Sweethearts in South Dakota (At the Altar Book 14) Read online

  He wasn’t nervous about the sex. He figured that God intended for it to be fun for both parties, and it was a natural thing, meant to be enjoyed. He was just nervous that he wouldn’t be able to go slow. He wanted to eat her up like a piece of candy. His jeans felt tighter just thinking about that long, slim body and what might be hidden under denim and cotton.

  It didn’t help matters when she spoke, her low, honeyed voice saying something as her full pink lips moved. Ryder wanted to hear his name on those lips. And then they were slowing down to make a turn, and she glanced at him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?” He could feel his face heat.

  “I said, ‘We’re here. This is the Circle G.”

  He looked, and sure enough, there was a simple black metal arch over a dusty two-track, with a stylized G inside a hoop in the middle. He didn’t see a house or any cows, though. Just long stretches on both sides of four-strand barbed wire fencing and rolling hills of still mostly green grass. They drove on, bouncing over ruts, for about a quarter of a mile, and on the next rise, he could see a low, white house that sprawled over a hilltop and a few barns and outbuildings scattered here and there, ranging in size.

  Ryder looked at Willa, and he could see the pride in her face as she waited for his reaction.

  “You own all this?” he asked. “This place is incredible.”

  She smiled shyly at him, and he finally understood the cheesy phrase: he could have sworn his heart skipped a beat. “It is pretty great,” she agreed. “If you look over there” —she nodded her head—“you can see Mount Rushmore.”

  “No kidding.” He whistled. He couldn’t make out the faces, but it was true. There was a view of Mount Rushmore from her backyard. The feeling of stepping on to a movie set persisted.

  Willa parked the truck in front of the house and waited near the front door for Ryder to grab his things. She wanted to curse when she saw Brodie riding toward them on one of the piebald geldings. She wasn’t ready to introduce them yet. Brodie wouldn’t appreciate that she hadn’t told him about Matchrimony, and he tended to be overprotective of her. Once, he’d decked one of the ranch hands for making a flirtatious comment to her. Being around men as she had all her life, Willa had brushed it off as boys being boys, but Brodie had considered the man way out of bounds. He’d gone to her grandfather afterward, and the cowboy had packed his things and moved on by the next day.

  “Hey, Will!” he called out, bringing the horse to a stop and looking curiously at Ryder in his suit and sneakers. “Who’s this?”

  Ryder studied the other man, feeling just a little bit insecure. He was perched on top of the black and white horse like he’d been born there, tall and tan, and not much older than Ryder. He was good-looking, as far as Ryder could tell, with a face that the ladies probably liked—sort of a cross between Matt Damon and the guy that played Thor in those superhero movies. He reached a hand down to Ryder, and his grip was firm and hard. Maybe a little too hard? Ryder narrowed his eyes and looked over to see Willa’s reaction.

  Her cheeks were dusty pink under her light brown skin. She cleared her throat and gave the man on the horse a careful look. “Uh, Brodie, meet Ryder. He’s . . . um . . . Ryder and I got married this morning.”

  The guy looked shell-shocked, his eyes wide. Ryder nodded his head. “Nice to meet you, Brodie.”

  Brodie nodded back curtly but didn’t say anything for a full thirty seconds. He studied Ryder again, harder this time. “What have you done, Willa?” he finally ground out.

  Willa wasn’t cowed by his overbearing tone. She drew back her shoulders and glared at Brodie. “I’ve gotten married.”

  “This is about the ranch, isn’t it? About Richard and the will.”

  “Brodie,” she shot back in a warning tone. “This decision wasn’t up to you. I’m taking Ryder in to show him around. If you want to talk about this later, fine, but right now, I want you to get a couple of men out there with you to move the herd. The back pasture is looking overgrazed.”

  Ryder winced. He didn’t appreciate the guy’s tone, and he wasn’t completely sure he wasn’t jealous of his obviously close relationship to Willa, but she’d just told him to butt out and that he wasn’t doing his job right. That had to sting.

  Sure enough, Brodie gave Ryder one last threatening look, wheeled the horse around without even using the reins, and headed off without a word.

  Willa grabbed the Tractor Supply bags and stomped toward the house, and Ryder found himself following her. Again.

  He mused over the situation. His new bride had some ’splaining to do.

  Three

  Willa stalked through the entryway almost unseeingly into the living room, dropping the bags she carried on the couch. That had gone just about as bad as could be expected. Her stomach ached dully. She knew Brodie well enough to know that he was hurt by the fact that she hadn’t told him she was getting married. He’d been her friend forever, and he didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. When she heard a thump behind her, she spun around, startled.

  “You forgot your husband again.” Ryder wasn’t smiling his usual, easygoing smile. He was just eyeing her, a serious expression on his face. No dimples. “I think we need to have a talk.”

  If there was one thing Willa hated, it was talking. “I’ve got some things to do,” she said, giving him a little distance as she sidled around him to head for the door.

  “Nuh uh, wife. I think this is important. What did he mean about ‘the will’?”

  Willa just wanted to escape, but judging by the look in Ryder’s eyes, he wasn’t having that. She backtracked and headed for a couch instead. Might as well get all of the unpleasantness over at once. Like a Band-Aid.

  “My grandfather stipulated in his will that if I didn’t marry in thirty days, I would forfeit the Circle G.”

  Ryder sank down on the couch opposite her, where Lachele had sat just a couple weeks before, his hands dangling over his knees. “Were you going to tell me this?” he asked seriously. “Or were you just going to let me think that you’d decided to use a matchmaker on a whim.”

  She bristled. “I was going to tell you. It’s not like we’ve had a lot of time together.”

  “Well, you could have brought it up at lunch when we were talking about your grandpa. So, do you intend for this to be a business relationship? Because if I’d wanted that, I’d have stayed in New York.”

  “No,” Willa said uncertainly, jumping up to pace across the Navajo-patterned rug. “I don’t know. I just needed to get married, is all, and this was the quickest way I could do it.”

  “What about kids? I told Lachele I wanted kids.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “I want them, too . . . just maybe not right away.”

  “And how is this supposed to work?” Ryder asked relentlessly. “Am I just supposed to stay here, twiddling my thumbs as you go about your ranching? Am I just supposed to be a convenience for you? Marriage is a two-way street. What about the physical aspects of this relationship? Were you just planning on some platonic thing?”

  Her stomach ached even harder. His blue eyes looked so disappointed, and she hated to feel like she was a disappointment. “I don’t know. We—we’ll work this out. You weren’t what I expected.”

  It was true. Ryder was nice, had a great sense of humor, and just brimmed over with fun. You didn’t have to be around him for five minutes before that became obvious. She liked him. If she had to spend the rest of her life with one person, he certainly wouldn’t be boring. To her horror, she felt tears burning the back of her eyes.

  Ryder watched her carefully. Willa’s eyes glistened as if she was ready to cry at any second, and he didn’t want that. She seemed so sturdy. Her backbone was so rigid that he felt like she might break if he wasn’t cautious. “Fine,” he said softly. “Go do what you have to do.” He waved a hand at the big screen TV mounted over the stone fireplace at the side of the room. “It’s
Saturday. Maybe I’ll catch some college football or something.”

  She nodded gratefully and meant to walk past him, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her down on his lap. “I want a real marriage,” he said, his voice husky as he toyed with the silky end of her braid, where it hung over her breast. “I think, deep down, you do, too.”

  Willa was caught up in his eyes, almost afraid to move. Her body felt like it was humming, warming wherever he touched her. “I like you,” Ryder said. “And I think we could make something really good together.” He ran a thumb over her bottom lip, and it tingled. He followed his thumb with his mouth, and the breath caught in the back of her throat. His lips were warm and firm, and it felt like his hand was searing through her shirt where it rested lightly at her back. He kissed her slowly, searchingly, like they had all the time in the world, but it seemed to end too quickly.

  Ryder gave the end of her braid a last playful tug, and she stood, her knees a little wobbly. “Something to think about,” he said, grinning a little.

  Shaken, Willa escaped as fast as she could.

  Ryder changed into jeans and a tee-shirt and explored the house a little after Willa had left. It seemed to stretch for acres. He counted four bathrooms, six bedrooms, a kitchen big enough to feed an army with two gas stoves, a laundry room, a living room, a game room, a professional-looking office, and a library. The Circle G was apparently a prosperous spread. He found the room that must be Willa’s and, resolutely, unpacked his bags. His wife apparently had little interest in clothes—the dresser was only half-full, and the closet had plenty of room for his things. He resisted looking in her drawers, but he was curious. Were her underthings as practical and no-nonsense as the rest of her clothes? He hadn’t seen a single dress except for the wedding gown that he hung up for her in the back of the closet. Looking to see for sure, though, would have made him a peeping tom.

  It was getting close to eight, and the sun had set nearly a half-hour ago in a technicolor burst of vivid oranges and blues that he’d watched from a big, west-facing bay window. His stomach was rumbling, and he wasn’t sure how much longer Willa would be, so he headed toward the kitchen at the back of the house to forage for himself. He was bent over, searching the fridge, when a door opened. Seconds later, a shrill, feminine shriek split the air, and something hit him hard in the back.

  “Hey!” he yelled, swinging around. His reflexes were quick. He ducked a can of green beans just in time and squeezed behind the partially open refrigerator door. “Don’t fire, I surrender!”

  Across the kitchen, the screaming intruder held up a can of corn threateningly. “You just stay right there!” she boomed in a voice that was much deeper than he would have guessed a minute ago. “What are you doing in Willa’s kitchen?”

  “I’m her husband. Ryder.” He held his hands up in what he hoped looked like a non-threatening way, but the older woman scowled and only hoisted the corn up higher. She had a seamed, leathery face, a bright pink sweatshirt with sequin-accented kittens on it, and a head full of tightly permed white curls that marched in precision down the back and sides in perfect formation. She looked like what his mother would refer to as an “old battle ax.”

  “You’re a liar. Willa’s not married.”

  He held up one hand with the plain gold band on it that Willa had placed there what felt like years ago but had only been this morning. “I swear to you. We just got married. And please, put the corn down. I don’t think she’d appreciate it if you killed me before we even got around to a honeymoon.”

  His brain scrambled for a way to convince her that he wasn’t a threat, and the words started tumbling out. “She had to get married. Her grandfather died a few weeks ago. He put in his will that she’d lose the place if she didn’t marry in a month. That’s why I’m here. We were matched up through a marriage service in New York—Matchrimony. You must be Mrs. . . . Hollis? The housekeeper?”

  The suspicious look didn’t leave her face, but her lips pursed, and she set the can down carefully on the countertop in front of her. Ryder resisted the urge to rub what was probably a burgeoning bruise on his lower back. The woman had an arm on her, for sure. He eased out from behind the refrigerator door and closed it behind him.

  “Truce?” he asked, holding out his hand and giving her his winningest grin, the one that had landed him some of the most difficult customers of his public relations career.

  Mrs. Hollis sniffed, unimpressed. “I suppose.” She shook his hand gingerly and went back to unloading grocery bags, as if the whole crazy interlude had never happened. “There’s more of these in my car,” she ordered. “The trunk isn’t going to unload itself.”

  Ryder shook his head in amusement. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, padding barefoot out the back door to unload the groceries.

  Willa rubbed her aching lower back and called herself ten kinds of a coward. It was nearly nine, and she’d been hiding out in the back of the barn that housed a small flock of goats, mucking out the pens. The goats were only there because her grandfather, in an uncharacteristically whimsical mood a few years before, had decided to buy a few after he watched some funny videos on YouTube. She didn’t mind them. They were Nubians, with long, soft ears and mostly docile personalities, but overall, she usually avoided the chores that went along with the goat barn. Her motives now weren’t pure, though. She was avoiding Brodie, avoiding Ryder, and avoiding thinking about marriage or anything, really, except the monotony of lifting one shovel full of dirty, stinky straw after another into a wheelbarrow.

  As a result, she was exhausted and dirty and probably smelled like poo. And she would be up again tomorrow at five, as usual. She plodded toward the house in the dark, through night air that carried just a nip of the colder temperatures to come, with a million stars spread out overhead. She didn’t even notice, though, too caught up in the guilt that swamped her when she pictured Ryder sitting in the big house by himself all evening, probably with his nose buried in one of the books that he’d bought.

  Sneaking in through the back door was just one more cowardly act, especially when Ryder was probably already in bed, but she did it anyway. She toed off her filthy boots in the mudroom and opened the kitchen door, completely unprepared for the sight of her new husband and her taciturn housekeeper engaged in a rowdy game of poker at the kitchen table. Country music blared out of the small countertop radio, and the two of them had tall glasses of iced tea and enough snacks scattered around that it looked like they must’ve been at it for a while.

  Ryder barely looked up from his hand. “Hey, Willa. Want to join us? Mrs. Hollis is beating the pants off me. She’s won all of my peanuts, and I owe her about seven thousand three hundred eighty-five M&Ms.”

  “There’s a bowl of chili in the refrigerator,” Mrs. Hollis said shortly. “Are you going to play, young man, or sit there jawing?”

  “I’m, um, just going to take a shower,” Willa said. “I’m not very hungry.”

  “You look tired,” her brand-new husband said, laying a card down on the table to Mrs. Hollis’s triumphant hoot and not even looking up to see that Willa did, in fact, look tired. “Why don’t you go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Feeling completely knocked off kilter, Willa headed toward the other end of the house. She showered, scrubbing her hair and thinking about how strange Ryder was. He acted like he wasn’t even expecting anything on this! Their wedding night! Her irritation grew as she pulled on some sweatpants and a T-shirt, brushing her teeth with more force than necessary. All of the worrying she’d done . . . for nothing? He was too busy whooping it up with her elderly housekeeper—who had never asked Willa to play cards in all the years that she’d worked for the Griffins. She threw herself into bed, forgetting to set her alarm. This was unbelievable!

  Willa had stewed for who knew how long, finally falling into a restless sleep, only to be jolted awake when she felt the mattress bounce. “Sorry,” came Ryder’s voice softly. “I’m not used to nighttime being pitch dark.”
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  “What are you doing?” Willa asked, clutching the blankets to her chest. Was this it? Were they going to . . . consummate things now? She lay stiffly as he settled in on the other side of her.

  “Going to bed,” Ryder said. “Goodnight. Sweet dreams.”

  She didn’t relax, even after his breathing evened out in sleep. She’d never had anyone sleep next to her, and she didn’t think she’d get a wink of rest all night.

  She must have, though, because she woke up the next morning with one leg thrown over Ryder, her head pillowed on his hard chest. The sun shone brightly through a gap in the curtain, illuminating his pectoral muscles, firm and sculpted and lightly dusted with light brown hair. It felt soft and crinkly beneath her cheek.

  Her eyes widened abruptly. Sun. Bright. It was morning. And she’d overslept. And she had wrapped herself around Ryder sometime during the night.

  Easing away as quickly as she could, she jumped out of bed and hurried to the dresser, rummaging around for some clean clothes.

  “I honestly never knew how sexy sweatpants were until now.”

  She spun around to find him watching her, his arms folded behind his head, his blue eyes sleepy, and an easy grin on his face. She couldn’t help it. She blushed. Willa hadn’t blushed as often as she had in the last two days since . . . ever.

  “Good morning,” she blurted. “I’m late.”

  His laugh followed her into the bathroom.

  She was gulping down a hasty cup of coffee in the kitchen, tucking in the tails of her long-sleeved flannel shirt, when Ryder padded in. He had loose pajama bottoms on but nothing else. His feet and his torso were bare. “Any of that left?” He nodded at her mug.