Free Her Cowboy Bears (BBW MMF Menage Shapeshifter Romance) by Tabitha O'Dell Page B

even find them, and our drivers
introduced themselves.
    “I’m Eli,” the man in the passenger seat said. “And
this is Austin.”
    I was in shock. I couldn’t believe these two men would
be who I was working for. They were so hot, so unbelievably hot.
    And I knew I had no chance with Ophelia around.
    You’re not here to flirt , I reminded myself on
the drive over from the airport. You’re here to work.
    I stuck to that motto when we got to Hollyhock Ranch.
It was even bigger than I expected, absolutely massive, with an old farm house
at the end of a long lane off an old dirt road.
    “It’s only three bedrooms,” Eli told us. “So you’ll need
to bunk up.”
    “Great,” Ophelia said with a roll of her eyes, but she
was the only one that offered any form of protest. The rest of us just grabbed our
bags and made for the house, but she stayed behind and waited until one of the
guys offered to get her stuff for her.
    “She’s going to be a real pill,” Max whispered to
Isaac. It wasn’t meant for my ears, but it made me smile all the same. The girl
might be beautiful, but that didn’t mean she could hold her own on the ranch.
    I couldn’t allow myself to get cocky, though, and when
four am came the next morning, I learned that lesson well. My alarm was a
banging on the door to the room I was sharing with Ophelia and I climbed out of
bed to get dressed while she only pulled the covers over her head.
    “We need to get to work,” I told her. “The warned us
it was a four am wakeup call.”
    “Whatever,” was all she said and I let her be. I
couldn’t force her out of bed.
    My first day on the ranch was probably the hardest day
of my life. Between feeding the horses, saddling them, and getting out to check
on the cattle before the sun even rose, I was exhausted before lunch.
    And then there was the other work to be done. Tossing
hay, cleaning stalls, feeding the animals. My bones ached and I nearly skipped
dinner to sleep, but when I sat at the table with my new coworkers, I was
filled with the best sense of accomplishment.
    Dinner was also the first time we saw Ophelia all day,
and she came downstairs fresh as the morning sun.
    “Sorry about that,” she purred at our new employers. “Jetlag
and all.”
    “Well, you get a pass today,” Austin said as he handed
her a plate. “But we expect you working just like everyone else tomorrow.”
    “No problem,” she assured him. “No problem at all.”
    But it was a problem. Sure, she actually got out of
bed, but Eli and Austin stuck her with me to learn the things I’d learned the
day before.
    “Just show her the ropes,” Austin told me, and when he
put a reassuring hand on my shoulder, I just couldn’t say no.
    But all day Ophelia whined, complained, and insisted I
do her share of the work. Even the stuff with the horses she couldn’t manage,
despite the fact that she claimed to own three of them herself.
    “This is gross,” she moaned as we cleaned out the
stalls. “When do we ride the horses?”
    “When we’re told to,” I told her as I chucked more
soiled straw out of the stall. “Come on, we need to get this done before
dinner.”
    That was nearly impossible when I was essentially
working alone, but it was worth it when Eli stopped by and told me he was proud
of how fast I was learning. Our bosses were so encouraging and nice, and
thankfully they didn’t put up with Ophelia’s shit for long.
    She lasted the span of a week at Hollyhock. I hadn’t
meant to overhear the conversation, but when I stumbled on it, I was over the
moon. They’d given her so many chances in the span of a week and now they were
telling her she had to go.
    She didn’t even put up a fight. She had just mumbled
okay and I barely got out of sight before Eli and Austin walked right by where
I’d been eavesdropping. I had to run back to the stable to make sure they didn’t
know I was where I shouldn’t have been, but somehow I made it just in time to
have them walk