Rough (RRR #2)

  ROUGH

  Rough. Rowdy. Reckless.

  Book 2

  By Kimball Lee

  Copyright 2015

  Kindle Edition

  All Rights Reserved

  Holt…

  I hate feeling like this. Alone, bereft… lost. It’s ridiculous for a man my age, well, I’m only twenty-seven, but still. And I should be used to it, I’ve been alone all my life. I grew up on the Corazon Perdido Ranch with my father and in our house and on the ranch it was hard to avoid each other, but as far as he was concerned, I didn’t exist. The problem was, and still is, that women don’t die in childbirth but my mother did, and no one would dare to admit that it was my father’s fault and not mine. Now Scarlet’s gone and for two months I’ve been going through the motions of everyday life: Get up, sink my face into the pillow where her head once was, (I refuse to let the maid wash her pillowcase) drink in the sweet honeysuckle smell of her, take a shower and use my own fucking hand to try and satisfy this constant craving for her. Then I go about my day and wear myself out with punishing physical labor so I’ll be too tired to think of her at night. It isn’t working for shit. I miss her, I want her in my bed, my house… my life.

  That night when she left and I just let her go—it was the biggest mistake I ever made. Scarlet and I were in my barn with Randa Cook, the veterinarian, and old Midnight, the finest thoroughbred the great State of Texas has ever produced, was laboring to draw his last few breaths. Scarlet’s friend Penn showed up, skidding into the gravel driveway in a black Porsche with news that Scarlet’s father was in intensive care in Atlanta. Instead of going with her when she needed me most, I stayed with the horse until he died.

  “Sad day, hard night,” Randa had said to me, wrapping her hand around my bicep as I stood watching the taillights of the Porsche disappear into the distance. Randa was wearing a ball-cap, her long red hair tucked up under it, and dirt-streaked jeans that hugged her perky little ass, which she was well aware of. “You wanna go have a drink, Holt, make a toast to Midnight’s memory and to his son’s future wins? I’ve bet a good deal of money on Pridey winning the Derby.”

  “Not in the mood, now or ever,” I said, shifting away from her, in her opinion we were once a couple, the truth is we used to fuck a lot.

  She took off the cap, shook out her coppery hair, and gave me a pissed-off smirk, “Fine, go mourn in your own way, but that girl is one-hundred-percent city, Holt. How long do you think it would take before she’s had enough of country life and what you have to offer, no matter how good you are? My guess is she’d be heading back to Atlanta anyway, best to make a clean break, don’t you think? Besides, do you really believe you’re in love just because you finally let a woman sleep in your bed? Although that is a first for you, I thought you never fucked anyone inside your sacred home.”

  “Careful, Randa, beautiful-but-bitter doesn’t look good on you.”

  “Fuck you Holt, you always were a coldhearted bastard,” she said, “I don’t think I’ll be stopping by to bring you breakfast anymore.”

  “Sounds good to me, I thought we agreed on that a long time ago,” I said as she huffed back to the barn with the crew of ranch-hands who arrived to transport Midnight’s body back to the Corazon Perdido.

  Half an hour later I threw a pair of jeans and a clean shirt in a duffle bag and drove out to the McCauley’s ranch. Jon-Wylder was kicked back in a rocker on the front porch of the main house, and he took one look at me and said, “Fuck! Let’s get you to Atlanta, son.”

  “I don’t even know why I came out here, the jet’s already taken off, right? Scarlet and her friends are gone, I’m too late,” I said as he lit a cigarette, took a drag, and then crushed it out under the toe of his boot.

  “Yeah, Campbell-the-king-of-cool scrambled two of our pilots and sent them and the girls on the jet. Damn son, get your shit together. C’mon, it’s never too late. You can take the King Air, it’s a little slower and the stand-by pilot is old as fuck, but I don’t think that matters, does it? The way you look right now, I’d say for the first time in your life you’re more fucked up over a girl than a horse, that about the size of it?”

  “I thought you stopped smoking a long time ago, jackass. And I’m surprised to see you back here in Tallulah, why didn’t you go with them, you and Gigi seem pretty cozy,” I told him, avoiding the question and the shit-eating grin he was giving me. It was clear that he was fighting some demons of his own.

  “Women, it sucks when one gets under your skin, huh? Love is a slippery slope, my friend. So you got it bad for this Scarlet chick? I know how you feel, it’s fucking heaven and hell when the sex feels so good it’s like getting a hand-job from an angel.”

  “Worry about your own sex life, ‘specially since you don’t know jack-shit about love,” I said and his eyebrows shot up at the tone of my voice, a sound I didn’t even recognize.

  “Whoa, son, this doesn’t sound good, you need to go take care of business,” He said as we climbed into one of the ranch SUVs and headed to their private airstrip. “Hey, I was bullshitting you about the stand-by pilot, he’s a hotshot fighter-pilot just out of the air force, and the King Air is a turbo-prop, you’ll be in Atlanta in two hours. Better yet, I’ll fly up there with you, but I’m not ready to face Gigi right now.”

  We had plenty to drink on the plane and contrary to his ordinary style, Jon-Wylder wasn’t his usual tell-it-all self. It’s not like me to butt into his or anyone else’s business but the whiskey had loosened me up and it seemed like Gigi had wreaked havoc with him just as Scarlet had with me, so I asked what had him out of sorts.

  “I hate Campbell right now, but I feel sorry for him, too,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his jaw before gulping the rest of his drink. “You know I stay away from the ranch, let Campbell do his thing running the show. He’s got his finger in several dozen lucrative pies—cattle, horses, crops, oil, all sorts of ‘consumer goods’ with our ranch logo. Fuck, next year you can go down to the Ford dealership and buy a truck with the luxury Corazon Perdido Ranch package. Fucking cheapens everything, but he’s got the money flooding in and that’s all he cares about. And who am I to complain? My cut gets bigger and bigger, so you’d think he’d stay off my back, leave me in Austin and let me play my music. My brothers and I are gonna be included in the Forbes list of the 500 richest bastards on the planet this year. Can you believe that obnoxious shit? Guess our time has come at last, capitalism at its finest, Campbell and Walker are short-stroking it all over the place. Fucking power-mongers, ten years from now Walker will be governor of Texas. Did you know this year is the sesquicentennial of the Corazon Perdido Ranch? For those of us who don’t know what the fuck that means, it’s one-hundred-fifty-years of legendary horseshit. I don’t need to tell you the story of my great-great-grandfather Captain Jon Campbell coming to Texas after he and General Grant’s army whipped the shit outta the Confederates in Virginia. Well here we are a century and a half later realizing Captain Campbell’s dream of building the richest ranching empire the world has ever known. You know what bothers me most about the whole fucking thing? Our mother was a thoroughbred, the product of fine Texas breeding. A mix of Campbell, Wylder, and Walker bloodlines, every female in our family tree was a Daughter of the Republic of Texas, hell, even beyond that they were docents of the DAR. Then the genetic well dried up, and along comes big, dumb-but-pretty, fast-talking, slicker-than-owl-shit Wes McCauley, and my Granddaddy married my mother off like a prize heifer.”

  Jon-Wylder poured himself another drink and stared out the window searching for who knows what in the night sky that streamed by outside the plane.

  “I don’t know what my brothers are so proud of, basically we’re mongrels. And it worries me that we aren’t the gentile ranchers
we should be after so many generations, we have way too much of our low-life daddy in us.”

  “You’re sounding a little too Aryan, buddy. Which are you more upset about, that your family veered from the path of creating a supreme race of beings, or that your brother’s making so much money you can’t spend it fast enough?” I asked, grinning as I sipped my drink and he laughed so hard that he spit whiskey across the table.

  “Honestly? I’m pissed at my brother for not going after Emma-Lee Travis when she left him seven years ago,” he looked me in the eye, and yeah, we both knew that story as well as we knew the history of the ranch. “Gigi is in love with me, I’m sure of it, but she’s starry-eyed over Campbell, and he’ll ruin what she and I have out of his own personal misery.” He leaned forward and refilled my glass from a bottle of twenty-five year old Pappy Van Winkle’s, then sat back with a look of sadness I hadn’t seen on his face since his mother died. “You’re doing the right thing, son, by going after Scarlet. Don’t trip yourself up by making the same mistake Campbell did. Go get the girl if you think you love her, bring her home and make her yours, make love and babies, make a life. Campbell was too pig-headed to go after Emma and too stubborn to fall out of love with her. Now he’s turning into our father, cold and ruthless and not worth wasting the bullet it would take to kill him.”

  “Mr. McCauley,” the pilot called from the cockpit, “Would you gentlemen fasten your seatbelts please, we’re landing.”

  Jon-Wylder asked if he should wait for me, hold the plane at the airport for a while, but I told him— No, go on, I had it covered. Fuck if I wasn’t wrong about that. I got to the hospital and found the intensive care unit, Scarlet had told me how close she and her dad were, how devastated she’d be if anything ever happened to him. So there I was in the corridor just a few yards from where she stood with her face in her hands and this young doctor showed up and wrapped her in his arms. He was pale and thin and maybe a half inch taller than Scarlet, but she looked up at him as if he were God. Her hands clutched his shoulders as he leaned forward and kissed her forehead and asked clear as day— “Is this what you want, are you sure, Scarlet, you have to be sure if we’re going to do it.” She didn’t hesitate, just kept nodding her head and whispering “yes” and then she closed her eyes and smiled like an enormous weight had been lifted, and I didn’t stay to witness the rest.

  *

  So here I am two months later (fifty-six days, to be exact, I’ve counted every one of them) parked in front of Trinity University, wrangling myself out of a low, sleek convertible in the blasting early summer heat, crunching my body into the jacket of a new suit that feels too tight, and too constricting, and totally unlike me. But if this is what it takes to make Scarlet O’Neal reconsider and say goodbye to that skinny, anemic looking doctor, to give us another chance, well, I’m determined to do whatever it takes.

  I stand at the back of the auditorium while Scarlet accepts her diploma and her buddy, Penn, delivers the usual ‘let’s go forth and conquer the world’ valedictory speech. Now I’m out on the campus lawn under the shade of ancient live-oak trees trying to keep cool while I wait for Scarlet. Suddenly, there she is, smiling, tossing her cap in the air, waves of dark, glossy hair fall past her shoulders, she’s radiant and glowing. Her huge amber-brown eyes, the exact color of good whiskey, are framed with black mascara which she doesn’t need, her lashes are so thick and dark they’re erotically obscene. Her lips are a perfect plump bow and she’s wearing red lipstick, which she also doesn’t need, she’s so shockingly beautiful. The color on her lips is like waving a red flag in front of my twitching cock and I want that mouth on that cock NOW.

  A woman who might be her aunt or a friend of the family helps her peel off the rayon graduation gown and she looks like a vision, a fucking mirage, too good to be true. The dress she’s wearing is short, white and wispy, tight at the top with a crinkly soft skirt, it pushes her breasts up so they’re perfect little half-moons, the tops barely peeking out, moving as her breath flows in and out. She’s teetering in spike-heeled sandals, bare, tanned legs that go on for days, and slim, toned arms hugging a man who must be her father. Penn whoops and grabs Scarlet and they jump up and down, squealing and laughing, cheek to cheek, talking nonstop. I walk toward her glad as hell that I’m wearing a jacket to cover my instant erection and when her amber eyes meet mine I exhale and it feels like I’ve been holding my breath since the last moment I saw her.

  “Holt?” she says and her voice is high and reedy, like she’s just seen a ghost.

  “Hey, beauty… um, Scarlet. Congratulations, I just… stopped by to say good luck… with your life… your future,” I say and my voice stumbles and catches in my throat. I can barely breathe or swallow and I’m sweating even though we’re standing in the shade of the massive trees, but I can’t help it, she has that effect on me. Her eyes widen and turn that unreal honey color that happens when she’s surprised or shocked or about to come. Under my jacket I’m in pain, rock-hard for this girl, harder than I’ve ever been for any woman, and I know I shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t have come to San Antonio, because it’s only gonna be worse when she walks out of my life again.

  “Thanks,” she says and drags her eyes away from me, but when she glances down demurely, the thickest eyelashes in the world rest on cheeks that flame scarlet—like her beautiful name. I let myself smile and relax, feel a touch of relief because the people gathered around her don’t know what I know, she’s missed me and she can’t help checking out my cock.

  “Hey, Holt Corrigan? I remember when you played for Green Bay, and Scarlet mentioned you once or twice or a few times, nice of you to come,” the man who’s probably her father says. He’s my height, nice looking, smiling, pumping my hand as he winks at Scarlet. “I’m Chandler O’Neal, Scarlet’s father and you probably know Penelope’s dad, Gus. He’s a huge, huge fan of yours.”

  A small crowd of Scarlet’s friends and family circle around us, talking, clapping me on the back, words flying, humming, I meet her mother, her older sister, and Scarlet and I ignore them, focused on each other. How did it go so wrong, what did I miss? The fucking presumptuous doctor is nowhere in sight and I get the feeling that he isn’t in the picture at all, he’s not part of her group, her life, she’s not with him, maybe I jumped the gun assuming she’d go back to him so readily.

  Penn reaches up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek and I have to bend down, she’s so tiny, she slaps me HARD and hisses in my ear— “Hurt her again and I’ll tie you to a fucking ant hill, slice off your dick, and feed it to the coyotes!”

  “Got it,” I say lifting my fingers to the handprint on my face and just hap-hap-happy as shit that Penn thinks I have a chance with Scarlet.

  I sign a graduation program for Penn’s dad, say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘thank you’ as he babbles on, but all I can see is Scarlet. Her eyes have gone from surprised to wounded, her teeth dig into her bottom lip as she tries to get her bearings, and I’m sick that I’ve hurt her when that was never ever my intention.

  “Are we going for lunch or what? It’s hotter than Hades out here, Lord the humidity, my hair has completely fallen,” the woman who I thought was Scarlet’s aunt but turns out to be her much older sister says. “Mother, invite Scarlet’s guest to come with us to the Argyle and let’s go for God’s sake.”

  “Oh. Well, we’re having lunch at the Argyle… Holt, is it? It’s a private club let me give you the directions and you’re welcome to join our family. Of course if you were only dropping by to offer your congratulations to my daughter and need to be on your way, we understand completely,” Scarlet’s nose-in-the-air Mother says, dabbing perspiration from her cleavage with a tissue.

  “I know where the Argyle is, thanks, I’d like to join you,” I say and finally Scarlet finds her voice.

  “You never called, I only got two texts from you. One asking how my dad was doing, and the other was the thumbs-up emoji when I said he was going to be alright,” she says ignoring her m
other’s seething stare and taking a step back.

  I step toward her and hold her gaze, “I thought you were back with your ex, it looked that way. In the hospital corridor I heard him ask if it was what you wanted.”

  “You heard what? What looked what way… are you dreaming? Why would you think that, it looked that way? You were in…”

  “Atlanta. I came after you, about an hour or so after you left. Midnight died and Jon-Wylder and I flew up to… I got to the hospital, as fast as I could… but I should have left the damn horse and gone with you in the first place.”

  “Alright, sorry I slapped you, there will be no ant hill, this time!” Penn says. “Oh, Mr. and Mrs. O’Neal, just to let you know, Holt doesn’t use big words, he doesn’t waste many words at all. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know plenty, I think he just kind of hordes them and doles them out a few at a time. Thought you should be aware of that, don’t underestimate him, he might just turn out to be a pretty good guy,” she winks and hugs Scarlet tight and says she and her dad have to go, they’re flying to California to meet with the CEO of Alice-Anne’s Farm Markets before she starts her internship at the store in Austin. Scarlet and Penn are laughing and crying, clinging to each other, and I can’t help but hope that some of Scarlet’s tears are happy tears because our two month separation was a colossal misunderstanding.

  “Daddy, Mother, why don’t you two go on ahead and Scarlet and I will ride with Holt. I’m Holly, Scarlet’s slightly older and way more beautiful sister. GO, Mother, we’ll meet you there!”

  “Alright then, but hurry up, we have reservations and they weren’t easy to come by with all the Trinity graduates and their families celebrating. Tell them not to dawdle, Chandler, the Argyle is very strict, thank God Scarlet’s gentleman friend had the sense to wear a suit,” Scarlet’s mother says and Scarlet shushes her and casts a pleading glance at her father.