Branded

by Tori Carrington

  Jo’s gaze trailed to where he stood between her and the door. The ranch hands. Would they hear her if she screamed? She winced. Would she ever live it down if they did?

  She stiffened her shoulders. After her stint in the military, she could handle three men like Carter. Of course, that would be three civilian men. Carter was also an ex-marine and would know all her tricks. Mix in the fact that he was drunk and unpredictable, and she didn’t think she liked where she stood much. Not at all. She started to edge toward the bathroom.

  “Where you trying to go, Jo?”

  Within a blink, he was in front of her, grabbing her arm. She gasped.

  “Who is he? Who did you replace me with?”

  Jo swung her hair back. “Surely you didn’t think we were exclusive, Carter.”

  She knew the words were a mistake the instant they exited her smart-ass mouth.

  He grinned at her. “Damn, but you’re pretty. Have I ever told you that? Too pretty for the likes of me, that’s for sure.”

  Jo didn’t know if she was more relieved that he hadn’t reacted to her challenge, or more repulsed that he was about to kiss her.

  She cringed away from his sour breath even as he yanked her closer.

  “Come here, baby. I need you. What’s so bad about that?”

  Jo swallowed hard and simultaneously stomped on his booted toes with her heel and twisted her wrist in his grasp. He doubled over, and she bent his arm behind his back.

  “Carter, you stink. I think you need to go take a nice, long bath. And think about making that trip back to Dallas and never coming here again.”

  She shoved him in the direction of the door, just as it swung inward.

  Jo blinked up at Trace who stood holding a 12-gauge shotgun, looking more dangerous than any man she’d ever seen.

  And considering her present company, that was saying a lot.

  TRACE WATCHED as the taillights of Sheriff Brody’s car disappeared down the long driveway, taking a cuffed and drunkenly angry Carter Southard to the county jail to sober up for the night. Charges, if any, would be decided in the morning, once everything was sorted out.

  Trace turned to where Jo stood just inside the door to her room, absently rubbing her arms as she also watched the sheriff’s car. The rest of the guys and Vern had dispersed, leaving the two of them alone.

  Trace was filled with an almost overwhelming desire to fold Jo in his arms and hold her close, if only to reassure himself that she was okay. He eyed the red marks on her upper arm, and then glanced into her face, which was void of emotion.

  She finally looked at him.

  Trace cleared his throat and peered down the cement porch that led to the other rooms. “I’ll have a couple of the guys arrange to take Southard’s bike to the county lockup tomorrow.”

  Jo nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  Trace wanted to go inside with her, finish what they’d started earlier. Although right now he’d settle for just holding her tight.

  But for reasons he couldn’t define, he didn’t think his attentions would be welcome. And he suspected that her reasons weren’t the same as his. He got the impression that something other than keeping their relationship under wraps motivated her actions.

  “Will you be pressing charges?” he asked.

  Her heavily lashed lids closed over her eyes, then opened again. “For what?”

  He squinted and stuck his thumbs into his front jeans pockets. “I can think of a whole host of crimes.” He gestured toward her arm. “That being one of them.”

  She followed his gaze, only then seeming to realize she’d been marked by her experience. She turned her arm to consider the bruises more thoroughly, her frown deepening.

  “I’ve suffered worse,” she murmured.

  “From a man you dated?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then press charges.”

  She considered him for a long moment, then crossed her arms over her chest. “Look, Trace, thank you for your concern. But none of this was really necessary.”

  “What, exactly, wasn’t necessary?”

  She gestured with her right hand. “I had the situation well under control.”

  “I saw that.”

  He remembered opening the door to see Jo shoving an intoxicated Southard in his direction, the man’s arm firmly pinned behind his back.

  “What made you come here, anyway?”

  “If you’ll recall, Vern suspected we had a rustler creeping around the barns.”

  “Ah, yes.” She nodded, as if just then remembering what they had been doing when the call had come in.

  “When I discovered Southard’s bike hidden next to the barn…well, I wasn’t sure what might have happened, given how you two parted the other day.”

  Actually, that was only partially true. If he were to be completely honest, he’d have to confess that the thought of the tall marine being anywhere near Jo now that Trace was seeing her bothered him no end.

  “That’s where he always stashes his bike when he visits,” she said in a tone that indicated challenge.

  “Are you saying he was invited here tonight?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course not. While I’ll be the first to admit that my…dating life is not exactly ideal lately, I do not invite two men over on the same night.”

  “But you didn’t invite me.”

  “So you think I invited him?”

  “I’m just asking if you did. It might help explain why you don’t want to press charges.”

  “I didn’t invite him.”

  If Trace held any lingering hope that he was welcome, it completely disappeared during their brief exchange. Jo was pissed.

  He only wished he knew why.

  “Well, then. So long as everything’s okay.”

  “It’s fine.”

  He touched the brim of his hat. “Then I’ll bid you a good evening.”

  Jo gave another eye roll, stepped inside her room and slammed the door.

  Trace stared at the smooth wood for long moments, trying to remember when he’d last had a door slammed in his face.

  Never.

  Chapter Eight

  JO FELT AS IF SHE’D MADE a wrong turn somewhere and had no idea how to find her way back. Metaphorically speaking. Behind the wheel of her truck, she knew exactly where she was going. It was the current zigzag direction her personal life had taken lately that had her feeling out of sorts.

  And this damn three-hour drive was giving her far too much time to think about it as her twenty-year-old truck ate the road between Wildewood and Beaumont.

  Trace’s suspicious expression loomed large in her mind as it had pretty much all night, denying her much needed sleep. She reached for the volume button on the radio, trying to drown out the memory with the sound of Little Bobby Douglass.

  What in the hell had Carter been thinking, showing up in her room like that, four sheets to the wind?

  And what in the hell had Trace been thinking, a hair trigger away from filling Carter’s chest with buckshot?

  Men. She’d come to understand that while women were the ones with the reputation for letting emotion rule their lives, men were equally driven. It was just the emotion itself that differed.

  Give a guy a beer, a gun and a girl, and he had all the reason in the world to go on a rampage.

  The late morning sun was finally high enough for her to flick the visor up. A moment later to slam on the brakes as a dark sedan cut her off from the right lane, her hand automatically reaching to stop the box with the bourbon pecan pie from sliding to the floor. She grimaced, thinking that she shouldn’t have stopped for the pie. Should have claimed forgetfulness, as she had so often during past visits home. But she hadn’t been able to do it this time, not again. Which was precisely why things never changed.

  Then there was her father…

  Along with the sun, the temperature had risen, sticking her hair to the back of her neck. She reached up and pulled the str
ands from her damp skin, since the fan was doing little more than moving the hot air around the cab. The repair guy had told her she needed to have the truck retrofitted or some such thing in order to take the new, more eco-friendly Freon canisters. She’d passed, determined to sweat out the summer until she traded up to a vehicle with air-conditioning that worked.

  Probably she should look into upgrading soon. Lord knew she had the money. Since she’d been stationed in Iraq for most of her two tours, and had only come home twice, she’d managed to save a precious lot over the past six years. She’d tried sending her father money, but he always refused to cash the checks she mailed, his pride not allowing him to accept help from his daughter.

  Finally, the exit she needed rolled up. The ride she’d thought would never end was, well, ending.

  Her breath caught in her throat, and she thought about driving on past. Even entertained the idea of turning around and heading back to the ranch. But she’d promised she’d make it this time. Promised she’d come home.

  She glanced at the pie and then swung into the right-hand lane, cutting off the dark sedan that had cut her off earlier. The driver honked and she gave him a friendly wave, figuring turnabout was fair play.

  Within minutes she was pulling into the driveway of the small house situated in the middle of a large plot of land that bordered the I-10. Jo had grown up listening to the roar of passing semis, and cleaning off everything in the house the dust they kicked up.

  Her father had bought a good filtration unit since, along with a central heating and air-conditioning system, so her parents didn’t have to open the windows, but she knew they still had to dust the place more than people who lived farther away from the highway.

  Of course, her parents’ lives were different from most people’s, anyway.

  Jo grimaced and brought her truck to a stop next to a specialized white van that was getting up in years but still served its purpose. She cut the engine as Possum, her father’s old hound, barked and then came lumbering out. A few years back, anticipating Possum’s ultimate surrender to the years, her dad had sired him out and had taken one of the female pups as payment. Petunia ran slightly ahead of the old dog, and both stood wagging their tails and waiting to be petted.

  Jo crouched down, enjoying the enthusiastic welcome.

  “You’re the only one they do that to. Any other visitor they’d have taken a piece out of already.”

  She smiled at her father as he walked toward her from the side door of the one-story, two-bedroom house she’d grown up in. Her mother had talked him into painting the shutters fuchsia years ago, but thankfully, time and the unforgiving Texas sun had bleached the color to a pale blush.

  “Hey, Daddy,” Jo murmured, welcoming a kiss on the cheek from him and an awkward hug.

  “Hey, yourself, pumpkin. I’d say you’re a sight for sore eyes, but I wouldn’t want to jeopardize any future visits.”

  Guilt and regret swirled within her as she took his arm and walked with him toward the door, after getting the pie from the truck.

  “How’s she doing?” Jo asked quietly.

  Lyndon Atchison nodded. “She’s doing okay. Ignoring the doctors, as usual. Has her good days and bad days. Just like the rest of us, I guess.”

  “And you?”

  Her father blinked at her, his face weathered from years of oiling pump jacks and working ranches. “I’m good. The same as always.”

  Jo hugged him to her side, wishing, as she often did, that life could have turned out a little differently for him. For all of them. Maybe then she wouldn’t be so quick to find excuses not to come home. Maybe then she could pick up a bourbon pecan pie and not have it mean that she was weak, or that it might do more harm than good. She wished a pecan pie could just be a damn pie, with no baggage attached.

  “Petunia’s new litter is coming along nicely,” her father said as the dogs ran in front of them. “I already have three sold. The new owners will pick them up next week.”

  Jo smiled. Her father had begun breeding Petunia for a little extra income. It was incredible what some people would pay for a purebred dog when pounds were teeming with big, furry hounds hungry for love and eager to give it.

  “I still have two left. You wouldn’t happen to want one?”

  She laughed. “Me? Whatever would I do with a dog? I don’t even have my own place.”

  “Of course.”

  He held open the door for her.

  Jo hesitated for an instant. She enjoyed this alone time with her father. The second they walked inside, everything would revolve around her mother. If only Jo could prolong this moment before surrendering to the next.

  “Everything all right?” her father asked.

  “What? Yes, sure. Everything’s fine.” She stepped inside, taking a deep breath to steel herself for what was to come.

  TRACE HELD THE PHONE to his ear, his mood dark. Last night’s events meant he had to stick around the ranch today rather than go out on the run with the men, where he’d much prefer to be. It wasn’t merely the incident with Carter Southard. Trace had gotten up before the alarm went off that morning to find one of the horses had taken ill and that a feed delivery had come up half-short. So he’d been backing up the stable manager for a vet visit, talking to the sheriff about what he wanted him to do with Southard, who was sober and demanding to be let free, and haggling for another delivery of feed to be made posthaste.

  As he waited for the manager of the feed plant to pick up his call, he paced back and forth, looking through the glass to where Miss Dorie handled a number of other emergencies in her office, and then back to the stables, where Doc Nelson was exiting the stall with the ill horse, shaking his head.

  Damn.

  “Mr. Armstrong, sorry to keep you waiting,” a male voice on the line finally said.

  “So long as you have good news for me, it isn’t a problem.”

  There was a pause. Trace didn’t think this was going to be good news.

  And he was right. The company couldn’t complete the shipment until early next month, which meant the ranch would have to ration as well as look for alternate suppliers to bring up the feed levels.

  Trace rubbed the back of his neck as he listened to the manager make his apologies and offer discounts for his trouble, but his attention was on the vet walking out of the stables.

  He quickly completed the call and grabbed his hat, hurrying out to hear what he knew would be more bad news.

  “It’s EPM,” Clinton, his stable manager, informed him. “He’s going to take her in. Try to treat her. But he won’t say on the prognosis until he sees how she responds to treatment.”

  EPM was equine protozoal myeloencephalitis, which caused a horse’s brain and spinal chord to swell. If the animal didn’t respond to treatment, she’d have to be put down. Thankfully, one horse couldn’t pass the disease on to others, but they could have access to the same source from which she’d contracted it.

  Clinton said, “I’ve already got an order out to check the food and water supplies, but since none of the other horses are showing signs of infection, I’m guessing maybe she came across a possum or an armadillo out on the range, and got it from them.”

  Hell. Jasmine was one of his better fillies. But even though the news might ultimately mean the loss of a damn good horse, it could definitely have been worse. Several neighboring ranches had been placed on quarantine because of tick fever. He’d been lucky so far, but knew better than to take anything for granted, since everything could change in the blink of an eye.

  Trace slapped Clint on his shoulder and then gave it a squeeze.

  The stable manager sighed and took off his hat, wiping his sleeve across his brow. “Doc’s going to come back later to check out the rest of the horses. Make sure they’re all okay.”

  Trace nodded. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  Clint was peering up the long driveway to the road and Trace followed his gaze, watching a white car kick up
the gravel as it approached. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the driver. His first thought was of Jo, but she drove a truck.

  Now what? He didn’t think he could stomach anything else.

  He wished it was Jo. Even though she’d made it plenty clear she didn’t want anything to do with him for the time being, he hoped she’d warm up to him again. He grimaced, thinking that it was probably the same thought the fool who’d spent the night in the county lockup had had.

  Trace felt his stomach tighten. Was it possible she wouldn’t want to see him again? The prospect didn’t sit well with him. Didn’t sit well with him at all.

  He was surprised that in such a short time so much of his mind could be occupied by a woman who was stubborn on the one hand and mind-blowingly sexy on the other.

  “Holy shit, as they like to say in my neck of the woods,” Clint muttered.

  Trace blinked, watching as the car stopped and the biggest problem of the day climbed out.

  His brother, Eric.

  Chapter Nine

  JO WATCHED HER MOTHER take tiny bites of the small piece of pecan pie, making humming sounds as she did so. “Oh my, I’d forgotten how good this was. Thanks so very much for picking it up on your way over, JoEllen Sue.” She leaned forward to put her empty plate down on the coffee table. Jo automatically reached to do it for her. “I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.”

  Jo looked at her father, who glanced down as he poured tea into the delicate little cups that Miss Daisy Mae Atchison had made him get out for the occasion.

  Jo smiled at her mother.

  Sometimes, just sometimes, it was easy to forget that they all faced the problems they did. When she concentrated solely on her mother’s violet eyes, it was easy to imagine that she was the same svelte beauty in the photographs that adorned the hutch right behind her. Miss Beaumont 1981. Miss Autumn 1980. High School Prom Queen 1979.

  But then Jo was forced to help her mother do something, as she just had, and she was reminded that all of them were held captive by her mother’s current three-hundred-and-fifty-pound frame.