Steal Her Heart (Kaid Ranch Shifters Book 1)

  STEAL HER HEART

  (KAID RANCH SHIFTERS, BOOK 1(hundred hehehehe))

  By T. S. JOYCE

  Steal Her Heart

  Copyright © 2019 by T. S. Joyce

  Copyright © 2019, T. S. Joyce

  First electronic publication: December 2019

  T. S. Joyce

  www.tsjoyce.com

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Editor: Corinne DeMaagd

  Photograhper: Wander Aquiar

  Cover Model: Jonny “Rip” James

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Up Next in this Series

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  More Series by this Author

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  About this Author

  Prologue

  “I don’t understand.”

  Dallas looked up from his glowing phone screen and sighed. “I told you, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m not happy. I haven’t been for a while, but I felt so guilty leaving you here. But I’ve talked to a friend, and she said you aren’t my responsibility. Neither is your living situation.”

  “My living situation,” Maris Thurgood repeated softly. Here she sat, in the cabin they’d rehabbed, on the ranch she’d saved for her entire life, and the love of her life was treating her like a burden. “I thought this was your dream,” she said.

  He was texting someone, a faint smile painting his lips.

  “Hello?” she asked. “Are you seriously smiling while you’re ending our marriage?”

  “Huh? Oh.” Dallas shoved his phone in his back pocket and cleared his throat, tried to look serious and clamped his hands together, resting his elbows on his knees. “Sorry, I was talking to…someone.”

  “Who could be so important that you would talk to them during this conversation, Dallas? Because you are ending my life as I know it. We were supposed to be forever. Remember? You promised that.” She stuck up her ring finger. “I’m wearing your ring—”

  “Maris, enough. I stopped wearing my ring months ago—”

  “You said you didn’t want to damage it while you were working!”

  “I’m going to need your ring back. It belonged to my grandmother.”

  “What?” Her eyes burned with tears. Stunned, she looked down at her ring, the one she was supposed to take to her grave. “Dallas…why did you marry me? Why did you take me to the courthouse? None of this makes any sense. I thought you were happy.”

  He was back to texting on his phone, and there were the red flags again.

  She asked the question she’d been afraid to for so long. “Who is she?” The answer would be devastating, but if he was going to wreck her like this, she wanted to know who she’d been up against. “Who is your friend who has told you to leave?”

  He canted his head and stared at her. There wasn’t a single speck of remorse in his icy blue eyes. “You know. You’ve known for a long time, Maris. You just don’t want to ask questions. You only want to see what you want to see.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The good in people. Not everyone is good.”

  “Who?” she asked, pushing. Usually, he got angry if she asked him direct questions like this.

  The slight smirk on his lips flattened to a thin line. “I want the tractor, and the trailer and the side-by-side. Oh and the Bobcat and post hole digger. All the big equipment. You can keep the herd, and keep this place—”

  “I paid for this place, and for the herd. You aren’t doing me any favors by letting me keep what is already mine—”

  “Be real, Maris. If I wanted to, I could get my dad’s money involved and come after everything. I could drown you in lawyer fees until you give me what I want anyway. We can draw this divorce out, and I’ll come for every penny you have, or you can play nice. We built this place up together. This wasn’t my dream—”

  “That’s bullshit. We had a plan, Dallas. We spent years getting to this spot, and we’re finally here and you’re bailing? What’s her name?”

  “Maris—”

  “I’ve been loyal to you from day one. My heart has been yours since day one. I took care of everything, I made your life easier. If you have any respect for me at all, you owe me a name.”

  “Why is that so important?”

  “Because in a couple months, when you’re done with her, and you think about the life I built for you, you’re going to text me. ‘Hey, how are you?’ And I need to be strong enough to ignore you and move on.” She brushed her knuckle over her damp cheeks and sat up straighter. “Her name will help me do that.”

  He scratched his clean-shaven jaw. His baseball cap was pristine and new, his jaw patted with aftershave, his nails perfectly clean, his cowboy boots designer. He’d liked this life, but only for pictures. Only for the attention it got him in the community. This all hit her as he murmured the name she’d feared for years.

  “Sadey.”

  That one word felt like a punch in the gut. It took the wind right from her lungs, and she hunched over, wrapping her arms around her middle. Sadey Lawklin, Dallas’s ex-girlfriend from high school. “How long?”

  “How long what?”

  “For once, just be an honest man. What harm could it do now to tell me the truth? Huh? You’re already leaving. Just answer my questions.”

  “So I can cause you more pain? I want to make this easy on you.”

  “Will you be full of bullshit your whole life, Dallas? You want to make this easier on you. You don’t give a shit about me. Let me have it.”

  The flash of sympathy he’d infused into his expression disappeared and was twisted into something harsh. “Okay. You want the truth? She was always there. She will always be there.”

  Maris squeezed her eyes closed, trying to control her tears. “I never had a shot, did I?”

  “No. But you gave me an easy life, and we got along well, and while she was trying to make her marriage work, I was waiting. With you.”

  “I was the filler? Seriously? I filled up your time while you waited for the woman you really wanted?” Her stomach churned in disgust.

  He nodded.

  “Then say it and make this easier for me to hate you. Say I wasn’t enough.”
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  He cracked his knuckles and shook his head. “You aren’t her.”

  She shook her head hard. “I’ll never be enough. Say it.”

  He let off a sigh and stared at the carpet as he uttered the words that were the final nail in her heart. “You’ll never be as important as her.”

  That admission was crippling, but it was better that she knew. For closure. “Okay,” she murmured, her heart bleeding out inside of her chest cavity.

  “Okay?”

  Maris inhaled deeply and steeled herself to be strong. He didn’t deserve to see her fall apart. He hadn’t earned the right to see how much he was hurting her. So she straightened her spine and lifted her chin, willed her tears to stay put while inside of her chest, her heart was ripping off in pieces. “You’re free, Dallas. Go be with her. I’ll be fine. I’ll manage the cattle myself. You don’t have to worry about me or check in on me. Go be happy with her.” Every word she uttered was a knife cutting deeper into her heart.

  He narrowed his eyes. “That’s it? You aren’t going to throw a tantrum?”

  “A tantrum? Do you even know me at all? That’s not how I work. I’ll make this real easy on you. I don’t have to get revenge on you. Your punishment is losing me, and someday you’ll figure that out. Go, be free, go chase happiness with her. But you owe me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you realize my value and what you threw away like a bag of shit, don’t message me. Don’t try to pull me back in again. Let me go.” God, her heart, her heart, her heart hurt so bad to do this. To be the bigger person. To be strong in a moment that hurt so much. “Please leave.”

  He nodded and smiled. “Okay. Okay. God, I feel like a hundred pounds has been lifted from my shoulders. It’s been so nice finally telling you what I’ve been feeling—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Dallas. No one cares about your feelings here anymore. Pack your shit and leave. I’ll be out front.”

  She’d never told him to shut up in all their years together. Not once in their one-year marriage or in all the time they dated. He’d talked to her like that plenty, but she was submissive. Always had been. She hated it because it turned her into a doormat to people like Dallas.

  Every cell in her body aching, Maris stood and made her way stiffly to the door. She turned as she opened it. “Why do you want the tractor and trailer?”

  “Sadey has land, too. She’s getting to keep it in her divorce. She needs them.”

  Maris huffed a breath. “I’m so happy everything is working out perfectly for you two. You’ll take the equipment I need to run this place, leave me alone to do two people’s work, and use the tractors we bought together on her property? I wish you luck when Karma finds you.”

  “You make me sound awful when you put it that way.”

  “You are.” Her eyes were so full of tears she could barely see, and her bottom lip quivered so she bit it to hide her emotions. Don’t cry. Don’t fall apart. Not until he’s gone. “You aren’t the man I thought you were.”

  Maris had never felt so low, so raw. She wasn’t enough to keep him. After everything she’d done for him, she wasn’t enough.

  She left him there watching after her. She made her way past her truck to the fencing in the front pasture, and as she leaned on it, let those tears finally fall. And as she watched the cattle milling around in front of her, wondering how the hell she was going to manage all of this alone, she uttered three words that were so much more important than “I love you” right now.

  “I deserve better.”

  She’d hit rock bottom, so she didn’t believe those words yet, but if she said them enough times, maybe someday she would.

  Chapter One

  One year later

  The rattle of the trailer behind her was a grating sound that echoed through Maris’s heart. Mr. Talbert had helped her get the cattle to auction, and now he was driving his empty trailer away. Stupid Dallas for taking her trailer. It was a huge shot to her pride that she had to ask for Mr. Talbert’s help in transporting the herd.

  It was auction day. Usually this would be a happy day because it would be payday for the ranch, but she was doing this for the wrong reasons. The wrong reasons for business, but the right reasons for her ethics.

  She finished closing the gate to the large pen behind the auction building and leaned on the fence, listening to the soundtrack of her herd bawling. Mooooo. Maaaaah. Moooooooooo! Her bald-faced cow, Marshmallow Face, was mourning her calf. Predators had taken it last night. She’d been a good momma cow, given a good calf to take to sale all three years Maris had run the herd. God, she couldn’t believe it had come to this. This wasn’t the right season to be selling, and she had never dreamed she’d be selling off the entirety of her breeding herd, but this was just as much for their protection as it was for the money to pay her massive debts.

  She had no other choice. She’d exhausted every Hail Mary in the ranching book, other than selling the ranch, which would happen soon enough. That, or the bank would just take it.

  The herd had been under attack for months now. Wolves were back in the area, and she couldn’t protect the cattle. Lord knew, she’d tried. How many days and nights had she been waiting out there with a rifle? Still, they came in relentless numbers to take her animals. The losses had stacked up, and each cow eaten hurt the herd, frightened them, and took money out of her pocket.

  With this life, there were good and bad years. This year, for Maris, had been brutal.

  She didn’t know what she would do next. All she knew was that a ranch without cattle wasn’t a ranch at all, and her identity as a person, a woman, and a rancher was dissolving with this sale.

  “Ma’am?” a deep voice asked from behind her. “Are you okay?”

  Maris turned around, expecting to find one of the auction workers, but found the cowboy version of Paul Bunyan instead. “Holy shit,” she uttered before she could swallow the words back down. Being alone so much made her really terrible at social gatherings. She was too practiced in talking to herself to keep her thoughts inside anymore.

  The cowboy was tall, well over six foot, and wide in the shoulders like the broadside of a barn. A deep brown cowboy hat hung over dark eyebrows and brown eyes. His dark beard was thick and nearly hid the thin line of the man’s lips. In the chill of the morning, he looked warm with a black long-sleeved shirt buttoned up most of the way. The top one was undone, though, and she could make out light tattoos on his neck and throat. His boots were scuffed, covered in speckles of cow shit and mud, and his wranglers were worn.

  She recognized the man; she just hadn’t seen him in a few years.

  “You… You’re Bryson Locke,” she murmured. “You work over at the Kaid Brother’s Ranch.” She searched her memory for the tidbits of gossip that always swirled around in a small town, especially in a small ranching community. “Ranch manager?”

  The man leaned on the railing to the cattle pen next to her and dragged his eyes from her to her herd restlessly milling around inside. “That ain’t my job, but yeah. Bryson.” He scratched the corner of his lip with his thumbnail. “And you are?”

  “Oh. I’m Maris.”

  “I thought so, but I’ve never actually seen you before. I recognized the brand,” he said, gesturing to her cows. “You’re the little ranch on our border.”

  This giant was intimidating to stand next to. He felt so much bigger than even his gigantic physical body. “Yeah, the Kaids talk to me from time to time if they’re near my fence and I happen to be there.”

  “Your fence?” he asked, his eyebrows arching up under his hat as he looked her up and down. Surprise was swirling in his eyes.

  She gritted her teeth and gave her attention back to the cows. “Typical. You just had the same reaction every man around here does. A woman rancher, no help, no man, she’ll definitely fail. Well, you’re all being proved right today. I’m folding.”

  “That ain’t what I meant.”

  “It is, and you know
it is. I don’t like sugar-coating shit much anymore. Honesty will keep me in a conversation. You have a good day, Mr. Locke.”

  “Oh, I’m dismissed, huh?” Why was he smiling like that? “Put your quills away, lady. I was surprised you didn’t list your man with you when you claimed that fence is all. I thought Dallas Farrel owned that property.”

  “No. Willow Switch Ranch is about the only thing that’s mine.”

  His eyes were narrowed again, and he faced her, shoulder leaning up against the fence still. “Why are you selling breeding cows and their calves at this time of year?”

  “For money.” If he wasn’t going to leave, she would.

  It had been raining for a week straight and the mud was up to her ankles, so she mucked carefully through it toward the auction doors, but he called after her, “I’m the same, you know.”

  “You work for a big, successful ranch that brings in more income in a single sale day than I make in a decade. We aren’t the same.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  With a sigh, she turned back around and took the bait. “Then what did you mean?”

  “I don’t like liars either. You just told one.” He tapped his temple. “I got a sense for that stuff. You ain’t selling for money. Or not only for money. Now we’re even. A lie for a lie. Now let’s play a truth for a truth. You go first.”

  Huh. Maris swallowed hard. Why was he so tempting to talk to? She’d had a plan. Stay bitter and angry at men the rest of her life and live alone as a prickly little grumpy cactus on her little slice of heaven-property for the rest of her days. But here was this giant man with tattoos all over his neck and hands, cow shit on his boots, eyes that were trained on her and much too interested, and she wanted to unload on him. She wanted to tell one person about her failures just so she wasn’t the only one in the world who shouldered them. And what could it hurt? She would probably never see him again.

  No one understood the failures of a rancher like other ranchers.

  “Predators are carving out my herd.” She twitched her head toward the cattle in the pen, still making a ruckus with their bawling. “They’re all I got left. And I know I’m not supposed to be attached. They’re business, right? Fuck.” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed so she wouldn’t cry in front of this stranger. “You caught me on a bad day, at the end of a bad month, at the tail of a bad fuckin’ year. Every one of those cows has names. They’re a good herd. I love them. Every time I lose one to a predator, it eats at me, and not just because I’m bleeding money, but because their lives are being wasted.”