? I asked him why I even needed to be at the meeting, since it was clear he’d just made me into a useless middleman and didn’t trust me with any real work.”

  “Whoa.” Logan knew just enough about Mindy’s relationship with her stepfather to know she didn’t normally voice those concerns out loud. “What did he say?”

  She sighed. “Stuff about my mom being happy. And how I should be grateful that I was basically living like one of the characters on Dallas—the TV show, you know, how they all worked for Ewing Oil or whatever but nobody ever seemed to do any actual work. That this way he didn’t have to worry about me or my ‘oddly placed loyalties.’ And then he said my car was a disgrace to upper management and I really should replace it as soon as possible because he had an image to maintain and I was part of that image.”

  Logan had seen Mindy’s car and privately agreed it should be replaced, for safety if for no other reason, but he wisely kept that to himself. “Loyalty to who?”

  She ran her hands through her hair, letting the strands fall back in disarray. “I may have said something about big corporate greed and how small business was supposed to be the American way and people should be able to make their own choices about what to do with their assets, free from coercion. Blah, blah, blah, ethics in business, blah.”

  Me. Loyalty to me. “You know, I . . . owe you an apology.” He leaned closer to the computer as if that meant anything over video, then realized it only made his face huge from her perspective, so then he sat back in his chair as Mindy’s face screwed up in puzzlement. “You were telling the truth. After those first few hours, you came clean about why you were here, and . . . you told the truth after that. And I’m sorry I believed you were still in cahoots with Bud that whole time. That the whole thing was some kind of honey trap.”

  She bit her lip, then sucked it out with a popping noise. “Well. You had every reason. I mean, there he was. And I was so flustered I couldn’t even say much. I have this . . . thing with authority figures, you know?”

  Logan laughed. “Uh, yeah. I got that.”

  “I should have stuck around and stuck up for myself instead of running away. Or quit my job right then.”

  “I’d have hired you on the spot.” He didn’t know where it came from, but it felt right. Having her at the ranch full-time. She would be nothing but helpful. It would make good business sense somehow.

  Mindy cocked her head. “With what part of your currently nonexistent budget, Math Man? For an engineer you sure can lie to yourself about numbers.”

  “Okay,” he admitted, “maybe not on the spot. But . . . sometime? If Giddyup is a success?”

  The look she gave him was half-flirting, half-pitying. “Dude. Do you even want to know my current salary? I’m not going to say I’m all about the money, but it is a considerable amount of money. And my mom is so thrilled. She’d be devastated if I left under a cloud. And I still think there’s a chance if I suck it up for a little while, Bud will finally give me some stuff to do.” She clenched her jaw, suddenly looking determined. Logan wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince, him or herself. “He knows I’m capable. I think the situation right now is just his weird way of punishing me for going AWOL, trying to get the deal with you, and . . . well, failing. And sleeping with you instead. Eventually he’s got to let me do some work for all this compensation. He’s a businessman. He’s not going to keep paying this much just to show me he has me under his thumb, right?”

  Logan considered it a moment, then shrugged. “You know him better.”

  “Yeah. That�
�s what I’m afraid of.”

  “There’s a place for you here,” he insisted gently.

  She looked away from the camera. “On the ranch, you mean? Or . . .”

  Logan wasn’t sure how to separate the two. The ranch was his life now; he only knew that Mindy fit in somehow. He hadn’t felt complete since she’d left. “We could figure that out as we went along, maybe?”

  “That’s a lot of uncertainty for such a tall order.” She looked back at him, a softer smile curving her lips. Gentle, but a little sad. “I guess we can talk about it when I get there next Friday.”

  “Fair enough.” He didn’t want to let her go yet. “You could just come as an attendee, too. I don’t want to be just another guy trying to put you to work. I mean, I’ll be busy during the event, but you said you had friends who were coming, so I guess you could still play with—”

  She laughed. “I said I’d be there, Logan. It’s okay. You don’t have to offer further inducements.”

  They did the awkward, too-long, you-first good-bye thing again, then signed off; Logan wished after the fact that he’d thought to screenshot Mindy’s face. Then he realized that was potentially kind of creepy, or at least overly lovesick, and he was not aiming to be either of those things.

  If only he could offer her an inducement the size of the fat paycheck and maternal satisfaction she was getting from Bud Jameson. Logan knew it wasn’t exactly a direct competition, but it was still hard to think how to woo her away from that lifestyle.

  Was that what he was doing now? Trying to woo her? He put the thought aside and tried to focus on the upcoming event.

  * * *

  All in all, Logan couldn’t complain. The problems got sorted out. The laughs outnumbered the headaches. Giddyup sold out and the waiting list was longer than the list of attendees.

  On the other hand, Derek Larch kept calling and emailing him. Putting more pressure on, implying more and more strongly that it really wasn’t up to Derek anymore. His superiors at the bank’s HQ were demanding he tighten up. Get rid of the risks, clamp down on the late pays. He’d done as much as he could, Derek implied strongly. . . and Logan really should have taken Bud Jameson’s offer to meet and talk instead of telling him to go piss up a rope.