Branded as Trouble

by Delores Fossen

  “You might not be able to get into school here,” Roman reminded him. “They might not take transfers this late in the semester.”

  “Dr. Woodliff said they would. He said his wife is a teacher there and that he could help me with it if that’s what we decided to do.”

  So, Tate hadn’t only thought about this, he had also talked to his therapist about it.

  “You wouldn’t have to go to the ranch with me,” Tate went on. “I know you’re busy and all with the rodeo stuff. But I’d be okay there without you. I mean, it’s not like I need a sitter or anything.”

  No. But Tate did need a father.

  And Roman needed his son.

  Garrett lifted his eyebrow but didn’t smile. That’s because he knew what Roman was about to say. Best not to gloat especially when the gloatee might punch him first chance he got.

  “Okay,” Roman said. “We’ll stay at the ranch.”

  Tate smiled. Actually, it was more of a grin. “Thanks, Dad.”

  He would have said it a thousand times just to get that kind of response from his boy. But saying it and living it were two different things entirely.

  Roman hoped like the devil that he didn’t regret this.

  * * *

  ROMAN REGRETTED THIS.

  The moment he stepped into the house at the ranch, he felt as if he’d gotten sucked into a circle of hell that Dante had forgotten to mention.

  Home.

  Home was a good place to be if it wasn’t filled with shit memories. And this place was doused in them. Added to that, there was a hoard of people there to greet Tate and him. Alice, the housekeeper. Lawson, his cousin. Sophie, Nicky, Kaylee, Clay, his mother and an old family friend, Billy Lee Seaver. They didn’t exactly shout “surprise” when Tate and Roman walked in with Garrett, but it was obvious that this was some kind of celebration.

  No Mila, though. Roman had thought she might be here for this. But she was probably still at work.

  The hugs started, and even though they tried to keep them gentle because of his surgery, Roman winced a few times. Winced, too, when his mother told him he needed a haircut. He probably did, but he made a mental note not to get one while he was there. Yes, it was childish, but his mother brought that out in him.

  “You have your old rooms, of course,” Sophie said.

  She took the gift bag from Vita and some flowers that Roman was holding. Actually, there were six bouquets in all, most sent by his business associates. Tate and Garrett had those, and Alice hurried to take them so that Sophie could show them to their rooms.

  Roman didn’t need her help finding his, but he didn’t know exactly where his mom had set up a room for Tate. He only knew that she had done it because she’d mentioned it any time he was around her. Of course, she always mentioned it as a complaint that Roman had never let the boy stay there.

  The house was sprawling by anyone’s standards, and they went down the hall where there were several bedrooms. His was exactly as he’d left it thirteen years ago, right down to the rodeo trophies he’d won, and the motorcycle magazines. It was like walking into a time capsule preserved in that circle of hell.

  “Your room’s right next door to your dad,” Sophie told Tate.

  It was a good room. Big and with windows that overlooked the barns and pastures. Roman knew that because it was the same view he had.

  “Your housekeeper brought some clothes and such,” Sophie went on. She tipped her head to a suitcase on the floor in Roman’s room.

  Garrett came in and put the flowers on the desk. His mother was hovering right behind his brother. At least the others hadn’t followed for this part of the homecoming. Not that Roman didn’t want to see them. He did. He just didn’t want to see them right now.

  “You want to go for a ride?” Garrett asked Tate. “We got in some new horses this morning, and we can see how they do.”

  “Yeah.” Tate was obviously eager to do that.

  “I would ask you, but you’re not in any shape to get in a saddle,” Garrett added to Roman.

  “He’s supposed to be on bed rest,” his mother reminded him.

  “So are you,” Roman reminded her right back.

  Hell. He had to stop this snapping. Roman didn’t want to drag Tate’s mood down to his own shitty level.

  “You want to take a nap?” Sophie asked him when Garrett and Tate headed out. His mother finally left, too.

  “Sure.” That was a lie. Roman just wanted a moment so he could steel himself up for the rest of this visit. Six weeks. It suddenly felt like an eternity.

  Sophie smiled, kissed his cheek. “My advice? If you need a place to escape, come to the guest cottage. That’s where my office is and there’s plenty of room. There’s enough office space for you, too. Temporary office space,” she added.

  “Thanks. For both the offer and the temporary part.”

  “I know this isn’t easy for you, but it’ll be nice to have you around.”

  “So Garrett won’t have to courier all the paperwork from the ranch that I need to sign,” he commented.

  “That, and we love you. You didn’t forget that, did you?”

  No. It was the one thing that had given him any sort of anchor. Especially after Valerie had left. Roman took hold of her arm, eased her closer. Well, as close as he could, considering her huge belly, and he brushed a kiss on the top of Sophie’s head.

  “I love you, too, Prissy Pants,” he said.

  Because it was an old childhood nickname that she hated, it got the exact reaction he expected. Sophie punched his arm. And she was good at it, too. It stung like hell. He’d obviously taught her the right way to punch.

  “You know I can always smother you in your sleep, Quick Zipper,” she fired back.

  Ah, good one. Roman hated it as much as she did Prissy Pants. He hadn’t always hated it, though. Once he’d thought it was cool that the other teenagers had considered him, well, a guy-slut who got a lot of action. But after he’d knocked up Valerie, the label just made him feel like a guy-slut who should have been more careful.

  Sophie’s gaze went to the window where Roman saw Garrett and Tate heading for the barn. “Can Tate ride?” she asked.

  “Yeah. He’s had lessons.”

  Lessons. That made him wince, too. He was an eighth-generation Texan from a long line of ranchers. It seemed a little like nails on a chalkboard to realize that his son hadn’t grown up riding. Maybe he could change that. Since Tate was going to have to move schools, anyway, maybe Roman should buy a place in the country where they could have horses.

  Sophie put the gift bag on the desk, and even though he didn’t actually see her look inside, she must have gotten a peek of the condom. “Did Vita expect you to need that while you were here?”

  “Who knows with Vita.”

  She made a sound of agreement. “Because Vita gave Mila a condom, too, along with some mumbo jumbo about there being some big changes in her life.”

  Judging from Sophie’s tone, she thought this was all connected. It was, but the only connection was in Vita’s warped mind.

  “Mila and I aren’t hooking up,” he assured his sister. “I don’t hook up with virgins.”

  “Good.”

  Well, he hadn’t expected that. Roman had always gotten the feeling that Sophie was trying to matchmake Mila and him.

  “Despite what Mila thinks right now,” Sophie continued, “she’s not the casual sex type. And she shouldn’t have sex with some guy from a dating site just because she no longer wants to be a virgin.”

  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.