Page 39 of Double Bucked

Ain’t no one ever looked at me like that before.

I slip my hands into the back pockets of her pants. Her body fits so snugly in my hands. “I wanna be yours, princess. Only yours.”

She blinks at that, surprised. A small smile touches her mouth, and it sets my heart on fire. “We can reinvent ourselves, Ransom.” She pushes my hair back, and her lips brush mine. “It’ll all work out.”

But that’s the thing about girls who grew up with silver spoons in their mouths.

When Claire Preacher says it’ll all work out, she believes it.

Her whole life, she’s had a little trust fund fairy godmother on her shoulder. Anytime she’s needed a soft place to fall, there’s her daddy’s dollar bills giving her that nice, green cushion.

What she doesn’t get is once he cuts her off—and he will—that’s it.

Life ain’t so easy when you’re scraping pennies to get by.

I should know. All my life, I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck. I’ve learned to beg, borrow, and, yeah, sometimes, even steal. I know firsthand that it doesn’t always work out. In fact, sometimes, it’s really fucking shitty.

The closer and closer we get to our departure date, the more it weighs on me. Claire’s a tough girl. If the going got tough, I know she’d survive it.

But I don’t know if I can. Can I survive the disappointed downward turn of her lips the first time her card gets declined? Can I survive watching her rake her fingers through her hair as she pores over the unpaid bills?

Can I survive knowing she won’t be able to eat all the macarons her sweet tooth deserves?

It makes my stomach twist up in knots. We’re less than a week out from departure, and I can’t barely focus on work.

“Ransom! Come get your crazy-ass horse!”

The shout of my name shakes me out of my haze. I drop the rope I’ve been wrapping up and get to my feet, quickly making my way through the stables.

I see one of the hands, Rafe, giving me a mean glare. Rafe and I have been friends since we were too small to fit in our boots. He’s a joker off the clock, but he’s serious on the farm, and he’s got a guilty-looking Chaucer by the halter.

“What’d he do now?” I ask.

“Your stallion keeps breaking out. I caught him riding Miss Penny again.”

I take Chaucer’s halter and pat his dusty neck. Affectionately, I say, “You dumb, horny bastard. C’mere.”

I lead Chaucer back into the stable, hooking him up. He jerks his head disapprovingly.

But Rafe still looks irritated. He shakes his head. “You gotta get rid of that penny-horse. This horse pumps out gold bars, man. You can’t have him wasting that.”

I shift back on my heels. Wheels are turning. “How much gold are we talking?”

Rafe takes off his gloves and leans against the gate. “Fifty thousand.”

“Huh.”

Rafe clicks his tongue like a disapproving mom. “Huh, he says. If my stuff went for fifty thousand a pop, you better believe I’d buy some gold briefs. Put these eggs in a nest. Strict, pineapple-only diet.”

I side-eye him. He shrugs. “Keep him away from Miss Penny. I mean it.”

But now my brain is working overtime.

Technically, it’s against the rules to collect semen manually from thoroughbreds. That’s why what we do at the breeding farm is so important. The only way these thoroughbreds are allowed to breed is the old-fashioned way—stallion meets mare, they do what animals do, and then eleven months later, boom. A beautiful, purebred foal.

Of course, if someone, say, collected the semen of a prize-winning thoroughbred…well. That’d be incredibly valuable on the market.

Sell it to the right person with the right mare. She starts pushing out race-winning foals, and her value goes up…everyone wins.

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