Braving The Storm: An Age Gap, Cowboy Romance (Crimson Ridge Book 2)

I’m like a fawn on ice skates with wobbly legs as I pull up and park outside the only cafe in Crimson Ridge. The place where my sister lurks in wait for me.

The unsteadiness isn’t out of trepidation, but from being so thoroughly blissed out after Storm took it upon himself to torture me in the best way possible this morning.

He knew I needed to be given the perfect kind of distraction to settle my mind and my nerves before descending into the viper pit.

My pussy is definitely a little sore. Meanwhile, I’m floating along the sidewalk on a serene ocean of contentment, no doubt with a goofy, love-sick grin on my face, as I shove my keys in my handbag.

The death-trap rental, as my cowboy likes to call my car, came in useful once more. As much as he might want me to drive his truck, we both know I’m a hundred times more of a liability to crash attempting to navigate a stick shift until I’ve had a lot more practice.

What I would give for all of that and more under his steady, guiding hand.

I’m instantly drawn to thoughts of future summer evenings, lazy weekends in the sunshine, driving with the windows rolled down, and building my confidence up behind the wheel with him by my side.

He makes me feel like I could damn well sprout wings and fly to the moon if I wanted to, and I’ve never encountered that kind of unwavering faith in me before.

There’s a glowing, glorious sensation that spreads through my chest as I imagine what a future with Storm could possibly hold.

How much I so desperately want to be with him.

In all honesty, I feel like a new woman. Before leaving the cabin, I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and as I took in the sight I realized the girl looking back at me was finally the person I’ve always known was there on the inside.

The version of Briar Lane, who is free to be herself.

This rugged, beautiful life, these mountains, they’ve awakened something that feels secure, settled, like warm spring rain caressing my skin. It makes all the noise that used to buzz around in my brain relentlessly ebb away, and makes the decision to stay here even easier.

I knew there was no way in hell I’d return to where I ran from, there was no going back.

Now, it’s clear and sparkling that this life is the one I choose, and allows me to feel more comfortable in my skin than ever before.

As I reach the cafe door, with its cute, covered porch and jasmine vine climbing over the latticework, I pause outside so I can send a quick message to Storm, letting him know I made it safely.

As I type and delete a series of kiss-face emojis—instead, opting to simply hit send, rather than terrify this gruff man by acting as if I’m a total girl-obsessed lunatic—I’m tempted to swipe over to the forbidden little secret hiding in plain sight. Thoughts of the video, and all the insanely hot memories conjured whenever I let my mind drift back to that moment, I still can’t hardly believe it’s on my phone. That girl in that video is me, and the entire, wicked scenario keeps on burning a hole in my pocket, our illicit night that nobody knows about.

What if someone saw? Would they know who he is to me? The man’s hand that distinctly shows his name, with his fingers tangled rough and brutally commanding in my hair.

At the time, I suspected, but didn’t fully realize, the care he took not to show too much of my face, so it’s almost impossible to tell it’s me he’s owning.

The only secret giveaway is the sight of my tattoo beside my breast.

Though there’s next to no one in the world who knows that I have it, not even my sister.

Quickly shaking off the flood of memories, I shove my phone away in my bag, and suck in a deep inhale, preparing myself to deliver the speech I’ve partially prepared during the drive into town.

I’ve got the first part down, rehearsed that shit out loud, and I’m primed to cut off whatever unhinged rampage Cris might go on.

From the point when I inform my sister that I’m staying here and never wish to see her ever again in my life, added to the details of my lawyer she can communicate through, I might be a little less finessed on, but I’m sure I’ll manage.

Pushing through the door, there’s a tinkling bell, and my eyes flicker to the table where I sat and had coffee on my disastrous date with Westin Hayes, what feels like a lifetime ago.

Today, there are two guys around my age sitting having brunch together, one has his arm affectionately draped around the back of the other’s chair, and the two are laughing over a video pulled up on one of their phones. Something tugs on my heart a little, pointing at them, saying hey, that could be you and the man you’re head over heels for.

Does Stôrmand Lane go for coffee? Or indulge in any kind of activity that doesn’t involve chopping wood, rounding up cattle, or fitting horseshoes? You know, the kinds of mundane, trivial things that might pass for a date? Could I convince him to do something like that, with me?

There are rows of tables to my left, and the place is more or less fully occupied, with the hum and clatter of the cafe taking over my senses.

My sister’s blond hair, severely pulled back into a tight ballerina bun, is easy to spot. Except, as I draw nearer to the table where she sits facing me, I want to freeze and turn around, to bolt for the door.

My eyes widen, and my throat seizes up.

However, forward momentum keeps propelling me closer even though my stomach is churning and queasiness rises within me like a putrid tide.

A man turns in his seat, designer glasses perched on his nose, dark hair perfectly styled into the look he’s always favored, one that screams fortune five hundred CEO, with a maroon cashmere sweater fitted to his lean frame.

My rat bastard, cheating husband.

Antoine still has the audacity to wear his wedding band, that 18-karat gold ring gleams at me as he gets to his feet and pulls out a chair.

I’m fighting the urge to vomit all over his thousand-dollar loafers.

“You bitch.” Ignoring the man standing before me, I want to reach across the table and claw my sister’s eyes out.

“Aren’t you glad to see your husband?” She empties a sachet of sweetener into her coffee, before stirring the contents I so dearly wish might contain arsenic.

“Briar, don’t make a scene, just take a seat.” The man I am legally chained to until I can get paperwork and lawyers and all sorts of shit I haven’t even begun to fathom handling, smiles at me with his unnervingly white row of veneers.

Or should I say fangs.

“Why are you both here?” I carefully put as much distance between myself and Antoine as possible. My skin crawls even being this close, that sickly perfumed fragrance of his aftershave gets stuck to the back of my throat.

“Like I told you on the phone, this is not a negotiation, Briar.” Cris rolls her eyes. “You’re coming home with us, and it looks like we’ve gotten here just in time. I can’t imagine the state we might have discovered you in if we’d left you squatting in that filthy hovel with him any longer.”

If I were a Doberman, my hackles would be on end, and my razor-sharp teeth would be bared.

“I’m not going anywhere. This is home for me now. I want a divorce, and I want nothing more to do with Lane Enterprises, and—”

“That’s cute and all…” Antoine cuts me off, his finger taps on what I now notice is a Manila folder lying on the table. “But I think you’ll find yourself a little more compliant in a minute or so.”

My eyes shuffle between the folder and its mysterious contents, up to Antoine’s poker face, and over to my sister, who sips her coffee and watches me with beady eyes.

“Anything been going on that we should know about?” Cris says. “You know, the media does love a good scandal to feast on.”

“Your insinuations are boring, Crispin. Fly back to LA and focus on making someone else’s life miserable for a change.”

“Briar.” My shitty husband tries to make himself sound important, like I’m supposed to fall in line as he’s always expected me to, but I’m not in the mood for his threats.

“What, are you going to do, Antoine? Pull out a series of photos your stupid PI has been running around snapping of me?” I jerk my chin at the folder, knowing there’s no way anyone could have taken anything incriminating of me and Storm together.

The places we’ve been are far too remote, too isolated, it’s not like we’re rolling around Crimson Ridge wrapped up in each other in a way that might be easy to spot.

Antoine gets a look on his face that says he’s already won, and the nauseous sensation really starts to build to a rolling boil.

He pulls out his phone from a pocket and lays it on the table in front of me. With a couple of taps of the screen, he brings up a video and my vision blurs at the edges, forming a tiny, dark tunnel. Sound distorts and fades into a faint buzzing in my ears as the recording starts to play.

… Your hot little mouth feels like heaven.

Just as the sound of that familiar husky voice speaks, and the sight of his name in inked lettering fills the camera frame—burying into my hair, tugging roughly, and commanding me to his bidding—I see the moment my tattoo comes into focus for the briefest second.

“You think I’d waste my time with PI’s?” Antoine leans close and sneers. “It’s called spyware, you dumb cunt. I’ve had access to everything on that phone of yours for years.”

Years. Not months. Not weeks.

This man who has been fucking around behind my back our entire sham of a marriage, had me monitored. While he was busy cheating, the asshole invaded my privacy on my own cell phone.

“How do you think Crispin knew where to find your sorry ass? We’ve known all this time, and I gave you a chance to do this the easy way. I gave you the opportunity to make a sensible choice, but you threw all that away.”

As I sit like a statue, growing more numb with every word, I see it all laid out. All the years of my life I gave up for these people. Guilted into trying to make amends for the fact my birth tore away our mother. A woman I never got to meet because the day I arrived was the day she was taken too soon. My father begrudged me for destroying his whole world, and my sister allowed her grief to fester until she lost any semblance of humanity toward me.

So, I agreed to their business arrangements. I said yes and obliged their demands for subservience and shoved aside my own life because I didn’t deserve to live, did I?

When I’d taken away the person they loved so dearly.

It’s all your fault. It would have been her birthday if it wasn’t for what you did.

“The jet is booked to depart at seven this evening.” Antoine’s voice is cold, hard, and calculating when he interrupts my desolate thoughts. He makes a disapproving noise as he stops the video, leaving me feeling entirely violated and with my head spinning that he’s had access to my phone this entire time.

“I’m not leaving.” My voice barely manages a shaky whisper.

“Briar, you’ve always been so pathetic, when are you going to get it through your head that there are more important things than what you want?” Cris skewers me right through the heart, as always.

“No, I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Yes, you are.” Antoine gets up and braces himself to lean over me; with one hand on the back of my chair, he drops his mouth close to my ear, which puts his cloying fragrance over me like a gag. “I guarantee you I’ve already got a lineup of your father’s old maids and cleaners who are all prepared to give statements that they saw your uncle going into your bedroom when you were a minor. They’ll go on record to say they found pregnancy tests in your bathroom trash while you were still underage. I’ll have doctors who will say they helped you two cover up the fact he committed assault.”

I’m shaking as the man carries on, eerily calm and deathly assured of his success.

“You think the negative publicity was bad when rumors flew that he played a hand in his wife’s death? Just wait ‘til I leak it to every news outlet that former pro rodeo star Stôrmand Lane was fucking his teenage niece.”

Antoine taps his phone screen, bringing up the still frame from when he paused the video a moment ago, the shot clearly showing inked fingers in my hair, S.T.O.R.M tattooed on his knuckles, and the side of my breast.

“Welcome to the patriarchy, you little whore. Something you should remember is that Montgomery’s will always win.”

I don’t know if I can think, or speak, or feel my extremities. Every part of me is numb and hopelessly broken in the space of a few short seconds.

I came in here with a plan, and these two lecherous creatures torpedoed that within a second.

How did I ever think I could escape their bullying, cruel existence?

“You’ve got until the time we’re due to take off. Go pack your shit and say goodbye to your stupid horsey friends… and don’t forget, if you even think about not getting on that jet tonight, everything I need to destroy that man is right here, ready to send with one click.”

He shoves the phone under my nose once more, and while it’s almost impossible to focus on the blur of text on the screen, I see enough.

Flashes of words and phrases of his pre-prepared media release. Gross violations of Storm’s personal life, none of which matters because he’s not interested in the truth. He’s interested in a character assassination, and this man sits in control of the media narrative like a spoiled emperor child.

All of the evil untruths are there, along with screenshots from the video, ready to be distributed with one tap.

Just like he’s got me pinned beneath that bony, pale thumb of his once more.