Chapter 1

Chapter One

A fter nearly fifteen years of running a kinky rehabilitation ranch, Lucas Callaway would have told anyone who asked that nothing could surprise him anymore.

That was until he got a call from his best friend, Gerald Rhodes.

Picking up his phone, he grinned at the picture of them that made up his computer screen's background. It had been taken right after college, two smiling idiots backpacking their way across Europe with not enough money and way too much confidence, as he hit the button to answer the call. "Hey, Jerry."

"Luke. I need help."

In all the time they'd known each other, he'd never heard Jerry sound so distraught. Bordering on desperate. Turning away from his laptop, he gave his oldest friend his complete attention. "What's wrong?"

"It's Dorothy. She's out of control, Luke. We just got a call to come pick her up at the police station because she got arrested for shoplifting. This is the third time in less than two months. I don't know what to do with her."

"That doesn't sound like our girl." The Dorothy he remembered was a sweet freckle-faced child with a smile that could have anybody wrapped around her little finger in a heartbeat. Granted, she hadn't been a child in a very long time, but that was still how he saw her in his mind, no matter how much time had passed.

"It's not like her at all. But she started hanging out with these new friends and it's like she's a completely different person, Luke. She even dropped out of college."

Dropped out? The star student who'd been top of her class in high school and practically had her pick of colleges had dropped out? Something was definitely wrong. "Jesus, man. I'm sorry. What can I do?"

"I don't know." Jerry let out a bitter laugh. "I don't even know why I called you."

Leaning back in his chair, Luke drummed his fingers against the armrest. There wasn't really anything he could do, especially since he now lived halfway across the country from his friends. Maybe he could fly out for a few days, try talking to Dorothy. They hadn't seen each other in years, but they'd always had a good relationship, even if it had fallen by the wayside as she'd grown older. And he'd heard kids sometimes listened better when it wasn't their parents delivering the lecture.

It was worth a shot, at least.

Then his gaze landed on one of the photos he kept on his desk. A woman, draped in all the pomp and circumstance a Master's degree in mathematics warranted, grinning so widely for the camera you could feel the joy pumping off the photo. She'd been one of his more difficult cases, which was why he kept that particular picture in such a place of prominence. To remind him that everybody deserved a chance to turn their lives around if they wanted it.

It was probably a horrible idea. And there was absolutely no way his friends were going to be on board with his particular brand of ‘rehabilitation'. But the longer he stared at the photo, the more certain he became that he could give his goddaughter exactly what she needed to turn her life around.

"Send her here." The words slipped out before he'd even had a chance to think them through.

"What?" Shock turned Jerry's voice to a high-pitched squeak. "Send my daughter to your—your kinkfest?"

Luke couldn't help but laugh at the description of his program. "I suppose that's one way to describe it. But you know I have an excellent success rate. She might do well here."

"I can't do that. She'd never forgive me."

"Would you rather have a daughter who hates you from the comfort of my ranch, or a daughter who loves you from prison?"

The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening. "There have to be other options. Other programs." If Jerry had sounded desperate earlier, he was bordering on frantic now.

"There are. But if she's here, at least you'll know she has someone who loves her looking out for her." He didn't even know why he was pushing so hard. He had plenty of contacts, plenty of friends with more traditional methods of rehabilitation he could call on.

But nothing felt as right as bringing Dorothy here, where he could handle her treatment.

And her discipline.

"I don't know…"

Jerry's hesitant answer pulled Luke out of his unexpectedly lurid fantasies and back to the present. "Look, why don't you talk things out with Sheila, see what she thinks about it, and call me back. We can even do a video chat with the three of us and discuss it, if you'd like."

"Yeah." Relief replaced the worry in Jerry's tone. Whether it was relief that Luke had given them a viable option for their wayward daughter or relief that he wasn't being expected to make the decision himself, Luke wasn't sure. Likely some combination of both. "Yeah, I'll do that. Thanks, Luke."

"Anytime, Jer. Give Sheila my best."

"Will do."

They ended the call and Luke turned back to his laptop. Even if Jerry and Sheila decided on a different path to handle their Dorothy problem, he wanted as much information as he could get on his apparently out-of-control goddaughter. Pulling up her social media, he skimmed her latest posts, which painted a much different picture from the phone call he'd just gotten. Instead of the wild criminal her father had described, he found a sweet-faced woman posing for pictures at the park with her friends in sundresses and other completely innocuous activities.

So either Jerry was outright lying… or his daughter was hiding something.

It took an almost insultingly short search to locate her real social media, the one she likely hid from her parents. This page much more closely matched Jerry's depictions of her. Drink in one hand, flipping the camera off with the other, she looked every bit the hellion her father had painted her out to be.

And instead of sweet little sundresses, she wore crop tops and cutoff shorts that exposed the bottom curve of what looked to be a very nice ass. The kind that would bounce and jiggle perfectly under his palm.

He'd had only the best of intentions when he'd first suggested sending her to him. But as he'd talked to Jerry, those good intentions had morphed into something darker. Something he knew he had no damn business wanting. And seeing her photos, seeing the woman she'd become, seeing how desperately she needed a firm hand, he made up his mind that he'd do whatever it took to get her to his Ranch.

Up until that moment, little Dorothy Rhodes had only ever known him as Uncle Luke. But once he had his way, the only name she would be calling him was Daddy .

One week after she'd gotten herself arrested for shoplifting, Dorothy Rhodes was feeling antsy. Something was up with her parents, she just wasn't sure what the ‘something' could be. They'd been acting differently around her, more relaxed, like they'd given up caring where she went or what she did.

It should have felt like freedom. Instead, it felt like the walls of her home were slowly closing in around her.

So when she got a call from Katie, her best friend and favorite bad influence, asking if she wanted to hang out, she didn't hesitate to change into something sexy and form-fitting before heading out the door. Her parents were nowhere to be seen, which wasn't as much of a relief as she wanted it to be.

The doorbell rang just as she was running down the stairs and she grinned as the excitement of a night out finally began pumping through her veins. "Bye! Don't wait up!" she called over her shoulder to the otherwise silent house.

But when she yanked the front door open, she immediately took a step back. Instead of Katie, she found herself face-to-face with a cowboy. Tall, with his broad shoulders stretching the button-down flannel that was tucked into equally tight-fitting jeans to the absolute max, he looked like he'd just stepped off the cover of one of those romance novels her mom had hidden all over the house.

The only thing that was missing was the hat. But she hardly noticed, as her gaze was too riveted on his face. Sexy, but in a rugged way, just like the rest of him. Age and, she assumed, time in the sun had dug lines into his skin, but they didn't make him any less attractive. If anything, they only added a dangerous edge to his expression that both terrified her and made her fingertips itch to trace every crinkle.

And then he smiled, not a wide grin, but just a tilt of his mouth that conveyed he was clearly amused about something… and that the something was her .

It was the smile that triggered her memories. "Uncle Luke?"

"Hey, little darlin'."

Plans temporarily forgotten, she squealed and threw her arms around his neck. He was tall enough that when he returned the hug, he lifted her clear off the marble floor in a move that sent her heart racing with childlike wonder. "Oh my god! Nobody told me you were coming! What are you doing here? I haven't seen you in forever."

Uncle Luke chuckled, his chest vibrating against her as he stepped inside and set her down on her feet before closing the door behind him. "Your parents called me."

When he stepped back, his gaze raked her from head to toe, and for the first time in her memory, she found herself wishing she'd worn more clothes. Not because he was looking at her in that lewd way old men in public spaces often did, but because there was more than a little disapproval in his eyes. Why she should care so much about disappointing Uncle Luke, she wasn't sure, but something about him made her want to squirm under his pointed gaze.

"Apparently you've been giving them some trouble."

Shock had her mouth falling open. "They called you ? Why?"

But before he could answer, his gaze shifted to something behind her and now he did grin, wide and welcoming. "Jerry. Good to see you old friend."

She watched her father and Uncle Luke embrace. In her memories, Uncle Luke was larger than life, a giant of a man, but she'd assumed that was just because she'd been so small the last time she'd seen him. But seeing him now, towering over her own father who was not a small man by any means, she realized she hadn't been remembering entirely wrong. Even at twenty-two years old, he would have no problem picking her up or giving her a piggy-back ride.

And that realization made her tummy feel very, very odd.

"Where's Sheila?" Uncle Luke asked as the two men pulled apart, his gaze scanning the wide-open foyer of their home.

"Lying down upstairs." Her father made a face like he'd just thought of something particularly unpleasant. "She… didn't want to be here for this."

"Be here for what?" Dorothy asked, the odd feeling in her tummy changing to nervous butterflies as she looked from one man to the other. "What's going on?"

The two exchanged a long look before her father cleared his throat. "We should step into my office for a bit."

"Whatever this"—she waved her hand vaguely at them—"is, it's going to have to wait. I'm going out with Katie."

"No, you're not." The surprisingly stern response came not from her father, but from Uncle Luke. "You can call her back and let her know you're unavailable for the foreseeable future."

She might have laughed, if he didn't look so serious. But even that no-nonsense glare wasn't enough to make her simply roll over. "Uh, yeah, I'm not doing that. Bye."

Uncle Luke shrugged as if her response didn't bother him one bit. "Have it your way, little darlin'."

Feeling smug, she turned back toward the front door. But a moment later she found herself hanging upside down, staring at the pristine floor beneath her, with a muscular shoulder digging into her stomach as he carried her away from the door.

"Uncle Luke! Put me down!"

A hard swat landed on her upturned ass. It was the shock of it, more than the sting that stunned her into silence. Had he really just spanked her?

"You're going to want to settle down, little girl, before you make this any harder on yourself than necessary."

By then they'd reached her father's office and Uncle Luke dropped her rather unceremoniously onto the deep leather couch. Crossing her arms as much in self-defense as defiance, she glared up at him. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Language, little darlin'. Keep swearing at me and you'll find yourself standing in a corner with a red hot bottom and bar of soap in your mouth."

Once again she found herself staring silently up at him, pure shock having robbed her of speech. The soft click of her father's office door locking snapped her out of it, and she turned her fury on him. "Are you just going to let him manhandle me like that?"

To her further surprise, Uncle Luke only laughed at her accusations as her father took his place behind his desk, looking more resolute than she could ever remember seeing him. Hands folded on top of the gleaming wood, her father pinned her with a cold stare. "Unfortunately for you, Dorothy, I am going to let him. As a matter of fact, I intend to ‘let him' do much more than just give you a single swat to the bottom. Since you refuse to listen to me and your mother, my hope is that your Uncle Luke might be able to get through to you."

Heat that was both humiliation and fury flooded her cheeks. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You know I live on a ranch." It was Uncle Luke who spoke now, as calmly as you please, like he hadn't just assaulted her in front of her own father. "What you don't know, is that my ranch serves two purposes. Half of the ranch is dedicated to cattle and other livestock, as you might expect, while the other half of the ranch has been turned into a rehabilitation center of sorts. People come to me when they have nowhere else to go and I help them get their lives on track. Currently, we have about twenty guests in the program, but over the course of the years I've helped nearly three hundred men and women turn their lives around."

"You want a round of applause or something?" Holding up her hands, she clapped them together twice in slow motion. "Hooray for Uncle Luke."

From his desk, her father hissed at her to not be rude, but Uncle Luke seemed unbothered by her sarcastic response. "As much as I appreciate the applause, I'm not here for the accolades." Again she got that odd little flutter in her tummy as his lip curled into a smug sort of smile. "I'm here for you."