Broken (Brody Brothers Book 4) Read online

  Winnie had never run so fast in her life, her soul shivering at the sound of the animals trapped in the massive structure where flames licked up one side of it. She didn’t stop to think of the dangers of running into a burning building, or about her crippling phobia of large animals. All she could hear was their terror and knew without a doubt that if they weren’t released from their pens, they would die.

  Magnus, Invictus and Dominus are basically Green Rock Ranch, and who we Brodys are.

  She could do this.

  She could save them.

  She hadn’t been able to save her mother.

  But she could save those bulls.

  For Des.

  Her momentum slowed only when she hit the human-sized office door, terrified it would be locked, and she nearly cried in relief when it swung open easily. She suffered the same anxiety when it came to the larger barn doors, but breathed easy once more when she discovered it had a normal plank latch with a padlock that was left undone. In less than a minute she had the whole front of the barn open before turning to race down an unfamiliar hall toward the sound of the animal that was clearly in the most distress.

  The orange glow and heat within the unfamiliar hall told her just how close she was to the fire. Then she turned a corner, and there it was—a nightmare of flames roaring through a wall of stacked hay. A gleaming Black Angus bull rammed against the wooden wall on the opposite side of the pen, trotted to the five-foot-high industrial-gauge pipe gate and rammed it, then bounced back to the wall, in a blind panic to get out.

  Oh, God.

  This animal was the stuff her nightmares were made of.

  But he was going to die if she didn’t move.

  Move, Winnie.

  Choking on the smoke billowing from the hay that was now just a roaring wall of fire, she grabbed at the gate’s latch, not surprised to find it was hot, and swung it open wide. The bull continued to smash itself against the wall, oblivious that it was free.

  He needed to be herded out.

  “Shit,” she choked weakly, frantically looking around for something, anything to wave. A half-empty feed bag sat nearby, so she kicked it over to empty it out, grabbed up the empty bag and jumped into the bull’s enclosure.

  “Go, bull! Go, go, go, go!” Wildly flailing the empty feed bag and screaming at the top of her lungs, she stayed as close as she could to the nearby fencing, ready to jump onto it if the animal wheeled around to attack her. Thankfully the bull shied away from her and half-ran, half-stumbled through the open gate and charged toward the light at the end of the hall.

  If she managed to get both herself and Green Rock’s three prized bulls out alive, she only hoped she wouldn’t be in too much trouble in letting them out.

  The second bull, once she found him, was much easier than the first. He seemed to understand exactly what she wanted him to do the moment she opened his pen, trotting casually right on by her to make his escape. The third one, however, was much harder. Not because of the animal itself, but because the fire had made it to the barn’s roof, and being inside that structure had become almost too hot for her to bear. The smoke was much worse, too, growing into a dense cloud that made her eyes stream and her lungs quiver with each breath. As she approached the pen, she had to get on her hands and knees in a desperate search to find air, taking precious seconds to slide her phone out to activate the flashlight just so she could see.

  One more bull, she thought, coughing so hard her eyes streamed even more. Just one more…

  The phone buzzed in her hand. Dimly she glanced at the screen, half-fearing the call would knock out her flashlight. When she saw Des’s selfie appear, a sobbing little cry escaped her, something she immediately choked on, but that didn’t stop her from hitting the right button and putting it to her ear.

  “Winsome? Where are you?”

  “B-Bachelor Pad.” She had no idea if he could understand her, she was choking so much on the smoke. She lowered her head almost all the way to the floor, looking for any breath of fresh air. “Fire. Trying… to get last bull… farthest from fire.” She could do it. She just had to keep going and find that poor trapped animal. If she could get the final bull’s gate open, she’d have it made.

  “Get out.” Des was screaming into the phone, so loud it was like he was right there with her. “Get out of there now!”

  “Almost there.” God, it was hot. It hurt to breathe, like trying to suck in air while inside an oven, but she was right at the gate now. Inside the pen the bull was maddened, with white foam dripping from its muzzle and eyes rolling in terror. Struggling to her feet, she reached for the gate’s latch, only to yelp when the heat of it burned her hand. The sound brought the bull’s attention swinging her way before the animal rushed at her in a panic to escape. As fast as she tried to get out of the way, it wasn’t fast enough. The bull smashed through the unlatched gate, and an instant later the gate smashed into her hard enough to send her flying into the wall.

  Darkness swam before her eyes as she hit the concrete floor, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe…

  As if in slow motion, swimmy movement came toward her through the darkness. There was a high-pitched ringing in her ears, so loud it muffled whatever was being yelled at her. Then she was suddenly lifted, floating, and it was so hot she’d rather never breathe in that heat again…

  Blessed coolness caressed her scorched flesh, almost freezing compared to the hell she’d been in. She tried breathing it in, but the coolness hurt too much. Her lungs spasmed, and she coughed so hard it was almost impossible to get air back into her lungs.

  “Oh God, God, she’s not breathing right,” someone shouted, sounding frantic.

  “Get her to the first-aid hut where the oxygen tanks are,” someone else said. “Doc’s already on her way for Lilah, so I’ll make sure she gets to Winnie first.”

  Then she was floating once more, tight bands around her as she struggled for breath.

  “You’ll be okay, Winsome. I’m here, you got that? I’m here. I’m going to make everything okay.”

  Des, she tried to say, but only a strangled croak came out. This kicked off another coughing fit, but when she tried to breathe her throat refused to let the air in. She struggled, panicked, and all at once she could feel it—the end of life.

  No!

  Everything narrowed to one pinpoint speck. As the world faded, all she knew was one word. It meant love and light and joy and belonging, and she was only sorry she hadn’t been able to tell him so.

  Des.

  *

  “Winsome. Baby girl. You gonna open your eyes for me?”

  Slowly Winnie dragged her eyes open. The plain white wall of the ranch’s fully equipped first-aid hut—which to her eyes looked like any trauma bay found in a big-city emergency room—was the first thing she saw. The second thing was Des’s face, dirty from both dust and soot, with pale creases radiating out from the corners of his eyes when he’d obviously been squinting through the worst of whatever hell he’d gone through. That alone made him look ten years older, but then she doubted she had any room to judge. Even without an oxygen mask in place, she could only imagine what she looked like.

  Death, probably.

  But she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. She was too thirsty.

  “Water,” she croaked feebly, looking around. Maybe she could get to a sink…

  “I got you.” In a handful of seconds he had a cup up near her mouth, slid a straw beneath the mask, then held her head up to drink. “Not too fast, okay? Doc said you sucked in a lot of smoke, so I don’t want you to choke on a swallow and put your lungs through any more coughing.”

  She was too busy drinking to tell him she doubted they’d seen the last of her cough any time soon. “Lilah?” she managed when she was done.

  He smiled as he set the cup aside. “Little Rose Elizabeth Brody was born a few minutes ago, according to the text Kill just sent. As soon as Doc Sharpe wraps up with Lilah and makes sure everything’s good the
re, she’s going to run back here to look in on you.”

  She sagged in relief. “So much for Lilah insisting it would be thirty hours of labor before her baby was born. She thought she had plenty of time.”

  “You’d think as a vet, she would’ve known that babies come when they come.”

  “You’d think.”

  “You all did so well here at home,” he went on, gently holding her bandaged hand in both of his and bringing it to his mouth. Beneath the bandages her hands felt raw, but thanks to the IV in her arm, the discomfort was oddly disconnected from her. “Someone told me it was you who plowed around all the buildings here to create a firebreak before the worst of the storm hit. That was some quick thinking, baby girl. That alone probably saved the birthing barn and the stables from catching fire as well. Fire department’s out there now, hosing down all the other buildings while trying to knock down the Bachelor Pad fire. Rain’s finally starting to roll in as well, so hopefully it’ll all just be a bad memory by the time the sun rises in the morning.”

  Thank goodness. “And the bulls? You’re not mad I let them out?”

  “You kidding?” A half-laugh escaped him. “I’m fucking furious with you, woman. You ran into a burning building to save fucking livestock and almost died. I don’t know how the hell I’m ever going to forgive you for that.”

  “But…” Confused and not sure if he was serious or not, she rested a bandaged hand on his forearm. “I had to, Des. You said they were who you were. I had to save them for you.”

  “They’re nothing compared to you. I can’t fucking believe I have to point that out.” His voice, always so powerful, shook with the intensity of his emotions, and it shocked her to her core. “Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. I have fucked up with you right from the get-go, and I know it. Trust is hard for you, and now I’ve gone and made it damn near impossible for you to believe anything I say because I wasn’t honest with you. No wonder you thought a stupid-ass bull was more important to me than you.”

  She tried to not feel anything, to tell herself that she was okay because she was always okay, but it didn’t work. The pain in his words still sliced at her in ways she hadn’t known was possible. “Are… are you saying the bulls aren’t more important to you than me?”

  “They’re nothing, Winsome, and damn my ass for making you feel so uncertain about your place in my life. I can’t fucking believe you’d even have to ask such a thing.”

  “I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question.” She had to reach up to press the oxygen mask closer, because the way he was talking made her suspect she might be hallucinating. “If you think about it, we haven’t known each other that long. Do I really even have a place in your life?”

  “Woman, you’re the center that holds everything together. That holds me together. I know I have an uphill battle when it comes to making you believe that,” he added grimly, his hand diving under her smoke-scented hair to curl around the side of her neck. “Trust has to be earned, and I’ve been going about it all wrong—demanding you trust me while holding shit back from you. That wasn’t fair, and I fucking hate that I wasn’t fair to you.”

  “The surveys on Smiley Lake.” Funny, how little that meant now that she’d actually faced a moment when she thought she was actually dying. “Tell me the truth, Des. Did you commission them before or after we got together?”

  “Before,” came the immediate response. “Within an hour of hearing that Able Smiley was dead, to be precise. I wanted to buy the homestead from whoever inherited, but I needed to know what it was that I wanted to purchase. That meant collecting as much information as I could to understand its value.”

  She could live with that, and it matched up with what Lilah had told her; the Brodys collected information to achieve whatever goals they had. But… “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

  A rough sigh escaped him. “The moment I saw you again in the cemetery, my focus shifted. Who the hell cared about a fucking lake when a curly-haired goddess was getting sassy with me? But you were so suspicious already, I thought that if I told you about the surveys, I’d lose my shot with you. I get that not being completely honest is an ass-backward way to win trust, but I didn’t give a shit. I had to have you. Nothing else mattered.”

  “So, you got me.” She searched his face, looking for any hope of getting out of this. “Where do we go from here?”

  “I’m not giving back your spark plug,” he announced, surprising her. She’d completely forgotten about that. “And I’m letting everyone know that you’re not to leave Green Rock unless you’re with me. You’ll recuperate here, which means spending twenty-four seven with me, and in that time I’m going to convince you that you can believe in me. It fucking guts me that you actually believed I would care more about a goddamn bull than you, but that’s okay. I now know where I stand. It’s my new mission in life to make you see, beyond any doubt, that you are the one place on earth where I belong. You are my home, and nothing else matters to me. Nothing.”

  “Des.” She tried sitting up straighter. This had the feel of being a life-altering moment, and she wasn’t about to slouch her way through it. “You can’t just hold me here indefinitely.”

  “Watch me,” came the grim reply. “I can and will do exactly that, and you’re going to love it. You’re going to love it because you ran into a burning barn to save animals that terrify you, and you did all that because you were thinking of me.”

  His tone was fierce, but there was a softness in his eyes she couldn’t look away from. “So? What’s your point?”

  “You defied death for me, woman. Believe me, I know what motivates a person to do that, because I chose to do the very same thing when I ran into a fully engulfed barn to save you. I know exactly what my motivation was. Even if you can’t believe my words, you can damn well believe my actions.”

  A flicker of that thing that was so hard to kill—hope—stirred in her chest. “Tell me what your motivation was, Des.”

  “I’ll tell you that when I saw you lying on the floor I thought for one terrible moment that you were dead. Honest to God, in that moment I wanted to die, too.” He squeezed his eyes shut a few moments before he opened them again to lock his gaze on her once more, his eyes so intense it was almost frightening. “You can’t ever put me through anything like this ever again, do you understand me? You have to live forever, because I can’t live without you, so just find a way to make that shit happen. And definitely no more running into burning buildings to save fucking bulls. They’re replaceable. You’re not.”

  Oxygen deprivation, she thought numbly as his words took their time sinking in. That had to be the explanation. “Are you trying to say you care about me, Des?”

  “Care about you? Nothing so bland could ever describe what you make me feel. I know you’re not going to believe me because I’ve fucked things up so bad, but you’re my heart, Winsome Smiley. Before you, I didn’t know why I’d been born. Hell, I spent a good portion of my life cursing the fact that I’d been born at all. But now I know why I exist. I was born for you. To love you. To be with you forever. I know I’ve let you down, and I know you believe the worst of me—maybe I even deserve that. But I love you, Winsome. I love you, and I’ll fucking keep you here forever if I have to, if that is what it’s going to take to convince you.”

  Dizzy joy shot through her, though she had to wonder if she hadn’t died in the fire and this was some kind of sweet slice of heaven. “Love, with a side of kidnapping. That’s so Brody.”

  “It is what it is.” Though he still sounded fierce, his touch was exquisitely gentle as he brought her bandaged hand to his mouth. “I just hope that one day you’ll be able to get past my last name and see me, the real me. The man who’d do anything for you, including running into a burning building. Think of that when you’re trying to find your way to forgiving me.”

  She doubted she’d be able to think of anything else. “Don’t forget that I went into that barn because of you, to
o. You were my only thought when I went in to save those bulls—Opal!” The realization that the sweet mama dog and her babies had also been in the Bachelor Pad slammed through her, instantly followed by a wave of grief. “Oh no, Des, I forgot Opal. Her babies, oh God, her babies—”

  “Are fine. They’re perfectly fine. She carried her babies out through that unfinished gap in the wall. Ry found them cowering by a water trough near the stables. They’re up at the main house now, closed off in the butler’s pantry and away from all the hullabaloo. If you’re feeling better tomorrow, I’ll ask the doc if your lungs can handle a quick visit from Panda. I’m hoping she’ll give the okay for you to stay here at Green Rock, rather than run you up to a hospital in San Antonio, but we’ll do whatever she says.”

  “Oh, thank God they’re okay.” She didn’t even care if she landed her booty in the hospital. All that mattered was that somehow everyone had gotten out alive, and she couldn’t stop a shaky sob to save her soul. “Some dog-mom I am. I didn’t even think about poor Panda until now. I think fate’s trying to tell me that I should never, ever have a dog, because I’d be a terrible mom.”

  “You’re not going to be a terrible mom.” Sounding like he didn’t know if it was okay to laugh at her, he pulled her into his arms and rocked her. “You’re going to be an amazing mom, trust me on this.”

  “I don’t even know how to be a good girlfriend.” Exhausted tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes as the madness of the past twenty-four hours caught up with her. “Just look at what happened earlier. My instinct was to shut you out over a stupid lake that I have nothing to do with and have never wanted. But I can’t shut you out,” she added with a feeble shake of her head. “When I thought I was dying, all I could think about was how I hadn’t told you that I love you, and that loving you has given me the greatest joy I’ve ever known. If you got close to me because your goal was to somehow romance Smiley Lake out from under me, then fine. I don’t care. Even if you never loved me, I’m still so grateful you’ve given me the chance to love you. I had no idea I was capable of feeling so much. Loving you is such a gift, you don’t even know. I swear I’ll always treasure it.”