Branded

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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 used 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.”