Branded as Trouble

Since Roman could see himself in the dresser mirror, he knew he made a face. “Is that what she’s doing?”

Sophie made a face, too. One of disapproval. “She’s considering it. Mom gave her these dating sites, and Mila said she was going to use one of them.”

Roman had to do a mental double take. “Why would Mom give Mila anything about a dating site? It was Mom who was asking Mila about them.”

“No. That was Mila’s fantasy dating sites.” She stopped. “How’d you know about that?”

“Mom has zero whispering skills, and it wasn’t as if I could get up and walk somewhere else. They were talking about it right after my surgery.”

Sophie nodded as if all of this was crystal clear. It wasn’t. He motioned for her to continue with her explanation.

“Before I started seeing Clay, Mom looked up some regular dating sites for me. Those are the ones she gave to Mila, though I can tell you from personal experience that it was a sucky ordeal. Anyway, Mila gave Mom the sites for fantasy dating, but I’m hoping Mom will decide against doing those.”

So did he. On both counts. A woman shouldn’t have to risk a “sucky ordeal” for her first time, and he didn’t want to think about his mother having fantasies of any kind.

“I plan to talk to both of them about it. Now, you go ahead and get some rest.” Sophie gave him another kiss and walked away.

Well, rest had been the game plan, but Roman wasn’t sure that would happen now. If he tried to nap, he was certain the only thing that would be going through his head was the conversation he’d just had with his sister.

Crap.

Why did he even care a rat’s butt about this? His mom and Mila were grown women. And plenty of people used dating sites, even strange ones like those that catered to the fantasy experiences. One of his business associates had found a site that catered to men who liked threesomes. Then foursomes.

Since it was obvious he wasn’t going to get any rest, Roman used the French doors in his room to go into the backyard. As a teenager, he’d used them to sneak in and out of the house, and he was sort of doing that now. He wanted a moment to himself. And he got it. No one, including any of the hands, was around. Not a surprise, really. On a nice spring day like this, there was plenty of ranch work to do, and Garrett and Tate would have gone out through the other side of the barn once they’d saddled up.

The stitches in his side were still letting him know he wasn’t completely healed, so Roman kept his steps light as he walked across the yard and to the corral where he spotted two palominos. Probably some of the new horses that Garrett had mentioned he’d just bought.

His brother had certainly made this place successful. Roman had the proof of that in the financial reports that Sophie sent him each month. Not just for the ranch, but for Granger Western, as well.

The bottom line was they had plenty of money.

But then, they always had. They hadn’t done anything to get that seed money started. They could thank their ancestors for that, but his siblings had certainly built on that, and built big. Roman had done the same with his rodeo promotion business, but he never forgot that it wouldn’t have been possible without those silver spoons they’d all been born with. Most of the time, though, people forgot about all the hard work that it took to keep those spoons polished.

He made his way to the corral fence to get a better look at the horses. He not only got that, Roman also got a jolt from the memories. There were memories everywhere on the ranch, but there was a bad one here.

This was where he’d had one of those pivotal moments in his life. Well, actually, the pivoting had started earlier that day. He’d been about the same age as Tate and had ridden his bicycle over to his great-grandfather’s old house. Not far, just a half mile or so, and it was a trip he’d made plenty of times before. That day, however, he’d seen his father’s truck, pulled off onto one of the trails that led to the house. Roman had stopped because he thought his dad had broken down, and he’d looked around, expecting to see his father fixing a flat tire or something.

But Roman hadn’t seen that.

Instead, he’d gotten an eyeful of his father making out with the new waitress from the Maverick Café. Roman couldn’t remember her name, but he sure as hell could remember seeing his dad kissing her and running his hand into her unbuttoned squirrel-brown uniform top. Even though Roman knew little about sex in those days, he was well aware of what was going on and recognized the heat-glazed eyes and the groping.

When his dad had spotted him, he’d stopped, bolted from his truck and gone after him, but Roman had ridden his bike into the woods and hidden.

Roman had also cried.

He hadn’t exactly put his dad on a pedestal because, in addition to being his father, his dad was also an asshole. Always wheeling and dealing. Always playing mind games. But the bottom line was he was still his dad. And Belle had still been his mom. In those days, Roman had had her on a pedestal. That had been before the harping, before the constant flood of criticism. When he still had respect for her.

But it all changed that day.

His dad had finally found him a few hours later, right here, next to the corral fence. He’d been neither apologetic nor remorseful. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d simply said to Roman if he told anyone what he’d seen in that truck, that he would ground him and sell his favorite horse, Lobo. After that, his father had walked away as if he’d just delivered some kind of decree that Roman would obey.

He didn’t.

That “decree” had made Roman feel dirty, as if he’d been the one to do something wrong. It hadn’t been fair, and in those days, Roman still believed in fairness.

It’d taken a week for him to build up the courage, but Roman had finally gone to Belle to tell her. He had waited until she was alone in her rose garden, and even though he’d fumbled with what he was saying, Roman had spelled it out for her.

Her husband was cheating on her with a woman—a girl, really—who probably wasn’t old enough to vote. And not only that, he’d threatened Roman into keeping his secret. A secret that was twisting and tearing his insides apart as only bad secrets could.

His mother hadn’t even looked at him the whole time he was talking. She’d kept clipping those roses, kept placing the flowers in a perfect, flat row on the basket looped over her arm. No tears, no denials, no falling apart as he had feared she would. She simply said the words that still echoed in his head.

“Go inside and wash up, Roman. Your hands are filthy.”

Even now, her reaction stunned him, and he’d tried to repeat what he’d told her, in case she hadn’t understood. But she had. When her watery blue eyes had finally met his, Roman had seen it all. She not only knew about her husband’s cheating, but she also wasn’t going to do anything about it.

He’d gone to his room and cried again.

The last tears he had ever shed.

Roman had tried to make sense of it. Hard to do that with his thirteen-year-old’s mind. And he hadn’t wanted to tell Garrett, his big brother, because he had known that Garrett would confront their dad. Garrett was the good guy even back then. He would have confronted their father, who would have given him a punishment equal to or possibly worse than the threats he’d issued to Roman, and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Belle would have condoned the cheating with her silence.

Maybe his mother hadn’t wanted to give up being a Granger. Maybe all of this—the house, ranch and money—meant more to her than her self-respect. Maybe she’d just been too weak to walk out of the marriage.

Whatever it was, Roman had lost respect for her that day, too. And for his father. Because his dad had indeed grounded him and sold Lobo.

Roman hadn’t expected Belle to go to his father and tell him what he’d said. But obviously she had, and she didn’t lift a finger to stop her husband from carrying through on his unfair threats. Then she’d tried to fix things by leaving him a picture of Lobo on his bed.

As if that would help.

It hadn’t. Not that day, anyway. But he’d kept the picture and looked at it from time to time. Still did. Because it was a reminder that things you loved could be snatched away. It was also a reminder, though, that there’d been something important enough in his life to love.

After that, Roman said fuck-you to fairness and to his mom and dad. He’d said fuck-you to a lot of things. And he had done that right here, standing at this very corral fence.

His father had continued the unfair shit for the next ten years before cancer claimed him. He’d made Roman the owner of the ranch when Garrett was the one who wanted it. Maybe that had been his father’s way of trying to pull Roman back into the family, but it hadn’t worked.

Ironic, though, that Tate had been the one to get Roman back here.

His father was probably laughing his butt off in the grave.

He was so deep in thought that he didn’t hear the footsteps until it was too late to duck for cover. But at least it wasn’t his mother. It was his cousin Lawson.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” he asked, tipping his head toward the horses. He walked to the fence, stood next to Roman.

They were the same age and looked more like brothers than cousins. On occasion, they’d raised hell together by drinking and making time with some of the more willing girls in Wrangler’s Creek.

“Garrett loves this place,” Lawson went on.

That caused Roman to look at his cousin. Because it sounded as if there was a “but” coming.

Roman cursed. “Please tell me Garrett’s not thinking about leaving here once Nicky and he get married.”

“No way. Nicky and her kid love it here, too, and you couldn’t get Garrett to move away if you stuck dynamite up his ass. There might be trouble coming, though.”

Hell. “What kind of trouble?”

He motioned to the back part of the ranch. “You know that land by the creek?”

With just that question, Roman got an inkling of what this was about. Because that land had been in dispute for more than six decades. It was an old family history lesson, but Roman’s great-grandfather, Zachariah Taylor Granger, or Z.T. as people called him, had a brother, Jerimiah, who was Lawson’s great-grandfather. Both Z.T. and his brother had built not only the town of Wrangler’s Creek but the ranch, as well. However, after a falling out, they’d split the land.

Except for about a hundred acres that, at the time, had been leased out to another rancher.

The lease had long since expired, and that meant the ownership of the land was in question, and it was a prized chunk of acreage to own because the creek coiled through it. Garrett needed the creek water to keep the ranch growing.

“Your brothers don’t even ranch their land,” Roman said, though he was certain Lawson needed no such reminder.

“That might change. Lucian is thinking about bringing in large herds.”

“Lucifer,” Roman grumbled.

Lawson didn’t object to the nickname for his oldest brother, especially since he was the one who’d given it to him. Roman’s family wasn’t the only ones on the outs with Jeremiah’s kin. Lawson had parted ways with his three brothers, as well. That was mostly due to Lucian. Roman was a badass novice compared to Lucian and the man’s cut-throat business tactics. Lucian and his brothers already had a huge ranching operation in another part of the county, but if they were looking to expand, they’d definitely be looking here.

“Did Lucian tell you this?” Roman asked.

Lawson shook his head. “Dylan.”

Another of Lawson’s brothers. Roman was a novice womanizer compared to Dylan, but at least he wouldn’t stab you in the back. Dylan fell into the lover rather than the fighter category.

“I’ve already told Garrett all of this,” Lawson went on, “but he’s not spreading the news just yet. Especially since it might not happen. Dylan’s trying to talk Lucian out of doing this.”

Okay, maybe Dylan had some fighter in him, after all.

“Tell Dylan thanks,” Roman said. It wasn’t thanks because of him but because of Garrett. This place did mean everything to his brother.

“I will. I’m seeing Dylan later this week. He’s coming into town to meet Mila for a drink.” And with that, Lawson walked away.

“Mila?” Roman cursed in pain when he moved too fast to catch up with Lawson.

When Roman did step in front of him, Lawson looked at him as if he didn’t understand what had to be a look of concern on Roman’s face. “A friend set them up on a blind date,” Lawson explained. “Of course, it’s not really blind because they know each other. Not well, though... Say, what the hell’s wrong with you? Are you about to keel over again from the pain?”

Roman took a moment to decide how to answer that. He took another moment to try to figure out why it bothered him that Mila was going on a date with his cousin. And it did bother him. There was no mistake about that. It bothered him because Dylan was a love-’em-and-leave-’em type.

Just like Roman.

And considering what Sophie had told him about Vita giving her a condom and Mila using a dating site, maybe she had decided to lose her virginity to Dylan.

Dylan would take it, too, because he wouldn’t care if he broke her heart in the process.

“Are you okay?” Lawson asked.

No. He wasn’t. Roman had to stop Mila from making a huge mistake.

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