Signing my name across the final page, I felt an extreme sense of satisfaction.
“Are you ready to meet up with the other five candidates, Ms. McAllister?” Alana stood across the table, ready for me the second I was done signing the next three years of my life away.
“Absolutely.” I smiled widely.
“You seem very pleased with yourself.” She returned my smile, but hers was poised and polite.
I adjusted my cowboy belt, ran my hands down my favorite blue-and-green-plaid shirt with pearlescent button snaps down the front, and let out a long, tortured breath I felt like I’d been holding in for the last four years.
For the first time, I breathed in nothing but pride and purpose.
“Never felt better. Let’s do this.” I grinned and put one boot in front of the other, ready for anything .
Madam Alana led me down a beautiful corridor, deeper into the swanky high-rise casino in the heart of Las Vegas. She opened a set of double doors which I assumed led to a conference room.
I scanned the faces of the five other people seated around a large glossy black table.
A beautiful brunette with stunning clear blue eyes unlike any I’d seen before.
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.