Everything seemed to be falling apart and Ryan’s brain worked double-time to get his head around a strategy to fix the situation. He looked his cousin over. Her jean jacket hid the tattoos; it might be possible to send her to talk to Adam before too many others arrived.

The horse was a must, if Ryan’s plans for the pack were going to work. They’d heard a rumor that a rancher outside Dallas had made Adam an offer on the stud, Dee had suggested they buy Black Guardian out from under the other bidder. Dee had been their ace in the hole. Adam had always said yes to everything she’d ever asked of him.

Until now.

And then there was Kate to consider…

Ryan’s gaze wandered down to her, standing in front of him. Her hair was long, sweeping down her back. He hadn’t noticed that before.

Dammit. Focus.

He couldn’t afford to be derailed by her. By the perfectly proportioned body that her all-black clothing couldn’t hide from him. By the way her hips swayed back and forth when she was thinking. By the sweet scent of her hair.

Bracken was talking, and looking straight at him, and Ryan suddenly realized he hadn’t processed a single word his alpha had said to him. He had been too busy thinking about running his hands up her long torso and grabbing her breasts and burying his face in her neck. He snapped his attention to the conversation just in time to hear, “and then we’ll have to start from scratch with another line.”

Breeding. He was talking about breeding.

Right?

Ryan tried just nodding along, but he hadn’t heard enough of the first part of the discussion to offer an informed opinion, and his alpha was staring at him. Waiting.

“Do you mind if I interject here?” Kate asked, and Ryan let out a breath, fast. The air must have feathered the skin of her shoulder, because she shivered and looked back at him, and dammit if that didn’t make the blood start to rush south again.

“If you have an idea, spit it out, K-Quade,” Bracken said, crossing his arms.

“What if you sent me to talk to him?”

Ryan snorted and Kate glared back at him, her blue eyes flashing. He was momentarily pinned by her frustration. His disbelief seemed to have touched a nerve. Noted.

“He doesn’t know me from Adam,” she said, and then paused to snicker at the pun. It was damn adorable.

What the hell is wrong with you, man?

“Go on,” Bracken said, one of his thick brows arched.

“So if I approach him about it, he won’t necessarily associate me with Dee. The two of them can patch things up on their own, and I can work on convincing him to sell the horse.”

“But you don’t know anything about our business,” Ryan interjected, moving around to stand opposite her. The whole sentinel-behind-her-back thing was starting to feel a little coupley, which wasn’t good for him. “How are you going to convince Adam of the merits of the sale?”

“It’s not rocket surgery, Mr. Rodeo, okay? I’ve worked on my grandfather’s ranch for my whole life—”

“You raise cattle,” Ryan said, stepping toe-to-toe with her.

“Big hairy whoop.” Kate put her hands on her hips, somehow managing to stare him down even though he towered over her. “I know plenty about horses. Plus, you don’t approach this with logic, because the logic says he can sell to whoever he wants. You win this with heart. That’s the only way you’ll get him to overlook the slight and keep doing business with you.”

A reluctant, tight feeling stole through his chest. Win this with heart… “You mean you’re going to flirt with him until he agrees to sell us the horse.”

She shrugged. “If that’s what it takes.”

“No.” The word was out of him before he knew it, and he followed it up with a hard, dark look. “Absolutely not. No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m the alpha and I said so,” he said, grasping for words. He couldn’t say the real reason out loud because it sounded so stupid. He didn’t want another man’s hands on her. Didn’t want her even flirting with another man.

Idiot.

“You’re not the alpha yet,” Bracken said. The warning in his tone was downplayed by the slight smile on his lips.

“But, Brack…” Ryan began, unsure of where he would end.

“She’s on a job interview, isn’t she? I say it starts right now,” said the alpha. He turned to Kate. “I’ll make you a deal. You get this horse, you get the job. No questions asked.”

Her eyes went wide, and her lip quivered for a second. Ryan just about reached for her—wanting to steady her, to let her know he was there—but caught himself in time. Even he was being taken in by the flirting.

Dammit. This was fifty shades of fucked up.

Ryan stepped away from the little grouping, walking toward the cabin. He didn’t want to know what else was said. He’d been on his way to see his alpha to ask about segmenting Dee’s old job enough that Kate could work in the office on another ranch, where Ryan wouldn’t have to deal with her. But he hadn’t had that chance, and now it looked like Bracken was fixing to give her the job outright. If she got that horse.

Every damn day in that office would be nothing but torture. He wouldn’t get any work done. Hell, he could hardly focus on the next task in front of him with her around. Let alone running an entire ranch and a half-fractured pack to boot.

“Ryan,” his alpha called out. “Come over here.”

Reluctantly, he turned back and found Kate staring at him, smiling from ear-to-ear. Shit This was not going to be good.

“I want you to take Kate up to the house and introduce her to Adam,” said Bracken, putting his hand on her shoulder. The gesture was completely benign, but it set off something inside Ryan.

Another man’s hands on her.

Dammit. This is going to blow balls.

“Fine,” Ryan bit out. “Let’s go.”

“Just wait a second,” Bracken said, gesturing back toward the cabin. “Let me introduce Kate around to the rest of the pack.” He slid his arm over her shoulders, and Ryan just about lost his mind.

He stood watching, fists clenched and heart racing, as his alpha pulled Kate down the path toward the first cabin, explaining that there was one cabin for the men and one for the women, and telling her who was around at the moment. Ryan’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding. Damn the stupid testosterone. He’d never been the kind of guy to get jealous, but wow, it was rearing its head now. Ugly damn head.

“You have it bad, cuz,” came Dee’s voice, breaking into his turbulent thoughts. “Mate pull?”

Ryan waved his hand, hoping to stave off this conversation, but Dee had worked beside him in the office for the last three years, and she knew him better than most.

“She’s a flirt,” he said, trying to ignore the constriction in his throat.

“Right.” His cousin put a hand on her hip and came to stand beside him. They watched Bracken escort her up the steps, onto the porch, and then into the house. “Y’know, when I first met Will, I thought the same thing.”

“Dee…”

“No, I mean it.” She nudged his shoulder with hers. “I’m not sure if Bracken told you the details, but we met again at the stock sale down in San Antonio.”

“Last week?” Ryan raised a brow. “Like…last Saturday?”

She nodded, pressing harder against him. “It happens fast. That’s how it is for us.”

“There is no us.” This was not a mate pull. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t allow it to be.

“Will showed up with another woman, y’know,” she said, her tone quiet. She gnawed her lip for a moment, like she felt disloyal talking about it. “At the sale. He brought his girlfriend. And of course, if Adam had been around, I would have been with him. I hadn’t seen Will since we were kids, before our magick had fully matured, before our wolves had come out for the first time, and it just…it caught me off-guard.”

He didn’t respond.

“We passed each other in a crowd,” Dee said, speaking in that same reverent tone. She’d obviously cottoned to the fact that he wouldn’t, couldn’t have this conversation with her. “He was hanging on this cowgirl, and I was with Jace and Judson. But I could feel him, through all the people. Our eyes met, and something sparked. I just knew.”

Ryan had to fight hard not to roll his eyes. Those words. I just knew. A guy didn’t know anything about a girl at a glance, and vice versa, except that they had some kind of chemistry, and that would fade faster than a cool mist on a desert morning. The only thing that lasted was pack.

“I’m not telling you this to make you uncomfortable.” Dee slipped her arm through his, like she planned to escort him somewhere. “I just meant to say, I know what you’re going through. Having a mate pull is intense. It’s—”

“This is not a mate pull,” he said, a little more forcefully than he’d intended. “She’s a flirt, and she’s good at flirting. That’s all this is.”

Dee’s snort was unladylike and loud. It was one of the things he would miss about having her around. He’d come to feel easy around her, and come to enjoy her brash behavior. She was never afraid to speak up.

“You keep telling yourself that, cousin.” She released him and made her way up the path just as Bracken was leading Kate back outside.

He narrowed his eyes on the flirty blonde, trying to remember the moment he’d first seen her in the library. The attraction had been instantaneous. No doubt about it. But was it Fate? That, he didn’t know.

If there had been other people in the room, he might could have compared his story to Dee’s. But the circumstances were completely different; there was a chance Kate was just really flirty. He didn’t like the fact that she needed to get away from her pack. But maybe he could help her fix the problem some other way—with an arrangement that didn’t entail giving her a job on his ranch.

There had to be another way.

Even if this was a simple attraction, not a mate pull, he couldn’t ignore the fact that his blood started to pump harder at the sight of her. The closer she got to him, the more he wanted to take her up to his bedroom. Or just a spare patch of grass.

Hell, he would take her against the side of a building right now. She was so damn sexy.

Her stance on the porch, languid and relaxed, was like a little Siren song for his groin. He wanted to see her really relaxed. Like after an orgasm. In his arms. And that was the absolute worst thing he could be thinking about right now.

Nope. He had to get her far away from him.

Fix the issue with her pack. Find her somewhere else to be gorgeous and sexy and tempting. Because he had a job to do, and he couldn’t do it with Kate around.

Up on the porch, Beau slid a hand onto Kate’s shoulder and the bottom dropped out of Ryan’s stomach. Aw, hell no. He clipped past Dee, ran up the steps, and smacked his brother’s hand away.

“Get off her,” he said, grabbing Kate’s hand and pulling her away from his lecherous, horny brother. That was so not happening.

“Bro, what is your—”

“We’ve got work to do,” he said to Kate, pulling her down the steps.

“It…was…nice…to…” Kate’s voice called back, taking the steps hard as she tried to keep up with him.

Ryan was about two seconds from throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her to the truck himself. She was not coming along fast enough.

“Stay away from my brother,” Ryan hissed at her, finally getting her to Bracken’s truck and depositing her by the passenger’s side door. He glanced back at his alpha, who stood, stunned, on the porch. “Keys?” he asked in a gruff voice.

Bracken did a football throw and the keys came sailing down to him, landing almost perfectly in his outstretched hand. Dee had headed up onto the porch, and she stood there smirking at him. His damn brother and his alpha were staring at him, too. Everyone could just back the hell off on their judgment.

“That was rude,” Kate said, swiping at his shoulder. “He was just being nice.”

“Beau is never just being nice. His agenda is always to get in your pants.”

She laughed and crossed her arms over her chest, pushing her smallish breasts up so there was now fucking cleavage to stare at, too. Shit. This woman.

“Well, he can’t have my pants. I need them,” she said with a smirk.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Get in the damn car.”

“It’s a truck.”

He pointed one key at her. “No lip from you. We have work to do.”

Kate saluted him. “Yes, sir, Mr. Rodeo.” Then she leaned toward him, dropping her voice and her eyelashes suggestively. “I’m all yours.”

Shit.

This was going to be a long night.