A svelte blonde with stick-straight hair parted down the center and freckles coasting across her pretty face.
An attractive Asian woman with the most flawless olive-toned skin I’d ever seen and long legs that any woman would give her eyeteeth to have.
A Black man who looked sexy as sin in a dark-purple dress shirt and slate-gray slacks. I couldn’t help but be surprised to see him sitting there. I hadn’t realized that men would be up for auction too.
And the last person in the room, a fiery redhead who turned her chair around just in time for those familiar sky-blue eyes to meet mine. They were the same exact color as our father’s. I watched them widen in fear as I realized who the last candidate was.
“What the fuck! No! Hell no!” I roared so loud the floor-to-ceiling windows opposite me shook.
My baby sister, Savannah, stood up with her hands held out in a calming gesture that did absolutely nothing to calm even one ounce of the rage blasting through my system like a nuclear plant exploding.
“Dakota, let me explain,” my twenty-year-old gorgeous, sweet little sister—who was supposed to be away at school—attempted to say.
I shook my head and stormed toward her.
The dude sitting near her was faster than he looked and immediately put himself between me and my own blood.
“Move,” I growled .
He shook his head. “Calm down, and I will.” He pointed over my shoulder to an empty seat.
“You’re outta here.” I pointed accusingly at my sister. “Now!” I hollered.
“Whatever you make tomorrow night won’t be enough!” she snapped as misery blanketed her tone. Tears filled her beautiful eyes and fell down her peaches-and-cream cheeks. “You know it won’t. We need more,” she choked out. “I’m doing this, Dakota.” She sniffled as the brunette came to her aid, wrapping her arms around my sister and patting her back. “Nothing you say can stop me! Nothing!” The fire in her blazed brighter than any sun-filled day on the ranch.
There was no way on God’s green Earth that I would allow my baby sister to go through with this. This was my battle and war to win, not hers. She was too good. Too innocent. Too na?ve to be chewed up and spit out by this cold, dark world. It was my job to protect her, and protect her I would.
“Wanna bet?” I growled through my teeth.
Episode 4
Sibling Rivalry
SAVANNAH
The conference room door opened, and my older sister Dakota entered. I could see her sizing up the other candidates in the reflection of the floor-to-ceiling windows I was facing, my back to the conference table behind me. I knew she’d be the last new candidate chosen of the people who would be participating in tomorrow’s auction. I just knew it. Part of me had hoped she wouldn’t make the final group, even while the other part of me knew how badly we both wanted to make it.
We needed the money.
The $250,000 we would each get upon signing with a bidder would just cover the bank lien on our family’s land and business. If we were both chosen for marriage, the earnings we’d be paid would hopefully cover most of the debt our pa had gotten us into.
Bad deals gone worse.
Over and over.
Each new cattle and horse deal my father made put the family deeper in the hole. First it was the stock of sick bulls he’d immediately taken to our normal pastures. Something any good rancher knew not to do. You separated the new out, gave them time to settle in, checked them medically, and made sure all was well before adding them to the herd. That process could take months. Pa didn’t want to wait, and he ended up infecting more cattle than he’d brought in. That was one loss that had hit hard.
Then it was the horses. Backdoor deals were not how the McAllisters did business. No, we bought, sold, and trained only the best. Everything above board and on the books. At least that’s the way our grandaddy had run things and had taught us since the day we could sit on a horse. By the time Pa got the last set of horses, they were already broken, and not in a good way. The animals had been mistreated, malnourished, and needed a lot of time, TLC, and money we didn’t have to put into them before any of them would make back even close to what he’d paid to purchase them in the first place.
Which was why I was here.
When I overheard what Dakota was going to do to help save our family’s land, I reached out to the company she’d mentioned in her calls. Did my own research and sent in my picture and profile. I was shocked to get a call directly from Madam Alana herself. She’d wanted to be certain that I was ready for such a drastic decision, including leaving behind my schooling, family, friends, and possibly the state and even country I’d been born in.
See, every candidate had to go where their husband/wife wanted them to go. Had to be ready at a moment’s notice to travel. And from what Madam Alana had told me, a lot of the bidders lived outside of the US. It would hurt to have to leave my family and friends, but not as much as it would hurt to lose our legacy. And those dirty rotten Goodalls had been sniffing around our acreage for generations. The feud between the McAllisters and the Goodalls was almost as well-known as the Hatfields and McCoys they taught children about in grammar school.
The hate between Duke Goodall the first and my grandaddy Earl McAllister was the stuff of legend. It started over a woman and continued for three generations over land. Now the Goodalls were trying to buy us out and obliterate our legacy forever. Their land bordered our 125,000 acres, half the size of theirs, which was close to 250,000 acres. They knew our land had stellar resources for the 3,000 cattle that roamed our property as well as the horse breeding program I planned to take over once I finished my veterinary degree. I’d completed three years of the four-year program since I graduated high school a year early. I only had one year left of my academic studies. After finishing my degree, I planned to work my practical hours under a skilled equine vet in my hometown of Sandee, Montana—population just over 2,000.
Because of all my pa’s bad deals, I had to do something to help save the land. My sister, who our father had treated horribly ever since she was a teen, couldn’t be the only one in the family stepping up. That land was a part of me. One I wasn’t willing to lose anytime soon.
Determined to face my elder sister head on, I turned my chair around, and her gaze met mine.
“What the fuck! No! Hell, no!” She roared and cursed in a way I’d never heard before. It was so loud my eardrums ached.
I stood and held my hands in a calming gesture as fear skittered down my spine in a wave of icicles. “Dakota, let me explain.” I barely got the words out before her fury filled the air, choking my words off at the quick.
She made a move to take hold of me and likely drag my behind right out the door. Before she could, the good-looking, soft-spoken man I’d since learned was named Memphis Taylor stopped my sister in her tracks.