But that left her with nothing to keep her occupied, and while the painting had done nothing to keep Sam and their relationship out of her thoughts, it had at least kept her busy so she wasn’t stalking around the house like a caged animal. She could only stand that for so long and then she realized she needed to get out. Normally she’d go work off the stress by doing some hard work, but that would mean seeing Sam and she was avoiding him.
A walk would help, she thought. She found herself heading to her secret place, almost by instinct and luckily her feet still knew the back way through the woods. Without a trail to follow and her mind on other things she’d have ended up lost. Instead she broke into the clearing and felt an instant sense of peace and calm.
She settled into her swing and after some careful testing decided it would hold her weight if she actually got it going. She kicked off with her toes; legs pumping, leaning back and forth she was able to reclaim that childhood feeling of flying. Her tummy did little flips and her giggles echoed under the majestic cathedral of branches.
For just that brief time she was able to dump all her worries and stress and immerse herself in the feeling of being a little girl again. Not the veryadultkind of little girl who’d been deliciously fucked by Daddy Sam in his bed the night before, but the kind who could relax and let someone else take care of all the problems while she played.
Was it really wrong to want to be both of those things? She felt like she had two people inside of her: the innocent little girl who needed to be cuddled and maybe sometimes punished, and the shamelessly sexual wanton who writhed and begged for Daddy’s cock to fill her up. Maybe if Sam was willing to deal with both, she’d be able to let him in finally and give him the commitment he wanted.
She lost track of how long she sailed back and forth thinking the idea over, but by the time she let the creaking rope swing slow and stop she’d made up her mind. A wide grin on her face, she was ready to skip off to find him and propose a new deal. There wasn’t anyone she would ever dare confess these needs to besides him, but he’d suggested the whole Daddy thing to begin with. That meant, at least on some level, he would understand. Maybe.
She had a picture in her head of how things would go. She’d track him down, probably alone in his office, so she could confess everything that had been going on in her head. Present him with the possible fix to all their problems, and he’d be so overjoyed he’d scoop her up and spin her around. Then they’d head off into the sunset for their happy ending.
It didn’t goquiteas planned.
Flushed and feeling excited she beat her way through the brush and undergrowth of the woods fairly quickly. Ignoring the branches that snagged in her hair, and the prickly burrs that stuck to her clothes, she had her mind on just one thing—Sam. But it turned out that her timing couldn’t have been worse.
She must have looked like a madwoman when she burst out of the trees. Luckily, she’d come out at the far side of the house where it was likely no one had seen her unless they happened to be looking in just the right direction at the right time.
She did take a few seconds to pull broken twigs and leaves from her ponytail, but she didn’t bother going home to clean up. She headed straight for the ranch, crossing her front yard in long strides as her eyes scanned for Sam’s tall shape. She could normally pick him out at a distance, but she didn’t see him.
Her first thought was to check his office in the main barn. If he wasn’t there someone might know where he was, so she didn’t have to search the huge spread of land looking for him. But she heard him before she saw him and stopped in her tracks just inside the open double-doors. He was yelling at one of the hands, a guy she’d never much cared for, and he seemed to be in a bad mood. She hesitated, her plan to dump her deep emotional revelations on him dying at the root.
She had a feeling at least part of his mood was her fault and she bit her lip, wondering if it would make things worse if she talked to him now. She was excited but she had a lot of intensely personal stuff to tell him and well, it was probably going to go better if he wasn’t pissed at her when she walked in.Later, she thought, but before she could leave, he turned and saw her.
His face darkened like a thundercloud and his eyes took on a flinty, cold look. “Not now, Charlie!” he snapped.
She flinched. “I was just…”
“I don’t care what you were ‘just doing’ I’m busy and not in the mood to play games with you right now.” The angry look he shot in her direction hurt like a slap in the face, and then he’d turned away like she was being dismissed from his notice and that stung her pride.
She took an involuntary step back and then turned on her heel and fled without another word. Her feelings were hurt and she had to blink back tears, but the further she got from him the more those emotions turned to anger and embarrassment.
How dare he treat her like that, and in front of one of the men who worked for them too!
She wasn’t paying much attention to where she was going and she found herself by the small corral where they’d been isolating one of the newer acquisitions, a big black stallion that was unbroken and still very wild. He had to be separated because he didn’t get along with the rest of the herd.
She’d been wanting to get a closer look at him since she’d come home and seen him pacing his territory with such wild spirit, but Sam had warned her off sternly. It was hard to believe the gorgeous creature was that much of a threat, but she’d obeyed. She did hope Sam was intending to keep him on the ranch permanently instead of selling him off once he was tamed a bit. He’d sire some beautiful foals no matter his temperament.
Growing up on a ranch had given her lessons in how dangerous horses could be, but she’d always had a good rapport with them. Despite what Sam thought, she was confident in her ability to make friends with the haughty stallion.
She spied a bucket of apples and snatched one up as a bribe as she headed straight for the gate. At that moment she didn’t give a damn about Sam’s warnings that he was dangerous. She was half-owner of the horse and if she wanted to feed him an apple, she could do that. It wasn’t like she was going to jump on his back and try to ride when he hadn’t been trained to it. She had common sense.
Ignoring all the men who got in her way and tried to head her off, she let herself into the paddock and almost immediately knew she was in trouble. The stallion eyed her with a devilish glare, snorting hot and heavy any time she took a step in his direction. His front hoof stomped the ground and he looked almost as though he was going to make a run at her.
Showing fear would be a mistake, and she clamped down on her first instinct, which was to turn and run for the exit. He could run faster than she could and besides, she knew she’d look like an idiot for getting scared so easily after telling all the watching hands she would be fine. She could hear them talking in low worried voices behind her and cursed under her breath.Didn’t they have something better to be doing? Like work?
No, she needed to make a stand and get the stallion in line. If she wasn’t afraid of him then he’d realize he couldn’t push her around. Horses could be giant bullies if they thought they had the upper hand, so she wasn’t going to run. “Hey there, pretty boy. I brought you something,” she said, keeping her voice low and even. She took a tentative step towards him with her hand stretched in his direction, apple sitting flat in the palm.
He looked curious and she could tell that he was tempted to come closer. For a second, she thought he might but then he snorted, and his hoof came down on the hard-packed earth. She jumped and almost lost the apple. It wobbled there in her hand and she had the oddest feeling that he’d wanted to scare her into dropping it. There was the cunning kind of intelligence in his eyes that the best horses had.
“Now is that a nice way to treat your new friend? Come on, you beauty; come get the treat,” she coaxed. She took another step closer even though her stomach was doing nervous flips.
His head snapped towards her, showing his teeth without really making an effort to bite. It was a half-hearted lunge to see if he could scare her off. She stood her ground, but inside she was shaking. Sam had been right, as he usually was, and that pissed her off. She just couldn’t see a way out without admitting she should never have gone in to start with.
The last thing she wanted to hear in that moment was his voice shouting “Charlotte McGee, you get your ass away from that horse right now!” at her from outside the fence.
Damn it.This was not going to go well, and she knew it. She was stuck with the choice of bowing to his angry shouting in front of all the men, or staying the course and risking getting stomped to death. Obviously, she was going with the stallion.
