“Wait, you slept with him?” Lincoln asked, while Timberlynn wore a huge smile on her face as if she had known it all along.
“I thought you knew!” I whisper-shouted as I quickly glanced around the diner.
Kaylee giggled and shook her head. “No! The only thing I knew was that you left with him and your brother came and picked up your car.”
I shook my head in confusion. “But you knew we had sex in his truck.”
The three of them all gasped again, then fell into a fit of giggles.
Once Kaylee got her wits about her, she looked at me and winked. “G-damn. You like the bad boys, don’t you, Merit?”
I felt my cheeks flush, and I was suddenly too embarrassed to even utter a word.
Kaylee waved off my embarrassment with her hand. “Girl, let me tell you, if Dirk is anything like the Shaw brothers—and I feel like I can speak for my sisters-in-law here,” she said, glancing at Lincoln and Timberlynn before focusing back on me. “We know how easy it is to get caught up in them and get down and dirty in a truck.”
“Or tractor,” Lincoln stated.
The three of us looked at Lincoln with shocked expressions.
She smirked and then winked. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. I’m pretty sure that’s where Hunter was conceived.”
Timberlynn giggled as Kaylee gagged.
“On a tractor? I thought a truck was uncomfortable,” I mused.
Kaylee turned back to me. “What I’m saying is, it’s okay to want a bit of a bad boy, and Dirk is, by all accounts, a very bad boy.”
I scoffed. “Being a manwhore doesn’t make him a bad boy,” I stated. Even I could hear the bitterness—or maybe that was jealousy—in my own voice. “I need to find a nice guy. Someone like Channing.” I winced. “Or maybe he’s not the best example, since he’s hung up on his ex. Roy, the guy who works at the feed store!”
They all snarled their lips.
“What? He’s a sweet guy, and I happen to know he goes to church every Sunday and leads some worship group.”
Kaylee shrugged. “All I’m saying is, good boys may go to heaven, but it’s the bad boys who bring the almighty heaven to you.”
Dirk talking dirty to me in this truck came racing back, and I felt my body temperature rise and my core throb at the memory. I reached for my glass of water and took a long drink as I chanced a look at Kaylee. She winked at me, then popped another fry into her mouth.
“So, can we be sisters-in-law even though we’re cousins?” Timberlynn asked as we all turned and stared at her.
Chapter Nine
DIRK
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Ty asked as I pulled the flank strap tight onto the bull. The flank strap was what encouraged the bull to extend his hind legs to buck without hurting him at all. It simply agitated the fuck out of him, hence the bucking. Ty had gotten into breeding bulls, specifically for the PBR, and the bull I was climbing onto, Dark Night, had only had training using dummy weights up until this point.
“Do you want to see how he performs or not?” I asked as I climbed over the bull and got settled. Brock pulled on the rope to tighten it as I slid my hand over the rosin to heat it up and coat my glove, then wrapped the rope around my hand to secure it. I gave it a few quick hits to make sure it was securely in place and glanced over at Tanner who was at the ready to open the gate. Chance, Tanner’s old roping partner, stood off to the side with his old high school girlfriend, now fiancée, by his side.
“Dirk, what if you get hurt?” Brock asked.
“What the fuck? You do remember I do this for a living, right?”
Brock shrugged.
“When did the two of you become such pussies? I’m not going to get hurt. We don’t even know if he’ll buck.”
The bull chose that moment to start getting pissed in the chute.
“Right, he’s not going to buck,” Ty grumbled.
I adjusted myself once more, then nodded so that Tanner could open the gate.
Dark Night took off into one of the highest jumps I’d ever experienced.
“Don’t get down the well!” I heard Brock yell out as Dark Night started to spin in one direction. I dug my spur into him, and he stopped almost on a dime and went the other way.
“Cover him!” Tanner shouted.
A horn went off, indicating I had indeed covered the bull. Eight seconds had passed, and I jumped off of Dark Night. I stumbled slightly but managed to get my footing.
With a huge smile on his face, Brock jumped down and helped Tanner and Chance guide the bull back into the chutes.
“Damn, I guess that’s why you’re number one right now,” Ty said with a hard slap on my back.