from the barn when he whipped out his little Willie.
Lots of memories.
Now she was back in town.
Last week when her father asked for her to come home, Bianca had reservations, but she set them aside. She knew it took quite a feat for her father to ask for help. For him to admit that he was close to losing the ranch was astounding. For him to say he needed her was the clincher.
“Well, can you beat that?” Bianca said aloud, her eyes lighting on the wooden sign that read:
KING EQUINE SERVICES
ESTABLISHED 1959
HOLTSVILLE, SC
(2 MILES AHEAD ON RIGHT)
She clearly remembered the day she helped her father hang the sign that her mother painted with care. And there it remained after all that time. The letters were faded and the corners of the wood was chipped, but her father hadn’t replaced it.
Maybe this trip won’t be so bad after all.
Bianca noticed a large and shiny pick-up truck behind her in her rearview mirror. She paid it no mind until the driver began to blow the truck’s horn and motion out the window with his hand.
Bianca checked her speedometer. She was doing fifty-five. Humph. “Better go around,” she muttered with attitude.
As the truck passed, Bianca noticed a man wearing aviator shades and riding in the back. The man and his pose looked straight out of one of those Ralph Lauren print ads—even done to the chocolate lab sitting dutifully at his side.
The man made Bianca want to do something naughty, like suck her finger or blow him kisses.
Ruggedly handsome, his salt and pepper smooth hair was cut very low. His beard and mustache was more a five o’clock shadow. She knew his hair was prematurely silver because there was no denying the youth and vitality of the man. She figured him to be in his early thirties, and his deep bronzed caramel complexion perfectly suited that beautiful hair. He had strong features. A lighter version of that male supermodel, Tyson.
Bianca wished his shades weren’t in place.
Her eyes took in the black tank he wore and the way it snugly fit his chest and emphasized the steely muscles of his arms.
Just before the truck accelerated and left her behind, the man waved at her before setting his arm atop his bent knee. The move drew her attention to the large tattoo of an eagle on his upper right arm.
“Ooh, come here, you,” she said to herself, waving back with a beguiling smile and a little toot-toot of her horn.
Good girls always loved bad boys, and there was something untamed and wicked about the man that drew her in. “Sexy silver self,” she said in a low voice to herself.
Did he like what he saw as well? She couldn’t help but get excited at the thought that he did.
Moments later the truck became a spot in the distance.
“Whew, he was fine,” Bianca moaned, just as she decelerated the car to turn it down the long and winding dirt road leading to the ranch.
The grove of trees lining the road offered enough shade to make one think it was suddenly late evening and not early afternoon. As a child Bianca would play among that blanket of trees, feeling like a princess in her own secret garden. Even when it rained the tree’s branches were so densely intertwined that nary a raindrop broke through to touch the ground.
Then the trees ended. Before her sat her childhood home, the King’s Castle as her father used to call it. The two-story home was an impressive structure. A huge wrap-around porch and so many windows that the sun glinting off the glass looked like the twinkle of diamonds. The navy blue shutters crisply contrasted off the white of the home with the underskirt of the home trimmed in red brick.
The mahogany front door opened and her father stepped out onto the porch, his arms already opened wide. Bianca flew out of the car and ran up the stairs to him. He enveloped her. She clung to his large impressive frame and to a past when there was no distance between them.
Although Bianca hadn’t returned once since she left college.
Although she owned a house in Atlanta just as large as this.
Although she swore to never return if things hadn’t changed.
Her first thoughts were, I’m home.
As Kahron Strong stood in the doorway of his bedroom and looked at the naked woman lying there like she was posing for Playboy, he wondered who he’d have to pay to get a housekeeper on whom he could rely.
This woman laying before was Erika—the fifteenth housekeeper/cook he hired since he moved to Holtsville, SC. He tried everything from the old to the young, male, female, and a few that could swing either way. He always got the same result—they did something to get on his last nerve.
Whether it was stealing, or being disrespectful, or watching more of his digital cable than actually working, or foolishly trying to seduce him—Erika was the fourth such to try that route—or just plain couldn’t cook or clean to save their lives, Kahron went through housekeepers quicker than tissue. He wondered if he was cursed.
Because she was laying out the goods he gave her a quick perusal. He shook his head. When a man has a naked woman lying before him and he notices that the furry mound between her legs is starting to grow down her legs—well, something just wasn’t right.
“Ma’am, please go on and get dressed,” he said, his voice raspy and filled with his Down South accent. He reached into his back pocket and pulled two twenty-dollar bills off the knot of money. “Your services are no longer needed.”
“What?” she exclaimed, actually opening her legs wider.
Kahron diverted his gaze and tried not to laugh at how ridiculous she was.
“Are you crazy?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“You ain’t all that, Kahron Strong.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know.”
He heard the rustle of the sheets and the squeal of the bed springs as she rose. He started to tell her to take the sheets with her, but refrained—he’d just throw them out. He felt sheets were almost as intimate as underwear and, well, it just wasn’t something he wanted to randomly share.
Kahron looked at wall until she snatched the money from his hand and slammed out of the room.
“Well, another one bites the dust,” he said, as the front door slammed soon after.
After a long day at the livestock auction in Chesnee, Kahron had just wanted to eat lunch and help his crew out with repairing the fence on the northeast portion of his one hundred acre spread.
A strip show hadn’t been on his “to do” list—especially from a woman whose crotch looked like she had Buckwheat’s head trapped between her legs.
He
