She pursed her lips and tried to read through his sexy green eyes. His dark bangs hung over his brows, and she really couldn’t gauge the totality of his anger.
“But…” She tried to think, clear the cobwebs from her brain. Nothing came to mind immediately which only gave him the upper hand.
“Don’t but me. Go on up to the house and see if you can’t do something useful like start dinner.”
She hated it when he treated her like a child but when he treated her like a woman, it really pissed her off. She stared at Kane and Evan. “You two aren’t any help.”
They didn’t say anything. Evan did hold up three fingers.
Screw him for siding with Braden.
She decided if they didn’t have anything to say at all, they wouldn’t tattle to Braden so she took her chances. “For the record, I wasn’t on the blasted horse.”
“Peyton,” Kane warned.
He said one word, her name and nothing else. Damn, she underestimated her impact on the younger Cartwells.
“Kane…”she emphasized his name with stark sarcasm. She even made an ugly face to showcase her immaturity.
“My ass did not sit on that stupid horse.” She twisted her blonde mane into a ponytail holder and started toward the house.
“The hell it didn’t.” Braden grabbed her by the arm and started for the truck. “My brothers ride Western. You’re the only one around here who rides in an English saddle. Period.”
“Ow! Let me go.”
She forgot about the saddle thing. If she planned to wiggle her way out of trouble here and there, she needed to practice up and become educated on their school of thought. Who would’ve thought to check out a damn saddle anyway?
Evan immediately jogged over to the side of the truck. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She squirmed. “Let…me go! You’re hurting me.” Not really, he barely had a hold of her but the squealing provided great sound effects.
“Move, Evan.” Braden stood firm.
“Hell, no. Let her go. She’s right anyway. You can’t spank her. You’ll never spank her. She’s too old for any man to spank her.”
“That’s debatable,” Kane muttered.
Braden and Evan stood nose to nose. Toe to toe.
Kane peered at Peyton and she continued to watch Braden and Evan. Let him look, she thought. He didn’t have to tattle. All he had to do was agree with her, tell a small white lie, and she might have been on her way to the kitchen to stir up some dinner.
“Fine, take her to the house.” Braden handed the keys to Evan and turned as Peyton skipped to the passenger’s side. She quickly reclaimed her earlier good mood-the one that encouraged her to devil Braden’s horse in the first place.
“Peyton?”
“Yep?” She turned around and he motioned for her. Rolling her eyes she walked back toward him and stopped right in front of him.
“So you didn’t ride him?”
“Nope.”
“Not even from one end of the barn to the next?”
“Nope.”
“Okay.”
She turned around and started for the truck. At the same time, Braden took off his cowboy hat and swatted her ass a few times.
Wheeling around on her boots, she glared at him. “Don’t you dare touch my ass!”
Kane and Evan laughed.
“I have a feeling it’s only the first of many,” Kane said.
“I only swatted it a few times for lying to me. Besides, I don’t want barn shavings in my truck, you little runt.” His mouth finally twitched, and she turned around before he saw her smile too. Evan slid behind the wheel and turned the key.
Immediately, she hit the button on the side of the door, and the window fell automatically. Leaning out of the truck window, she screamed behind them as they pulled away from the barn. “Touch my ass again and I’m going to squeal like a pig and call you Big Papa!”
“Peyton! Get back in here now.” Evan grabbed her left arm and tugged her across the bench seat.
“Watch it. You boys are getting touchy-touchy the closer I get to eighteen. If you’re not careful, I might just ask to ride more than Braden’s stallion in three days. I might want three rough and ready cowboys.”
“And, darlin’, you can bet on one thing. You’d have more man than you’ll ever handle. Any one of us would make Braden’s horse look like a gentle lamb.”
Evan didn’t sleep a wink. All he thought about, all he dreamed about when he closed his eyes was one tough-talking teenager. He should’ve been shot in his own bed for thinking about her in the first place. At best, someone should’ve tied him there and left him until the hot little blond a few doors down turned eighteen.
He rolled on his side and looked out the window into the darkness. A full moon lit up the southern skies. All he saw, all he thought about led him back to Peyton. So help him God, thoughts of what might happen in three more days, kept him tossing and turning. He tried to shake it off, think of someone else, like the cute little redhead he’d been screwing for the last several months.
He stared harder into the darkness. Come to think of it, he hadn’t visited Norma Jean in a month of Sundays so it might be high time. Yeah, maybe he’d give her a call in a couple of days. He reached for his cock and made a decision. No, the redheaded hairdresser would get a call first thing in the morning, and he might call early.
He blinked as he stared outside. Now, as luck would have it, he was seeing things too. He rolled over and glared at the blank wall. Immediately, he turned back. “Shit!”
He jumped up and tugged on his jeans and practically fell into the hallway. He pushed the door open to Kane’s room and shook him. “Get up. It’s Peyton.”
“Huh?” He rubbed his eyes and moaned. “What do you mean it’s Peyton?”
“I saw her creeping out to the barn.”
Kane swallowed tightly, released a frustrated sigh, and glared at the alarm clock before throwing back the blankets covering him. “I’ve had about all I want of one stacked little blond. I swear I have.”
“Liar. You can’t get enough of her, and she knows it.” He tossed a shirt at his brother. “She’s going for Braden’s horse again, and she’ll end up dead if she takes off in the middle of the night.”
A few minutes later, Kane and Evan rounded the corner of the corral. They stopped only long enough to squint, stare off in the distance, and take off in an all-out sprint.
In the back of a pick-up truck, somebody’s truck, Peyton reached behind her torso. She just about let all of them see the innocence of youth, what little she apparently had left.
“Peyton Storm! Put your shirt back on, damn you!” Braden stepped out from behind a big oak and headed toward the truck before they reached her.
Mortified, the boy below her scrambled to his feet and covered her. At least he had the good sense to do right by her. Maybe Evan wouldn’t kill him. Kane might still try, if Braden didn’t beat them to it. He looked like he’d considered it.
By the time they reached the pick-up truck, Braden held Frank Sanders by the collar.
“Boy, does your daddy know you’re out here at our place tonight?”
Kane’s neck pulsed with anger, his bright red face showed the color of fury even in the dark night. “Of course he doesn’t. You think old man Sanders would want him out here fucking around with a minor?”
“Two days,” she reminded him as she wiggled her head back into a T-shirt. “Two days, and if I’d only had a lick of sense, I would’ve been free as a bird in two freakin’ days.”
“Well, too bad, Peyton. You signed up for a year of Cartwell supervision and you’re going to get your money’s worth. Now hop out of the truck now,” Braden demanded.
Braden’s patience wore thin tonight and Evan tried to imagine the why behind it. What he’d seen and what he’d heard coming from the truck might provide plenty of cause and reason for it. When it came to Peyton, he usually found a way to remain calm at all costs. Evan and Kane liked to rib him about it too.
Peyton kissed Frank on the cheek. “Tell your daddy I’m sorry.” She winked at him before she added, “And tell him when I’m eighteen, I might even make it up to him if he won’t throw the book at ‘cha.”