Teach Me The Ropes (Bachelor Auction Book 1) Read online

  Or maybe he was just a dick.

  I spun on my heel and kneed him in the balls. He bent at the waist, dropped to his knees, then tipped over onto his side in a fetal position on the industrial carpet. His hands cupped his crotch.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered as he groaned from the floor. I glanced at the door, hoped Sarah Jane didn’t come in with any of the other kids, or Claire in search of her dad.

  My breath came out in pants, my adrenaline pumping. I stared down at him, noticed the way his face had turned white and couldn’t miss the wheezing coming from his lungs. I hadn’t meant to knee one of the preschool’s clients in the balls. I’d just acted without thinking. In anger.

  This was bad. Really bad, even though he deserved it.

  This was what I’d wanted to do to my ex. Hit him where it counted, but I never got the chance.

  “I’ve had enough of guys like you,” I said, setting my hands on my hips. He was clearly in misery. Served him right. “Try your flirting shit on someone else.”

  Grabbing my bag and keys, I stormed out the front door. I’d taught Sawyer Manning a lesson, but had I learned one too? The hard way, like losing my job and where I slept at night?

  2

  SAWYER

  “A bachelor auction? You’re shitting me,” Huck said, running a hand over the back of his neck, staring wide eyed then dropped into the stool at the counter.

  “Language,” Alice scolded. She’d stopped chopping the carrots for the stew for dinner and gave him her familiar withering glare. Even though we were grown men, that didn’t keep her from reminding the three of us of our manners.

  My brother only grinned back, if a little sheepishly. It was the look that had gotten him out of messes growing up and still got women out of their panties. Since he was the chief of police now, he’d grown out of being a hellion but not out of charming the ladies. “Fine. You’ve got to be joking,” he said instead.

  A smile turned up the corner of our housekeeper’s mouth as she looked from Huck to Thatcher to me. The three Manning brothers. Bachelor brothers to her disappointment. They were in the kitchen with Alice as she prepped dinner. I was on the couch in the great room—the open space that was part family room, dining room and connected to the kitchen—with a bag of frozen peas on my crotch.

  As soon as we’d gotten back to the ranch, I unhooked Claire from her booster seat, and she’d run off toward the stable where Roy had promised her a pony ride. After I saw her meet up with the older ranch hand, I’d headed inside and right to the freezer. When I’d dropped onto the couch and put the package over my… package, Alice had arched a brow but hadn’t said a word.

  My annoying brothers had, and I’d had to give them a play-by-play. More like blow-by-blow. Fuck.

  They’d thought I’d been joking at first, but the peas resting on my jeans-covered crotch had set them straight. They’d even winced and put their hands over their own junk in instinctual male protection. With a little distance and recovery time, I’d had to laugh because a woman had dropped me like fucking Redwood. Not many caught me by surprise, but Kelsey sure as shit had.

  I knew what to watch out for next time. There would be a next time. No woman had intrigued me like she had in… ever, which meant I’d lost my mind. She was feisty, bad tempered and had it in for me.

  I’d laid on the floor of the preschool for a few minutes after she’d stormed out. Partially because I’d been unable to move and partially because she’d destroyed my pride. I’d thought of our short conversation ever since and tried to figure out what I’d said or done that had pissed her off that much.

  I didn’t hurt women. I didn’t fuck with them. String them along. I was the nice Manning brother. I sure as shit hadn’t done anything to Kelsey, and yet she seemed to have a fucking hair trigger, and I’d somehow pulled it. I thought I’d behaved the gentleman in the few minutes we’d talked.

  I’d offered to show her around town, not around my dick.

  “I’m not joking,” Alice repeated. “A bachelor auction Friday night, and all three of you are in it.”

  Thatcher glanced my way but didn’t seem too bothered by the idea. He’d come in from the stables and sported jeans, held up by a belt and the Junior Steer Roping champ belt buckle, and t-shirt. His t-shirt was as dusty as his sturdy work boots. There was a crease in his red hair from his Stetson, which hung on a hook by the back door next to mine. He worked as bartender at the Lucky Spur downtown, but that was at night. During the day, he pretty much ran the ranch.

  Huck gave me a grim look, as if he were heading to the gallows on Friday instead of a fundraiser. He shifted uncomfortably, adjusting his utility belt, heavy with radio, cuffs, holster and pistol. Between the two of us, we had the chief roles down. He was the chief of police for The Bend. I was the fire chief. I’d had the day off, so I’d volunteered to pick up Claire, so Alice hadn’t had to go back into town.

  I shifted the ice cold peas in my lap, remembering what that kindness had gotten me.

  “I admit,” she said with a small shrug of her shoulder, “I will get some amusement from watching you three squirm up there on stage.”

  “At our expense,” I called, adjusting the pillow behind my head.

  She set those gray eyes on me. “A woman’s paying the tab. No expense to you.” The corner of her mouth twitched, and she was intentionally being sassy. As if the older woman was ever sassy.

  “It’s for a good cause,” she added, reminding me we couldn't complain. But that didn’t stop Huck.

  “Yeah, but here? The Bend is so small, who’s going to bid?” he asked.

  Huck and I were public servants. We were used to helping the community. Hell, we put our lives on the line every time we took a shift. But this was definitely a new twist.

  Thatcher went around the kitchen island and snagged a carrot chunk from the board and popped it in his mouth. Alice slapped his hand but gave him an indulgent look. “If I’m going to be forced on a date with the highest bidder, I don’t want it to be Miss Turnbuckle from the library,” he advised. “I want to use my time wisely.”

  I had a feeling wisely meant in bed with his head between a woman’s legs as she screamed his name, but I wasn’t going to say that. Not in front of Alice.

  I’d like to use my time wisely with the gorgeous redhead who’d shot me down. I’d gone down in flames, hard core.

  No. Fudging. Way, she’d said.

  With those words, she’d made it pretty damned clear she wanted nothing to do with me. I’d watched her walk inside, and I’d stood on the playground, stunned. It wasn’t as if I’d asked her to hop in my bed. I hadn’t told her what I’d been thinking, about how I wanted to bend her over the side of my bed and fuck her hard, to find out if a good girl like her liked to get her ass spanked. Or how those plump lips looked spread wide around my dick. Any of those would have deserved a knee to the balls.

  But I hadn’t said any of that, and she’d practically ripped me a new one. Any sane guy would have gotten the message and headed in the opposite direction, but I’d gone inside to apologize and make it right, which had gone so fucking wrong.

  “I’m sure Selma Turnbuckle will be there and might just bid on one of you and win. If she does, you will be a proper gentleman,” she warned, waving her knife in each of our directions. The woman was the ranch’s housekeeper and all-around mother hen. And she wanted us married.

  That was all fine and good, but I didn’t want to be sold to the highest bidder. I wasn’t fucking a cow. I’d sure feel like a piece of meat up on the community center’s stage as women bid on what they saw; me and my brothers and the other men who’d been wrangled into participating.

  Part of going on a date was the hope of not being a proper gentleman at the end of it. But Miss Turnbuckle, the town librarian, had to be seventy if she was a day. She had gray hair when I was a kid. I had nothing but gentlemanly thoughts where she was concerned. Maybe she wouldn’t be a bad date. She always loved that Momma had named us after
Mark Twain characters. I’d escort her home and be done.

  It had been a long time since I’d felt any kind of real attraction to a woman. Years. Until earlier. Until Kelsey. The first time I’d seen her across the playground I’d felt like a cartoon character with my eyes popping out of my head and my dick instantly hard. She was just that fucking pretty. I was thirty-fucking-four years old and was far from a monk but had never once felt this way. Like being hit by a fence rail upside the head.

  I wanted the whole deal. The heated looks, the flirting, the foreplay, the sweaty sex. Instead, I’d gotten a knee to the crotch. I must be insane because I still wanted Kelsey. Maybe more so because she’d stood up to me. For what, I didn’t know. But I’d find out.

  I should have my head examined because females were crazy. I’d had a woman who I’d thought was the real deal, but that had turned to shit. Tina. Thinking her name had the same effect on my dick as thinking of Miss Turnbuckle. I shifted the peas, winced.

  “You said you want us happily wed,” Thatcher said, snatching another carrot chunk.

  He might be the youngest, but he was the biggest pain in the ass.

  “Alice, a date with one of your friends isn’t going to get us to the altar,” he added.

  She set her knife down and sighed. Wiped her hands on her apron. “I want you each to find a good woman.” Her gaze shifted to mine when she said that, the importance on the word good because we all knew I’d found a woman—Tina—and that had been bad. “Make some babies.”

  I’d had no expectation of ever finding a good woman. Turned out, Tina had wanted the Manning land and the money that went with it more than me. When the pre-nup I’d presented her had brought out where her true interests had been, she’d left me. And the area.

  No way could she fuck the town’s fire chief then fuck him over and stay around. The Bend was too small for shit like that to fly. The chances of finding The One in rural Montana, who’d make me smile and make me come hard were fucking slim to none. I instantly thought of Kelsey. She’d made me smile. And she’d make me come so fucking hard—as soon as my balls recovered.

  As for making babies, I was up at least to practice. A lot. I didn’t even need a bed. I’d be all over practicing with Kelsey bent over my desk or in the back stall of the stable. A blanket in the south pasture. Even in my fucking shower.

  Fuck, I was in trouble if I was imagining doing all that with a woman who clearly hated my guts.

  “You got Claire out of me,” Huck reminded Alice.

  Alice’s face softened at the mention of Huck’s daughter. The woman had been part of the family since before I was born and had stayed on to take care of us after our parents died when I was fifteen. She wasn’t a blood relation, but she was definitely Claire’s honorary grandmother. “I did. Now get a woman, too.”

  Huck titled his head back and laughed. Claire’s mother was a piece of work and long gone. Huck was better off without her. So was Claire.

  Maybe Alice was right in her putting us in this auction. Clearly, Huck and I sucked at picking women. As for Thatcher, no woman had turned out to be a gold digger or shown up pregnant for him, but he was still single, and that was his fatal flaw in Alice’s eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Huck said, appeasing Alice.

  “The auction was organized through the community center,” she said, picking up the cutting board and sliding the cut carrots into the pot on the stove. “You have to admit it’s something different than last year’s holiday wreath sale.”

  It sure as hell was. Selling some holly bows was one thing, selling myself another.

  “Rev. Abernathy will be the MC,” she added, as if that made it better.

  Thatcher laughed. Huck groaned. I did, too, but inwardly. We’d gone to church as kids with our parents, but we’d veered from that flock.

  “Are these dates chaperoned then?” Huck asked. “Hang on. This isn’t some bait and switch way to have us married then and there, is it?”

  I stilled, thinking the possibility was real.

  “Huckleberry Manning, did you hit your head? It’s a fundraiser not entrapment.” Alice gave him the eye again. “Women not just from The Bend will come and bid. I expect some from as far as Helena. It’s not often the Manning brothers are up for sale.”

  Often? More like never. We may have chased skirts in the past, and Huck even may be a father now, but we Manning brothers were selective. At least discrete. We sure as shit didn’t kiss and tell.

  She eyed the three of us up and down.

  We were all over six feet and had our father’s broad shoulders, square jaw and blue eyes, but we’d somehow come out with different hair color. My hair was almost black. Huck’s was blond and Thatcher was a carrot top. I remembered our father had always said Momma had two-timed it with a few cowboys to get boys looking so different, but they’d been so much in love that there wasn’t a chance either of them had strayed in their marriage. It was a perfect union I wanted for myself, too, but doubted I’d get. I was getting old and, it seemed, only desired for my big bank account or my big dick. Or both.

  “I don’t need help with my love life,” Thatcher said, offering us his sly grin.

  Alice humphed and got back to her chopping, moving onto the celery next. The scent of browning meat from the pot on the stove made my stomach growl.

  “Love life? No, but you haven’t brought a woman home for dinner once,” she said to him. “He had a child out of wedlock.” She aimed her knife in Huck’s direction, and he actually blushed but wasn’t ashamed of Claire. Alice loved Claire to death, so her point wasn’t about anything but the three of us all having the same single status.

  “And you.” She turned and offered me a shrewd glance.

  “Me?” I asked, setting my hand on my chest. “What have I done?”

  She glanced at the peas on my crotch.

  “Clearly you’re doing it wrong,” she countered, full of sass. “Since you’ve wasted a bag of my peas trying to get a date.”

  “After Tina—” I lifted the peas up in the air. “And earlier, you want me to go out and pick up women?”

  She frowned, puckered her lips as if the thought of Tina left a sour taste in her mouth. “Pick up? No. Look what that effort did to you. You clearly need to be auctioned off if you can’t do it yourself.” She turned to her stew pot, a little flustered, then looked at me over her shoulder.

  I actually felt my cheeks heat. I felt off my game. I wanted Kelsey. I wanted her to buy me at the auction because I wanted a second chance. Hell, I wanted to know what made her run so hot. But there was no way in hell she’d be buying my sorry ass.

  “I’m not raising you boys forever,” she continued. “I’ve told you before, and I’m telling you again, I’m working on moving to be near my sister in Alabama where it’s warm all year round.”

  She’d said that before, and I had a sneaking suspicion she was getting more serious about the plan by the day. Alice had been our rock since our parents had died. She was mother, housekeeper, nurse and had even been chauffeur until I got my license and took over that role.

  “You don’t want us to pick up random women, but you’re okay with us being auctioned off to the highest bidder?” Huck asked.

  “I wasn’t trying to pick up a random woman,” I reminded, trying to make them see that I wasn’t a manwhore. “The new preschool teacher’s… hell, she’s something. I offered to show her around town not my bed.”

  Alice narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.

  She ignored me and Thatcher and spun about to face Huck. “You volunteered—”

  “Volunteered? More like shanghaied,” Huck cut in, but it did nothing to stop Alice.

  “—to be bachelors to raise money for the youth program at the community center. You remember how involved you were as kids.”

  We’d done little league and a few camping trips. Some dances. I’d even had my first kiss at one of those.

  When I’d gone off to college in Missoula, Huck and Th
atcher—who were two and four years younger—had done more stuff through the program. Alice was right. It was a worthwhile cause, but I’d rather write them a check than be in an auction, but I didn’t dare suggest that. I was the fucking fire chief. I was invested in this town.

  “Miss Turnbuckle will be a dream date in comparison to someone like Delilah Mays,” Thatcher said then gave an exaggerated shiver. He might be the least… selective but wasn’t interested in that piece of work either.

  “Delilah?” Huck groaned and went to the fridge, grabbed a mug from the cabinet and poured himself some coffee, which Alice always kept fresh. “She’s had her sights set on any one of us since we got hair on our balls.”

  “Language,” Alice warned again, shaking her head in her usual dismay at Huck’s crude words.

  “What the he—heck, Huck?” I said at the same time, trying not to laugh, even though it was true.

  “You have a point there,” Alice conceded. “I can’t believe she hopped in your bed senior year.”

  “Hopped in my bed?” I asked, eyes wide. “Alice, she didn’t come through the front door. She climbed through the window and stripped herself bare.”

  Thatcher chuckled. “First time you get a woman in bed, and you can’t perform.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, even though at the time, it was a nightmare. Delilah was beautiful. Had been even back then. Any high schooler’s wet dream. But when she surprised you in your bed… my teenage dick had gotten hard at the sight of her perky tits but quickly deflated. For a while, I’d thought she’d broken me.

  That fiasco hadn’t deterred her much although she’d moved onto Huck and Thatcher. She hadn’t climbed in their windows. At least she’d learned that lesson although I was sure she still wanted one of us, all these years of rejection later.