Free Green Broke Woman by Zoey Marcel Page B

again. She wouldn't let him. Slade and the others sure as hell weren't
coming near her again either.
    But would they be arrested without sufficient
evidence? She'd had no marks on her body, and the tape hadn't been the
nightmarish rape Beck had filmed. It was a dull recording of Beck, Slade, and possibly
Bruce all playing Scrabble together. The date on the tape had been the same as
the hellish video she'd been after. The police had watched the tape in its
entirety and then given it back to her when the recording was deemed useless
and the contents contrary to her claims.
    The cops in Beverly Hills had been contacted
and said they'd investigate the Hammond estate once they got a warrant. Hopefully
they caught Beck and Slade red-handed and broke into that vault of horrible
secrets. It nauseated her to think of anyone seeing the contents of those
tapes.
    Kayla tried not to think about the fact that
her water bottle was empty. She'd lose too much water from sweating if she
didn't drink some soon. That couldn't be good. Would her immune system suffer
from dehydration? Fortunately, there were no sick people around, just lazy-ass,
happy horses grazing contentedly all over the plane of food they trampled.
    Kayla's heart caught in her throat, and her
pulse roared to life. The Langley ranch was getting close, so very close. She
hoped the cowboys weren't married. Would she be able to keep herself from
bawling her eyes out in front of them if they were?
    What about her daddy? Was he still mad at her
for leaving home and moving to a state he considered saturated with deviance?
She would go visit him, but first she'd stop by the Langleys ’
ranch since it was coming up.
    ****
    Travis Langley drove the tractor into the
barn and parked it before shutting the engine off. Time for a
break. He wiped his forehead with his arm and climbed down, taking a
cool swig from his water bottle. Leaving the lid off as he held the bottle, he
moseyed out of the barn, allowing the water a moment to settle in his gut.
    A small, curvaceous woman coming up the road
almost made his neck snap when his head jerked to look at her. Man, she looked
like Kayla Sanders. Yeah, right. His sweet little Kayla just happened to decide
to come home to him today, wearing— Oh lord, what a
dress. The sleazy black number looked more like a slip. Probably
just some random woman.
    He watched her closely, finding his body
moving almost involuntarily toward her. His mouth hung open when he got a
better look at her. It was Kayla. His baby cricket had come home to him. The
plastic water bottle landed on the ground with a muted thunk and an erratic gurgle of
spewing liquid when he dropped it. He quickened his pace, wondering what the
hell he would say to her after being apart for so long.
    Kayla stopped at the split rail fence and
just stared at him with her lips parted. She looked like an adorable, hot
librarian or a sexy nerd with her big black glasses, but they didn't overpower
her face. Rather they seemed to flatter her like she'd been born with them.
    She had more tattoos than before. One on each
thigh, a portrait of Marilyn Monroe on the inside of her right forearm, and
some word scrawled all fancy-like on her collarbone, though she was too far
away for him to read it clearly. She had a few colorful tattoos on her left
arm, but not enough to qualify as a sleeve.
    The bitty black dress hugged her hourglass
figure, and the cleavage pretty much screamed “Here are my titties ”,
but he didn't mind one bit.
    She had big, chunky bracelets on her right
wrist, one black and the other a turquoise kind of color. He would have called
it blue, but she'd always corrected him when he grouped all shades as one
color. He must learn the different shades she'd insisted. Turquoise was about
the only one he remembered her beating into his head.
    Her long, wavy curls of sleek ginger fell
soft and free over her shoulders, flirting with her beyond distracting breasts.
Her plump limbs were tan, and