Dynomite: A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance Read online

  DYNOMITE

  A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance

  Layla Wolfe

  Copyright © 2015 Layla Wolfe

  Kindle Edition

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Cover art by Red Poppy Designs

  poppyartdesigns.com

  Edited by Claudia Morfit

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  To Nikki Holmes. For your in-depth look at how to build my own bucking chute.

  I met him on the shittiest day of my life.

  And being arrested for prostitution wasn’t the worst part.

  Legend had it my new stepbrother was called Dynomite because, well, he spewed like a raging volcano.

  That only made me hate him more, thinking about his damned volcano. I loathed him and his arrogant vanity, his smug self-assurance. Dyno Drummond had no reason for vanity as far as I could tell. He was just an outlaw, a horse that couldn’t be tamed, a down and dirty vaquero who dreamed of being a rodeo star.

  He busted his way into my life, my house, fucking everything that walked. Not me. I was Miss Squarepants, Head Bitch, holier-than-thou cheerleader who couldn’t be touched. Dyno called me a Force-Me Queen. If only I knew what that meant.

  My football playing boyfriend was a brainless goon. My BFF coveted and loathed Dyno just as I did. Dyno’s only friend was the alcoholic Native American, Sequoia, the kid on the fast track to nowhere.

  Seven years ago, the shit hit the fan. Dyno left, did a few tours as a SEAL, and came back different—decorated, mature. He thinks he’s tough enough to rejoin the circuit and become a bareback bronc champ again. He thinks he can break me, too. Well, he’s got another thing coming.

  I don’t break easily.

  Bad cowboy.

  Go to my room.

  DYNOMITE

  A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance

  Layla Wolfe

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  About the Book

  Part I

  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

  Part II

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  More Books from Layla Wolfe

  Part I

  CHAPTER ONE

  APRIL

  It was the shittiest day of my life. And being arrested for prostitution wasn’t the worst part.

  The worst part was meeting Mr. Dynomite.

  I mean, what a dumb fucking nickname! He probably christened himself. At the very least, couldn’t he have spelled it the normal way, ‘dynamite’? Mr. Dynamite wouldn’t be half as asinine. Okay, it would still be moronic. And why did he run around trying to show every girl exactly why he was called that?

  But I digress. I didn’t get to be the deputy in my high school cheer squad for being a fucking moron, but I didn’t understand why the cops were handcuffing me at first. I was wearing low-slung cutoff jeans with a giant pewter buckle with my red-and-white checked shirt tied around my midriff, between my boobs in their push-up bra. Also, I was standing with a group of other young women dressed identically in front of the Astro Bowling Alley. And I was wearing rhinestone-encrusted cowgirl boots.

  Couldn’t the cop see I was an aspiring buckle bunny following the CCPRA circuit? My buckle announced it from ten miles away! Every bronc rider in Last Chance aspired to The California Cowboys Pro Rodeo Association, and my boyfriend Lawson entered some of the rough stock events. Too bad we weren’t with Lawson, any boys, or any team ropers at the moment, and I was bending in the window of a passing sedan giving an old guy some directions. Maybe my boobs were sticking in the geezer’s face, I don’t know. Maybe he was an undercover cop, and a pretty good one at that. But when the real cop car pulled over with its cherry flashing, the geez peeled off.

  The cop shined his flashlight in our faces. We automatically put our arms up to cover our eyes, maybe making us look more suspicious. “Are any of you girls over eighteen?”

  My best friend Olivia stepped forward, bold as ever. “I am, officer. We’re about to graduate high school. Are we doing something wrong?”

  “Underage drinking, for one,” said the cop, pointing his Taser at my beer can.

  I stuck out my lower lip. That was the beginning of my legal troubles that night. I had always been the rebellious one. Even though I was deputy of our cheer squad, I was still the black sheep. I was the only one who smoked cigs, who had tried any drug harder than recreational Ecstasy. Although I was from a rich ranching family, I stole things sometimes just because I could. A rich family doesn’t equate to a good home life, and after my mother died of cancer six months before, I had just gone downhill, filled with angst, self-cutting, and self-loathing. Now I proved this to my squad mates by sassing the cop.

  “Everyone drinks in Last Chance,” I claimed. “We’re always out here on Manilow Avenue drinking.”

  “April,” said Olivia under her breath. A few of the other girls took several steps back, leaving me basically alone with the cop on the sidewalk.

  I hate pigs anyway, and this cop looked just like one as he glared impudently at me, waddling forward. He waggled his Taser, as if to warn me of the consequences if I should move. “Who bought the beer for you? You are aware you have to be twenty-one in California in order to purchase beer.”

  I wasn’t about to admit Lawson had purchased the beer with his fake ID before leaving to score some weed. I just waved my Coors around. “I don’t need to divulge anything to you, officer. It’s my Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate.”

  Olivia bravely stepped back up. “She doesn’t mean that, officer. We just found the beer sitting here, some bum must have left it—”

  But the officer whipped cuffs off his duty belt as his partner got out of the squad car. “So you admit you bought the beer yourself,” he said, “in addition to solicitation out here on Manilow Avenue. You just made my job a lot easier.”

  Several of my friends gasped loudly, but that was the extent of their protest. I swear to fucking God! Sometimes friends are worthless. Cops were manhandling me just because I was enjoying a beer and being a Good Samaritan by giving some old guy directions! It didn’t take long for me to utilize my dad’s name.

  In the back of the squad car I struggled fruitlessly against my cuffs. I knew that throwing a fit would be futile and probably even land me in more hot water. But I had to stand up for myself against this wrongful arrest. Being convicted would ruin my chances of getting into an Ivy League college, even if those odds had been growing slimmer and slimmer with each passing month. “My dad is Cliff Pleasure, owner of Hardscrabble Ranch,” I whined through the grating that separated the front and back seats.

  I was heavily pissed off, but I guess the larger part of me knew that something bad was going on. I was probably fairly drunk too, having polished off my customary two beers to each of my friends’ one. I remembered this burnout guy from school being arrested for public intoxication. Sequoia Crooks was some kind of Native American, I guess, and probably shouldn’t drink at all. He lived near our golf course—yes, Hardscrabble Ranch had its own golf course—in our former cow boss’ house. Anyway, Sequoia was always making a laughingstock of himself by showing up drunk at rodeo events thinking he was about to compete. He sometimes did compete, but one day he was so stumbling wasted that the arena director had just called the cops on him. Drunk in public, or some such bullshit.

  I knew I’d blown my chances at a good college, but I couldn’t live with an arrest on my record. My life had been fucked since my mother’s death, but I still had some sense of pride.

  “Oh, Cliff Pleasure,” said the arresting cop, whose nametag said he was Sergeant Vassar, like one of the colleges I had hoped to attend.

  “You know him?” I asked sweetly, but the asswipe wouldn’t answer.

  A slow sense of panic began to set in as they “hauled me into the station,” as they say. They didn’t read me my Miranda rights—didn’t that mean I wasn’t arrested?—but they did fingerprint me and throw me into a holding room with some real hookers. Boy, these gals were the real deal, with their violet eyeshadow and surgically enhanced boobage. Suddenly I felt very small and insignificant, just a juvenile delinquent playing at being an adult. Drinking beer and talking back to cops, what was I thinking? My mother would be completely ashamed of me. She’d always been a lady, running the ranch with a genteel but firm hand. I’d never even begin to measure up to her if I stayed on this track.

  “Did you see that hot
stuff who just came in?” one hooker asked the others.

  “Cop or criminal?” asked another.

  “Criminal, but boy, what a juicy pup.”

  “Pup? Working our turf?”

  “I don’t think he’s working. I just mean he’s got that pup look. There he is, Britny! Look—he’s just a slim, built twink. I swear he can’t even grow a right beard.”

  “Oo, but he’s trying. Love his ink.”

  Sure as shit, a different officer—I swear his badge said he was Smith, another jab at another college I couldn’t dream of attending—shoved a mumbling, stumbling guy into our little cell. He was scruffy and disheveled, about my age wearing a sleeveless army jacket. A faded, threadbare name stenciled on the chest said he’d stolen the jacket from a “Melrod.” He was mumbling and snarling at Smith, his hands cuffed behind his back, as mine still were. He had dirt smeared over his china doll-like face, his dishwater blond hair parted on the side, obscuring what might’ve been brilliant, piercing eyes.

  “Police brutality,” he muttered. “Fucking arresting a guy for just living now, is that what they fucking do in California?” The girls around me twittered and sighed at the sound of his syrupy southern drawl.

  “Until you come up with a better ID than your coat, you’re not going anywhere,” said Smith, shutting the cell door.

  “Oh, such a young pup,” cooed a woman of the night.

  Melrod glared at her from under his curtain. “I’m not gay,” he snarled, “and I’d never have to sell this ass.”

  He was not only dirty, but vain and arrogant too. He tried to show the girls his jeans-clad ass by lifting the bottom hem of the army jacket with his bound hands. I realized it was sort of a turn-on, watching such a macho, rebellious guy struggle helplessly. The sheen of dust didn’t obscure his pulsing, buff biceps, a half-sleeve of tattoos displaying a colorful mix of Asian and biomech styles.

  That’s when it hit me. Advanced Algebra class at Mario Lanza High School.

  I sat in the front with other mathletes, of course, although I’d been slipping lately. Melrod or whatever his name was—he was a new transfer—sat in the back with losers like the drunk Crooks kid, making obscene gestures, and kicking each other under the table. Who could forget that ink of a geisha with a death’s head skull and gnarled hands, protected by a glaring snowy egret? It was beautiful artwork, but I never paid attention to the boneheads in the back of the class.

  He, too, had a look of recognition when he first saw me. There the fucker was, showing his ass to a bunch of hoes. Fucking grinning at me because he obviously recognized me and now suspected I was one of those nightwalkers!

  A flood of shame washed through me, and I inched even farther away from Britny. This put me in close proximity to a true drunk, one of those passed-out juicers who chugs fortified wine and thinks Fireball whisky is the crème de la crème of cocktails. This excuse for a human had a different sort of dirt, pungent and sour, and now I wasn’t sure where to move.

  “Ms. Mathlete,” Melrod murmured. “Well fucking well. Fancy meeting you here. And with these ladies I recognize from Manilow Avenue? The Astro Bowling Alley?”

  Britny said, “Actually, we work Manilow down by the Heartbreak Bar.” She sneered sideways at me, giving me the once-over. “And we wouldn’t be caught dead in those tacky bling boots.”

  That was fucking it, man. I lost it. “I’m not a fucking whore! I’m here under a case of mistaken identity. That pig who hauled me in just wanted to fulfill his quota. Tell them, Melrod! You’ve seen me in math class. I’m no fucking skank. I’m on the cheer squad. I competed in the academic decathlon!”

  Melrod just eye-fucked me skeptically. “How would I know about that? Never seen you in my life, though I can tell you’re a well-broke filly.”

  I snorted hotly. “How do you know what ‘well-broke’ means? You sit in the fucking back of the class throwing fucking spit wads at people who are actually trying to get work done.” A “well-broke filly” meant that I was young and educated, but how did this outcast know those rodeo terms?

  It was hard to tell what those half-lidded eyes were thinking under all that hair and dirt. But he nodded knowingly. “I see. You’re more of an outlaw mustang, then.”

  I thrashed so angrily I rose off the bench, but I didn’t want to face him. Because of my absurd predicament, I was allowing this nobody from the other side of the tracks to goad me, to get to me. “And you’re a fucking greenhorn!”

  His eyes narrowed further. “And spit wads are so last year. I’m usually busy posting creepshots of your butt cleavage to Christian Mingle.”

  I could’ve breathed fire, and I could feel my eyes bulging in their sockets. “I don’t have any fucking butt cleavage!”

  It was Britny’s turn to snort skeptically. “I beg to differ, sweetheart. Those shorts are so tiny you can barely tell you’re wearing them.”

  Now I knew the true meaning of “seeing red”. It was like blood flooded my eyeballs—I literally saw everything through a haze of red! It terrified me I might be so drunk it was making my eyeballs bleed, or someone had put some synthetic Ecstasy from China into my beer. “You…” I seethed, unable to come up with a word bad enough for this Melrod motherfucker. “You fucking outlaw.”

  He bowed a little at the waist. “Why, thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Now I did stand, but it was only to hock up as much loogie as possible in my dry mouth and spit it into his fucking face. At last, I’d affected him. At last, all the smug expression dropped from his face. At last, he wasn’t so much full of himself as afraid of me, and that’s what I wanted.

  I wanted to be as scary as him.

  “April!” someone barked, and my eyes darted to the door. A bailiff stood there blocking my father from peering into the holding cell. “What in God’s name is going on in there?”

  Jesus fucking Christ! So they actually had called my father!

  The bailiff shuffled me from the room. I stumbled sideways over my boots because I wanted to get a last triumphant look at Melrod. He attempted to wipe my spittle from his face with his bare shoulder, hunched up so he looked like a fucking crybaby, but he couldn’t get to the goo that dripped from the tip of his nose.

  The last thing I saw before I faced my father’s wrath was that filthy outlaw wiping his nose off on the front of an obliging hooker’s tiny shirt. Her fake boobs didn’t bob at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DYNOMITE

  They call me Mr. Dynomite, but you can call me Dyno.

  And I couldn’t wait to tell that little rah-rah why.

  First off, I’d just been nailed for being a zombie. Yeah, you heard right. Being a zombie.

  Someone saw me in my cowboying getup jaywalking across Dick Van Patten Boulevard or whatever the fuck’s the name of the main drag. I was dusty and messed up after being thrown by a half-broke paint in Hardscrabble’s corral. I’d been wrangling for Cliff Pleasure for two weeks while my mom softened him up, staying in a shitty motel until he let me move into one of his many buildings. And he didn’t even recognize me when he came to bail out his slutty truant daughter.

  Anyway, that’s how I wound up in the city jail—not the first time I’d been in handcuffs. Some shocked motorists had reported me as zig-zagging through all four lanes of traffic like a hammered zombie, my clothes in shreds, I guess with parts of the insides of my face hanging out. A sinus cavity here, some eardrums there. I’d really just come from playing a few games of pool at The Neon Cocktail, but try telling that to the tourists on their way to Palm Springs. I guess someone swerved to avoid me and jumped the curb.

  I wanted to be a newfangled Jack Kerouac, and all they saw was a Walking Dead extra.

  They were convinced they’d seen an escaped zombie on his way to chomp some brains, and once the cop gave me a breathalyzer test, it was all over. I blew like .18, which I guess is somewhere between fairly basted to heavily fossilized on the drunk scale.

  I recognized that filly April Pleasure from school. She was a pom-pom cheerleader, but there was a wild, arm-jerker side to her. An arm-jerker’s an animal that bucks with lots of power. I’d already been fantasizing about bucking her and showing her who the fuck was boss. I’d only been at Mario Lanza High School for two weeks, but I’d already banged a couple of hipster chicks. I was currently tantalizing one of April’s own squad mates, some blonde airhead named, I think, Olive. Or Olivia.