In Bed With My Ex's Brother-in-Law novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Bride's Horse
Shiloh leads her ex's bride up the aisle on a white mare, watches her own mustangs given away as a wedding gift, quits in front of both packs and leaves with the bride's brother, who tells her in the truck what he really needs her for.
My mate married another woman on Saturday, and his mother made me lead the bride's horse up the aisle.
"Nobody else can hold that mare," Noreen Jessup said that morning, handing me the white satin lead. "You'll do it, Shiloh. You owe this family that much."
So I did it.
I walked a white mare down a carpet laid over the Jessup arena dirt, with two whole packs watching from hay-bale pews.
The bride rode sidesaddle in a dress she kept yanking at the neckline.
Her name was Kacey Bridger. She was twenty-four, and she looked like she wanted to bite someone.
At the end of the aisle, Coy Jessup stood under an arch of sunflowers in a white hat.
Six weeks ago, in the Jessup hall, he'd told the whole pack he was done with me.
"A half-blood whose wolf can't even howl," he'd said. "I need a Luna, not a horse girl."
Five years I'd slept in his bed. He never once put his mark on me.
I held the mare steady while Kacey slid down.
Coy took her hand and winked at me over her shoulder.
Every horse on the Jessup Ranch had come through my hands. Ninety head. They bolt from wolves, every wolf but me.
That was the only reason Noreen had let a half-blood sit at her table for five years.
I turned to lead the mare away.
"Stay," Noreen said, loud enough for the front rows. "The horse is part of the gift."
The reception was in the big hay barn, under strings of lights.
I stood at the back with the mare, because she wouldn't stand for anyone else.
Across the barn, the Bridger pack had one table near the door.
Their Alpha sat at the end of it with his chair tipped back and his black hat low.
Rance Bridger. The bride's brother.
He used to ride saddle bronc on the circuit, before his wolf got too strong for any horse to carry him.
He hadn't touched his drink.
He was watching me.
Noreen tapped a glass with a fork.
"Kacey, sweetheart, a Jessup bride doesn't come to us empty-handed, and she doesn't leave the altar empty-handed either."
She waved at the big doors.
Two of the Jessup hands led in a string of mustang mares, roped head to tail.
Fourteen of them. Duns and bays and one mouse-gray grulla with a black stripe down her back.
My mother caught them wild out of the Red Desert the year I was born.
She left them to me when she died.
"Fourteen Red Desert mares," Noreen said. "Our wedding gift to the bride."
People clapped.
The grulla threw her head and found me across the barn.
"Those are mine," I said.
The clapping thinned out.
Noreen smiled.
"They wear the Jessup brand, dear. Everything you brought to this house became Jessup."
"He never marked me."
"And he never will." She lifted her glass. "But we're not cruel. Shiloh stays on as stable help. Somebody has to muck out after the bride's horses."
Coy laughed into his beer.
"Come on, Shi. Where else are you going to go? You've got nothing that isn't ours."
A few of his friends laughed with him.
Kacey didn't. She was staring at her plate.
I looked down at the white satin lead in my hand.
Then I unbuckled the halter, slid it off the white mare's head, and let the whole thing drop in the sawdust.
The mare stood there, free and confused.
"I quit," I said.
Noreen set her glass down. "You can't quit a pack."
"I'm not quitting the pack. I'm quitting your barn."
I stepped over the halter.
"The fall gather is in three weeks," I said. "You've got four thousand cows up on Owl Creek. You'd better hope your horses like you better than they like me."
Coy stopped laughing.
Every wolf in that barn knew the answer.
I walked the whole length of the barn, past the head table, past the cake, to the Bridger table by the door.
Rance Bridger let his chair down onto all four legs.
Up close, he had a thin white scar along his jaw. His eyes were nearly black.
"You need a horse gentler?" I asked.
"I need somebody who can get a horse to stand for me."
"Then I'm hired."
"I haven't said what it pays."
"I don't care what it pays."
One corner of his mouth moved.
Coy came off the dais fast, still holding his beer.
"Where's she going to sleep, Bridger? You've got one house and nineteen wolves. Bunkhouse full of your hands?"
The barn went quiet enough to hear the lights buzz.
Rance looked at me, not at Coy.
He was letting me answer.
"His bed," I said.
Coy's face went red from the collar up.
"You'd go to my brother-in-law?" he said. "On my wedding day?"
"You married his sister. I didn't marry anybody."
Rance stood up. He was taller than Coy by half a head.
He put on his hat, dropped a twenty on the table for the bartender, and held the door open for me.
Behind me, the white mare whinnied and tried to follow.
Out in the dark, the grulla called after me too.
I didn't look back.
His truck smelled like hay and coffee and him.
We bounced down the Jessup lane in silence until the ranch lights were gone.
Then he pulled over on the county road and cut the engine.
"You know I'm your ex's brother-in-law as of four o'clock today," he said.
"I know."
"And you know what the whole valley's going to say you are."
"Let them."
He studied me in the dashboard light for a long time.
"Good," he said. "Because I didn't bring you home for horses."
My hand found the door handle.
"Then what for?"
"My sister didn't marry Coy Jessup for love. She married him to pay a debt my father never signed."
He started the truck again.
"I've got one moon before Coy puts his teeth in her shoulder. And you're going to help me get her out of that house."
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