His Enemy's Daughter Read online

  She would never really belong here. It was high time she realized that.

  “Well,” she managed to say in a voice that sounded relieved, if a little airheaded. “I’m so glad we were able to find a solution that works for everyone! And Mr. Wellington, I’m extra glad you are able to bring your horses all the way to the Bootheel.” Her grin was so bright it about blinded him. “I’d like to remind everyone that showtime is in three hours and we do have a sold-out crowd tonight and an almost sold-out crowd tomorrow night. Let’s give these people a reason to come back that doesn’t involve funnel cakes.”

  She got a little bit of a laugh for this and she kept that big smile going, but Pete could see the light dying in her eyes a little bit.

  Good. That’s just what he wanted. He didn’t feel the least bit sorry that she’d been overthrown in a mutiny. It was past time she found out what it was like to have a usurper sitting on the throne of one’s inheritance.

  Still... Watching her grit her teeth as she shook hands with cowboys bothered Pete a little bit. These men had been nothing but rude to her today. Some of them had dressed it up with prettier language than others, but still. She had to pretend like this was all hunky-dory because if she punched someone like her brother would’ve, they’d start in on how it was more proof that women shouldn’t be in charge of these things.

  That’s just the way it went. What was done was done and the end justified the means. He had successfully accomplished the first step in taking back his rodeo and he couldn’t afford to let things get personal. Nothing he felt for Chloe was personal and that was final.

  She turned to him. “When you get time,” she said, sweetness dripping off every word, “I’d like to go over your new duties with you.”

  Which meant she was going to try to destroy him. Pete grinned. He’d like to see her try. “Absolutely,” he told her, fighting the odd urge to bow. “You’re the boss.”

  Fire danced in her eyes, promising terrible, wonderful things. She tilted her head in acknowledgment of this false platitude and then sashayed off, her head held high and her hips swaying in a seductive rhythm. Pete knew he wasn’t the only one watching the Princess of the Rodeo leave him in the dust. The woman was an eyeful.

  Just as she got to the gate, she turned and looked back over her shoulder. Sunshine lit her from behind, framing her in a golden glow. Damn, she was picture-perfect, every fantasy he’d ever had come to life. If he didn’t know who she was, he’d be beating these other idiots off with a stick to get to her first.

  But he did know. She was an illusion, a mirage. She dressed the part, but she was nothing but a city slicker and interloper. A gorgeous, intelligent, driven interloper.

  Their gazes collided and his pulse began to pound with something that felt an awful lot like lust. Even at this distance, he could feel the weight of her anger slicing through the air, hitting him midchest.

  Oowee, if looks could kill, he’d be bleeding out in the dirt.

  With a flip of her hair, she was gone.

  “Well, how about that,” Dale said, laughter in his voice. “You got your work cut out for you, Pete.”

  Oh, yeah, he was going to have his hands full, all right.

  It was time to show Chloe Lawrence that the All-Stars was his. But she wasn’t going to make this easy.

  The thought made him smile. He was already starting to like this job.

  Three

  Chloe’s hands were shaking as she sat at her makeshift makeup table in her makeshift dressing room. Which made applying her false eyelashes somewhat of a challenge. She forced herself to take a few deep breaths.

  She was going to kill Pete Wellington. It wasn’t a question of if. It was a question of how.

  She’d love to run him down with her glossy palomino—but Wonder was at home, enjoying her hay and oats at Sunshine Ridge, Chloe’s small ranch retreat northeast of Dallas. With all the things she had to juggle, she couldn’t handle taking care of her horse, too. It wasn’t fair to Wonder and it wasn’t fair to Chloe. So she was borrowing a horse for her big entrance tonight.

  Frankly, it didn’t feel right running Pete down with a borrowed horse. Too many complications.

  That man was up to something. If Steve Mortimer had had a problem getting his horses to the Bootheel, he would’ve called Chloe. It was obvious Mortimer had no such problems.

  What kind of deal had Pete made with the stock contractors?

  And how did backing her up when she was under siege figure into it? Because he wasn’t doing it solely out of the kindness of his heart. This was Pete Wellington she was talking about—there was no kindness in his heart. Not for her or anyone in her family. She didn’t want to offer him a job. She didn’t want him anywhere near her. But...

  If she didn’t hand off some of the responsibilities to Pete, would people break their contractual obligations in protest? She could hire someone else but then she’d have the exact same problem—the people who made the rodeos work would balk at dealing with an outsider. By the time she found a workable solution, the All-Stars might very well die on the vine. And who would take the blame for that?

  She would.

  Maybe she could arrange a stampede. Watching Pete get pulverized would be immensely satisfying.

  There. Her hands were steady. Who knew thinking of ways to off her nemesis would be so calming?

  Now she applied the false lashes easily. She wore them for the shows because she was moving around the arena at a controlled canter. If she didn’t have over-the-top makeup and hair—not to mention the sequins—people wouldn’t be able to see any part of her. She’d be nothing but an indistinct blur.

  And if there was one thing the Princess of the Rodeo wasn’t, it was indistinct.

  She was halfway through the second lashes when someone knocked on her dressing room door. If one could call this broom closet a dressing room, that was. Hopefully, that was Ginger, who sat on the local board of this rodeo. If anyone could talk some sense into those stubborn old mules, it’d be Ginger. She took no crap from anyone.

  Chloe still had an hour and a half before showtime, but the gates were already open and she needed to be out in the crowd, posing for pictures and hand selling the Princess clothing line. She was behind schedule thanks to Pete Wellington, the jerk. She finished the lashes and said, “Come in.”

  Of course it wasn’t Ginger. Of course it was Pete Wellington, poking his head around the door and then recoiling in shock.

  “What do you want?” she asked, fighting the urge to drop her head in her hands. She didn’t want to mess up her extravagant eye shadow, after all. Then she’d be even further behind schedule.

  He was here for a reason. Was it the usual reason—he wanted his rodeo back? Or was there something else?

  “I want you to put on some damned clothes,” Pete said through the open door. At least he wasn’t staring.

  Chloe frowned at her reflection. “It’s a sports bra, Pete. It’s the same one I wear when I go jogging. The same basic style women across the country wear when they’re working out.”

  It was a really good bra, too. Chloe had perfectly average breasts. And she’d come to a place in her life where she was happy with perfectly average breasts. She liked them. They were just right. Anything bigger would make cantering around arenas every weekend downright painful.

  That didn’t mean she hadn’t gone out of her way to buy a high-end sports bra that provided plenty of padding. Everything about the Princess of the Rodeo was bigger, after all. She did a little shimmy, but nothing below her neck moved. She was locked and loaded in this thing and her boobs looked good. And completely covered. “It’s not like you can see my nipples or anything.”

  “Dammit, Chloe, it’s a bra,” he growled back through the door. “I can’t... You’re... Look, just put on some clothes. Please.”

  Oh, she liked that note of d
esperation in his voice. Was it possible she’d misread the situation? For almost ten years now, she and Pete had been snarling at each other across arenas and in parking lots. She’d always thought her physical attributes had no impact on him because he’d never reacted to her before in that way.

  But he was reacting now. She could hear the strain in his voice when he added, “Are you decent yet, woman?”

  She stood, her reflection grinning back at her. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” she said, plucking the heavily sequined white shirt off the hanger and sliding her arms through the sleeves. “I’d be willing to bet large sums of money you’ve seen your sister in a sports bra and never thought twice about it. And yes, I’m decent.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Lawrence—you are not my...” Pete pushed his way into the dressing room, which was not designed to hold a man his size. The space between them—no more than a foot and half—sparked with heat as his gaze fell to her chest. “Sister,” he finished, his voice coming out almost strangled as he stared at the open front of her shirt.

  “Thank God for that,” Chloe said lightly as she brushed her hands over the sequins—which conveniently lay over the sides of her breasts. “I pity Marie for having to put up with you, I really do.”

  She’d never had a problem with Marie Wellington, who worked her wife’s ranch in western Texas. But then again, Marie had made it clear some years ago that she didn’t care if the Wellingtons got control of the All-Stars or not. “It’s just a rodeo,” Marie had confided over a beer with Chloe one night. “I don’t know why Pete can’t let it go.”

  In the years since then, Chloe hadn’t gotten any closer to finding out why, either. But if the man was going to torture her, she was going to return the favor—in spades.

  Her hands reached the bottom of the shirt and she took her time making sure the hem was lined up.

  Pete’s mouth flopped open as Chloe closed the shirt, one button at a time. She probably could’ve asked him for the keys to his truck and he would’ve handed them over without even blinking. She had him completely stunned and that made him...vulnerable.

  To her.

  She let her fingers linger over that button right between her breasts as Pete began breathing harder, his eyes darkening. The cords of his neck began to bulge out and she had the wildest urge to lick her way up and down them. The space between them seemed to shrink, even though neither of them moved. Her skin heated as he stared, tension coiling low in her belly.

  Crap, she’d miscalculated again. Did she have Pete Wellington at her mercy? Pretty much. But she hadn’t accounted for the fact that desire could be a two-way street. He’d always been an intensely handsome man. She wasn’t too proud to admit she’d had a crush on him for a couple years when she’d first started riding at the rodeos, until it became clear that he would never view her as anything more than an obstacle to regaining his rodeo.

  But the way he was looking at her right now, naked lust in his eyes instead of sneering contempt?

  He wanted her. And that?

  That took everything handsome about him and made him almost unbearably gorgeous. Her pulse began to pound and, as she skimmed her fingers up her chest to ostensibly reach for the next button, she had to fight back a moan.

  “There,” she said as she fastened the last button, and dammit, her voice came out breathy. “Is that decent enough for you?”

  Pete’s gaze lingered on her body for another two seconds before he wrenched his whole head up. His eyes were glazed. She probably couldn’t have stunned him any better than if she’d hit him on the head with a two-by-four. Chloe had to bite her lower lip to keep from saying something wildly inappropriate, like I’ll undo all of those buttons while you watch or maybe just a simple, effective your turn.

  Talk about wildly inappropriate. Instead, she said, “What do you want?” because that was the question she needed the answer to.

  His presence wasn’t an accident and he was plotting something. But her words didn’t come out as an accusation. At least, it didn’t sound like one to her. It almost sounded like...an invitation.

  He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the motion. The look in his eyes said one word and one word only—you. “We, uh, have to talk. About the job.”

  Right, right. The job. The rodeo. The feud between their families, going back over thirteen years. The way she knew he was here to undermine her but she wasn’t sure how supporting her was going to help with that.

  None of that had a damned thing to do with the way his eyes devoured her.

  She turned and bent at the waist to check her makeup in the small travel mirror. Pete made a noise behind her that sounded suspiciously like a groan. She glanced back at him in the reflection and saw that he was, predictably, staring at her behind. “Yes, the job. The one you volunteered yourself for?”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed again. “That job.”

  She reached over and picked up her chaps. They were show chaps, bright white leather that had never seen a speck of dirt or a spot of cow manure. With supple fringe at the edges, the chaps had “All-Stars” worked in beads running vertically down each of her thighs and then, at the widest part of the chaps at the bottom, “Princess of the Rodeo” had been spelled out in eye-popping gems of pink and silver. Nothing about these chaps were subtle and everything was designed to catch the eye. She always wore the white outfit on the first night of the rodeo. The second night, she had another matching outfit in patriotic red, white and blue. Those chaps were so covered with rhinestones she needed help mounting up in the saddle.

  “What I’m trying to figure out,” she said, propping one leg up on the chair and strapping the chap around her upper thigh, “is why you want the job, Pete. By all accounts, you don’t need the money. I know Marie’s ranch does well, too.”

  Chloe had done her research—he was quite well off. He wasn’t at the same level the Lawrence family was, but his net worth meant he didn’t need this job. Gorgeous, wealthy, rugged—Pete Wellington was a hell of a catch no matter how she looked at him.

  And she was looking at him right now. He stared at her with naked desire and she could feel her traitorous body reacting. If it weren’t for his hell-bent vendetta, she’d be tempted.

  A shudder worked through her body as she went on, “And you haven’t exactly shown a willingness to work beneath a woman in general or me in specific.”

  He had his thumbs hooked into his belt, but he was gripping the leather so hard his knuckles were white. She’d put a lot of money on the fact that he wouldn’t be able to tell her what she’d just said.

  But this man was just full of surprises, wasn’t he? “I never said I have any problem working under you,” he said in a low voice that made that tight coil of desire in her stomach painfully tighter. “In fact, I’m beginning to think it’s a good idea to have you over me.”

  Her fingers fumbled with the strap and she had to stop before the heavy leather fell off her leg entirely. Her hands were shaking again, but this time it wasn’t with rage.

  Damn this man. Even when he pissed the hell out of her, he still had the capacity to make her want him. At least this time, she knew she’d made him want her, too.

  It wasn’t so much cold comfort as it was outright torture, however.

  She took a deep breath, hoping to clear her head—but it didn’t work because now his scent was filling this tiny space. Leather and dirt and musk. He smelled exactly like a cowboy should, rough and maybe a little dirty but so, so right.

  “Good,” she managed to get out, but she didn’t sound in charge by any stretch of the imagination. “I’m glad you’re coming to your senses.” There. She managed to get the straps on the first chap done and turned her attention to the second chap. Which required her to switch legs. She leaned into the mild stretch and this time, Pete definitely groaned.

  She couldn’t t
hink of anything to say that wouldn’t come out as “Could you help me with this?” and no matter how hot he was making her, she was absolutely not about to have sex with Pete Wellington in a glorified broom closet.

  Or anywhere else, she mentally corrected.

  Sex with Pete Wellington was completely off the table. Or any other flat surface. That was final.

  So she kept her mouth shut as she worked at the buckle. When she had that one done, she belted the chaps at her waist, which finished the whole look off with the giant belt buckle that had Princess worked in Swarovski crystals. Her dad had commissioned it for her when she’d turned eighteen.

  She turned back to the mirror, trying not to look at the man behind her, but it wasn’t easy. He must’ve taken a step forward at some point because he loomed over her now. She could feel his breath messing up her carefully curled hair and it was tempting—so damned tempting—to lean back into that broad chest, just to see what he’d do. Would he push her hair to the side and press his lips against the little bit of skin right below her ear? Cup her breasts through the sequins? Run his hands down her waist and around to her denim-clad butt?

  She physically shook as these thoughts tumbled through her mind. She never hooked up at any of the All-Stars events—which was both company policy and her own personal rule. Cowboys were off-limits. But she lived out of a suitcase seven months of the year, which didn’t make it easy to have relationships, either.

  It’d been too long since a man had gotten this close to her.

  Why, oh why did it have to be Pete freaking Wellington? He might be turning her on and she might be driving him crazy, but a little raw sexual attraction didn’t change anything. He wasn’t here by accident and she couldn’t give him any more leverage over her. For all she knew, this attraction was part of whatever con he was running. Get her in a compromising position and blackmail her or something.