Taming His Wild Girl (Wild Whip Ranch Book 2) Read online

  The music changed to hard, pulsing rock—and her eyes darted across the room, as if she was looking for instructions. Her whole face tensed, then her hands went to the back of her white tutu, and she tore it off and cast it across the stage. Underneath, she was wearing a black skirt that didn’t cover her ass, and lacy stockings. She took a step forward and lifted her hands up to her hair as if she was going to loosen it—

  And at last I saw her.

  Isabelle.

  The dancer on stage didn’t just look like my tiny dancer. She was her. My heart plummeted, and my throat closed up. Four years older than last time I’d seen her, and evidently a helluva lot more screwed up.

  I didn’t stop to think. I leaped toward the stage and called her name.

  Her eyes locked with mine. They looked different—heavily made up, I guessed—but they were the same ones that had watched me all those years ago. Big blue doll’s eyes. I’d lived to watch them light up with life. I’d missed them when she’d gone. I’d know them anywhere.

  She opened her mouth and those perfect lips framed my name. Joel.

  A heavy pair of hands grasped my shoulders, dragging me back from the stage. “Sit back down. And don’t try to touch the dancers,” a voice grunted in my ear.

  I threw him off me. I was too keyed up to do anything else.

  “Isabelle, please—” I tried again, hands braced on the stage, leaning as close to her as I could get.

  This time, the hands dug into the sides of my neck, seeking out my pressure points, while a deft fist landed in my right kidney. I crumpled, my vision blurring from the pain. Suddenly, there was a meathead on either side of me, dragging me out of the club.

  “I warned you already,” said a menacing foreign voice. They hauled me through the exit and tossed me into the foyer.

  I went down hard, but I bounded up and dusted myself down, fury boiling in my veins. That was stupid. I was bursting to go back in there, but there was no point getting into a punch-up. And something told me those thugs didn’t only fight with their fists. I had to be smarter than they were.

  I was smarter than this. Isabelle made me stupid.

  Isabelle. I had to see her. Had to speak to her.

  I couldn’t believe she was here. I’d thought I’d never see her again.

  Every part of me screamed to take her in my arms, find out where the hell she’d been all these years.

  A month or so after she’d kissed me and her parents had freaked out and cut their vacation short, I’d read about them in the newspaper:

  The entire family had gone to buy a horse, and on the way back, their car and the horse trailer had been hit by a semi. They had all been killed—except for one, who’d ended up in the hospital with broken bones. Isabelle.

  I’d gone crazy looking for her. I managed to track down the foster family that she’d been placed with. But she wasn’t there—her foster father told me that she’d stolen from them and run. And then the trail had gone cold. I searched for her on Google and social media at least once a week, but there was never anything after those heartbreaking news stories. Promising ballerina loses entire family in tragedy. Sleeping driver slaughters four. I’d hoped that she’d changed her name and was managing to find some happiness somewhere. Had picked up the pieces of her wrecked life, and created a semblance of normality.

  But here she was—stripping on a stage in a trashy club. My heart cracked again.

  “You gonna leave by yourself, or you need some assistance?” the cash booth attendant bellowed through a microphone. She had big frizzy black hair and a mean mouth. She looked like the madam of a brothel. I sure hoped this place wasn’t a brothel. The thought sent a shard of pure ice down my spine.

  There was no way I was leaving without seeing Isabelle again. But I also knew there was no way I was getting back into the club.

  I stormed through the set of heavy double doors that led outside. I was on a featureless street, lined with commercial buildings barely a step up from shipping containers. The entrance to the club was discreet—a plain black door with Beyond Hope written on a brass plaque. You’d have to be looking for it to know it was there. I stood on the edge of the sidewalk and looked at the dark upper windows, hoping to god there weren’t bedrooms up there. The building was halfway along a block. There had to be a back entrance somewhere. I went along the sidewalk and made a right on the corner. A few meters along, an alley brought me to a bunch of dumpsters and a row of back entrances. As I arrived, one of the doors opened and a girl slipped out. She was wearing jeans and a shapeless T-shirt, and a big holdall was slung over her shoulder. She cast me a quick, watchful glance and hurried on her way. One of the strippers? I cast my mind back to the shows I’d seen tonight. I’d barely been watching them—mainly zoning out and wishing I was in my playroom with a willing sub. Her curly blonde hair looked kind of familiar though. This had to be the back door to the place. I’d just wait here until Isabelle was done with her shift. My throat tightened. I hated the thought of her stripping. I’d seen what the other girls did—all that bent-over, in-the-splits kind of thing, while drunk guys stuffed paper money into their garter belts.

  I was going to speak to her, make sure tonight was her last night in this dump, whatever it took.

  A good couple of hours passed while I paced up and down, kicking at leaves and trash. My buddy Kevin texted to say they were leaving, and to ask where the hell I was. I told him I’d overdone it and had to go back to the hotel. He lol-ed and called me a pussy. Whatever.

  Every nerve in my body, every single part of me, was fixated on seeing Isabelle again. I felt the years falling off me, back, back to that moment when she and her family were staying on the ranch. That beautiful half hour where I’d driven her to the rodeo, and it had just been her and me, alone in the truck, and she’d suddenly blossomed like an unfurling bud.

  One girl after another came out through that door, and I started to worry. What if Isabelle had left out the front entrance? What if she’d guessed I was waiting and tried to avoid me on purpose?

  At last, a small girl in gray sweats and a beanie came out of the door, hauling a bag that was almost as big as she was. Relief burned through me like a shot of scotch.

  “Isabelle!” I called, louder than I meant to. She looked up, eyes filling with alarm.

  “Thank God. I was scared I’d missed you.” I reached for her automatically. But at the fury in her face, I stopped short, hands splayed at my sides like a clown.

  “What are you doing here?” she said in a cold, even tone.

  “Hey, it’s Joel, from the ranch. You remember me, right?”

  “I remember you,” she said, and her expression didn’t change.

  I swallowed hard. She still hated me. After all these years. Thought I was nothing but a dumb cowhand.

  “I was here for a bachelor party. This place is not my scene, at all.” I was talking fast, suddenly aware how bad it looked.

  She shook her head, as if she didn’t want to hear any of it, and walked right past me.

  “Isabelle, please—” I could hear the desperation in my own voice. “Please, just stay and talk to me for a second. I-I heard what happened with your family.”

  She stopped walking. In the dark of the alleyway, her eyes were like two pits. The color drained from her face, and she looked exhausted. Broken and exhausted.

  Then she started to shake all over. Her throat worked, and she swallowed convulsively. “I don’t want to talk about my family,” she said.

  “Okay.” I put my hands up in surrender. “But, please tell me, what are you doing working here? I was so shocked to see you.”

  “Minding my own business,” she snapped.

  “Isabelle, you shouldn’t be here. This is not you. You were so talented.”

  “That’s all gone now, Joel. In the past.” There was such flatness to her, such an absence of hope, that it about killed me. She’d become a doll—a hollow, lifeless thing in truth.

  “Who’s this
guy, Tinks?” a voice bellowed. I looked up. The back door had opened and a thickset figure in a black turtleneck was filling the doorway.

  “You know we don’t allow boyfriends here.” He folded his arms, looking very pleased with himself, with his greasy ponytail and manicured beard. I itched to step over and flatten that belligerent face of his.

  When I looked back at Isabelle, the fear in her eyes disturbed me. Real, animal fight-or-flight panic. She was terrified of this asshole. What had he done to make her so scared of him? The back of my neck prickled, and my fists bunched.

  “I’m not her boyfriend,” I told him. “Just a friend who’s looking out for her.”

  He gave me a nasty smile and cracked his knuckles. “Well, friend, how about you get the hell out of here while you can still walk?”

  I looked from him to Isabelle’s pale, pinched face, and back again. She didn’t need the situation to escalate right now. I took a step back, and Isabelle took her cue and started walking as well. I turned and followed her around the corner. She was going fast, almost at a run, and I took long strides to catch up with her.

  “Just stop and speak to me for a moment,” I called after her. I followed her out of the side street and onto the main road.

  She came to a dead stop beneath the streetlight and spun around, eyes flashing with the feistiness I remembered from that day. “You have no idea of the shit you just got me into,” she spat. She turned, and started walking again.

  “Isabelle, you have got to get out of there. Do you hear me? Don’t go back. Ever.”

  She stopped once more. We were at a bus stop, I realized. “I have to go back. I need to live my life like anyone else.”

  “No. No there.”

  “Then what do you want me to do? Beg on the streets?”

  “Come stay with me,” I blurted out. “I’ll take care of you.”

  She’d been rummaging in her pockets for something. Now, she froze. “What?”

  “I said, I’ll take care of you. Give you everything you need. You don’t need to work in that place with those thugs.”

  She yanked out her purse, spilling a few coins at the same time. “I don’t need anyone taking care of me. People taking care of you is what screws you up.” Her voice was loud, furious.

  “These guys are going to screw you up. They’re as dangerous as hell. I don’t think you understand that, Isabelle.”

  She squatted down and started scraping the coins off the sidewalk. “Oh, believe me, I understand very well what they’re like.”

  I tried to help her, but she was already straightening up, and an intercity bus pulled up to the stop. The destination was Tayleworth, a town I’d never heard of.

  “Isabelle,” I called after her as she headed toward the bus’s opening door. “At least tell me where you live.”

  “Leave me alone, Joel. I don’t need this in my life.” She climbed up onto the bus. The door folded shut and I watched as she paid the driver and walked the length of the bus. She picked a seat on the far side, away from me. And she was gone.

  My insides ached. I slumped against the shelter and stared up at the strip of starless sky showing above the buildings. She still hated me. Still thought nothing of me. Like that teenage girl who’d used me for kissing practice, then treated me like rancher trash the second her parents turned up. That terrible episode was alive in my mind again.

  Her parents had believed her version of events, of course. She’d been hysterical and underage drunk in the presence of a guy who’d promised to take care of her. Of course, it was all my fault. And actually, it was. I’d sensed she was up to something when she snuck away from me. I never should have let her go to the bathroom by herself. I wished so badly that the scene had played out differently, that we’d kept having a nice time together, enjoying each other’s company. And when her parents had turned up to check on her, they would have seen us hanging out, drinking colas. We would have gone back to the ranch, and she and her family would have enjoyed the rest of their vacation.

  The last thing they ever did together.

  She wanted nothing to do with me, and I couldn’t blame her. But I was going to get her out of that dump. I wouldn’t fail her this time.

  Chapter 3

  Isabelle

  I sat at the back of the bus where it was darkest and quietest, pressed my burning forehead against the cold window, and stared blankly at the dark stores and houses rushing by.

  Joel.

  His name seemed to beat through my veins. To vibrate in my soul.

  My all-time biggest crush. Four years older, and even hotter.

  He’d changed. He was no longer the scruffy young cowboy I’d lost my heart to. He looked like a city boy now, in his crisp blue button-down. But he still had that deep, outdoorsy tan.

  He always used to wear those red plaid lumberjack shirts with the sleeves torn off, showing off his big muscly biceps. I couldn’t help smiling at the memory. And those sexy tattoos. God, those tattoos. I used to know each one by heart. I’d caught him working in the barn once, without a shirt, and memorized the art of them.

  His jaw was broader now, and his forehead was heavier. He’d shed the last signs of boyishness, but his eyes were the same—those deep set amber irises that had peered right into my soul and understood that I wasn’t the uptight little girl everyone thought I was.

  That I was growing into a woman, with a woman’s needs. My parents just hadn’t figured it out.

  Then that night at the rodeo.

  It flooded back to me on a wave of hot, tingling shame.

  I’d wanted to impress him so bad. I’d gone to get the beers to show him I was a grown-up. But the bartender wouldn’t serve me, of course. Then a couple of douches gave me a bunch of shots, and my stupid brain thought I could sneak them back to Joel.

  Then it had all gone so wrong. My parents had shown up, and I’d been well past tipsy. The first and last time I got wasted in my life. My parents marched me out of the rodeo, and I puked by the car. I couldn’t remember what else had happened. I just remembered Joel looking at me sadly, gripping his white cowboy hat in his hands as the shadows flickered across his tanned face.

  I knew I’d done something bad to cause Joel’s hurt and my parents’ rage. But it wasn’t until days later, after we’d lurched out of the vacation and driven back home, that my parents told me what I’d said.

  That Joel had kissed me.

  I’d laughed, because it was so ridiculous. Of course that wasn’t what happened. No way had he been attracted to my sixteen-year-old self. I knew what I looked like—ramrod straight, hair scraped back, shirt buttoned up to my neck, and plain face, no make-up. I knew I must have kissed him instead. I just wished like hell that I could remember it.

  He’d been such a sweetheart that night, taking me out, showing me a normal time.

  And I’d betrayed him. Thrown his kindness right back in his face, gotten him into trouble with my parents and his parents. He should hate my guts.

  But now he was back, offering to help me. No one helped me. It had always been all me. My parents had been good people. But they’d sat me down when I was twelve and explained that they were there to provide support, but if I was going to succeed, then I had to do it all by myself.

  Then they were gone in, a moment. A long moment of shrieking metal and screams, followed by infinite darkness. I’d been unconscious for a long time. When I finally woke up, I was fine, aside from a broken leg full of pins. My career was over, of course. But that didn’t matter, because everyone I loved was dead. My whole family wiped out by one selfish prick who hadn’t taken a break when he was supposed to. He’d dozed behind the wheel of his semi while it massacred four people.

  I’d survived, barely. That was what my life was now—the bare minimum, the lowest level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: survival. Pain in my leg, barbed wire caging my heart.

  When the bus reached my stop, I climbed off and trudged to my hateful apartment. Everything about it said sl
eazy money—from the high-security entrance, to the cheesy McMansion exterior, to all the glitter and bling of the interior design. Albanian chic, my roommate called it. She wasn’t so bad, most of the time. I’d been grateful to move in with her after being on my own. I’d been alone since my family died and I’d run from foster care. No money, no safety net. Sleeping rough, working a string of shitty jobs that barely allowed me to rent a hotel room week to week. The long hard scramble out of a hole that only grew deeper, closing in over my head, blotting out all light.

  That was how the Albanians got me—the promise of money, a decent apartment. All I had to do was serve drinks to loud, drunk, gropey guys. I knew the owners were dangerous. I’d just prayed they’d leave me alone.

  Then I discovered the ‘small print’. They owned everything. Not only the apartment where I lived with another stripper, but me as well. Apparently, I was under contract for a year. Turned out strippers had to pay for the privilege of stripping at this joint, and if you were broke, the bosses ‘lent’ you the money, and you had to repay it. It was bullshit, and it made my blood boil. But there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it. When I complained, Elio put his meaty paw around my neck and muttered something about his ‘network’. I knew what that meant: they were mob, and they had associates everywhere. If I ran, they’d catch up with me. Destiny told me they’d hurt a girl who’d tried to escape before she’d paid off her debt. I think she was trying to be nice, but who knew in this joint? It was a nest of vipers that I’d jumped into with my eyes shut. Just do your time, she’d told me, as if I was in jail. It’ll pass, and you’ll be free to leave.

  At least I got a place to stay out of it. Except…

  The sound hit me before I even turned the key in the lock. Pounding death metal. Which meant my roommate and her loser boyfriend would be up all night, getting high on meth. My heart sank.