Branded

by Tori Carrington

  Trace held up his hands and grinned. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think shooting the boss is a good idea.”

  Jo blinked once. Then twice. Had the man who’d occupied so many of her thoughts all day just materialized in her doorway? Or was she imagining things? Her gaze flicked down his tall, muscular frame and then back again. She licked her lips. He had to be there. Because her imagination wasn’t nearly this good.

  She slid the safety back into place and put the firearm on the bedside table. “Yes, I’d say it rates right up there with sleeping with the boss.”

  “Regrets?”

  She shook her head. “Merely stating facts.”

  Jo met his heated gaze, feeling the same sizzle she’d come to expect every time their eyes met. Damn, but he had an effect on her that she couldn’t cool down with any size bucket of cold water.

  Trace glanced around. “Mind if I come in?”

  “You own the place.”

  “I meant, am I welcome?”

  She held his gaze.

  He came in and shut the door.

  Jo immediately felt the heat ignite into a full-out fire. She got up from the bed and moved toward the bathroom. “Pour yourself a drink if you’d like. Fix one for me while you’re at it.”

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  Jo closed the bathroom door behind her and leaned against the smooth wood, surprised to find herself out of breath, as if she’d just run an eight-minute mile rather than walked five feet.

  She caught her reflection in the mirror, grimacing at her faded purple high school varsity T-shirt and loose-fitting jeans, her regular bedroom attire. No silky nighties for her.

  At least her undergarments were one hundred percent pure Victoria’s Secret. Yes, while even she bucked falling into the traditional roles, she wasn’t without her wicked interest in sexy underwear. A passion that Trace had seemed to appreciate last night.

  Of course, she couldn’t exactly walk back into the bedroom in nothing but her bra and panties. Well, she could, but she wasn’t going to. Instead, she stepped to the sink, took out a hair dryer she rarely used, and applied scant makeup that she rarely wore. A citrusy lotion was about as close to perfume as she got.

  Minutes later, she stared at her reflection again. Was it her, or did her eyes look a little bit brighter? Her lips a little bit plumper? Her gaze dropped to the front of her shirt, finding her breasts high, her nipples clearly visible. She ran her palms over them and shivered in response, anticipation coursing through her veins.

  She hadn’t had an inkling that Trace would show up at her room tonight. In fact, she’d pretty much accepted that if there was going to be a repeat of last night, it would come at her doing. The fact that he appeared to want her as much as she wanted him made her hot in areas she normally didn’t pay a great deal of attention to.

  Jo finally exited the bathroom, to find him sitting on the edge of the small sofa, sifting through her selection of CDs.

  “Interesting collection.”

  She smiled. “Find anything you like?”

  He looked at her over his shoulder. “I see a lot I like.”

  She was a Southern rock kind of girl, the louder the better. But somehow she got the impression that he wasn’t talking about her taste in music.

  He raised a CD case. “Do you mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He fed the disc into the player located under the TV, and within moments strains of the Eagles filled the room. He switched off the television, then sat down on the love seat and held up a glass in her direction.

  Jo rounded the coffee table and sat down next to him, accepting his offering. She coughed when she got a mouthful of plain soda. She lifted a brow.

  “You told me to get you what I was having,” he stated.

  “So I did.”

  He stretched his long legs out in front of him, crossing his boots at the ankle. Jo watched the move, appreciating the hard line of his thighs, the way his jeans bunched at his crotch. Damn, but he was a tall glass of sweet tea. She could climb on top of him right now and not want for a single thing for the next six hours.

  Instead, she stayed right where she was, allowing her right arm to brush against his left, the only sounds those of the CD and the ice clinking in their glasses.

  “Is this a date?” she asked, staring at their reflection in the blank TV screen.

  “Date?”

  She shifted on the cushion, folding her right foot under her other knee and resting her elbow on the back of the sofa. “Yeah, you know, those things that people go on or schedule in order to talk or eat before they screw.”

  His grin was as filthy as her words. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a crude mouth?”

  She smiled back. “Just about everybody I come across.”

  She rubbed her eyebrow with the pad of her thumb, remarkably satisfied to be sitting there looking at him. Just looking at him.

  She’d never been a girl given to mooning over a man. She was either attracted to someone or she wasn’t. And things pretty much escalated after that. Even in high school, she hadn’t been the hand-holding, meandering-down-the-hall-and-staring-up-into-her-beau’s-eyes type. She had too little time on her hands, so she’d figured out pretty quickly that she’d have to learn how to put those same hands to good use with the time she did have.

  She glanced at her knee. Of course, there were other reasons for her actions. Mostly, she’d been needed at home. And when she hadn’t been home, she’d been thinking about what she’d have to do when she got there.

  “Uh-oh. No filthy words now?” Trace asked.

  “Huh?” She looked at him. “Oh.” She offered up a smile. “What, do you want to hear me say the word screw again?”

  He chuckled.

  “I don’t know what it is with men. You’d think women never used profanity, the way y’all react.”

  “Tell me, is it something that you and your girlfriends do frequently?”

  “Cuss? Hell yeah.”

  Of course, she really didn’t have any girlfriends. She’d learned a long time ago that it was better to fly solo than to face uncomfortable explanations.

  “But enough about me,” she said. “I want to hear more about this brother.”

  His eyes darkened. “I didn’t realize we were talking about you.”

  Jo got the impression that his change in expression had everything to do with her mention of his brother.

  She held up her hand. “I don’t need to know all that,” she said. “So what’s say we keep it simple.”

  He cleared his throat and reached for his soda. “Fair enough. Just so long as you know that I’m going to be asking a few questions of my own…”

  Chapter Six

  TRACE’S MUSCLES TENSED tighter than tow wire. On a level he was loath to acknowledge, he should be happy not only that Eric had survived the past six years in the Middle East, but that he was coming home.

  Trace wasn’t.

  Jo shifted again, drawing his gaze to the way her full breasts swayed beneath the thin cotton of her old T-shirt. “Is he older or younger?”

  “Who?”

  She made a face.

  “Oh, you mean Eric.” It was Trace’s turn to shift. “Older.”

  “There’s just the two of you?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you get along?”

  He stared at her.

  She lifted her right palm. “Just picking up on some strange vibrations here, that’s all. If you don’t want to talk about it…”

  Trace knew that by saying that, she was making it virtually impossible for him not to talk about it.

  Besides, when it came to Eric, it was probably long past time Trace stared down that particular unbroken horse and tried to tame his emotions. While much of what had passed between the two of them could be chalked up to simple sibling rivalry, there was nothing simple about what was happening now.

  “We use
d to be closer than two brothers could be,” he said thoughtfully. “We grew up doing everything together. He saved my ass when I got my foot caught in the rope lassoing my first bull. I saved his when his horse went down twenty miles out, while he was on a solo run.”

  Trace trailed off, remembering that day. He’d been seventeen to Eric’s nineteen, and his brother had been an hour late for dinner. While his parents pretended not to be worried, despite his mother’s washing the same pan five times and his father staring out into the sunset as if the world had up and disappeared, Trace had saddled his own horse and gone out looking for Eric. He’d found him five miles away from where he’d been forced to put his injured horse down. Eric was walking in the general direction of the ranch house, the temperature already beginning to dip low in the January night.

  “What happened to change that closeness between the two of you?” Jo asked.

  Trace drew a deep breath. “I don’t know…”

  That was a lie; he did know. But it was more knotty than a single conversation could untie.

  “You asked yesterday out on the range why I hadn’t enlisted in the military,” he said quietly. “I know you didn’t mean for me to specifically answer the question. You were just trying to deflect mine, but…”

  When his silence dragged on, she prompted, “But?”

  “Well, I was the one who was supposed to ship out to marine recruit training six years ago, not Eric.”

  Jo’s brows drew together. “I’m not following you.”

  He clenched his fists against his thighs. “I’d signed up at a recruiting office in San Antonio after our parents died.” After he and Eric had had their first argument about the running of the ranch. “But by noon the next day, I found out that Eric had driven to that same office and pulled my paperwork, and put in his own.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. His way of playing big brother, I guess. He thought he was saving my ass by going in my place, or some damn fool thing.”

  “Why didn’t you go, anyway?”

  Trace gazed at her. “This ranch has been in the family for four generations. An Armstrong has always been at the reins of the lead horse. I couldn’t just get up and leave the place to run itself.”

  “I’m sure Vern would have taken care of it.”

  Trace nodded. “That he would have. But back then, in the wake of losing my parents so abruptly, my emotions were still raw. It was important to me that the ranch be run by either Eric or me. We owed it to our folks.”

  Jo grew quiet. He watched her trace a stripe on the fabric covering the sofa with her short, unpolished thumbnail.

  He squinted at her. At the way her long, shiny black hair fell like a sheet of silk over her slender shoulder. At how delicate she appeared, when beneath her fair skin he suspected she was made of molten steel.

  At how patiently she listened to him, as if it was important to her to hear what he had to say, important for her to understand him.

  Before he knew what he was going to do, Trace lifted a hand to cup her chin. She looked at him, the expression in her deep blue eyes questioning and curious. He brushed his lips against hers, watching as need joined the other emotions in those glistening pools.

  She smiled beneath his amorous assault on her mouth. “I thought you had a few things you wanted to ask me.”

  He searched her face. So beautiful. So strong. “Oh, I figure we have time enough to get around to that…”

  Her lashes cast shadows against her cheeks as she looked down. “But not now.”

  “Definitely not now.”

  He deepened the kiss, enjoying the taste of toothpaste on her tongue, the freshness of soap on her clean skin. She was everything and nothing that he’d expected her to be. And he was fascinated beyond what he thought might be safe.

  He scooted closer to her so he could feel her soft breasts against his chest, his hand drifting to her hip.

  His cell phone vibrated in the holder at his belt.

  Damn.

  “Was that you or me?” Jo whispered.

  “Unfortunately, I think it was me.” He kissed her again and then reluctantly drew back and took out the intrusive instrument.

  Vern.

  “What is it?” Trace grunted.

  “I suspect we have a wrangler wandering about the ranch, Boss. How do you say we handle it?”

  JO WAS HUNGRY. And not for the bag of barbecue-flavored chips she’d just opened, either. But seeing as she didn’t have access to what—or who—she’d rather be feasting on, she popped a potato chip into her mouth and crunched while she paced the room. She checked her cell phone, put it back down and then ate another chip, thinking about what Trace had shared with her a short time ago…and wondering if he’d be coming back.

  The chips tasted little better than thinly sliced cardboard, so she dropped the nearly full bag into the wastebasket and then walked around the room, switching off lights. While she didn’t have to work in the morning, it was important that she keep herself on a tight schedule. Especially considering that she had gotten precious little sleep the night before.

  Moments later she was stretched out under the top sheet in bed, staring at the ceiling.

  Well, that worked.

  Her mind raced with a thousand different questions as she considered the man who had been little more than a way to release stress yesterday. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, not a good idea in the long term, maybe, but good for what she’d needed at that moment.

  The problem was she was wound up even tighter now.

  Strange. Definitely strange.

  She rolled onto her side and stared at the glowing red numbers on her digital clock. When she’d first signed on at the ranch, it had taken her awhile to get used to the almost complete silence of such an isolated location. The bunkhouse was far enough away from the stables and the cattle that she couldn’t hear more than an occasional irritated neigh every now and again. And since they all worked hard during the day, the ranch hands were done in by ten-thirty at the latest.

  Jo hadn’t known crickets could be so damn loud.

  She rolled to her other side…and found herself face-to-face with a shadow looming over her bed…

  THE TWO-WAY RADIO ISSUED white noise, and then Vern’s voice said, “Anything on your end?”

  Trace plucked the handheld unit from his belt and spoke into it. “No.”

  “Copy that.”

  Trace frowned as he refastened the radio and brought the ranch pickup to a halt on the far side of the cattle barn, located a couple hundred yards back from the stables. He switched off the engine and waited for the gravel dust to settle in the light of the high beams. The startled cattle made a few muffled noises, but remained quiet for the most part.

  He climbed out of the truck and checked the paddock gates. It didn’t appear that the lock had been tampered with. He stepped to the barn and did the same. Nothing. Still, he opened the lock and went inside, flicking on the overhead light. Nothing appeared to be out of order.

  Vern wasn’t one to sound the alarm on a whim, so Trace had taken him seriously when he’d said he suspected someone was on the property who didn’t belong here. While rustling livestock wasn’t as widespread as it was even ten years ago, what with better technology and security, there were still incidents here and there. Wildewood had been hit a time or two in the past few years, with cattle or horses coming up missing, and a figure with a bandanna around his nose and mouth and a cowboy hat showing up on the security tapes the next day. And no more than an hour later, the man responsible would be arrested by Sheriff Brody.

  Vern had reported he’d heard sounds of a car near the property, then its engine stopping. And had witnessed a shadow sprinting through darkness relieved by only a waxing moon.

  Trace locked up the barn again and began to head to his truck, only to backtrack and walk along the side of the building instead.

  Jesus.

  He plucked the radio from his belt.
/>   “Vern, are you certain it was a car you heard?”

  “How do you mean?” The foreman’s voice crackled as he answered.

  “Could it have been a motorcycle engine?”

  More specifically, the engine to the Harley ridden by Jo’s old boyfriend.

  Yes, they definitely had someone very unwelcome on the premises…

  Chapter Seven

  “CHRIST, CARTER, what in the hell are you doing?” Jo said, automatically reaching for the 9mm under her pillow. She felt nothing but cool, smooth sheets.

  “Looking for this?” Carter held up her firearm so that she could just make out its shadow. The stench of whiskey and beer made her recoil in disgust as she scrambled out the other side of the bed, her heart thudding in her chest. He must have come in and retrieved the gun when she’d gone into the bathroom to wash off the makeup she’d put on after Trace had left.

  Trace…

  Jo cringed. Had Carter seen her and Trace? In her experience, no man took well to watching a woman he’d kissed mere hours before kissing another man.

  She reached for the light and switched it on, even as she visually and mentally swept the place for something she could use as a weapon.

  “Shit, turn that damn thing off,” Carter said, blinking.

  Jo backed away from the lamp and the bed, clad in her ratty old T-shirt and panties. Carter seemed to realize the same thing as his heated, drunken gaze took in her semidressed form.

  She shuddered in foreboding.

  “You’re drunk, Carter. You need to go somewhere and sleep it off before we have this conversation.”

  “I didn’t come here for conversation, Jo. I didn’t drive down from Dallas in one-hundred-degree heat so we could talk.”

  She’d figured he’d left the area after she’d turned him out yesterday. Apparently he hadn’t done any such thing. Instead, he’d stuck around, perhaps thinking he could change her mind.

  “Where’d you go last night, Jo?” Carter asked, reaching to put her gun down on the nightstand, and almost missing. He nearly lost his footing as he moved quickly to stop it from falling. “I came over here and you were gone.” His usually clear gray eyes were bloodshot and watery. “Did you bunk with one of your buddy ranch hands down the way?”