River's End (River's End Series, #1)(4)

Joey was the one who insisted that Chance work there. And look how well that turned out. Chance Poletti was lazy, shiftless and could only do a crap job at any task he was assigned. Jack always ended up fixing most of Chance’s work. Chance cost him extra money and increased his workload. But he let Chance stay because Joey needed that. Joey thought he owed Chance, and was constantly trying to prove to Jack that he was his own man. Jack wanted to inform his little brother that his judgment in people sucked, but the more he tried to tell Joey anything, the more Joey rebelled. So for now, he had to let Chance stay if only so that Joey could learn this lesson. Joe trusted people at face value. He was naive to people like Chance, whom he saw as a friend he owed a debt to.

Chance was a polished manipulator and used Joey’s youthful innocence and belief in goodness to get what he wanted. What Chance wanted was something that Jack hadn’t nailed down yet. But he knew it was something. And to date, he just let it go, hoping Joey would wise up before Chance’s real reasons for befriending Joey became known. Joey had to toughen up if he intended to work on and run the ranch, so it seemed better to do it now rather than later.

Jack just never considered having the female version of Chance suddenly show up and screw Joe over.

Erin Poletti. Funny how she showed up out of nowhere, unannounced and unwanted. She was so unprepared for and inappropriate to the ranch, he wondered why Joey couldn’t see exactly what she was about: herself.

And Joey was a prime target to whatever trap Ms. Poletti and Chance were plotting.

Like any red-blooded, straight man, Jack first noticed her body. He glanced over at where she stood, still mooning up to Joey. She was slim and small, with shapely legs that she showed off with a skirt that flounced around her thighs, offering a peek-a-boo effect that could drive any man crazy. And what else could Erin’s goal be? Especially since it was not even fifty degrees out today.

She had narrow shoulders and a small frame with small breasts, which she did her best to highlight with the strip of hot pink bra she allowed to show over the top of her shirt.

If a guy could manage to look past all that, ignoring her clothing, which seemed to wink at him, her face could have stopped a plane dead in the air. She was that pretty. Her big green eyes, which even from a distance, Jack could see she knew exactly how to use, by making them even bigger and wider eyed, so she looked more vulnerable. It was a guise for idiots like his brother who wanted to slay whatever pretend dragons someone like Erin Poletti feared. Her hair was pushed off her forehead by a black headband, and hung around her shoulders in twisting black curls. She had a mass of ringlets that must almost reach her waist. It was too bad such a pretty face was wasted on someone like Erin. He wondered what she usually did. Or did she just latch onto people, like a parasite, until she moved on or was figured out?

The car, however, gave Ms. Poletti away. It sorely revealed a need for money. Money, no doubt, she and her scoundrel brother were planning to coax out of Joey. Did Chance bring Erin in on his ongoing scam?

Joey’s eyes never quit following Erin Poletti’s clothes. Yeah, she was the perfect shiny object to distract Joey with, now wasn’t she? What the hell was she doing here?

Visiting her brother who worked on a horse ranch? Yeah, sure. He believed that. Wearing little flip-like shoes with heels that would twist an ankle if she planned to walk past the rim of her car. There was no room on a place like the Rydell River Ranch for a piece of fluff like Erin Poletti.

Jack smashed the shovel into the horse manure he was cleaning from Augusta’s stall. Hauling back a full load, he dumped it into the large trailer behind him, which he had to drag out to the larger pile of even more manure, beyond the barns.

Augusta, grazing in the pasture now, was the Rydells’ most prized horse. His horse. Augusta was a full-blooded Nokota ranch horse. More importantly, he was Jack’s heart; although, of course, he didn’t tell anyone that. It was just between him and his horse. Augusta read Jack as if she were Jack’s own arm. When they were together, they were that synchronized and in tune. Jack had never experienced anything like it in all the years he trained and bred horses.

His brother was supposed to be helping him clean the enormous barn that housed many of their horses. Some were boarded here, some were there for training or care; and a few dozen belonged to the Rydells. Jack glanced over his shoulder. Joey was leaning into Erin Poletti’s car and dragging out a duffel bag. His jaw clenched. Damn it, Joey, what are you doing? Unloading another untrustworthy Poletti to live with them? Couldn’t Joey ever see past his own nose? Or, in this case, his own dick?

Jack threw the shovel down and kicked at the stall. He didn’t have time for that. Not to watch Joey get his ass handed to him by a pair of experienced tits. He didn’t have time to protect Joey from whatever blunder Chance Poletti was setting him up for. He had enough on his plate just making sure Chance didn’t actually cause any real damage to the ranch, or the Rydell reputation.

He had the ranch to run, two sons to raise, and dozens of horses to care for, as well as many to train. Not to mention the endless hours of work outside of the horses that still had to be done. He really didn’t have any time for this crap. Joey opened Chance’s trailer and took Erin inside.

****

Erin held her breath, then let it out of her mouth before taking another breath back in. The trailer stunk. It was putrid. It had garbage overflowing the trash can and littered all over the counter. Dirty clothes and shoes were everywhere. This was the trailer in which she was to live? It wasn’t very big and had a door near the back, which turned into a small kitchen, with a half-sized fridge, sink, stove and countertop. With one step, she was in the living area, a small square of couch with a two-seater table across from it. A small hallway with a sink on one side and a door on the other lay beyond that. The toilet? Well, it looked about as big as a two-foot closet. At one end was a bed that took up the front of the trailer. It was wedged between the walls with barely six inches of room to walk around.