Branded

by Stacy Gail

  Oh, God.

  It wasn’t over. Her punishment for daring to touch a Brody wasn’t over.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it...

  The beautiful hope that had bloomed in her turned to bitter ash, and her eyes stung with unshed tears as she bent to gather up her portfolios. There would be no forgiveness for her after all, she thought, the dual knives of anger and despair twisting into her chest until she couldn’t breathe. No matter what she did, there would never be any forgiveness. Nothing changed in Bitterthorn.

  That meant only one thing.

  She had to get out.

  Clutching the portfolios to her chest and praying that one of them would be her ticket out, she turned back to the post office to fumble her way, by herself, through the door.

  * * *

  “Hey there.” Lucy Jax waved at Celia as she pushed through the sweet shop’s glass door. “I was thinking, for the next window mural that you do for the shop, would it be possible to have something to do with the Easter Bunny hiding eggs in a garden setting? Josie has decided that the Easter Bunny and Peter Cottontail are one and the same bunny, so I thought that might be an appropriate theme.”

  “Sounds cute.” Celia tried to smile as she laid her laptop’s messenger bag on an empty table. “Mind if I jack your WiFi for a while? I need to get more resumes out there ASAP.”

  “Feel free.” Lucy rang up a customer and sent them on their way with a smile while Celia plugged in her laptop and settled in. By the time she got online and opened up her emails, her friend was pulling up a chair across from her. “Okay, what’s up? You look like you’ve got the world’s biggest headache.”

  “It’s just been another glorious day in Bitterthorn.” The hurt and bewildered dismay had morphed into an anger that was so dark it blotted out the afternoon sun slanting in through the front room’s windows. “So glorious I have to wonder...if I had an accident and was bleeding to death in the middle of the road, would people just walk by like I wasn’t even there? Because right now, I’m pretty sure they would.”

  “It happened again,” Lucy guessed. At Celia’s grim nod, she sighed and shook her head. “What in the world is wrong with this stupid town?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care. All I care about is getting the hell out of here and moving on with my life.”

  “Cel—”

  “I used to love this little town so much, but now I... I hate it here, Lucy.” To her horror, her voice wobbled with tears not of sadness, but of soul crushing anger. She was shaking with it, in a deep-down way that she’d never felt before and she feared she could never fully recover from. “I’m just about ready to pack up and leave even without a job waiting for me. Every time some guy makes me feel invisible, a little more of me dies, because those little pieces of me are starting to believe that I deserve to be ignored.”

  “You don’t,” Lucy fired back immediately, reaching out to grab her hand. “You got drunk. You made a mistake. Every single person in this stupid town has done at least that much. If a few of them are judging you, they’re shallow hypocrites who aren’t worth your time.”

  “I’m the one who’s starting to feel like I’m not worth it. Come to find out, when you’re treated like you’re nothing, you begin to believe it.”

  Lucy’s intake of breath was so sharp it was like she’d been stabbed. “No, Cel. Please hear me, okay? You’re not nothing.”

  Valiantly Celia tried to smile. Lucy was so sweet. “I’d really like to believe that.”

  “Believe it, sweetheart. It’s the truth, I swear it.”

  “It’s just... I can’t allow these bits and pieces of me to disappear until I really am nothing,” she whispered while the tears finally fell. Angrily she swiped at them before turning her attention back to her email. “I’m done with just taking what this town dishes out with good grace and hoping this crazy behavior eventually fades away. It’s not fading, but I am, so before I fade away completely, I’m going to save myself by using my brain and my talents to get out of this toxic environment. And this company might just be the ticket,” she added, clicking on an email and scanning through it quickly. “Listen to this. ‘Dear Ms. Villarreal, thank you for your interest in Velni and Associates,’ blah, blah, blah. Here... ‘After reviewing your digital work and wealth of successful projects, we believe your creative talents might be a good fit for our promotional graphics firm. If you would be willing to come in for a formal interview...’” She took in a calming breath and glanced up at her friend. “Would I be interested, can you believe it? I’d fucking run there right now, if I could.”

  Lucy’s brow puckered. “Where’s this Velni and Associates located?”

  “Dallas.” Celia pursed her lips as she read through the email once more. “I could live in Dallas. I’ve heard the traffic there is worse than it is in San Antonio, but I could get used to that. I mean, I practically got used to being invisible to the majority of bachelors here in Bitterthorn, so that means I’m capable of getting used to anything, right?”

  “You’re not invisible to me or my family, and from what you’ve told me, you’re not invisible to Ry Brody.”

  The words sparked a lovely glow in her heart before reality mercilessly smothered it out of existence. “And yet the moment I’m out of his sight, I’m out of his mind.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I haven’t heard word one from him since yesterday. Which sounds pathetic,” she admitted on a gusty sigh, leaning back into her chair. Try as she might, she couldn’t make herself click on the email’s reply button. She should have been thrilled to receive it, but she wasn’t. How could she be thrilled about anything when she was invisible not just to the men of Bitterthorn, but to Ry? “Just listen to me, Lucy. I’m so desperate for Ry to acknowledge my existence that I get all freaked and insecure when I don’t hear from him within a twenty-four hour time span. He should probably consider himself lucky that I haven’t broken down his front door because I’m so starved for attention.”

  “I suppose anyone would start feeling that way after being ignored,” came the thoughtful reply, and her tone was so distracted it brought Celia’s gaze to her. “I don’t know, though. You’ve always had fairly high standards in the people you’ve dated in the past.”

  “Yeah, but like you said—that was the past. I’m now so pathetic I’d probably get hot and bothered by anyone paying attention to me, even if he were a cross-eyed hunchback with chronic halitosis.”

  “Hot and bothered,” Lucy repeated, amused. “Is that what Ry makes you? Hot and bothered?”

  There was no point in lying. “Like a nuclear power plant in mid-meltdown.”

  “But you think it’s because you’re starved for attention, and that any other man you came across would have the same effect on you?”

  She opened her mouth to reply, only to have the image of the post office guy, Brad and his flirtatious smile, drift through her mind. “I’m...not sure that’s entirely true.”

  Lucy didn’t look all that surprised. “Why’s that?”

  “Because I have had a few opportunities to get busy with the opposite sex, and the prospect left me cold.”

  “Considering how lonely you’ve been, why do you think that is?”

  “For the record, I know what you’re doing,” Celia said, then sighed when Lucy merely grinned at her. “You want me to go ahead and say the truth out loud, right? Okay, fine. Let’s play it your way. Not just any man can get my girly parts tingling the way Ry does. And the reason for that is the same reason I grabbed his butt all those months ago. I don’t know how he does it, but Ry makes me hotter than the surface of the sun without even trying. And it pisses me off no end.”

  “Wow, that was such an unexpected turn I think I got whiplash.” Lucy rubbed her baby bump, looking like she didn’t know whether to frown or laugh. “Why get pissed off because you’re attracted
to Ry?”

  “Because it’s me grabbing his butt all over again, except this time I don’t have the excuse of being under the influence of too many strawberry margaritas. At least then I could blame my grab-ass behavior on alcohol, but now here I am, cold sober and wanting to jump his bones every time he’s near. I have zero control when it comes to him, and I have no clue how to get that control back.”

  “My guess is, you’ll never get what you’re calling control back,” came the calm reply. “Whether you like it or not, a part of you—your needs and your wants—is attached to Ry, and that’s something you have no control over. You also don’t have any control over him, so that’s double the craziness.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “My advice is, don’t try to control everything, Cel. You’ll just make yourself nuts. Instead, try going with the flow and see where it takes you. You might wind up in a place where you’re very pleasantly surprised.”

  “The only place I want to wind up is out of this town,” Celia muttered, turning her attention back to the email that needed to be answered. “That is still within my control, so that’s what I’m going to focus on. Not on Ry, and not on how he makes my panties melt. I don’t need that distraction, especially since that’s all I seem to be to him—a distraction.”

  Chapter Six

  “That broccoli is just about ready for harvest.”

  Celia looked up from weeding to find her landlord and friend, Pauline Padgett, smiling at her from the fenced edge of the large vegetable garden. Years ago when she was still in high school, Pauline had given Celia her first job at Pauline’s Praline Sweet Shoppe, but eventually gout had sidelined the older woman. Still a dynamo in a scooter tricked out to look like a three-wheeled Vespa, the heavyset, gray-haired woman Celia thought of as a second mother had a way of knowing all things.

  “The spinach, the lettuce and Swiss chard are all going nuts, too.” Celia waved a gloved hand at the row of huge cauliflower plants in front of her. “Not too sure about these guys, though. Something’s eating them, and I don’t want to look too closely to find out what it is.”

  “An avid gardener who’s afraid of bugs.” Chuckling, Pauline shook her head as she settled back onto her scooter. Celia grinned, because when it came right down to it, she’d be the first to admit she didn’t make sense. “I’ll have Willard take a peek at the cauliflower to see what can be done. That reminds me,” she added with a snap of her fingers. “He wanted to know if you’ll need any help hilling the sweet potatoes and potatoes. I think he wants to use his new baby tractor. He’s looking for any excuse to use it.”

  “Pauline, the sweet potatoes are in the old water troughs that used to be in the barn, and there’s just one row of potatoes. Hardly worth dragging out his spiffy new toy for just one dinky row of potatoes.”

  “But that’s just it, honey. It is a toy, and he’s dying to play with it. Help me out and let him play in your garden, please?”

  Celia straightened, nudging her wide-brim straw hat back. “Is it my imagination, or did that sound desperate?”

  “I’ll be honest with you, honey. Ever since I sold the shop and I’m spending more time at home, Willard is driving me out of my tree with all his projects. Projects he wants to share, God help me.”

  “Aw.” Celia grinned as she bent to dust the rich, dark soil off her jeans. “I think that’s sweet.”

  “It would be, if his many suggestions didn’t come straight out of the loony bin.”

  Celia laughed. “Like what?”

  “For one thing, he suggested that instead of using my scooter to get around in town, I should load up his mini-tractor and use that instead.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding? He wants everyone to see his new baby. Can you imagine what I’d look like toodling down the sidewalk on that thing? I’d die of embarrassment.”

  “I would say Willard needs a hobby, but since his hobby seems to be you, I’m thinking you should be the one to get a hobby.” Tossing her tools into an old painter’s bucket she used to lug her gardening paraphernalia around, she made her way toward the gate that had once been a stall door from the converted barn. “Weren’t you going to start a cooking blog? I’m living proof you’re a great teacher. You taught me everything I know about cooking and baking.”

  “I can’t type for beans, so blogs are a no-go. Instead, I’ve decided I’m going to make one of those video blogs. What are they called, vlogs? You know what I mean.” Suddenly her eyes gleamed behind her rimless glasses. “And there it is, the perfect excuse to get Willard out of my hair.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I need a studio,” she said with a decisive nod. “Even if it’s just a little she-shed. Willard can keep himself occupied by building it however he wants, which means he won’t be underfoot all the time. Then I can hide in it on the excuse of filming a video. There’s no downside to this.”

  “Wow, that’s actually pretty brilliant.”

  “Honey, when you’ve been married to the same man for as long as I have, you find ways to make sure he doesn’t drive you completely around the bend. And speaking of men,” Pauline went on, leaning on the scooter’s pink handlebars, “do you have any plans to see Ryland Brody now that he’s back in town?”

  “He’s back?” Celia went still as an odd little shock zipped through her. It had been almost a week since her interrupted tour of Green Rock Ranch, and in that time she hadn’t heard one fricking word from Ry. She’d grown from insecure and needy to outright pissy about the whole thing, to the point where she’d given serious thought to sending him nothing more than a bunch of middle-finger emojis. Just the thought of it sweetened her mood.

  But in the end she’d kept her hands off her phone. Sending even that fury-driven text would have meant she was the one reaching out to him first, and she’d decided somewhere along the way that she would die a thousand deaths before contacting him. Yes, they’d shared some serious bone-melting kisses and yes, the heavy-breathing aspect of their relationship had been accelerating at a breakneck pace.

  But so what?

  There’d been no promises on either side when they’d gone their separate ways. In fact, Ry had barely spoken a word at all to her once they’d left the ranch and he’d dropped her off at her place. At the time she’d assumed he was preoccupied with business hassles. She’d heard from her mechanic and friend, Coe Rodas that Ry and his brother Fin had flown the ranch’s Cessna to Houston on business, while their half-brother Des stayed home to keep things under control. So she knew Ry was busy.

  Everyone in Bitterthorn knew.

  That wasn’t the point.

  Not everyone in town had been kissed by Ry in a way that promised some hot and sweaty, headboard-breaking, porn-star sex right around the proverbial corner.

  She’d been kissed that way, though.

  So whether she wanted to admit it or not, she’d been waiting.

  Waiting for Ry to remember to tell her that he was going out of town on business.

  Waiting for him to call or text to see how she was getting on without him.

  Waiting for him to tell her when he would be back home.

  Waiting.

  Like a damn moron.

  “Men are dicks,” she muttered out loud, then put a gloved hand to her mouth when she realized she’d spoken out loud. “Sorry, Pauline.”

  “No, no.” With a sympathetic click of her tongue, Pauline waved a dismissive hand. “If that look on your face means what I think it means, there’s no need to apologize. I take it Ry hasn’t called you to let you know he’s back in town?”

  “There’s no reason why he would, or should.” Resolutely lifting her chin, Celia unhooked the gate’s latch and pushed through. “That man is not my boyfriend, and I’m sure as hell not his girlfriend. He’s just a member of Texas royalty
who deigned to offer me a job.”

  “A job that you still haven’t decided on taking?”

  “Actually, I’ve decided,” Celia said with a nod. Pauline didn’t have to know that the decision was made right at that moment, after all. “I’m taking that job, and you know what? I’m going to work the hell out of it. With all the hours the Pure Angus project is sure to take, I’m going to make enough money to put Bitterthorn in the rearview mirror once and for all.”

  * * *

  Unbelievable.

  Celia’s damn curtains were open again.

  Jaw taut, Ry reached for his phone in its holder on the truck’s dash, only to change his mind when he noticed the upper half of the Dutch door was open as well.

  Shit.

  Out there in the middle of fucking nowhere, with her nearest neighbors a good fifty yards away, and Celia had her whole damn house wide open. The woman clearly needed to have the situation explained to her in no uncertain terms.

  That was something that had to be done face-to-face.

  And while he was at it, he thought as he slid out of his truck, he needed to square a few other matters with her as well.

  The tightness he could feel in his mouth softened when he caught sight of Celia through the open upper half of the Dutch door. Though there was a screen door in place to shut out the bugs she so hated, he could easily see her at the long dining room table, her legs folded lotus-style in her chair while she busily typed away on a laptop. Behind her, the small sound system pulsed out the sultry, sexy Mazzy Star classic “Wild Horses,” and he could see her slender bare foot absently tapping along with the beat. Her hair was up in a messy bun, exposing the graceful long line of her neck and shoulders exposed by a ballerina pink camisole. Surprisingly, a pair of glasses perched on her nose, the dark rims complimenting her coloring and making her look downright studious.

  He’d thought he knew all about her, but he hadn’t known she wore glasses for close work.