EXCERPT

New place, new town, new beginning. Exactly what Travis needed after too many years spent living out of a beat up old travel trailer and his pickup. Too many years chasing the rodeo circuit and the big money. Too many visits to emergency rooms to get pieced back together after another bull got cantankerous and took it out on him. His last near-death experience had put the fear of God in him and convinced him to seek a new way to make his living.

He stretched his arms high, trying to get the kinks out of his back. Grimacing, he heard the familiar Pop! Pop! Pop! of vertebrae trying to settle into proper position. For a man not yet thirty, he felt older than time itself on some mornings. But he refused to let this be one of those days.

As he looked across the ranch yard from the porch of the foreman’s house, he grinned. Damn fine spread old man Thompson had here in the heart of Wyoming. A bunkhouse finer than a lot of hotels he’d slept in; a stable so clean you could almost eat right off the floor. And a main house that looked pretty fancy. A Victorian, he thought people called the style. Too much fru-fru for his taste, but he liked the simple one-bedroom foreman’s house enough. His new home.

Home. Hell of a long time since he’d had one of those. He planned on working his tail off to impress Daniel Thompson so he could stay here a spell. Of course he could always wander on back to Texas and maybe work with his family on their ranch. Didn’t hold any appeal, though. He and his dad hadn’t parted on the best of terms the last few times he’d stopped by. He wasn’t even sure he was welcome there anymore. Darn his dad’s stubborn hide!

He planted his battered Stetson on still wet hair and headed toward the main house. As the new foreman about to begin his first day on the job, he had a hundred questions for the owner of the Crooked T. One of them being what had made Daniel give him the job? True enough, he’d grown up on one of the biggest ranches in Texas and new his way around the chores. But all that seemed a lifetime ago. There had to be more men out there than he cared to think about capable of taking this position. So why him?

Travis ambled to the back of the house, the kitchen area. Like on most ranches, the front door was used for company and the back door for everyone else. He put one boot on the first step of the porch and knew he’d never ask those questions about why he was here. He wouldn’t risk jinxing his good luck at running into Daniel after his final rodeo. Working here in a part of the country he’d come to like, he’d have a chance to get his head on straight and figure out what he wanted to do next with his life. Invest in his own ranch? Could do that, he had the prize money he’d set aside and it was considerable.

Time to put those decisions aside for now and get on with the job he’d been hired to do.

He raised his hand to knock on the door, and then froze at the gruff sound of Daniel’s voice. “Lie still!  I ain’t got all day to get this done.”

A loud SMACK! drifted through the screen door, immediately followed by a feminine yelp.

“Dammit, Dad, I’m lying as still as I can!” came a definitely unhappy feminine protest.  “It hurts!”

Jodi?  Daniel’s daughter?  Travis had seen her yesterday and been all kinds of impressed. Cute gal, a little young for him, being only twenty. Maybe twenty-one. Sexy, too. Oh, yeah, he’d been impressed by those mile-long legs in skin-tight jeans, and by a short top that showed off a real nice amount of skin. He’d had more than his share of hot little rodeo bunnies chasing after him when the times were good, so he was plenty used to “cute” and “sexy.” But there’d been something else about Miss Jodi Thompson that had caught his attention. Still, she was not only too young for him but she was also the boss’s daughter. Hands off should be his motto around here.

He’d stood there thinking about the shapely redhead and had barely noted the continued sounds of what could only be a man’s hand connecting sharply over and over with a bare backside. But when she gritted out in fury, “Stop it, Dad! Dammit, stop!” his attention moved to the kitchen again.

Stopping wasn’t what Daniel had in mind. He made his position clear with a brisk round of loud swats that had to have stung. Travis figured the swats were well deserved. He didn’t particularly like a woman cussing, especially not her parent. He’d been raised to show respect.

******

Jodi decided that she must have fallen out of favor with the good Lord. This was NOT how she’d envisioned spending her summer. Sweat trickling down her back, standing in the hot sun holding yet another fence post to be repaired. The mountains off in the distance looked so appealing. They were no doubt a much cooler place to be than here in the middle of miles of pastureland with heat seeming to roll up off the ground in waves.

Irritated, she glanced over at her nemesis re-stringing the barbed wire not six feet away. The new foreman’s biceps bulged with the effort, stretching the fabric of his sleeves to their limit. Legs solidly planted, the muscles in his thighs looked rock hard in his faded and worn Levi’s. But then a man who’d made his living for years by using his leg muscles to try and stay seated on a determined-he-didn’t bull would look like Travis McVey did.

She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of one hand. Sweating was gross. Oddly, though, the way his sweat-stained shirt stuck to his back only added to his masculinity. If anything, the wet shirt highlighted the way his back muscles rippled. Class A stud, as her best friend Aubrey would call him. A fact that annoyed Jodi to no end, especially when he basically ignored her. Except when he ordered her around.

“Hold it up straight,” Travis gritted out, sliding a glance her direction. His caramel brown eyes sparked with aggravation. “Pay attention to what we're doing here.”

“I am! This isn't rocket science, you know. I'm holding a damn fence post, that's all,” she countered, tired of this chore and being bossed around. They'd been riding the fences all morning, mending spots here and there. She wanted to go take a cool shower, and then hang out by the pool behind the main house. She wanted to stretch out on a chaise and sip on lemonade the rest of the day, maybe call her friends.

He thumbed his hat up a notch so that she clearly saw his scowl. "You've got a definite attitude problem, don't you? Nothing but a pampered little princess.”

She felt herself blush, remembering how he'd heard her father comment on her poor attitude several days ago when she'd first met Travis. Right after she’d just received a sound spanking. "I DON'T have an attitude problem. I'm just tired of this particular job, and tired of your harping at me all the time." She narrowed her eyes at him. “And I’m NOT a ‘pampered little princess!’ If I were, I sure wouldn’t be out here baking in the hot sun, breaking every fingernail doing chores with you.”

He moved closer to her. Too close. Wrapping the wire around the post and then twisting the end tight to finish attaching it in place, he said, “Reckon it's time you and I parted for the day, darlin'. Before you find yourself going bottom up and getting a butt warming from me.” He stood, towering over her by a good six inches, shaking his head in disgust. “I'll check the rest of this fence myself. You take yourself a ride and do some thinking. Thinking about how you're either going to give me a good day's work, or about how you'll find some other way to fill your time here this summer.”

If only she had that kind of choice! She didn’t know why her dad was so adamant about her working on the ranch this summer. Usually she helped out some, played a lot. And she sure didn’t see why her dad seemed so impressed with Mr. Travis McVey. She wasn’t impressed. Well, maybe except for his body, but then what woman with eyes wouldn’t be.

Again, frustrated with her physical attraction to him, she snapped, “How dare you talk to me like that! You work for me.” She took a quick step when a vein pulsed in his neck, his jaw hardened.

“Wrong,” he countered, lifting his battered hat to swipe at the beads of perspiration on his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “I work for your father. YOU work for ME, according to Daniel. Which means YOU do as I say, how I say, when I say. Do I make myself real clear?”

Jodi curled her hands into fists and gnashed her teeth. He was right, and she her father would have the same opinion. She needed some space from this stubborn man. The worst of it was that she needed the space even more to figure out how she would possibly work with him all summer and not want to jump his bones. Idiot that she was, she'd wanted him since that first night when he'd come back to eat supper after her spanking. There was just something about his crooked smile, about the amusement that simmered in his eyes most of the time, about the deep warmth of his Texas drawl.

“I said do you understand?”

“Yes, SIR! Anything you say, Sir. How high do I jump, Sir?”

Crooked T Ranch is download only but is available in print in the RANCH HEAT trilogy available from Lulu, Romantic Spankings and Amazon.