Page 12 of Wrangling a Wild Texan

Spoiled little rich girl.

Dog in heat.

What made them even worse was she couldn’t deny them. She was a spoiled little rich girl and she had been trailing after Reid like a dog in heat. There was something about the man that made her do things she had never done in her life. She wasn’t a saint by any means, but she had never been so blatant about her sexual interest. In fact, she had never had to pursue a man. They’d always pursued her. If she showed any interest, they were more than happy to oblige.

Every man but Reid.

He wanted nothing to do with her. Even though it had been quite obvious he’d liked what he’d seen. Not only had she felt his impressive erection, she’d also seen it pressing against the frontof his swimsuit. Unfortunately, his body might like her, but his brain didn’t.

Probably because shewasa spoiled little rich girl.

It hadn’t always been true. While her and Corbin’s parents hadn’t been dirt poor, they’d lived from paycheck to paycheck. Usually separately. Mama and Daddy had a tumultuous marriage. They couldn’t go for more than a few months without getting into a fight that sent one or the other packing. When that happened, Corbin and Sunny had been pawned off on whatever relative was willing to take them. They had lived with grandmas, aunts, uncles, and cousins. None of them had a lot of money . . . especially that they wanted to share with two orphaned relatives. She and Corbin had spent their lives wearing hand-me-down clothes and shoes and never asking for more than what they were given.

It wasn’t until Corbin had gotten old enough to get his own job that Sunny had gotten her first pair of name-brand athletic shoes. She had been over the moon and Corbin had been thrilled he could make her happy.

Looking back, that’s how it had all started—Corbin enjoying buying her things and her enjoying getting them. As they grew, the gifts got more and more extravagant. She went from designer sneakers to expensive jewelry, cars, vacations, and an apartment in Paris so she could study art. Corbin had even bought her the Holiday Ranch.

It was the only gift she hadn’t accepted and not because she hadn’t wanted it. As a kid, she had dreamed about living on the Holiday Ranch as much as she had dreamed about being one of the Holiday sisters. But she hadn’t been able to allow Mimi, Darla, and Hank to be thrown out of their family home. So she had convinced Corbin she really didn’t want the ranch and had run off to Houston.

But it was still Corbin’s money that paid for the apartment she lived in. Still, his money that bought her car, her clothes, and her food. She tried to act like she was making it as an artist, but the truth was she couldn’t pay her cellphone bill with the money she made off her paintings. She hadn’t sold one painting in the last three months and Corbin had made sure she’d had plenty of gallery showings.

A newspaper art critic had summed it up.

S. B. Whitlock has skills . . . just no talent.

In other words, Sunny was just a talentless, spoiled rich girl.

As she lay there, she grew more and more depressed . . . and more and more anxious. If she had been in Houston, she would have chosen some thrill-seeking thing to do—skydiving or wakeboarding or driving a race car at the motorsport track. The city offered numerous adrenaline-pumping activities. But here in Wilder, there was nothing but skinny-dipping at Cooper’s Springs and that was the cause of her anxiety.

Which left only one thing.

Getting up, she quickly dressed in an old T-shirt, jeans, and boots. Corbin and Belle had left two of her favorite Strawberry Sweet Cakes muffins from Nothin’ But Muffins and a note on the kitchen table saying they’d gone into town and would be back later. Sunny grabbed one of the muffins and a bottle of water from the refrigerator before she set out for the Holiday Ranch.

It was a glorious spring day. The midday sun shone brightly, but a cool breeze kept the temperature from being too hot. Bluebonnets were in full bloom and the pastures looked like a purplish-blue sea that rippled in the breeze. If Sunny had been in a better mood, she might have stopped to enjoy the sight. Instead, she barely paid attention as she headed toward the Holidays’ farmhouse.

When she got there, she spotted Mimi working in her garden. Sunny loved the older woman. Mimi was the type of grandmaSunny had always wished for—a kind yet strong woman who loved her family above all else. Normally, Sunny would make a beeline straight for Mimi and help her with her gardening. Today, she was too anxious to be around people. So she merely smiled and waved before heading up the porch steps.

As soon as she entered, she could hear Darla working in the kitchen. The sisters’ mama was an excellent cook and was always in the kitchen preparing food for her large family. Darla, Hank, Mimi, Hallie, and Jace might be the only ones living in the farmhouse, but the other married sisters and their families stopped by often.

Bypassing the kitchen, Sunny took the stairs to the second level. Once there, she walked to the end of the hallway where the dropdown stairs that led to the attic were located.

The short time Sunny had lived at the ranch, the attic had become her place to paint. With Mimi’s and Darla’s help, she had cleared out an entire area right by one of the big dormer windows and turned it into an art studio.

When she lived there, Sunny had spent hours painting the idyllic country scenes just outside the windows. Country landscapes were her specialty. Or had been before all the bad reviews had given her painter’s block. Now she couldn’t even paint a plain slat fence that didn’t look like a kindergartener’s.

But today, she didn’t want to paint fences or idyllic country scenes.

Today, her anxiety pushed her to paint something darker . . . something angrier.

After adjusting her easel, she took the largest canvas from the stack leaning against the wall and placed it on the bottom canvas holder before securing it with the top holder. Moving to her art table, she went through the wide array of acrylic paints. After selecting Prussian green, cobalt blue, and raw sienna, she squirted some of each in plastic Solo cups before adding glazingliquid and water from a jug she kept on the table. Once the paint was thinned and mixed to the desired consistency, she picked up the container of green paint and moved over to the easel.

She studied the pristine white canvas for only a moment before she lifted the cup and with a snap of her wrist . . . threw the paint at it.

It landed in a satisfying splat. She watched the paint drip down the canvas before she continued splattering paint until the cup was empty. Then she did the same with the blue and brown paint until the canvas was completely covered with dripping splats of paint.

She stood back and studied it. It was a true mess, but there was something missing. Mainly, her anxiety. After tossing the paint cups in the trash, she squirted some scarlet-red paint onto a palette, mixed it with a little burnt umber, then scooped some onto a long, thin palette knife and started applying the red to the splattered painting. The more she streaked globs of red through the dripping splats the more the tight knot of anxiety in her gut loosened.

She layered in other colors using her palette knife, mars black and ultramarine blue, before she picked up a brush and start adding highlights and shadows. She worked until her arm ached and her back hurt. When she was finally finished, she stood back and studied the painting.

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