Worth the Trouble Read online

  "I have to answer to your boyfriend?" Ethan asked tight-lipped. If that was the case, letting the man know he was interested in Rocky would make the odds of him being accepted slim. It was a lose, lose proposition he was facing here.

  "He's not my boyfriend, but he will be our supervisor if you make the team."

  Resolve poured through Ethan and he told her arrogantly, "There's no if about it. When I make the team, I'll get along with the asshole."

  Ethan wasn't letting her go off into the woods half-cocked, thinking because she'd taken a class that she was prepared for search and rescue. There was a helluva lot more to it than that. Obviously, neither she, or the vet realized that.

  Ethan realized it, because he had lived it.

  The hope he'd been trying to temper with reality flickered back to life, along with excitement at the prospect of being useful again. This could be his new reality, his new purpose, along with giving him the vehicle to make sure Rocky didn't kill herself.

  To make it happen, he was going to have to do two things: keep his hands off of Rocky so he didn't piss off the vet, and learn to ride very quickly.

  Jealousy shot through Ethan when Rocky defended, "He's not an asshole, he's a really smart, really good guy and you'll like him if you give it a chance."

  "Are you dating him?" Ethan asked gruffly.

  Rocky's face flushed but she met his eyes steadily. "Not that it's any of your business...no, I'm not dating him or anybody else."

  Hearing that made him feel a little better and his shoulders relaxed some. Her next words however, made him tense up once more.

  "That doesn't matter though, because what happened the night of the wedding, and what happened yesterday isn't going to happen again," she told him firmly, then followed up with, "We're going to be friends and nothing more if we're going to work together."

  Definitely not what Ethan wanted to hear, since he now realized her reaction to their kiss yesterday hadn't been feigned, or out of pity. He would follow her rules for now though, because whatever it took, he was going to be on that team. She was the key to accomplishing that, he needed her to teach him how to ride.

  "We'll never be just friends, Roxanne. Something is going on between us, but it won't happen again until you want it to happen," Ethan agreed, but then added a caveat, "What's good for the goose though--no more dates with the vet either. You'll be working with him too."

  "It wasn't a date, Ethan...he wants--"

  "I know exactly what he wants, because I want the same thing, but it doesn't look like I'm gonna get it. You'll be working with him too though, so it's only fair that you hold him to the same policy."

  "Fair enough," she agreed with a huffed breath. "I promise I won't date Wes either, not that we were dating to begin with."

  "Good," he said then gave her a wide grin. "Now, when do my lessons start?"

  "As soon as my sister leaves," she told him. "In the meantime, you can work harder in the gym to get ready."

  "Why wait?" Ethan asked her in confusion.

  Storm clouds gathered in her gray eyes then she told him, "Because my sister is a handful as I'm sure you noticed. Between keeping up with my chores and dealing with her, I have enough on my hands for a little while."

  "Leigh Ann said she's going home in a couple of days, right?" he asked.

  "Don't bet on it. When she shows up you can bet my mother won't be far behind. Before long we'll have a week long drama fest here, if I can't get rid of her, before mama shows up. Terri and Joel will probably fire me. It's happened at the last two ranches I've worked at. I have no idea how they found me here."

  "You don't talk to your family?" Ethan asked not understanding at all.

  Even when he was pissed at them, he loved his family and knew they loved him. He would never cut them off. As crazy as they drove him sometimes, his family was the only thing that kept him sane throughout the circus that had always been his life.

  Without fail, they were always there for him.

  Everyone needed someone who cared about them, loved and accepted them unconditionally, even if they didn't agree with the things he chose to do. It looked like Roxanne didn't have that luxury.

  Sympathy filled him and he reached for her hand, but she stepped back.

  "My sister and I have nothing in common, my mother and I have less. After my dad died, I just kind of struck out on my own," she told him. "Trust me when I tell you you're better off staying out of the drama."

  "Let me be the judge of that, Roxanne. I'll be here if you need backup."

  "My mother will be like a bobcat eyeing a tasty chicken, if she senses you're interested in me. She will hound you to the ends of the Earth trying to get you to marry her old maid daughter who nobody wants. You will be put through absolute hell, before she tries to remake me into something I'm not...just stay away from me if she shows up, please."

  "Okay, I will," he agreed. "I'll help you get rid of them too. I want to get started on our lessons as soon as possible."

  Roxanne knew if Ethan got in the middle of it, he would get a lesson he wouldn't forget. He couldn't say he hadn't been warned though when the trouble started. And it would.

  Her sister didn't show up here just for a friendly visit. She was running from some kind of trouble, and looking for Rocky to bail her out. Leigh Ann might be beautiful, but she couldn't take care of herself. Their overbearing mother hadn't ever let her take care of herself, or make her own decisions.

  Even Leigh Ann entering the Miss Texas pageant, had been their mother's decision. Her sister had won, but it hadn't improved her circumstances. Her life prospects had gotten slimmer. She quit college for her 'reign' and never went back, so she had no life skills other than being pretty and socially adequate. That had however served Trudy Baker's purpose of making her daughter more attractive to a rich man for marriage, which so far had resulted in five broken engagements, but no vows.

  "You can marry a rich man as easily as a poor man, girls."

  Nausea rolled in Rocky's stomach, as she recalled her mother's mantra since she and her sister were teenagers. Her mother's philosophy resulted from thinking she could have done better than Samuel Baker, and wanting to make sure her daughters did do better.

  After she became pregnant with Rocky as a teenager, her mother and father had gotten married. Her daddy wasn't rich, but he worked hard to try and make her mother happy, and provide a good home for his family. The first was impossible, and the second he had done in spades, even making sure they were taken care of with life insurance after Trudy drove him to an early grave.

  Regardless of how she treated him, her daddy had also loved Trudy the best he could, even though she was very hard to love sometimes. There was nobody better than her daddy, and Trudy Baker was damned lucky he married her.

  Now her mother's mission in life was to get her sister married off well. Rocky didn't feel sorry for Leigh Ann though. Until her sister said "Enough!", like Rocky had done years ago, she would never be free of their mother's oppressive love.

  If that was love, Rocky could definitely do without it.

  "Stop frowning, sweetheart...it'll cause wrinkles," Ethan told her with a chuckle.

  "Now, you sound like my mother," she told him with a shake of her head and a shiver.

  "God forbid..." he replied with a grin.

  "Oh, honey, you have no idea..." He would soon find out soon enough though, if she couldn't get rid of Leigh Ann.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  After Ethan left the barn, heading for the gym, Rocky finished her chores for the morning, then took Reed out for a ride. It gave her time to get her head straight, and to make plans about what she could do to get her sister the hell off the ranch, before the crew came back from the trail ride later in the afternoon.

  One thing was for sure, if her sister was still here then she could not stay out at the employee bunkhouse anymore. And she couldn't stay at the guest bunkhouse either, all eight of their current guests who were staying there were men too
. Rocky knew the effect her sister had on men, and letting her stay either place would amount to tossing a juicy bone into a pack of dogs.

  Not that she thought the guys wouldn't be respectful, they would. It would just cause problems, and that is the last thing she needed at this job.

  Every one of them had been nothing but respectful to her, but then she wasn't a woman in their eyes. She was a co-worker and a friend, that's how they treated her...mostly. But Leigh Ann would be a different story, she was a different woman, former Miss Texas, and a helluva lot more sensitive than Rocky. The way those guys talked out there at the bunkhouse would have her ears burning.

  It looked like Rocky had no choice but to ask Terri if Leigh Ann could stay up at the big house with the two spa guests. Normally, the weeklong spa adventure package was booked up weeks in advance, but Rocky thought there were only two guests up at the house right now.

  It wouldn't cost the ranch money, if Leigh Ann stayed up there a couple of days. But she was going to offer to pay Terri for her stay, and she was going to make it plain to her sister that her stay had an expiration date.

  Rocky wished her sister would just get the hell out of Dodge and save her the trouble of figuring all this out, she didn't have time for it. But Rocky knew that wasn't happening, and unless she decided to hurt Leigh Ann's feelings and make her leave she wasn't going to. If her mother showed up, Rocky would make her sister leave and take their mother with her. Until then, she would take the time to find out what her sister's latest crisis was and see if she could help her.

  Last night she had been too mad to talk to her sister, but she was more than ready this morning. Leigh Ann couldn't hide out here, no matter what kind of trouble she'd stirred up for herself this time.

  Sweat dripped between her breasts and Rocky pulled her shirt away from her heated skin. First, she needed a shower though, then she would talk to Leigh Ann.

  When she walked through the front door of the bunkhouse, she found Leigh Anne pacing in the kitchen, while talking on her cell phone. Smoke poured out of the toaster on the counter, and the smoke detector was screeching so loudly Rocky wondered how she could even hear whoever was on the phone. Taking a towel off the rack by the sink, Rocky fanned the smoke detector until it stopped then threw the towel on the counter.

  "Still haven't learned how to cook, huh sis?" Rocky grumbled then went to the toaster and popped out the burnt bread.

  That was the one feminine talent Miss Texas hadn't conquered, but her tomboy sister had. Rocky loved to rub it in too. Their dad had done most of the cooking at home, and he had taught her. Leigh Ann had been too busy learning how to do her 'pageant walk' and put on her makeup correctly to pay attention to things that mattered.

  When she finally noticed the smoke, Leigh Ann coughed then fanned her hand in front of her face. "Mama, I don't want you out here. There's nothing to talk about!" she whined into the phone.

  Just as Rocky had predicted, Act Two of the newest melodrama in her life was about to begin. Rocky waved her hand to get Leigh Ann's attention then mouthed, "Don't tell her where you are!" She hoped against hope that her sister had enough sense to withhold that bit of information.

  With a shrug, Leigh Ann mouthed back, "I had to!"

  Rolling her eyes, Rocky threw up her hands then stalked out of the room.

  Her sister might as well argue with a fence post, it would probably produce more results than arguing with their mother. Regardless of whether she was welcome here or not, Rocky knew Trudy was coming and bringing a mess of trouble with her, like she always did.

  After quickly showering and changing, she scraped her hair back into a wet ponytail and headed back to the front of the house. When Rocky walked through the living room, her sister was sitting on the sofa and wiggled her fingers at Rocky as she said, "I had to hock the ring, Chester, I needed the money. No, you can't get it back, I sold it."

  Rocky assumed she must be talking to finance number five, and it looked like she was going to be on the phone with him a while. Giving her a short wave, Rocky tried to escape out the front door with a sigh of relief at the reprieve.

  She would go up to the big house and talk to Terri first, then come back here and hopefully Leigh Ann would be off the phone then. She needed to find out what the schedule was for the big house anyway, and see if they even had room for her sister up there, before she offered to let her do that.

  "Annie, wait!" her sister shouted just as her hand touched the doorknob. Rocky's shoulders tensed, and she twisted the knob hoping for a quick getaway.

  "I have something to do, we'll talk later," she said quickly then walked out the front door and shut it behind her.

  Once her feet hit the hard packed dirt, she took off running toward the house. When she entered the house, the only person she saw was Penny in the kitchen. She told Rocky she thought Terri had gone out to the spa, so she headed out the back of the house toward the salon. The salon wasn't somewhere Rocky went often, but she needed to talk to Terri.

  The smell of hair spray and other strange scents assaulted her nostrils when she walked into the salon. Sadie was standing over a woman at the shampoo bowl, so rather than interrupt, she waved to her then headed through the salon toward the back of the building where she knew the spa was located.

  She had only been in here one time, when Terri had forced her to allow Sadie do her up for the wedding. The woman had brought her back here to wax her eyebrows, and give her a manicure. That was an experience Rocky never wanted to repeat, ever, she thought with a shiver.

  Stopping to scan the spa area, she saw Lynn, the nail technician for the salon, working on a woman's feet, but she still didn't see Terri. A little farther inside, behind a curtained partition, she saw another technician who she didn't know working on a woman laying on a table of some sort. The woman's head was wrapped up in towels, and the technician was patting them. Rocky didn't even want to know what they were doing, so she didn't hesitate to move on down the hall.

  The door to the right led into the gym, and Rocky decided to look in there before she checked the rooms down the darkened hall to the left. Swinging open the heavy door, Rocky spotted Joel on a treadmill over on the far side of the huge room.

  There were very few people in the gym at the moment, so it was easy to figure out that Terri wasn't one of them, but she would ask Joel if he'd seen her.

  When she approached he pulled the earplugs from his ears and pushed a few buttons on the machine to stop it. His skin was slick with sweat, so he used the towel around his neck to wipe his face and shoulders then smiled at her.

  "Hey, how's Chancey doing?" he asked breathlessly.

  "Wes says he's gonna be fine, he put him on antibiotics," she informed.

  "You coming in to work out now?" he asked with an odd smile, then stepped off of the machine.

  Rocky snorted then said, "Nah, I get enough of a work out in the barn. I was looking for Terri, have you seen her?"

  "She came in her earlier, but left when Ethan left," Joel told her.

  "You know where she was headed?"

  "She didn't say, everything okay?" he asked and swiped his face again.

  "Yeah, everything's fine," she lied then turned back toward the spa to look there again. "I just need to ask her a favor."

  "Good luck finding her," he said with a chuckle. "That woman is like the Energizer Bunny on steroids."

  That was a very apt description for his wife, Rocky thought. Terri was always going somewhere and doing something. That's probably why she liked her so much, Terri was hard working and down to Earth, a lot like herself.

  Terri was one of the only female friends that Rocky had ever had, and she felt bad about asking her to do this, because she felt like she was abusing that friendship. What choice did she have though?

  Once Rocky went back through the door to the spa area, it closed behind her and she was again enveloped in the calming atmosphere. It was dead quiet, with the exception of some weird oriental music being piped through
the speakers in the ceiling. The area was softly lit and relaxing. Involuntarily, the tension in her muscles disappeared as she walked as quietly as she could down the darkened hallway.

  At each opened door, Rocky stopped to peer inside looking for Terri. When she reached a larger room where the interior was divided into smaller rooms by curtained partitions, she stopped. Curiosity got the better of her when her eyes landed on the padded tables in the center of each room, so she crept farther inside to investigate.

  From the tables, sheets and towels in the rooms, she figured this must be the massage area. Her mother and sister treated themselves to spa treatments frequently, and she had never understood why, until now. What puzzled her though, was why it didn't make them calmer than they were. If Rocky had the nerve to get a massage, she thought she'd probably have a hard time getting worked up about anything ever again.

  A flickering glow under one of the curtains to the left caught her attention, then a throaty masculine moan broke the silence. The sound hit Rocky right in the solar plexus, and she took a few tentative steps in that direction.

  It almost sounded like a man in the throes of extreme sexual pleasure.

  Another moan broke the silence, and she stopped then swallowed hard, holding her breath. Rocky knew that moan, Ethan was the one moaning behind that curtain.

  "God, that is so good..." he moaned, and his slightly slurred, deep voice sent her heart rate clicked up a few notches.

  It sounded like he was on the verge of an orgasm, Rocky would know.

  Maybe they did more back here than massages, she thought with anger tweaking inside of her. The news was full of back alley massage parlors being busted for offering 'Happy Endings'. She certainly never imagined the R & R Ranch offered that service.

  It sure sounded like it though.

  Although she knew she shouldn't, Rocky couldn't help herself when she tiptoed to hide on the other side of the narrow opening to the room. With one finger, she created a small opening in the curtain so she could see inside, but couldn't be seen.