Page 6 of Ranch Rules

“Nate!” she called out once she was back in the hallway. She headed for the staircase, taking them two at a time. “Nate!” She could hear Thomas behind her, giving chase, so she sped up. “Nate!”

Once she had descended the stairs, she knew she had to move fast. She veered left and was gratified to see what looked like an office straight ahead. The door was closed, but that was a simple fix. “Nate!”

Thomas had feet as silent as a cat—had to, or else she wouldn’t have been so shocked when she felt his fingers grasp her upper arm.

Gasping in surprise, she tried to wrench away from him but found that she could not shake free of his grip. “Let go of me!” she demanded.

“‘Course, once you agree to let me escort you back to your room. Then we’ll sit ourselves down and have a nice talk.”

Something about the way he said talk made her freeze. That, and the fire she could see in his blue eyes. Oops. She’d made yet another mistake, it would seem. She tried to push it aside, but she could no more shake off the feeling than she could his relentless grip. “Listen, I just need to talk to Nate. Just for a second. Once I get the—”

“I’ve tried to be patient, Miss Natalie.” The way his lips pressed together told her his patience was running thin. “I tried to explain guests of Discipline Ranch do not receive the Wi-Fi password. There are several reasons for this, and I’m happy to explain them, the same way I would have if you hadn’t taken off.”

There it was: a flash of fire in his eyes again that simultaneously made her uneasy and yet jolted a nameless something inside of her awake. She wished she knew what the feeling was, but having never felt it before, it was hard to say.

“Listen—”

“What’s going on here?”

Both she and Thomas turned to look at the speaker. When his grip slacked on her arm, she took the opportunity to break free and rush forward. “Hi. I’m Natalie.”

The speaker was a tall, stern-looking man who glanced from her to Thomas. “First-timer, I take it.”

She smiled wryly. “Yes, as it happens, and I just can’t believe that you have some... policy... that keeps your guests from using the Wi-Fi. You might be surprised to learn that almost ninety-eight percent of hotels offer it for free now.”

He was a good-looking man, she could see that right off, but he was staring at her with an impassive expression that made her uneasy. “Is that so?”

Natalie got the distinct impression that it was a rhetorical question, but her training as a lawyer bid her answer anyway. “Yes. I mean, I’ll pay for it if I have to, money isn’t a problem, it’s just the principle of the thing. Having to chase down the owner just to get—”

“We would never dream of charging a guest for a Wi-Fi password,” he interrupted smoothly.

Natalie’s brow furrowed, because while he’d said what she wanted, she felt sure that he didn’t mean it the way she hoped.

“Our rules state that we do not allow internet access for our guests,” he continued, confirming her worst fears.

“But—”

He gave a shake of his head that silenced her at once. “No buts. Why don’t you come in, and I’ll explain how things work around here?” He held out his arm to indicate his office.

Natalie hesitated. His offer didn’t sound any better than the ‘talk’ Thomas had mentioned. She glanced back at him and saw the same stoic expression as was on Nate’s face. Swallowing hard, she nodded. It didn’t seem like she had much choice, after all.

But she must have hesitated too long because next thing she knew, Thomas was putting a hand on her upper arm and directing her into the open office. The door shut behind her with a foreboding thud. Without warning, her mouth went completely dry.

And that was even before she saw it, though she typically liked to examine other people’s offices, mentally comparing the size, the brand, and cleanliness to her own. She took pride in her system of organization. Then she would normally turn to survey the bookcases. But in the case of Nate’s office, she didn’t do either of those things. Her eyes were caught by the centerpiece of the room, her gaze sliding right by the desk without even seeing it.

In her own office, much like the other partners at Briggs & Spric, you would see framed diplomas and certificates. If Nate had those, however, he kept them elsewhere. Her mouth had dropped open, and she knew it, but Natalie felt powerless to change it. Every time she tried to work it closed, it fell open once more.

She couldn’t help it. She was stunned. More than stunned. What a businessperson kept displayed in their office was a testament to what he loved, and seeing Nate’s passion laid out so brazenly made her want to turn on her heel and run. She would have done, but in the same way that she couldn’t seem to control her jaw, her feet were also immobile.

Natalie couldn’t look away, either. It was like a train wreck—she knew she should flee the scene, but it was such an anomaly, so ugly, she couldn’t look away.

“What...” She tried to make her tongue work, but found she wasn’t sure what words she was even searching for. Instead, she reached out a finger and pointed.

Both men followed her gesture to the wall behind Nate’s desk. She knew they were looking at the same thing her brain was trying to convince her was an optical illusion, yet both of them wore neutral expressions in the face of her own disbelief.

She had never seen anything like it, nor had the imagination to dream such a thing up. There were two dozen gleaming silver hooks on the wall above the desk, and from each one dangled a paddle. Some were leather, looking stiff and stingy, some polished wood varying in length and width. There were even two with holes drilled into the surface. There was a pair of hairbrushes—one with a large, flat plastic head, the other a thick mahogany. There was something that looked like a belt, but wasn’t. It was black leather, but the leather was braided in a way that should have been pretty but instead put a strange foreboding in the pit of her stomach.

Though she’d pushed Thomas to the back of her mind, he must have been paying very close attention to her, because he walked over and caressed the length of the tawse, his eyes on her the entire time.

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