Chapter 8

Lauralee

"I heard that she took a lot of breaking in."

The strange male voice coming from the barn made me stop. I crept up closer to the wall of the barn and eased forward. I heard Ted laugh and I scooched myself forward a little further. I hadn't seen Ted yesterday, which made me eager to see him again, but he had been difficult to track down all morning. Mason had finally told me I could find him in one of the far horse barns. Now I stood outside, listening to his conversation with a man I couldn't place.

"Yeah, she wasn't the most experienced thing when she first got here, but I taught her a thing or two. I like my girls that way. Nice and moldable. It makes it easy to show them exactly how you want things done. Rather than having to deal with one who thinks that she knows what she's doing, when it’s causing you more frustration than anything. There are some that have come along that I would rather take care of things myself than deal with trying to train them."

My breath caught in my throat. He spoke about me. He was in the middle of telling some guy that he trained me to service him properly. I took one step into the barn, slipping around the side wall, so I was concealed by a support beam but close enough to hear the conversation better.

"I can feel you on that," the guy said. "There's nothing worse than doing everything you can to take care of her and then have her bite you or get too enthusiastic and buck you off."

"Well, I don't have that problem anymore. She's smooth, silky, and never, ever uses her teeth. She's the best investment I've made in a long time. Worth every penny."

Both men laughed, and a coil of nausea rolled through me. I felt so stupid for having let him manipulate me like all those girls I had pitied for so long. I had let him tap into all of my fantasies and insecurities, and then damn it if I didn't let him tap me. Twice. Oh, god.

I backed out of the barn, hoping that he didn't see me, hoping that I could run until I disappeared into the ranch and never have to look back. I made it out and took off running, trying to see through the tears that burned in my eyes as I crossed the field toward my parents' house. Within a few seconds, I could hear heavy boot steps behind me as Ted chased me. He must have seen me as I tried to make my escape, and he was now attempting to gloss over that whole suggestion that I'm little more than a prostitute who happens to be able to take care of cows.

At least he gave me credit for being able to multitask. They weren't exactly the job skills that I would list on the next resume that I had to fill out, which would be soon since I was not going to spend another minute working for him. But from what I had heard from some of his other conquests, that little bit of recognition was far more than he usually offered the women he slept with.

Suddenly, the hurt and the sadness gave way to fury. I stopped and whirled around to face him. Ted looked startled at my movement and skidded to a stop a few feet away from me.

"How dare you?" I demanded.

"What? I saw you sneaking out of the barn, and I thought I would come see if you were OK. You are terrible at being stealthy, by the way."

"Oh, so I guess I'm not worth as much as you thought, am I? Or is it that being stealthy isn't one of the qualifications you expect in your 'girls'?"

I spat the words at him, but at that point, I was so angry that a little bit of projectile saliva was only going to work to underscore my fury.

"What in the living hell are you talking about?" he asked. "I was in there talking to the vet, and I saw you sneak out of the barn and run away, which brings us to here. Somehow, I think I missed a major part of whatever incident has thrown you into this particular stage of crazy."

"The vet?" I hissed incredulously. "You have so little regard for anyone's feelings that you tell your vet about all of your conquests?"

"Ok, seriously, Lolly. I'm not following any of this."

The use of my special name angered me. "I heard you in there talking about me. You two were laughing it up while you were telling him that I didn't have a lot of experience when I first came to you, but that you trained me up fine and now I wasn't giving you any problems. You were talking about me like a fucking horse—oh my god, you were talking about a horse."

I covered my eyes with my hand and turned my back to him.

"Yes, I was talking about my horse. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Now that I understood he hadn't been calling me a skillfully trained prostitute, but that I had fallen off the deep end because of him, I started crying even harder. I tried to get ahold of myself, fighting back the tears and trying to square my shoulders so I could turn around to face him. This was not becoming of a ranch hand.

"I thought you were talking about me," I finally said, feeling like a complete jackass. "I thought you were saying that I was worth every penny."

Ted's hands came to my shoulders and applied pressure as he tried to turn me around. I resisted, but he pulled more insistently until I finally turned around to face him.

"Why would I say something like that about you?" he asked, his eyes looking genuinely hurt and concerned as he gazed at me.

Good lord, he was beautiful. It was like he had just sprouted right on out of the ground along with the wheat and the corn. He was so perfect. He could be the bottom of my food pyramid any day.

"Lauralee?"

His voice snapped me out of my musing, and I wiped a tear away from my cheek.

"Because you see girls as disposable. You always have."

"I don't see girls as disposable."

"Yes, you do. Ask anyone. And you’ve never wanted me since what happened at prom. Hell, you’re not even sorry about that. I don't know which is worse, the fact that you go through girls like drag queens go through duct tape or the fact that you never wanted me to be one of them. That you couldn’t even apologize to me for all that happened. You just up and moved right on to the next. My heart was broken, Ted."

"I’ve always wanted you. And before you go blaming me for what happened, might I remind you that you never apologized to me. You were so mad you weren’t getting your way, that you up and went off with another guy. So don’t blame me. You stepped out on me."

“What? I stepped out on you? Andy was Bailey’s friend. It wasn’t more than that, and I would have gone with you if you hadn’t been so stubborn.” Anger boiled in my blood, and I couldn’t believe that all this time he thought I had stepped out on him? It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. “If that’s how you felt, why didn’t you talk to me? Instead, you ruined my prom dress and nearly broke my tailbone.”

“And if I had talked to you, you still would have gone out with him because I wasn’t going to that stupid damned dance! I offered you a date, but what I had to offer wasn’t good enough for you. You wouldn’t have fallen down if you hadn’t tried to stop the fight.”

“There shouldn’t have been a fight.”

“There shouldn’t have been another guy.”

The words were spoken so close to my face I could feel the warmth of his breath. That warmth and closeness had been such a turn on before, and now it slapped me like he’d used his hand. He blamed me. All this time that I thought he had too much pride to humble himself. He wasn’t humble at all. He had thought it was my fault all along. I didn’t know what to say. I pulled my gloves from my back pocket so I could get to work.

“Look, I’m sorry about everything. I didn’t come back here expecting any of this to happen. Not us, not the sex, not the creek, none of it. I wanted to help your family, but at the same time I needed the job too.”

He shook his head. “I surely don’t need any of this shit, Lauralee. I’ve got enough on my plate, and I don’t need you telling me what a shitty person I am and throwing my past at me. The reason I wanted your brother was so he could help me get our computer system up and running. I didn’t take you on with any plan to make you like all the rest. But I wouldn’t expect you to believe me. You used to say you saw more in me. Guess you lied.”

As he walked away my heart sank. As mad as I was at him, I couldn’t help but feel responsible for how things had turned out. And when I thought we were making progress, I had to go and throw his past at him. No one deserves that. But then again, he did throw in the fact that he preferred my brother. I could have told him about how I am the one who set up our system and the one who had trained my father and brother on the program, but he’d been too busy putting me in my place to listen. I was too upset to work. I stripped off my gloves and headed back home.