Wicked Fall
(The Wicked Horse Series Book #1)
By Sawyer Bennett
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2015 by Sawyer Bennett
Published by Big Dog Books
ISBN: 978-1-940883-32-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
http://sawyerbennett.com/uncivilized-by-sawyer-bennett/
Prologue
Woolf
I trot up the porch steps, my boots clunking loudly as heels meet wood. It looks like I’m walking into an ordinary log cabin home—one story, knotty white pine weathered to a burnished mocha color. It is, in fact, my home office. And by home office, I mean the place where I conduct my business as I sit on top of a dynasty built upon the backs of cattle and fueled larger by oil sucked from the ground.
My office looks like a home because it used to be one. More specifically, this used to be my great-grandfather Jared Jennings’ modest log cabin. He built it upon the initial acres of the Double J ranch, which he founded upon just a measly ten-thousand acres at the base of the Teton Mountains in Wyoming.
And yes, ten thousand acres is measly when you consider that JennCo—the parent corporation that holds the cattle and oil businesses—now owns just over three hundred thousand acres between Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
It’s no wonder my shoulders always seem to sag under the weight of the monstrosity I manage. My father, Jake Jennings, died almost eighteen months ago and since my mother had passed a long time ago, the burden of JennCo fell to me and my brother, Tenn.
At thirty-four, Tenn is older than me by two years and should rightly be JennCo’s CEO, but he doesn’t want any part of it. He’s happy living his quiet existence clear across the country with his wife, Casey, their three-month-old daughter, Bree and his daughter by another marriage, Zoe. While Tenn spent the first year after my father’s death helping me transition into the driver’s seat, he’s been gradually backing away from the business end of it.
I can’t say I blame him. He just doesn’t have the passion that’s needed to run this empire, and he’d rather tinker with the motorcycles in his custom shop.
Not only do I not blame him, I’m actually a bit envious.
Everyone turned their eyes to me the minute Jake Jennings bit the dust after taking a fall off his horse and an errant hoof to the center of his chest. While I watched Lucky, one of my father’s longtime ranch hands, perform CPR on him, I felt the keen loss of my most influential mentor. I also immediately felt the weight of responsibility press down up on me, because Tenn had already made his break away from the family. I knew that I would be expected to take up the reins and lead JennCo forward.
And that is the last thing in the world I wanted.
People would be surprised to hear that because I never ventured forth from the ranch. Minus the four years I spent at the University of Wyoming, my life has been here at the Double J. I’ve been working cattle since I was old enough to ride a horse, and I love it. I mean, I absolutely love the work.
I just didn’t want it to be my whole life.
Like Tenn… I had other desires.
Unlike Tenn… mine are a bit darker.
A bit more lecherous.
They are altogether nasty at times.
I unlock the door and step into the converted log cabin. It’s been modernized and upgraded over the years, once serving as one of the homes offered to the foremen before becoming an office. This cabin became obsolete as a family home once my grandfather, Louis Jennings, took over the Double J. It was his vision that catapulted the modest ranch into JennCo and put us on the Forbes list. And of course, you can’t rub money elbows with other tycoons and not have a western-styled palace to show off. Said palace would be just to the west of us… the home where I was raised and now live.
Fifteen thousand feet of treated lumber, slate stone, and glass that is built on top of a large butte. It looks like a long, sprawling cabin from the front, but the house practically dribbles down the back for three stories. It’s a behemoth, but it’s also what I’ve called home for my entire life.
I flip on the lights as I walk through what used to be the living room but has now been converted into a secretarial office. I currently do not have a secretary because I can’t seem to keep one employed for longer than a few weeks at a time. I don’t think I’m a hard taskmaster even though I might wield a riding crop quite well on a woman. But I am a hard worker who has always gone balls to the wall from sunup to sundown most of my life, and while I never expect the staff to keep pace with me, I do expect them to have a work ethic. It seems like every woman, and even the one man, that I put into the position of my administrative assistant was more interested in posting selfies on Instagram than doing the fucking work I assign them. At least now, I’ve vowed to myself to use a temp agency and let them vet out the candidates because I just don’t have time for this shit.
I walk down a hallway and back to what was the largest bedroom in the house. It was my father’s office, and it’s now mine as evidenced by the wooden plaque on the door that says Woolf Jennings. My mother was a lover of literature, a high school English teacher by trade. Even though she married into immense wealth, she loved to teach.
And she loved Lord Alfred Tennyson and Virginia Woolf the most, so goes the story of how Tenn and I were named.
Pushing the door open, I flip the light switch, taking off my Stetson and hanging it on the peg beside the door. The office is richly appointed with lustrous, reclaimed wood flooring, heavy pine furniture in a Native American design, and cowhide-covered chairs recycled from some of our own cattle. It’s masculine and still bears the faint odor of my father’s cigars in the air.
The unmistakable, heavy boot steps of Bridger echo down the hallway, and I can smell the coffee in his hands before I see him. He steps through my office door, which is almost a squeeze for him as the guy is massively built at six-foot-six inches of honed muscle and tattoos. On the quickest of glances, he looks like he belongs on a cattle ranch. Thick denim jeans, plaid western shirt, appropriate shiny belt buckle, and brown Stetson. His face is tanned from riding range on hot summer days and his hands are roughly calloused from roping cattle or mending torn fences. He’s a true cowboy in every sense.
Except he’s not.
Look closer and you see a man that, like me, entertains the thought of living another type of life.