Page 10 of Trig
Shit. Not what, perhaps awho.I hadn’t thought she might already be claimed. There was no ring on her finger, but she was so fucking beautiful that all kinds of fuckers probably sniffed all around her.
“Boyfriend?” I asked between clenched teeth.
She shook her head. “No. I go to school there.”
I’d been mentally preparing to go all the way to the coast just to tell the fucker he lost his shot with Ellie and that she was mine now. Not that she was a student.
Wait, she looked young, buthowyoung? I was thirty-four and didn’t mind that she was younger. But I needed her fucking legal. “School?” I asked, neutrally.
“I’m a junior studying accounting.”
Well, then. She was probably smarter than me and my siblings combined.
“Impressive,” I said, returning to my work making us some breakfast. It also meant she had to be at least…twenty-one? What the hell did I know about counting higher than eight seconds? I’d skipped college and gone straight into the pro-rodeo circuit where I literally flung myself off the back of an angry bull. Talk about stupid.
She shrugged and took little sips of her coffee.
“If you’re in school there, then what brought you to Devil’s Ditch?”
Her eyes widened. “We’re in Devil’s Ditch still?”
I arched a brow. “Still?”
She knew the town and the use ofstillmeant she started here.
She bit her lip. “I saw a sign for it as I was, um… driving and thought I made it farther in the snow.”
“Nope. Still in Devil’s Ditch. You’re on my family’s land here. Wilder Ranch.”
She glanced around. Took in the kitchen. My house wasn’t fancy, but it was built sturdy and big enough for a family I hoped to have someday. Now that the woman I was going to fill with my babies was at my kitchen table, it was going to be sooner than later.
My dick was eager to get right on that.
When my thoughts went one way, hers obviously went another.
“Family? Wait. You’re… um, married?”
I dropped into the seat beside her, took her hand. “Not yet, sugar. But real fucking soon.”
6
ELLIE
What the hell?
“You’reengaged,then?” I asked, tugging my hand free. I’d spent the night in a man’s bed who was engaged to someone else! I wore his clothes, andonlyhis clothes. Only a few minutes earlier he’d said I was his.
His.
That he’d spank me!
I popped to my feet, the kitchen chair skidding across the hardwood floor. God, what was I going to do? I was trapped in the house with a man while his fiancée was elsewhere? I was mortified for thinking what I had of him. That I noticed how handsome he was. How strong his hands were. How I wanted to feel his lips on mine… and other places. That while I’d been stunned by the mention of being spanked, the idea of something so intimate and carnal had made me squirm.
That just looking into his eyes made me feel things I’d never felt for anyone else before.
The guy was gorgeous. Of course, he had a woman! He probably had a flock or a harem of them.
I was stupid. STUPID!
