Bound, Branded, & Brazen
Page 4

“Dave Exton?” Valerie wrinkled her nose at the circled name under the “Guy I’ll Marry” category. “What was I thinking?”
“You were thinking you had a thing for red hair and freckles when you were twelve years old,” Jolene said.
“And lanky, gawky guys,” Brea added. “Oh, God, Brett Stanton? Gag. What was I thinking?”
“Brea and Brett,” Valerie said. “I remember we teased you mercilessly about that name combination.”
“Funny how one’s tastes in guys could change over the years, isn’t it?” Jolene said. “And of course, we all chose the mansion.”
“And we wanted to live in Paris and drive the Lamborghini,” Brea added.
“And have two kids, and be schoolteachers. Those were all the popular wants. But none of us managed to reach those lofty goals, did we?” Jolene said, going quiet as she studied her pages with her lips pressed together.
“We used to have such fun playing this game,” Valerie said, smoothing her hand over the yellowed pages of her notebook.
“We played it a lot,” Brea said.
“Especially whenever a new boy caught our eye. We wanted to make sure we would end up with him,” Jolene added.
Wineglasses were refilled and the room went quiet. Valerie lifted her gaze from the pages of her notebook now and then to watch her sisters, knowing they were lost in their own memories, just as she was, back in a time when it was such a thrill to be in love. How long had it been since she’d felt that way about a guy?
Not since Mason. And not again after him.
“Oh, I have the best idea ever,” Jolene said, her lips lifting in a wide grin.
“What?” Brea asked.
“You’re going to love this.”
“What’s your idea?” Jolene always had wacky ideas that usually got them all into trouble, Valerie thought. But they were usually the most fun ideas, too.
Jolene lifted her glass to her lips and took a sip.
“Jolene.”
She giggled.
“Jolene!” Brea repeated. “What?”
She put her wineglass down.
“Let’s play the M.A.S.H. game again. Right now.”
Valerie
WHAT KIND OF HOUSE? CAR?
Mansion Porsche
Apartment Lamborghini
Shack Corvette
House SUV
WHERE TO LIVE? NUMBER OF KIDS
Paris 5
London 3
Dallas 1
On the Ranch 2
GUY OCCUPATION
Mason Teacher
John Doctor
Fred Fashion Designer
Bill Actress
three
“play the game?” valerie gaped at jolene. “are you nuts? We’re not kids anymore.”
Jolene took a long swallow of wine, then went to the bar and refilled her glass, bringing the bottle over to refill her sisters’ glasses, too. “Oh, come on. What’s the harm in having a little fun? How long has it been since we played this game?”
“Ten, twelve years or so, at least,” Brea said.
“Exactly. So let’s do it.”
Jolene looked so eager and excited. Even Brea was digging in her bag for a pen.
Valerie didn’t want to be the one to spoil their fun, and even she had to admit she was eager to take pen to paper and play again.
“Fine. We’ll play.”
They swept their notebooks to the first blank page and grabbed their pens. Valerie stared down at the blank page for a long time. She wasn’t a kid anymore, with childlike dreams of fame and fortune and big houses, expensive cars and the man of her dreams. Real life didn’t work that way. But oh, to dream . . .
She put her pen to paper and started filling out the dwellings, the cars, the occupations, where to live and even the number of kids she wanted to have. Jolene was right. It was fun getting into the game again, imagining all the what-ifs. But when it came time to fill in the guys—men she wanted to marry—she drew a blank.
“You stopped again,” Jo said.
“What are you, my warden?”
“You paused at the guys, didn’t you?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because Brea did the same thing.”
“Hey,” Brea said, tilting her notebook away from Jolene’s prying eyes. “Quit peeking.”
“It’s not like I’m going to copy the guys you write down. I already know who I want.”
Valerie’s brows perked up. “Really. That confident, are you?”
“About who and what I want? Hell yes. Now if I could just get him to see it my way . . .”
“And which guy would this be?” Valerie still found it hard to believe her baby sister was old enough to date, let alone fall in love or have sex. But Jolene was twenty-six, and more than capable of running a ranch by herself. She could certainly fall in love. Get married. Raise a family. Time had passed too quickly. And Valerie had missed a ton of it.
“Walker Morgan.”
“Ahh, I thought I saw you making eyes at him over supper,” Brea said, a knowing smile spreading across her face. “He’s hot, with that coal dark hair and stormy eyes. Yummy.”
Jolene licked her lips and scribbled in her notebook. “That he is. And what about you, Brea?”
Brea shrugged, tapping her pen against the paper. “I don’t know. I don’t really . . . get out much.”
“If you’d quit spending all your time falling in love with fictional characters in those books you read and experience real life, maybe you’d have some names to write down,” Jolene suggested.
Brea lifted her chin. “There’s nothing wrong with reading.”
“There is if that’s all you do. There’s a big ol’ life out there just waiting to be lived. Why don’t you try it?”
Brea glared at Jolene, then turned her gaze on Valerie. “What about you, Val? Any new guys in Dallas spark your interest enough to put them on paper?”
There had only been one man in her entire adult life, and that had been Mason. He was past, not future. Yet she didn’t have anyone else to list there; she didn’t date, wasn’t interested in it, really. Her life had been about work, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for as long as she could remember. And the only thing that had disrupted her goal had been Mason.
“Val. Val!”
She jerked her head up and looked at Jolene. “What?”
“You done yet?”
She slid her gaze back to her paper. “No. I’m still thinking.”
“It never used to take that long,” Brea said. “What’s the holdup?”
“Give me a minute.” She wrote Mason’s name . . . then nothing, realizing he was the only man she’d ever wanted. Since she was a teenager, he’d been the only man in her life. How pathetic was that? After Mason’s name she listed the names of men who didn’t exist. “Okay, done.” They switched notebooks to prevent cheating.
“All right, then,” Jolene said. “Time to draw a number.”
“I’ll start the spiral,” Brea said. “Valerie, you tell me when to stop.”
“Fine.”
Brea started a spiral in her notebook, drawing a continuous, gradually outgoing circle. The rule was that you couldn’t look at the person drawing the circle so you couldn’t guess at how many rows of circles there would be, thereby guessing the outcome. So instead Valerie looked at Jolene, who smirked at her.
“Did you write Mason’s name down, Val?” Jolene asked.
“Of course not.” She turned to Brea. “Stop.”
Brea lifted her pen from the paper. “Okay, time to count.” Brea counted the numbers of swirls. “There are seven. Start crossing off your list.”
They crossed through the list every time they got to the seventh item, until each category only had one item left. Then they handed the notebooks back. Valerie noticed a few familiar names in Jolene’s notebook—ranch hands—and a few unfamiliar names, too. But she’d definitely seen Walker Morgan’s name on the list, the man who’d eaten supper with them, the man Jolene couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of.
“So,” Valerie said, ignoring her own list. “Looks like you and Walker Morgan are going to be very happy together in your mansion in Paris with your two children.”
Jolene snorted. “Yeah. You could see me in Paris in a mansion, couldn’t you?” Jo shifted her gaze to Brea. “And who were the guys on your list? Didn’t see anyone I know except our own Gage.”
Brea shrugged. “I just tossed him on there for fun.”
“Uh huh,” Jolene said. “He looks like he’d be fun. And dangerous. That man is wicked sexy. Think you can handle him?”
Brea blushed. “This is just fantasy.”
“Gage is some fantasy, isn’t he?” Valerie teased.
Brea lifted her chin. “What about you, Valerie? Who were the guys you had on your list?”
No one real except Mason. She put the notebook aside. “This game was a lot more fun when we were kids.”
“And guys were just a wish list instead of reality?” Jolene asked.
“Something like that.”
“You wrote Mason’s name down, didn’t you?”
Valerie nodded, unable to meet her sister’s eyes.
“Did something happen between you two today?” Brea asked. “Supper was damned uncomfortable.”
Valerie inhaled, then let it out. “He came to see me in my room when I arrived.”
“Uh oh. Did you two argue?” Jolene frowned. “I’ll kick his ass if he was mean to you.”
“He wasn’t mean to me. We were talking, and then all of a sudden we were kissing.”
“Whoa.” Brea’s eyes widened.
“Yeah. I didn’t mean for it to happen. We’re divorced. He and I are history.”
“Apparently not,” Jolene said, her lips lifting. “You two have always had combustible chemistry.”
Valerie pushed herself into a standing position and paced the room. “I shouldn’t have come home. I need the distance between him and me.”
Jolene reached for her hand. “Hiding isn’t going to solve what’s wrong between you and Mason.”
“It’s been working just fine the past two years.”
“Has it? Five minutes together and you’re tearing each other’s clothes off.”
She pinned Jolene with a glare. “Nothing happened. I stopped it.”
“Dumbass,” Brea mumbled. “You two are meant for each other. You have been since the first day you laid eyes on each other.”
Valerie shook her head. “I don’t think so. His life is here. Mine is in Dallas. We want different things.”
“Only because you think you can’t live here.”
She turned her gaze to Jolene, swept her hand across her baby sister’s cheek. “I can’t live here. I tried.”
Jolene hugged her. “Then I guess you’ll have to figure out a way to bury the past and your feelings for Mason. And we’ll be here to help you pick up the pieces.”
Brea moved in and hugged her, too. “We’ll always be here for you.”
Shit. Tears pricked her eyes and she forced them back. She threw her arms around her sisters. It had always been her job to take care of them, and now they were shouldering her burdens.
“You know, as much as I hated the thought of coming here, I’m so damn glad to be with you two again. Bickering and all.”
Jolene pulled away and grinned. “That’s not bickering. That’s just sisterhood.”
they sat and went through their mother’s box of memorabilia for a while longer, drinking wine and reminiscing about their childhood until Jolene and Brea decided to go up to bed.
Valerie wasn’t ready for sleep yet. She needed some air, so she pulled the doors open, went straight for the front door and down the porch steps, out into the chilly spring night. By the time she made it all the way to the barn, she wished she’d put on warmer clothes and a jacket; she’d forgotten how cold the nights could get out here in the spring. Goose bumps pricked her skin, making her shiver all over.
She should head back to the house, but too many memories clung there. Instead, she opened the barn doors, and was enveloped in the warmth from the horses.
“Hey, babies,” she said in a soft, gentle voice as she closed the door, letting the darkness surround her. She inhaled the scent of hay and horses and smiled. Such familiar smells. Sometimes the things of home just felt right. This felt right. She moved in, careful not to make too much noise in the dark. “It’s just me.” She wanted to assure them she wasn’t some stranger there to harm them.
She heard the movement of hooves, the occasional wuffling of their breathing, but otherwise all was quiet. She moved along each stall, refamiliarizing herself with horses she’d ridden before, and meeting some of the new ones. The smell reminded her of being in here with her father. He’d loved the horses. He’d loved everything about this ranch, about this life. She had, too, until her parents had been abruptly taken away from her. Then she’d hated everything about the Bar M.
Except Mason. But he hadn’t been enough to keep her here.
“You could turn some light on in here.”
She pivoted, her heart crashing against her chest at the sound of another voice. Mason’s. “You scared the hell out of me. You could have turned a light on so you wouldn’t frighten me half to death.”
He flipped on the overhead lights and headed toward her. “I was in the tack room. Heard someone come in. Since I wasn’t sure who’d be in the barn this late at night, I figured I’d come out to investigate before I announced I was here. Just in case it was an intruder who wasn’t supposed to be in here.”