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  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2015 Jenika Snow

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-328-2

  Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

  Editor: Karyn White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

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  ROUGH IN THE SADDLE

  The Sterling Brothers, 1

  Jenika Snow

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter One

  “She left me everything?” Pearl Connor asked, but she was mainly talking to herself, and not really asking a question. She looked at her grandmother’s Victorian style home. She’d come here just twice since her grandmother had bought it years ago, and although she’d seen her grandma several times when she’d come and visit Pearl’s family in Ohio, this place had always kind of scared Pearl. She looked over at the attorney who had met her at her grandma’s place. He handed her a folder of paperwork, and she stared at the manila file.

  “She did. I have not gone over any of her personal belongings or documents that I’m not obligated to examine, because she specifically left directions in her will that she wanted everything left as-is. You can sell it if you want, but the market nowadays, and the fact the house is in desperate need of updates, might make it a tough sell.”

  Pearl nodded, but her head was fuzzy, her brain barely working right now as she remembered all the times she’d spent with her grandmother throughout the years. The attorney stayed for another ten minutes, but once he left she stood on the porch and watched as his BMW pulled away from the curb and disappeared down the street.

  She shut the door, the hinges creaking, and instantly the feeling of being alone settled into her. Turning away from the door, she leaned against the wood, felt the hard coldness seep into her bones, and closed her eyes.

  The house smelled like her grandmother, right down to the light floral fragrance of perfume that her grandma had worn for the last several decades. Pearl opened her eyes and looked around the house. It was a large home, with a basement, main level, upper level, and attic. The house was decorated in normal grandma fashion, with floral print furniture, handmade crafts lining the wall, which her grandma had painted herself, and of course pictures of her family.

  Pearl pushed away from the door and went over to the row of pictures right in front of her on the opposite wall. The picture she stared at was one of her mom, dad, herself, her Grandpa Steven, and her grandmother when Pearl was only about five years old. It was an old picture, one that had been before her Grandma Shirley left them and moved out here because her grandfather had been transferred for his job.

  But now everyone was gone except her, and Pearl felt even more isolated than before. She had no one, no one that she loved anyway. Her mom and dad had passed away the previous year, and although she should have moved out here with Grandma Shirley, Pearl couldn’t bring herself to leave her job and what she’d worked for. But none of that mattered anymore because she’d been laid off. Her parents were gone, and now the rest of her family was, too. That was the problem with not having any siblings, having her parents being only children, and not having any immediate family that she could lean on.

  Seeing her reflection in the mirror right across from her, she smoothed a hand over her cheek. She’d gotten her grandma’s smooth, chocolaty complexion and flawless skin. Her black hair was currently in two braids, and although she was a little old to wear her hair like that, she didn’t have time to properly do it since receiving the phone call to come to Granite, Colorado. She’d get a perm, smooth the curls out and try to make herself not think about all the times her granny had told her stories as she combed out her hair and put it in braids before bed.

  Pearl moved away from the pictures and started making her way through the house. Leaving her bags by the door, she realized she should have kept them so she had something to hold onto and keep her hands busy. She kept twisting her fingers together, her nerves, sadness, and anxiety moving through her. She tried not to cry, and tried not to feel the guilt that swamped her. Pearl should have been here more for her grandmother, should have visited more after her grandpa died. Pearl felt like a shitty granddaughter, but there was nothing she could do about that now.

  Sitting on the couch and staring at the fireplace, she felt this chill move through her. What she needed to do was get a job. After receiving the call she knew what her future would now consist of. Losing her job in the city had been hell, and she’d been depressed, not knowing where she would work that would make her enough to be able to pay her bills in her current apartment. But it seemed fate had other plans.

  She didn’t plan on leaving this small town, not since she’d made the decision to get away from the city, away from everything she’d called home for so long. Granite was now her home, and she’d have to make the most of it. The house situation was covered, and at least she didn’t have to worry about rent or mortgage, but Pearl did need to worry about eating, paying electricity and gas, and all the things that went with that. But could she find a place in this small town? Would they even accept an outsider like her, even if her grandma had been a resident of this town for decades?

  ****

  Travis swung the bale of hay into the back of the pick-up truck, and then wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. It was a hot fucking day, or maybe he was just working especially hard, trying to get this shit done? The hay was leftover from last year’s crop, and all he was thinking about was getting all the work done, heading over to the bar, drinking, and fucking. He needed to find a woman for tonight, wanted to be balls deep in her and relax. He’d been working nonstop for the last two weeks, barely able to take a piss because of the workload.

  “I think that’s about it for tonight,” his younger brother Colton said.

  “It’s about fucking time. My balls are sticking to my thigh,” Jace, the youngest Sterling brother, said. He took off his Stetson, wiped his forehead with his forearm, and grinned at them.

  “Dude, too much information. I don’t want to have the image of your balls in my head for the rest of the night,” Colton said, and Travis grinned. His two younger brothers were only a year apart from each other, but five years younger than Travis’s thirty-seven years.

  “All right, enough talk about balls,” Travis said, put his hat back on, finished the last of the work, and the three of them headed inside to the farmhouse, the one they’d grown up in, helped their parents tend, then watched them die in.

  It wasn’t hard to live in the house anymore, but at first it had been hell. Seeing the room where they’d taken care of their mom when she was sick every day, walking by it, still feeling her presence, had been hard on everyone, their father included. And then one day their dad had just decided it was the time to give up. They’d found him dead in the bathroom, a bottle of pills beside him, and an empty bottle of Jack still in his lap. Maybe he hadn’t meant to take so much, but the end result was the same. They’d lost both their parents in the span of a year when they weren’t much older than their teenage years.

  He went into the kitchen and grabbed a pitcher of water out of the fridge, and three glasses from the cabinet. The sun was starting to set, and the three of them would head ove
r to Dickie’s, the local bar in the town of Granite.

  “Just a heads up, I’m gonna be bringing home a woman tonight, so if you hear the headboard banging don’t come in,” Jace said and grinned, taking the offered glass of water Travis gave him. Jace’s place was far enough away from the main house that they’d never hear anything banging, but Travis knew his brother was just trying to get a rise out of them.

  “Shit, if we can hear the headboard banging all the way from your place you’re doing somethin’ right,” Colton said and started laughing, which caused Jace to do the same. All Travis could do was shake his head at the immaturity of his brothers.

  They all lived on the rolling, lush and green twenty-acre property that had been in the Sterling family possession since when their great-grandfather owned it. He and his brothers had built two smaller houses on the property a mile apart from the other and the main farmhouse. It allowed them to stay on the farm, help with the work so the ranch stayed afloat, and also to give them privacy.

  Although he loved his brothers and wouldn’t mind sharing space with them, they were grown adults and listening to his brothers fuck was definitely a mood killer. So, years ago they’d built the separate houses, brought home random women to let off steam, and worked from sunup to sundown. It was hard, straining farm work at times, but this was their home, their mother and father’s home, and the Sterling brothers weren’t about to let it go no matter what.

  “Well, I’m going to get cleaned up, and I suggest you guys do the same,” Colton said and stood. “Ain’t no woman gonna want your sweaty asses for the night. And damn, Jace, you’re smelling extra rank today.”

  Jace flipped him off as he finished off his water. He set the cup down and grinned. “This is the smell of a real, hardworking man.” Jace stood and clapped Colton on the shoulder, and Colton jabbed him in the gut.

  His brothers left, and Travis was left thinking that they would never grow up, not until they found some good, decent women to keep their wild asses in line. But even though they were some of the wealthiest farm owners in Granite, the small town still looked at them as if they were a stain on the land. If their father hadn’t died the way he did, hadn’t gotten hooked on the prescription painkillers, and washed them down with pills, they wouldn’t have had to seem like they had this weakness.

  The town of Granite was old, with families inhabiting it for generations. When something like this rocked their “village”, it affected everyone. Even all these years later the older generation looked at the Sterling brothers funny when they walked by. They might not invite them over for lemonade and talks on the porch, but hell if they wouldn’t come to them when they needed hay or lumber, or anything else Sterling Farms supplied and produced on the property.

  Now, the younger generation in Granite couldn’t give two shits about stains or funny looks. They partied hard and socialized up the ass with them.

  Travis turned and looked out the kitchen window, watched as his brothers got in their vehicles and drove over to their places, and thought about all the shit they’d been through over the years. To be honest he couldn’t care less what anyone thought about him or his family. He didn’t care if the older folks looked at them like a stain on their perfect little town. The Sterling family had been in Granite for just as long as anyone else that called this town home, and wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. They were here, they weren’t going anywhere, and even after those old geezers were gone and in the ground the Sterling men would still be here.

  Chapter Two

  Pearl pushed open one of the scarred, wooden doors of the only bar in town. It was named Dickie’s, and that seemed a little fitting as many of the men she’d seen thus far wore jeans, Wranglers, tight enough that she could see their, well, Dickie’s. Maybe she should have stayed home tonight, but the fact was being by herself at her grandma’s on the first night was a little unsettling. She was sad about the death, sad for herself that she no longer had anyone, and she was not going to sit around feeling sorry for herself.

  So, Pearl had decided to head to the bar, maybe have a couple of drinks, meet some of the regulars, and maybe, just maybe make friends. Not that Pearl cared much for having friends, but if she planned on finding work and making Granite her home, she needed to make some connections.

  The first thing she noticed as she stepped inside was that everyone seemed to stop what they were doing and stare at her. Although she was black, and the majority of the customers were white, she knew they weren’t staring at her because she had a darker skin color. This was a smaller town, had been established by founding families for generations, and because of that they tended to look at outsiders differently. Because Pearl hadn’t been to see her grandmother in Granite for years, she was an outsider.

  They didn’t know her, probably didn’t trust her, and she couldn’t blame them for that. Hell, small towns like this probably got a lot of people passing through, maybe trying to hide out, find new identities because this place was high in the mountains and away from the general population.

  She smoothed her hands over the edge of her silk shirt and looked around. The bar was packed, mainly in men wearing Wranglers, Stetson hats, plaid shirts, and cowboy boots. The women wore Daisy Dukes, cowboy boots, and shirts that showed their midriffs and cleavage. Pearl felt really overdressed, but oh well, because she’d come here to get some drinks and not think about anything else.

  She moved over to the counter, took one of the few empty seats, and waited for the bartender to make his way over to her. The bartender was a young man with a head full of sandy colored hair brushed back from his forehead, his muscles lean but defined, and showing through his white t-shirt. He was leaned over the bar talking to another customer, his ass popped out and his tight as fuck Wrangler jeans curved to the cheeks. The guy he spoke with was younger, and by the body language alone she new some serious flirting was happening between the two men.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a soft voice, hoping he heard her. A few of the customers sitting at the counter glanced her way. One of the guys grinned and gave her a wink, and another woman looked her up and down, clearly dissatisfied with Pearl’s appearance.

  Finally the bartender pushed away from the counter and turned to face Pearl. He looked at her, well, as much as he could given the counter blocking her lower body. After a second of watching her, he smiled and made his way toward her, leaned on the counter in the same fashion he had while flirting with the man, and smiled again.

  “Well hey there, stranger.” He grabbed a napkin and set it in front of her. “What’ll it be?” He lifted a sandy colored eyebrow, his dark eyes like melted coal.

  “Something strong.”

  His grin widened, and he nodded. He turned, and she watched as he made some kind of fruity looking drink. Pearl didn’t normally consume alcohol, and when she did it was beer. Having liquor would probably make her sick, but she didn’t care, because all she wanted was to forget for a little while. He set the drink in front of her, and put one of those colorful little umbrellas with a maraschino cherry at the end in her drink.

  “Bottoms up, sweet cheeks.” He didn’t move away, and so she picked up her drink and took a sip, and instantly fire raced down her throat. She gasped, her eyes watering as the bartender started chuckling, which caused a few people close by to do the same.

  “Honey, don’t ever let Chippy here make you a random drink. He loads that shit with gasoline,” a woman next to her said with amusement in her voice.

  Pearl looked over at the woman, who had too dark roots for her bleached blonde hair, but a warm and kind face. It certainly tasted like he’d put gasoline in it, but she picked it up again and took another drink. This one went down a hell of a lot smoother than the first swallow.

  “Thatta girl,” the bartender who was named Chippy said, his straight, white smile flashing. He turned and helped another customer, and she shifted in the seat so her back was to Chippy now, and stared at the large room.

  There was an ol
der looking jukebox in one corner, a pool table with green, faded felt covering it, and older looking sticks and balls being used with it. There was a group of men playing pool. Some were leaning against the wall with women hanging off of them, and as Pearl turned her focus on the other end of the room three men caught her attention. The shadows in the corner partially obstructed her full view of them, but she could see that they all sat at a circular table, two of the men having women on their laps, and the men’s big bodies what she noticed first. They also were very similar in appearance, clearly related from the dark hair on their heads and the identical matching blue eyes.

  Yes, even from the distance she could see the light, aqua color, and it was one of the men that had her interest growing instantly. His flesh was the color of the setting sun, golden, tanned. She picked up her drink, trying not to seem like she was staring, but in all honesty it was hard not to. There was this air about him, this commanding presence that covered him, as if she could actually see it. He wasn’t a classically handsome man, but this worn, rough and tough guy that had this raw sex appeal to him. She didn’t even know what had caused this instant heat to fill her when she looked at him, but it was definitely instant.

  Then he turned his head toward her, right in her direction, and stared at Pearl. It was as if she couldn’t even move, couldn’t even breathe as his blue gaze held hers. Should she turn away, act as though she wasn’t watching him? Already they’d been watching each other for several seconds, and this uncomfortable intensity filled her. She forced herself to turn away, held onto her drink harder, tighter, so that she almost feared she’d break the damn glass.