Rodeo rebel, p.1
Rodeo Rebel, page 1
“Can you please just be straight with me?”
“Of course.” He arched a light brown eyebrow at her. “I don’t appreciate that you think the worst of me. And given the way my own father just erased me from his life, it gets under my skin that people are determined to write me off.”
The accusation hit home with pinpoint accuracy.
No matter that she believed Gavin had earned his reputation, a part of her still felt the sting of his allegation.
“So, if we’re going to work together on this bachelor auction, I’d appreciate it if you’d take the time to get to know me. Go on a date with me, Lauryn.” That trademark smile returned at full wattage, a potent weapon in his seductive arsenal, as he lowered his voice a notch. “Find out for yourself if I’m as bad as everyone says.”
* * *
Rodeo Rebel by Joanne Rock is part of the Kingsland Ranch series.
Dear Reader,
When I have a fun idea for a story, I like to explore it every which way. After seeing the Barclay sisters through an inheritance drama in my Harlequin Desire series Return to Catamount, I kept thinking about what a problematic last will and testament would do in a family of sons. Before I even finished my series of sisters, I was already deep in conversation with the men of Kingsland Ranch.
You see, these four sons of Duke Kingsley are in for a rough ride as they navigate their mercurial father’s final wishes. I thought I would send women into their lives at the worst possible time, forcing them to deal with romantic feelings as they each come to terms with what their home and family really means to them. For Gavin Kingsley, that means Lauryn Hamilton, the local charity director who really needs his help—right when he needs to leave Montana for good.
I hope you’ll enjoy the Kingsland Ranch series as much as I enjoyed writing it. As always, you can learn more about my upcoming books on my website, joannerock.com, including the release dates for all of the upcoming Kingsland stories!
Happy reading,
Joanne Rock
Joanne Rock
Rodeo Rebel
USA TODAY bestselling author Joanne Rock credits her decision to write romance to a book she picked up during a flight delay that engrossed her so thoroughly, she didn’t mind at all when her flight was delayed two more times. Giving her readers the chance to escape into another world has motivated her to write over one hundred books for a variety of Harlequin series.
Books by Joanne Rock
Harlequin Desire
Return to Catamount
Rocky Mountain Rivals
One Colorado Night
A Colorado Claim
Kingsland Ranch
Rodeo Rebel
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
You can also find Joanne Rock on Facebook, along with other Harlequin Desire authors, at Facebook.com/HarlequinDesireAuthors!
For my three amazing sons,
Taylor, Camden and Maxim.
I could not be more proud of you.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Excerpt from The Inheritance Test by Anne Marsh
Prologue
Gavin Kingsley couldn’t pack his bags fast enough.
“You knew about this all along, and yet you said nothing to me.” He stalked around the built-in dresser inside his spacious closet while he fumed aloud for the benefit of his oldest half brother, Levi Kingsley, currently on the other end of their teleconference.
Even now, Levi’s face was framed in the tablet screen perched on a shelf between a display case of watches and the charging station for Gavin’s electronics. He’d lived in this custom-built house for all of two years after agreeing to purchase land next door to the western Montana–based Kingsland Ranch, where he’d been raised. Somehow, his half brothers had convinced him to oversee the growing stud program at Kingsland, even though their father—Duke Kingsley—had never viewed Gavin as favorably as his sons by Duke’s first wife.
Foolishly, Gavin had allowed himself to believe his estrangement from his father would be temporary. That Duke would welcome him back into the fold, and they’d smooth over past differences so that working together and living next door to Kingsland all made sense.
Only to be disinherited by his father’s surprise will.
The memory of that moment—of the realization that he’d been an interloper in his own life, that his own father hadn’t thought he deserved the Kingsley name—threatened to rip another hole through him.
Levi’s voice cut through the maelstrom. “Gavin, I had no idea Dad intended to leave Kingsland Ranch solely to Quinton and me.”
Not interested in his brother’s explanations, Gavin swept out a drawerful of T-shirts and shoved them into a duffel bag. He’d sell the house as soon as possible. For now, he needed to catch the first flight out of Montana.
Far from Kingsland Ranch.
“I call bullshit.” He yanked open a drawer of workout gear and grabbed a handful of items to add to his going-away collection of clothes. “You’re a trustee of the estate. Obviously, you had to know in order to be named in the living trust—”
“Just because I’m the trustee doesn’t mean I knew Dad’s directives until the lawyer read them to us this afternoon,” Levi shot back, his deeply olive skin showing a tinge of red as he got more fired up. He sat in his home office at the Kingsland main house, the same home where Duke had died of a heart attack two weeks before. Behind Levi, Gavin could still see the wooden sign with interlocking horseshoes that made up the ranch’s logo. “The only reason he created that trust was so the estate could avoid probate and we could maintain day-to-day operations without any gap in management.”
Gavin pulled out a garment bag to hold his dress shirts and suits.
“I find that tough to believe, given all the closed-door meetings you and Dad had about the trust and his plans for Kingsland.” Bad enough that his brother had lied to him by omission all these years, allowing Gavin to believe he’d have part ownership of the ranch and a say in the daily operations. But his own father hadn’t thought Gavin warranted a footnote in his will.
But then, Duke had long looked at Gavin as less than worthy. Duke’s two sons, Levi and Quinton, had been born of a love match between Duke and Adele Boudreaux, the daughter of one of the most successful horse breeders in Texas. After Adele’s sudden death in a riding accident, Duke had married for convenience’s sake, turning to his housekeeper, Isla Mitchell, as a temporary nanny for the boys. Gavin’s mother had never escaped the taint of that domestic situation in her wealthy husband’s eyes. After their divorce five years later, Gavin continued to have privileges at the ranch, but he’d spent a considerable part of his youth attempting to gain his dad’s approval. Tough to do when he hadn’t lived at Kingsland full-time. He and his mother had a downgraded lifestyle, where Gavin felt more like a visitor in his father’s home than a son. Later, in his bull-riding days, he’d quit striving for approval and indulged his wild side, content to stir Duke’s anger in a classic case of “some attention is better than no attention.” But Gavin had cleaned up his act years ago and assumed he’d be included in the family business eventually.
Hell, he’d had faith in that idea so completely he’d allowed Levi to talk him into building his home next door to the Kingsley acreage.
“Well, believe it,” Levi fired back, shoving a hand through dark hair that favored his French Creole mother. “And you can’t leave now when we’re about to launch the stud program. We can’t do this without you—”
“Excellent. I can’t deny I’m pleased to hear that,” Gavin retorted. “Considering the blow I’ve been dealt this morning—to say nothing of Dad’s illegitimate son, who got screwed over even more than me—I like the idea of the new business failing spectacularly without me.”
Even though he’d worked his ass off to assemble all the right pieces and the right horses to launch the Kingsland breeding program. He hadn’t thought twice about pooling his resources with his brothers’, assuming they would all benefit from Kingsland’s success. Now he wished like hell he were launching the stud services under his own ranch’s name. He needed to consult a lawyer to figure out how to untwine his finances from his family’s.
“Gav, the kickoff event is just a few weeks away. And we already promised Lauryn Hamilton that Kingsland would sponsor the bachelor auction to benefit her horse rescue since the timing coincides with our launch.” Levi leveled a scowl at him. “Do you mean to tell me you’re going to let her down after all the hoops she jumped through to pitch this thing to us?”
Gavin’s hand paused on the zipper of the garment bag as he envisioned Lauryn’s disappointed—gorgeous—face if the Kingsley family backed out of the fundraiser she’d worked tirelessly to pull together. He’d been the point person for Kingsland and had even promised her he’d go onstage to offer himself as a bachelor.
Something he wouldn’t have done for anyone but her, a woman who’d intrigued him for years yet had previously kep
Part of that may have been because Gavin had run afoul of her adoptive father, who also happened to be the local sheriff. There’d been a long-standing enmity between him and Sheriff Hamilton after Gavin had torn through his newly planted cornfield on four-wheelers at midnight with some buddies when he’d been all of fifteen. Clearly, the man didn’t believe in character redemption, even though Gavin had personally replanted the field. The sheriff had continued to hound him for the slightest misstep for years.
But her dad might not have been the only reason for the distance Lauryn kept between them. After college, she’d spent two years in Duke Kingsley’s employ, working as his administrative assistant while she saved money to start her horse rescue since she was a passionate champion of providing homes for animals that had been neglected or abandoned.
Lauryn’s rescue, Hooves and Hearts, now operated just a few miles down the road from Kingsland in the small town of Silent Spring, Montana. But given that she’d worked closely with Gavin’s father for two years, he had to wonder if part of her refusal to give him the time of day—apart from this new fundraiser, Studs for Sale—was because Duke’s view of Gavin had further tainted her own.
Making him wonder...as Duke’s administrative assistant, had Lauryn been privy to the will that left Gavin with nothing?
Gritting his teeth, he shouldered the duffel bag and tried to collect himself before answering more calmly. “It’s not me who let Lauryn down. If the event doesn’t happen, it’s your father’s doing, not mine.”
If it had been just a matter of money, Gavin wouldn’t have even cared. He could make his own fortune, Kingsley wealth be damned.
But he’d been denied the ranch. His home. His livelihood. Something he’d assumed was his birthright as a Kingsley. A fresh wave of fury threatened to drag him under again, and he had to shake himself to ward off the anger.
Levi launched into another argument, but Gavin switched off the device to end the connection. He was too angry to field questions about his decisions right now. The hurt was too raw. The resentment all-consuming. His dad hadn’t even bothered to explain the omission of his other sons in the will. Gavin and Clayton Reynolds—a son by a mistress—hadn’t warranted even that much.
Gavin needed some time to get his head around what had happened so he could forge a new course for himself. One that didn’t have anything to do with Kingsland Ranch.
Rationally, he knew he would miss working with Quinton and Levi. It hadn’t been their fault Gavin had been disinherited. And he would miss their help with the stud program he’d taken so much pride in developing.
But he wasn’t about to just hand over all his hard work to his brothers now. The breeding business couldn’t launch with the Kingsland name on it—not when Gavin was no longer in the Kingsley fold. They’d need to draw up a division of assets.
A divorce from his own family.
Yet—as he stalked through the living area of the massive home he’d built to overlook the Madison River, which snaked past Kingsland’s grazing pastures and created a boundary between his holding and his family’s—Gavin was surprised to realize that despite all the hell that had rained down on his head today, his thoughts still circled around the fact that he’d have to disappoint Lauryn Hamilton. But not even the lure of her mysterious hazel eyes or her deep, throaty laugh that always sounded like she was thinking something slightly wicked could make him stay where his contributions weren’t acknowledged or appreciated.
He’d kept Lauryn safely in his personal fantasies for years. For now, she’d just have to stay there since the last thing he needed was any attachment to this godforsaken place.
One
Fit to be tied, Lauryn Hamilton steered her pickup truck along the Madison River, past the well-known Montana ranch where she’d worked for two years. But Kingsland, with its interlocking-horseshoes logo and endless acreage, wasn’t her destination today.
The road was paved and smooth, making it impossible to kick up a cloud of dust and gravel the way she would have preferred as she drove toward the man who had stood her up this afternoon. Because this level of anger required some kind of physical outlet. If not dust clouds and gravel, then throwing her meeting notes in Gavin Kingsley’s face would have to suffice.
She stomped harder on the accelerator, beyond ready to confront the charismatic bad boy of Silent Spring. He’d made a big deal about chasing her for years—behaving as though he wanted her even as he gladly dated every woman in her age bracket for miles around. Then, the one time when she’d actually needed the flirtatious rancher to show up for her—to help her get the Studs for Sale event off the ground—he hadn’t bothered to put in an appearance.
Even though he’d chosen the time and date for the planning meeting weeks ago. He’d agreed to sponsor the auction that would be held at Kingsland Ranch. Had even seemed excited about it. Didn’t he have any sense of responsibility?
The main ranch house came into view a moment later, but Lauryn bypassed the mammoth two-story family compound to seek out Gavin’s place. She’d never visited it personally, but she’d heard all about the home’s construction two years ago since the former bull rider had always been a subject for gossip among Silent Spring locals. His good looks and bad boy reputation had made it impossible to avoid talk of his escapades ever since she’d moved here, back when her parents had adopted her at twelve years old after the most traumatic month of her life.
Rubbing a hand over one shoulder where the scars of that time had left her with a visible reminder of old hurts, Lauryn could still recall hearing about Gavin for the first time, when he’d driven through her dad’s fields at midnight. At first, she’d envisioned a boy similar to her—someone in a foster home, who’d had a rough start to life—when she’d imagined what the late-night intruder might be like. When she’d learned that he was the son of the wealthiest man in town, an overindulged Kingsley son, her curiosity about him had vanished.
They’d always been worlds apart, from their very different beginnings to the way Gavin thumbed his nose at the world while she strove to make people like her. But when Gavin had agreed to help her with the Studs for Sale event, she’d believed—briefly—that he’d changed.
The more fool her.
Moments later, the newly constructed cedar home came into view. Smaller than the main residence but impressive nevertheless, the two-story building was L-shaped around a wide redbrick driveway with darker pavers laid out in the pattern of the Kingsland horseshoe logo. Lauryn parked her truck right in the middle of the emblem and jumped down to the ground, her boots striking the stone pavers with determined steps.
Checking her watch, she noted the time was half past noon before she stepped onto the porch and raised her fist to knock on the door.
“Gavin.” She called his name as she rapped quickly on the wooden barrier. “It’s Lauryn. I need to speak with you.”
No answer came.
Not by word or deed. The door remained shut, the house remained quiet and her call went unanswered.
Where could he be? He knew how important the Studs for Sale event was to her. Her horse rescue desperately needed the infusion of capital the bachelor auction would bring since she was expanding the rescue into an equine-therapy program—an effort close to her heart, considering how much it had helped her recover from the trauma she’d experienced as a child.
Knowing that Hooves and Hearts would benefit from the auction, she’d done all the preplanning work herself to make certain that her sponsors could make a difference simply by writing a check. But Gavin had wanted to take on a bigger role since her event coincided with the launch of Kingsland’s breeding service. Her Studs for Sale bachelor auction would naturally bring a lot of spotlight to Kingsland. It made no sense for Gavin to abandon the project now.
Peering around the quiet front courtyard, she spied empty wooden benches beside manicured dwarf trees, chokecherry bushes full of white blooms and pink bitterroot flowers climbing over low rocks. Everything well tended.
