Rodeo rebel, p.17
Rodeo Rebel, page 17
He didn’t want to lose her any more than she wanted to lose him.
And the spark between them was more than alive and well. It was a fire that wouldn’t go out.
Beside her, her friends were encouraging her as the bidding started, but she wasn’t ready to show her hand just yet. Not that she wanted Gavin to wonder if she was going to bid on him. She guessed that he could see right through to her heart the same way she’d read his when he walked down the runway.
But they’d spent hours and hours planning this auction event together, and she wasn’t about to let her prize stud go for any less than he deserved. Gavin Kingsley held a worth greater than she’d given him credit for. He was so much more than a handsome bull rider. So much more than a successful rancher.
Everything she needed to know about him she’d seen the day he’d held her through an anxiety attack. And again the night he’d helped her start a memorial blaze for her foster sister.
“Bid soon,” Kendra urged her as the crowd quieted for the bidding war between two determined competitors. “They’re already higher than any of the other bachelors.”
Turning around to scout out the competing bidders, Lauryn recognized Camille Jorgensen as one of them. The other woman was a petite brunette in a beaded blue sari.
The auctioneer waited for a bid to top Camille’s latest. “Going once, going—”
Lauryn raised her bidding paddle, her eyes on Gavin, who stood beside the auctioneer. “Ten thousand.”
A startled gasp from the crowd told her no one was topping the bid. But all the while, she didn’t shift her attention from Gavin.
The man who’d promised he’d never leave her if she gave him another chance. She hoped he could see what her gesture meant, even if she’d been bidding with his money. She wanted to give them both a second chance.
“Going once, going twice, sold to bidder number twenty-nine!” the auctioneer called before moving on to the evening’s final bachelors.
Vaguely, Lauryn felt her friends’ hugs and heard their congratulations before she made her way toward the back of the room near the steps to the stage. Angling through the crowd, words of congratulations and even a bit of teasing echoing around her with every step closer. Finally, she reached the golden rope and moved it aside to claim her prize. Claim her man.
Gavin was already waiting for her, his arms outstretched.
Lauryn stepped into them, holding him tight. Breathing in the cedar scent of his aftershave as she tucked her head against his chest. The rest of the arena faded as they stood in the shadows of the fundraiser.
They held one another for a long moment before Gavin edged back to look into her eyes. “I’m so sorry for not seeing everything I had in front of me. I’ve been so busy being hurt and angry with my father that I didn’t see the hurt I was causing my brothers. To you.”
His hand cradled her face as he tipped it up to his.
She melted at the contact, appreciating his words even if they weren’t necessary any longer. She had seen the truth of them in his eyes when he’d walked out onto that stage earlier. He carried pain and baggage from the past just as she did. But they hadn’t let it break them.
And she wasn’t going to let it steal their future. “I was hasty and on edge, all too willing to take offense because I was—”
“You were entitled to being on edge.” He cupped her shoulders, fingers massaging lightly. “It was the worst-possible day for you.”
She shook her head, her heart aching with how close she’d come to ruining things with him forever. “No. The worst-possible day for me is the one where I lose you.”
If she’d had any doubts about how he felt about her, they evaporated now as his shoulders slumped with relief. She hadn’t realized how tense he’d still been until that moment.
“Lauryn, I love you, more than I can express. But I want to have the time to find the words to explain how precious you are to me.” His hands rubbed up and down her arms, as if he could rub the truth of them into the skin bared by her halter-top dress. “And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make things work between us. To make things as happy and beautiful as you deserve.”
Her heart fluttered. She shivered with the feelings his touch stirred. Awareness, and so much more.
“Then let’s start now,” she urged, remembering well that forever wasn’t always guaranteed. With Gavin at her side, she wanted to keep living her dreams, working to make them come true every single day. “Let’s begin our future tonight. I love you, too, and I don’t want to wait another day to begin the happiness we both deserve.”
Gavin wrapped his arms around her again, pulling her against his chest and holding her tight against his crisp lapel. “I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I’m not going to question it. I’m just going to make sure you never regret choosing me.”
Feeling her first and best dream already coming true, Lauryn kissed him with all the love in her heart, taking her sweet time to do it right. Thoroughly.
Lucky for her, they had forever.
* * *
Look for the next Kingsland Ranch story,
coming Spring 2023.
And if you liked these Western romances
from Joanne Rock, don’t miss the
Return to Catamount trilogy!
Available now!
Rocky Mountain Rivals
One Colorado Night
A Colorado Claim
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The Inheritance Test
by Anne Marsh
One
“Prove you’re Masterson material in the next ninety days or you’re out.”
Declan Masterson had never backed down from a challenge in his life, but this one was a shock.
In the years since his adoptive father J.J. had plucked him and his brother Nash from foster care, dropping them into the exotic world of Hollywood, J.J. had blustered and threatened whenever Declan had failed to live up to the illustrious Masterson standard of a ruthless Hollywood player. In the past, Declan had responded to J.J.’s criticism by going off on another of his wild adventures, but he’d turned over a new, reformed leaf when J.J. had finally named him as his heir apparent.
“You’d better define out.” He sprawled in his chair, watching J.J. carefully. J.J. looked relaxed in his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, suit jacket discarded, but underestimating him was like mixing up snakes and celebrities in Hollywood’s famous Runyon Canyon. You only made that mistake once.
“Fired,” J.J. snapped back. “No longer provisional CEO of Masterson Entertainment. I have an offer to buy this company—and they don’t need you.”
Much as he pretended it didn’t, J.J.’s criticism stung. Declan’s jaw tightened involuntarily. He’d spent two years under J.J.’s thumb earning the chance to run the family company, to green-light his own projects and make films that would change people’s lives. Despite years learning moviemaking from the ground up—
because J.J. would hand him nothing and he earned it or did without—now it could all be taken away.
Because he wasn’t, and never had been, a true Masterson.
“I’ve tripled our revenues,” he pointed out. “I’m damned good at what I do. We both know it.”
Masterson Entertainment produced films in partnership with other major film studios and was about to ink another multi-film cofinancing deal. While Declan could walk away and start his own film studio—his acting career had earned him millions—he’d have to give up projects he felt passionately about if J.J. followed through on his threat to sell. He’d have to start over from nothing.
He’d vowed he’d never be nothing again.
J.J. pinned him with a glare. “You’ve made a joke of the Masterson name with your adventures. In the last two years, you’ve free-climbed the tallest casino in Las Vegas, headlined a Megavalanche bike race in the Alps and dove with great white sharks.”
He’d also run the company and, in the year prior to that, made a blockbuster movie that had outperformed its projected revenue at the box office. Those contributions were outweighed by his reputation as the playboy prince of film.
Declan couldn’t explain the restlessness that constantly drove him. He simply had to lose himself in intense, thrilling activities. It was a drive that he’d—mostly—channeled into his career as one of Hollywood’s leading action heroes, and now into Masterson Entertainment. But since he could only be on set so much, he also climbed, skied and raced as fast as he could. The more extreme the conditions, the more he loved it. In the past few years he’d earned a reputation as a fierce competitor in the world’s top sailing races. And when there wasn’t a race or a film or a business deal to be made, yes, there were women.
“Those things would be fine,” J.J. continued, since clearly his definition of fine was the only one that mattered, “in moderation. Instead, you turn everything into a spectacle, with a film crew, ridiculous bets and women. You proposed to an actress by scaling the wall to her hotel balcony. You did this at midnight, in boxer briefs and with a candy ring from a gas station.”
Declan grinned. “Harry Winston was closed, so I improvised. You left out the part where she refused and the paparazzi caught the whole thing on camera.”
He’d fallen off the respectability wagon rather publicly that night in Beverly Hills, but it had been funny, at least until the photos had surfaced and his impulsivity had been commemorated in the tabloids and on dozens of celebrity gossip websites.
Proposing to Jessie St. Chiles, his costar in his last film, had been an impulse. They’d been friends with benefits, but Declan knew he wasn’t marriage material. His own biological father had walked out early and J.J.’s wife had divorced him after just six months of marriage. She’d been long gone before Declan and Nash had arrived at the Malibu mansion. Jessie knew he wasn’t actually looking to get married and they’d both had a good laugh.
“When people hear your name, they wonder what ludicrous stunt you’ll pull next,” J.J. growled.
“Which is very on-brand for us.”
J.J.’s face darkened. “It is—for our film talent and our marketing department. But when you were racing in the Alps two months ago, you were off-grid for two weeks. Our cofinancing deal went bad and we lost a ten-picture deal because no one could find the CEO. You’ve spent more time out of the office than in. No one takes you seriously in the boardroom because the only time we can count on you to show up is for the start of a race. You’re no Masterson.”
“Not by birth,” he agreed. J.J. had adopted him and Nash at the ages of eight and six. J.J.’s own biological son was estranged. Depending on who told the story, Revere had either left the Malibu mansion at seventeen or been kicked out. Either way, he hadn’t been heard from since.
J.J. flipped a photograph across the desk. The camera had caught the woman in the picture off guard, her eyes half-closed, lips parted. Late twenty-something with brown hair pulled back in an unremarkable ponytail, she wore a boring, white polo shirt with an embroidered logo. Martha’s Kids.
“This is the daughter of Bryant Palsgrave, a successful Wall Street investor from one of New England’s oldest families. Wealthy. Discreet. Her brother could be a future president.”
“Charming,” he said dryly, unsure of J.J.’s angle.
That kind of stultifying, quiet lifestyle was a pretty prison. Fortunately, old money families wouldn’t have anything to do with someone like him, an actor, recklessly decadent and from a working-class background that J.J.’s adoption could never compensate for. Declan had no problem working his ass off—he’d spent his twenties building his film career, starting as a stuntman and then moving into feature film acting. He’d made a lot of money and been on the cover of magazines, but now he wanted to produce.
Growing up in Malibu, his neighbors had all been in the industry: movie stars, producers, screenwriters, musicians. The gated homes might cost north of seven million dollars, but when your kid went down the street to play, the mantel held an Oscar or Golden Globe. Bodyguards and luxury cars, with paparazzi lurking behind the well-manicured palm trees and dodging the dog walkers to the stars, were the norm. As a working class transplant, Declan had been shocked and then enchanted. He’d yearned to be part of those beautiful people with a magnetism and presence that marked them as members of a powerful Hollywood tribe.
J.J. followed the headshot with a glossier sheet of paper, a press release for a New England boat race that made Declan laugh. The participants were sailing two-person keelboats, just twenty-two feet long with a shallow draft and one mast. He’d raced faster and bigger when he’d been a teenager.
“The race around Martha’s Vineyard next month raises funds for charity. One local and one celebrity per boat. The fastest boat wins the million-dollar prize for the charity of their choice. Charlotte Palsgrave needs a partner and I owe her father a favor.”
“You’re joking,” he snapped. He raced million-dollar yachts with a full crew in the world’s most extreme weather conditions. No way would he partner with a spoiled, local, blue-blooded princess in what amounted to a glorified dinghy.
J.J. leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “You will partner with Charlotte and win this race for her—and you will be the perfect Masterson representative. Charming, well-bred, disciplined. There will be no scandals. You will prove, once and for all, that you are a worthy heir to the Masterson legacy and that I can count on you to be where you’re needed. In exchange, I will refuse the buyout offer I have and will sign Masterson Entertainment over to you. You’ll own it, lock, stock and barrel, and you will have sole control.”
It was just a race, he told himself, and not even a hard one. One lap around Martha’s Vineyard, some photo ops with the blue-blooded princess and he’d be on his way back to Hollywood with the real prize: his inheritance.
“Win this race,” J.J. said. “And it’s all yours.”
Declan didn’t know why J.J. had decided to finally back his bid to lead the family company—or why he’d consider selling the precious Masterson film studio. J.J. had a pathological need to be in control. And he loved nothing better than designing a series of challenges for “his boys,” challenges that only underscored how unworthy he thought they were of whatever prize he’d dangled before them. Nash had walked away from J.J.’s tests five years ago, immersing himself in his oil and chemical company. Declan had done the same—until two years ago, when he’d given into temptation and returned. The only thing that had made it tolerable was knowing he could see the finish line—a line that J.J. had just moved. Could he still win this? He thought he could—but he’d also learned a thing or two during his years in Hollywood. One of the most important lessons? Always, always get the deal in writing.
“Draw up a contract,” he said. “Thirty days. In exchange for no bad publicity and one race win, I get Masterson Entertainment.”
He wouldn’t lose.
Copyright © 2023 by Anne Marsh
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ISBN-13: 9780369724489
Rodeo Rebel
Copyright © 2023 by Joanne Rock
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