Not today, not ever, handsome.
“Are you ready to be taken to the candidate room where the others are?” Madam Alana asked.
“You mean I get to meet the other people up for auction?” I blinked in surprise.
“Yes. These individuals will be the only people who know exactly what you are going through. I suggest the six of you become friends.”
Friends.
The word battled against the uneasiness swarming around my mind and heart. I’d never had any friends. Only my sister.
Suddenly this decision didn’t seem so lonely.
Episode 3
A Good Woman
DAKOTA
“Darlin’， a good woman knows her place is by her husband’s side. She acts as his right hand just as he is her left. Not two wholes, but two halves that make one solid unit.”
My granddaddy’s words were the heart, blood, and soul behind the type of family woman I wanted to be. I’d dreamed of finding a man of my very own, raising kids on the farm, and being my husband’s right hand whenever it was needed. I spent my entire life working the land alongside my grandfather while my daddy spent his time drinking, carousing, and cheating on my mother.
When my mother, Carol McAllister, left this world at the young age of thirty-four, there wasn’t a single soul in our small town of Sandee, Montana, who didn’t know exactly why she took her own life. There was only so much a dainty flower like her could weather after seventeen years of being a doormat to the man she’d devoted her life to.
I hated my father with every breath I took, but I was determined to make my grandaddy proud, may he rest in peace. Only my father was doing a damn good job of ruining everything my grandfather and the generations before him had built. The legacy that was supposed to be mine and my sister’s, not to mention the generations to come.
With renewed focus I skimmed the section in the contract once more that focused on my sexual proclivities. The options were endless, and I wasn’t exactly knowledgeable about the myriad of options available, nor had I had a lot of experience, so I simply checked the box for heterosexual and moved on.
Sex wasn’t the most important thing on my mind. Even in my teen years I gave all my attention to helping run the farm. Sure, I’d had a rumble or two in a hay loft with one of the young ranch boys my grandfather hired each summer. Even had a secret romp in the cab of my beat-up Ford truck with a boy from my school one hot and sticky August night. Neither of those teenage experiences prepared me for adult copulation, that’s for sure.
The first time I had what I’d call “real sex” with an adult man, I was twenty-one. He was twenty-six at the time and a prospect from a biker club that had been traveling through our town and had stopped at the local bar for a drink and a little fun. I spent two full days in bed with the bearded brute who knew more about sex and how to please a woman’s body than I thought was possible. Mama never shared what good and pleasurable experiences could be had from the opposite sex. I figured it was because my pa was an asshole who never showed her true love and kindness. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant with me at seventeen, her first time lying with a man, her entire life would have been different. She might still be alive today.
Still, Mama never complained about what her life could have been. She did her best to make Pa happy. Did everything in her power to turn his favor toward her, to no avail. He was too self-centered to give my mother the time of day. And he made it known regularly that he thought she’d tied him down with two daughters and no sons. Useless leeches he called us.
It was worse for me since I was the oldest and was a taller, stronger version of my mother. He hated me with a passion I’d felt my entire life. Nothing I did was ever good enough, and I’d tried plenty to make him proud. Learning every task on our ranch from cattle herding, horse breeding, mucking stalls, manning the fences, keeping the books, attending auctions, and anything in between. I never said no to a task and always tossed my Stetson into the ring whenever needed. There was no job I didn’t throw myself into with both feet and all my heart.
It never mattered to him. Nothing was good enough for Everett McAllister. Not our mother. Not his daughters. Nothing. And now the ranch was in dire straits. The only hope my family had was me. If I could muster up enough money to pay off the bank lien and the enormous debt he’d gotten into since my grandfather died four years ago and ultimately buy him out, we could be free. It was the only way he’d walk away from what he believed was his birthright.
Once I was chosen in the auction, because there was no other alternative, I’d become the hero in my family’s eyes. Not the useless “little girl” my father often labeled me.