Page 46 of Second Chances with my Billionaire Bosses

“What the fuck?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. She’s not our goddamn surrogate. She’s our woman.”

“She’s going to be the death of me.” Shep ran his hands over his face and shook his head. “She’s nuts. Absolutely, bonafide nuts. All that quite sweetness and cold aloofness was a farce. Our surrogate? Our fucking surrogate? Like we were going to fuck her, get her pregnant, continue to fuck her while she grows our baby, and then just let her leave? I’m not sure if I’m more offended for us or for her. Does she think so little of us that she thinks we’d take the baby and just wave her away? Or does she think so little of herself that she thinks that would ever be possible? That she could just slip away and it wouldn’t end us?”

The front door slammed and a few seconds later Maxie came stomping around the side of the house. She spotted us and put her hands on her hips.

“You can’t just kiss me to shut me up and then walk away!”

Shep was worked up and he didn’t hesitate to march towards her.

“You wanna bet, you sexy little nutcase?!”

Maxie gasped and backed away.

“I’m not a sexy little nutcase! That’s so offensive! Don’t try to kiss me, Shep! I mean it! Shep!”

Shep wrapped his arms around her hips and picked her up with his hands full of her ass. She braced herself with her hands on his shoulders and glared down at him but he didn’t care. He pulled his hand back and slapped her ass hard enough that the sound echoed over the empty pastures.

“You are a little liar. You know that? You pretended to be so sweet and innocent but you were hiding that you can also be a stubborn pain in the ass. You think I’m going to let you walk away after you grow our baby, woman? Never. Never in a million years.”

Maxie’s eyes heated and when he slapped her other ass cheek her mouth popped open on a slight whimper. Blushing a deep red, she changed tactics and gripped Shep’s hair and tugged his head away from her chest.

“You have insulted me so many times in the last ten minutes, Shep Winston, and I’m starting to get mad!”

“Good! Get mad! Get fucking angry and fight me, baby, because this is it. You’re looking at your future right here and now, so you’d better get fucking used to it.” Shep turned his head and nipped at her wrist. “There’s not a goddamn thing you could do to make us change our mind about you. We’re not going anywhere. Do your worst.”

After slapping her ass one more time Shep put her down and then leaned down and kissed her forehead. She stumbled back a step, her face a mask of confusion.

“Time to get to work. I’m going to tackle that dead plot of the pasture. The tiller finally came in.” Shep grinned at me and Rhett once Maxie couldn’t see his face.

“Ranch isn’t going to work itself, Maxine. Let’s go, sweetheart.”

CHAPTER 34

Maxie

Two days. Forty-nine hours and fifteen minutes if I was being specific. That was how long it’d been since I’d lost my virginity. A little less since the last time I’d had sex with my bullheaded roommates. I wanted to strangle them or mount them but I wasn’t sure which I wanted more. They’d lit a fire in me that I couldn’t manage alone and then they’d just cut off the water supply. I was in a constant state of arousal, thinking of all the ways we could have sex instead of working. After being a sheltered, sexually constipated husk of a woman for nearly three decades, my body was awake and it needed more.

After Shep spanked me and told me to do my worst, they hadn’t touched me again. I could feel their eyes on me, always on me, but they kept their hands to themselves. They were punishing me for not accepting what they wanted as law. It felt like they were waiting on me to come crawling to them on my hands and knees telling them I’d been wrong. It wasn’t going to happen. The same way they’d awoken my sexual desire, they’d awoken the fight in me.

Shep wanted me to do my worst? I would show him just how bad my worst was. He was acting like we were married but I’d show him that he didn’t really want me. Not for keeps. I’d show them all and then they’d get over their tantrums and we could get back to the good part. I just needed them to accept that I wasn’t their forever. I had a thousand lessons from my mother banging around in my mind, all of them of her, telling me all the things I did that would stop anyone from ever loving me. I had the playbook on how to show the guys they were confused and didn’t really want me.

I wanted a few months in the warmth of their arms before I left and they were impeding that with their flighty dreams of me being the mother to raise their children. The sooner theyaccepted that I was temporary, the sooner I could find their heat again and settle into it for a while. I wasn’t so blind to my own feelings that I didn’t know I felt the same fanciful things they felt but I knew the end already. My heart would be shattered into a million pieces just like the first time. I just it shattered wanted it to be under my own terms.

Once upon a time, I’d had little ideas here or there about things I wanted or didn’t want. I’d never been brave enough to think past that first initial thought because I’d always known what Mom would say. In my attempt to be perfect and not rock the boat, those little ideas had faded until I thought they were all gone but something about Shep demanding I do my worst had triggered a landslide of those ideas.

At the back of my mind, it felt silly and childish. I was a grown woman finallythinkingof doing things most teenagers did to rebel against their parents. I also recognized it was twisted to try and make my mother’s abuse a self-fulfilled prophecy. I was planning on doing the things she said would make me unloveable, to make me unloveable. Making her right? It made my stomach hurt and my head throb but only if I actually thought about what I was doing.

My first act of rebellion was the easiest. My clothing had always been more about coverage and convenience, even if that meant wearing a flannel to cover my chest in the middle of the summer. I couldn’t do much about parts of my clothing because there was no way I was riding Bob in a dress but I gathered up all the flannel shirts I owned and tossed them in a trash bag. They went to the back of my closet and sat there with whatever dust bunnies had been left over from the Mays.

Without my flannels, my tank tops were a little more scandalous. My curves weren’t easily hidden in just a tank top. I put my new uniform of choice to the test when a team from the auction house showed up to unload the cattle we’d purchased.Too nervous to attempt having breakfast with the guys, I’d stayed hidden until it was time to help with the cattle. The guys saw me for the first time that day at the same time as the four men who’d arrived in two semi-trucks.

I felt the energy shift as I approached and a strange beat of arousal hit me. The things I was learning about myself and couldn’t begin to understand were unlimited since sleeping with the guys. My body, or my brain, seemed to find a lot of things appealing that never would’ve crossed my mind before. Like walking towards a group of men in a tank top that clung to my chest, while the men I wanted watched with dangerous scowls on their faces. A part of me wondered if Mom had been right about me because knowing I was making them mad sent an excited shiver down my spine. There had to be something wrong with me.

Instead of Mousy Maxie I pushed my shoulders back and greeted the new guys.

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