“She sounds like a kitten purring,” Grant said softly. His brothers nodded at his comment, not wanting to wake their sleeping beauty. They were going to let her sleep a while before taking her back to the hotel. They needed to get up early the next morning and head back to the ranch.
Chapter Seven
Ramona Styles was madder than she had ever been at Greg Maxwell. How dare he disobey a direct order. “I thought I told you to get her at any cost,” she ranted at him, slapping him across the face.
“Yes, Mistress. I screwed up.” Greg had been Ramona’s submissive for several weeks, but was getting tired of her bullshit. When she told him to kidnap her daughter, it didn’t sound like that bad of a deal. Following the brat to the casino with the three cowboys she had been living with made it even easier. His break had come when she wandered off from them. It was easy enough to keep her drinking, and he was so close to carrying her off before the damned bartender interfered. Next time she wouldn’t be so lucky.
“Give me another chance, Mistress. I won’t mess up again.” Greg hated begging, but with the mood Ramona was in, he had no choice.
“Why should I do that?” Ramona was the worst Greg ha
d ever seen her.
“I promise, this time I will get her.” He really did hate letting her down. Ramona had found him, homeless and jobless, begging on the street several months ago. She had taken him in and started training him to be her slave. At first, he’d loved her and done anything she wanted. When she found out her ex-husband was dying, she changed, and not for the better. She became even more cruel and conniving. Her hatred for the man was burning a hole in her heart. Greg just wanted to settle this and have his Mistress back. Then everything would be fine. He would do whatever it took to make that happen.
Greg had been Ramona’s former slave, but now she a new slave by the name of Luke, and Greg wanted Luke out of the way.
Luke Ryder was working undercover for the FBI. The only person who knew his real identity was his friend and former partner, Ron Ayers, chief investigative officer for Rapid City.
Ramona had been on the FBI radar for years and they finally put Luke in undercover to catch her. Several of her former lovers had disappeared mysteriously and no one knew where her money came from. Even though she acted poor, her bank account was six figures and the woman never held a job more than a few months. She was either laundering money or running drugs, and it was Luke’s job to find out.
Luke had started working for the FBI ten years prior, right after his last tour overseas. He had been places that made Dante’s seven levels of hell seem like vacation spots, but living with Ramona was definitely one of the lower spots. The woman was the devil incarnate. He would be glad when this assignment was over and he could go back to his normal self. He’d been a Dom in the lifestyle for years and would never view his subs in the same way again.
Luke never asked and Ramona certainly didn’t volunteer, but he wondered what had happened all those years ago. He knew she had very little contact with her daughter, and she always spoke of the girl with contempt in her voice, but he didn’t know why and didn’t dare ask.
When she had heard that her ex-husband was dead and that the girl had sold the house, she was furious. “That house should have fucking been mine.”
She’d raged and thrown things. It was a very bad night for Luke that night. He still had the marks on his ass to prove it. Whenever Ramona was mad, she took it out on him and had almost put him in the hospital once. He stayed and took it, though. Keeping up his cover was almost not worth what the bitch was putting him through. This was his last assignment. He was retiring as soon as he had the dirt and a conviction.
“Okay, tell me how you plan on getting her and not fucking up this time,” Ramona said spitefully.
Luke outlined his plan for getting hired has a ranch hand for the brothers and rooming in the bunkhouse to be closer to Stacie. He could watch her movements and get on the brothers’ good side. He figured it would take three to four weeks to win them over and be alone with Stacie long enough to make his plan work.
“Well, I can see you’ve thought this out, and being away from me for a month will be the best punishment I can give you.” Ramona laughed and laughed.
The next day, Luke applied to work at the Ransom Ranch.
He was hired with no problem, not even meeting the brothers or Stacie. The foreman did all the hiring for the ranch. Getting a bunk in the bunkhouse was no problem. They kept several hands on the ranch at all times, and he was willing to take the lower pay to have a place to stay.
It was a week before he saw any of the brothers, and then only in passing. So far, everything was going to plan. It was easy to get a night off to go into town and file the reports he needed to without anyone suspecting anything. It was almost too easy to do what he needed.
* * * *
Something about one of the new ranch hands bothered Stacie. He seemed to be watching her too much. She never got really close to any of the men. The only person who ever came in the house other than the brothers was the foreman, Dallas Jankins.
Now that she had been spending more time with her men individually, she was out of the house more and noticed this hand watching her . Maybe it was just her imagination, but she thought she knew him from somewhere.
Today she was going riding with Grant. He’d been teaching her to ride and she loved it. It gave her time alone with him, and he was showing her different parts of the ranch. She hadn’t realized how big it was. Today they had packed a picnic lunch and Grant had a couple more surprises for her.
Grant was taking her in a direction they hadn’t gone before. This part of the ranch was wooded and Stacie enjoyed the cooling shade of the trees. They didn’t have far to go through the woods before they came to a clearing with a small pond.
Grant tied the horses to a tree at the edge of the clearing and they walked closer to the pond. Spreading out the blanket he had packed, they sat to enjoy their lunch. Jake and Seth were going to eat their lunch with the hands today.
After finishing their lunch, Grant lay back on the blanket and pulled Stacie so that she was pillowing her head on his chest.
“What’s bothering you, baby?”
Stacie didn’t know how he knew something had been bothering her, but she was glad he asked and now she could tell him without figuring out how to bring it up on her own. “It’s probably nothing, but I’ve noticed one of the new hands. He seems to be watching me. Sometimes when I’m in the house, I look out the window and see him looking in, and I’ve noticed that when I’m out with one of you he always seems to be around. It’s probably just me.” She tried to laugh it off.