Broken (Brody Brothers Book 4) Read online

  Oh, yeah. Definitely a sight to see.

  “I’ll bet it’s a damn sight easier getting samples from it now that crazy Able isn’t waiting out on his porch with a shotgun.” Fin chuckled, eyes still on the water tank. “Wish I’d known you were going last night to collect a sample. I would’ve gone with you and we could’ve finally had that swimming party we were always talking about.”

  “You didn’t miss much.” Des’s tone was more abrupt than he’d intended, because the thought of Fin seeing Winsome Smiley the way he had made his skin prickle until all he wanted to do was scowl. “I sent the water sample to the lab this morning, so we’ll hear back from them in about a week. In the meantime, we need to put together a purchase proposal for the Smileys that they won’t be able to resist.”

  “What’s irresistible to a little old lady three days older than dirt and her dressmaking granddaughter?” Fin took his hat off to mop his brow with his forearm before slamming it back in place. “Fact is, all Able Smiley did was hold on to that land so we couldn’t have it, the fucker. Hopefully his daughter won’t be so mean-spirited, but I won’t hold my breath. The Smileys live to screw with the Brodys.”

  “There’s no telling which way Winsome’s going to jump,” Des mumbled around a yawn, while the mere mention of the woman who’d kept him awake last night brought to mind the heart-stopping moment he’d gotten a full view of the cutest damn apple bottom he’d ever seen. And he’d live and die remembering those wet, mauve-tipped breasts of hers that were built to fill a man’s hands to overflowing. No wonder he’d had to whack off in a futile attempt to get some relief from the set of blue balls she’d given him. “That reminds me. I’m having lunch with her about an hour or so from now, so I’d better go get cleaned up and over to the homestead before too long.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Fin raised his brows at him. “Gonna work the slick Brody charm on her, are you?”

  “Brodys don’t have charm. We just scare the shit out of people.”

  “That’s what I meant. You gonna scare the shit out of her until she signs on the dotted line?”

  “She’s not officially the owner of the Smiley homestead yet.”

  “She will be. Able didn’t have any other kids. Truth be told, I’m shocked that mean old turd managed to procreate at all.”

  That made two of them. “I’m just having lunch with her. That’s all it is.”

  “Uh-huh.” Fin continued to stare at him until Des wanted to punch him in the eye. “You’re not thinking of trying to get that property out from under her by seducing her, are you?”

  Des went unnaturally still. “What did you say?”

  “I just want you to be careful,” he said, not backing down. “Remember what Dad taught us about being a Brody man. We’ve got targets on our backs, even those of us who are happily married. If anything, you’ve got even more of a target on you now, because you’re the only bachelor left.”

  Goddamn it. “Of all people, are you really reminding me that women would do just about any damn thing they can think of to seduce a Brody? That’s how I was fucking conceived, or have you forgotten that?”

  “I haven’t forgotten shit. I’m just reading the room, and if you’re smart you’ll do the same.”

  “What am I supposed to be reading?”

  “There’s a pretty girl who might want to use an inherited property to try to scalp you when you’re, you know… at a vulnerable point.”

  Swear to God, if he killed Fin now, no one would blame him. “How the fuck am I at a vulnerable point, asshole?”

  “Come on, Des, you know what I’m getting at.”

  “The fuck I do.”

  Fin loosed a short sigh. “All right, fine. I’m talking about you getting gored and having to leave the rodeo circuit.”

  “Fuck me.” Disgusted, Des looked away and gave serious thought to just leaving then and there, but that wouldn’t solve anything. No matter how hard he tried to avoid it, this discussion wasn’t going to just go away. “So my career on the pro circuit as a bull-rider ended on the biggest possible down note. Big fucking deal. Everyone on the circuit knows you don’t grow old in that profession. You just enjoy the ride while you’ve got it.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have it anymore, and you never talk about that.”

  “What the hell do you want me to say?”

  “That you miss the rush, the adulation of the fans and the buckle-bunnies. That you’re pissed at the world because everything’s different now. All of that would be totally normal, but you’ve never said so much as a word about it.”

  Jesus. “What do you want me to do, go on some dumbass daytime talk show and cry out my feelings? Have you met me?”

  “What I want is for you to not bottle all that shit up. Not with me, or Ry. Hell, even Kill wants to hear how you’re doing.”

  Des snorted. “Oh yeah, I can see it now—me crying on perfect, big brother Killian’s shoulder. What a helluva riot that would be.”

  “Look, we’re all worried about you because we know—”

  “You don’t know shit, Fin, and just so you know, I don’t appreciate you assholes talking about me behind my back.”

  “We love you, dumbass, so find a way to cope, all right? You’ve been at loose ends because your world’s been turned upside down over the past couple years. Losing rodeo left a big hole in your life. Because of that, I don’t want you trying to fill that emptiness with some woman who might not be good for you.”

  “Fin—”

  “Not to mention life here in Bitterthorn isn’t anything like the life you knew when you were on the road. You can’t just dick around with that Smiley woman like you did with all those buckle-bunnies that used to line up outside your trailer door. When you were on tour, no one gave a damn if you took a whole passel of bunnies into your bed. But it’s a different story back here at home.”

  Seriously, Fin had to have an off button somewhere… “You might be my brother and best friend, but I’m about three seconds away from making you swallow your fucking teeth. I didn’t ask for your opinion on how to live my goddamn life.”

  “I just don’t want you getting tangled up in a small-town drama with a woman who’s got a property we want. That shit could blow up into an all-out clusterfuck before you know it, and that could an effect on all of us.”

  Des didn’t bother to stifle a snarl as he turned to face his brother fully. “You should know me better than that. I know how to avoid trouble, especially the sordid kind that made a disaster zone out of all our lives while we were growing up. I’m a fucking master at avoiding that kind of shit.”

  Fin didn’t flinch from that furious glare. “So does that mean you’re not targeting Winnie Smiley just for the sake of getting the Smiley homestead out of her?”

  “It means I’m not going to stand here explaining my damn self to you, or anyone else. Mind your own fucking business, Fin.”

  “It’s my business to know how Green Rock Ranch acquires Smiley Lake. And make no mistake,” Fin added, his voice as hard as stone, “we’ve got to fucking acquire it if we want any kind of future in raising beef cattle for the Pure Angus brand.”

  “We’ll get it.”

  “Just not by seducing it out from under the girl next door, yeah?”

  “We’ll get it,” Des repeated, gritting his teeth. “Land management’s my job now that I’m working at the ranch full-time, so I’m tackling this shit like I tackled everything in rodeo—head-on with no fear. I’m going to pull my own weight around here, but I don’t need your help in doing it, you got that?”

  Fin’s brows slammed down. “What the hell do you mean, pull your own weight? You don’t have anything to prove, Des. You’ve always pulled your own weight.”

  “When I’ve been around, sure. But everything’s different now that rodeoing’s in the rearview mirror. Killian’s the business genius behind expanding the Brody brand throughout the world. Ry’s got his organic beef project, Pure Angus. It’s been going gangbusters,
but it eats up most of our time. That means you’ve taken over the stud business, which is what put the family on the map in the first place. I thought I’d found my place in bull-riding and bringing whatever recognition I could to the Brody name with rodeo, but that’s gone now. I have to find a new place for myself.”

  “Says who?”

  “I do. And now that we’re in a record-breaking drought and stretched so goddamn thin, I see how important that place is. One way or another, I’m going to get what this ranch needs, and that’s water.”

  “Jesus, listen to yourself.” Fin took his work gloves off and hit them against his thigh, whether to knock the dust off them or in a burst of frustration, Des couldn’t tell. “Fuck the Brody name and fuck having to prove yourself. You don’t have to prove shit to anyone, because you’ve already done that a million times over just by being you. That’s her talking, not you.”

  Des winced before he could stop it, and everything inside him locked up tight.

  Her.

  Fuck.

  Her.

  He just couldn’t escape that bitch, he thought, gritting his teeth in a silence that nearly choked him. No matter what he did, where he went, or how he lived, it was her shadow that cast a pall over everything.

  Della Brody.

  Fin’s mother, and Ry’s and Kill’s.

  But not his.

  Della Brody, the madwoman who’d done everything possible to destroy Des from the moment he’d been abandoned on the Brody doorstep. She was the lunatic who’d told him from the beginning that he was disgusting, a vile mistake that no one could love. A waste of fucking skin.

  She was the one who’d very nearly killed him while his father had done nothing to save him, proving her words right.

  He really was just a thing that not even his father could love.

  Her.

  When nothing but silence spun out between them, Fin sighed roughly. “Look, I know you don’t like talking about her—”

  “Then don’t fucking talk about her, idiot.”

  “You’re the idiot if you think you have something to prove after all this time,” Fin shot back, looking as aggravated as Des felt. “You’re the toughest sonofabitch I know, Des, and when it comes to cowboying, there’s no one more accomplished than you. If you’ve got a hard-on to do what’s best for Green Rock Ranch because you’re getting into the swing of day-to-day ranching life and you love what you’re doing, then great. Out-fucking-standing. But if you’re doing it to prove to a long-dead, hate-filled crazy bitch that you’re enough of a Brody to contribute to this ranch, then check the fuck out and go do something else. You can’t live your life trying to placate the ghost of a woman who could never be placated when she was alive. Life’s too damn short for that kind of shit.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Des muttered, feeling hot and prickly all over, and it wasn’t just because of the sizzling-hot sun glaring down on them. “Since when the hell did you get a degree in psychiatry? Stick to ranching, you’ll live longer.”

  “Because if I keep pushing, you’re going to kill me?”

  Des slanted him a smile sharp enough to cut. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”

  “I’m not wrong, Des.”

  “Look, it’s just lunch with Winsome Smiley, man. Not even dinner. It’s nowhere near as serious as this ridiculous conversation.”

  “Good to hear,” came the quick reply. “Because Winnie Smiley is the furthest thing away from a buckle-bunny. Not only is she loved by just about everyone in Bitterthorn, she’s a frigging Quaker, or some damn thing.”

  “So?”

  “So, she’s about as untouchable as a damn nun. I can’t believe I have to point this shit out to you.”

  “I can’t believe you think you have to.”

  “Des, I’m just trying to—”

  “Enough.” Des dipped the brown cowboy hat he wore lower so his brother wouldn’t see just how close he was to beating the shit out of him. “You’re getting to be as much of a holier-than-thou pain in my ass as Killian, so back the fuck off, Fin. It’s. Just. Lunch.”

  But they both knew it wasn’t just anything, Des thought as he drove to his house, a modern wood and glass creation he’d designed himself on a lonely stretch of land out by Lone Sentinel Butte. The fact was, Fin was more right than he knew. Des hardly recognized the life he had now. Not too long ago he’d had the world by the proverbial shorthairs as a rising star on the bull-riding circuit, crisscrossing his way across the North American continent on a wave of daredevil-loving adulation. The higher he’d climbed in the ranks, the more parties he’d gotten invited to, which meant making connections that had landed him lucrative promotional deals and endorsements. Naturally, with money and fame came the women.

  So many women.

  But even more than that, he thought he’d found acceptance. A place where he belonged.

  In the eyes of Bitterthorn, Texas, he’d never felt like he’d had that—a true belonging. He’d only been five of so when he’d grasped the concept of what a bastard was, and from that moment of understanding he’d felt… different. Less than. Like his life suddenly didn’t have as much value as his brothers.

  Out on the circuit, however, things had been different. The buckle-bunnies hadn’t given two shits about which side of the sheets he’d been born on. The promoters hadn’t cared, either. Not being judged as something evil and obscene simply because he existed had been such a relief that he’d lost himself in that world, pretending the acceptance of strangers was the acceptance he’d craved as a kid who hadn’t belonged anywhere.

  He should have known that reality would always find a way to flip him the bird and remind him there was never a place in the world where he truly belonged, because he wasn’t a true Brody. He wasn’t a true anything.

  And if he wasn’t anything, what did that make him?

  A nothing.

  That was the hole he carried around every damn day of his life.

  A vast, yawning nothing.

  For too many years he’d tried ignoring that god-awful hole by refusing to feel anything. Then, when he’d had to cover what his father’s wife kept doing to him, he’d gotten into rodeo to explain away the injuries. Strangely enough, that lie had led him to the discovery that daredevil tricks made him feel something besides numb, if only for a few moments.

  Death-defying rides had brought him fame, and with it, so many women he’d lost count. The pleasure, like everything else, had been fleeting. But it was better than numbness, so he’d embraced it wholeheartedly.

  Then he’d gotten gored.

  And the people in that world dropped him like he was radioactive.

  As much as that had hurt, it had given him the space to see what his reckless, daredevil life really was.

  A deep-seated death wish.

  And it had very nearly come true.

  Della Brody had done everything she could to see him dead. Little had he known that from the time he’d landed in the Brody house when he was a bewildered kindergartener, that crazy bitch had also planted seeds in his soul that ultimately had him wishing for the same damn thing. Even now he was shocked at how that poisonous shit had almost done him in.

  That was all on him, of course. He’d allowed Della’s self-destructive hatred to seep into that battered thing he called a soul, to the point where part of him had welcomed the end of his life. It had taken nearly dying to realize just how fucked up his head was.

  The best revenge he could ever get on that woman now was staying above ground, and being happy about it, he decided, stepping into the bathroom for a quick shower. That was the trick, though. When it came to happiness, he had no clue what that was all about. Considering how his life had gone, he was only nodding acquaintances with happiness. In fact, whenever he thought about being happy, almost nothing came to mind.

  Almost nothing.

  A thick mane of golden-brown curls, with just a hint of red, flashed before his mind’s eye. When he’d been a kid riding on
a school bus, it had taken all his control not to reach out to one of those curls to pull it, just to see it bounce back into place.

  The very thought made him smile.

  Thirty minutes later he pulled up to the small, squat box that had once been Able Smiley’s house, his attention sharpening when the screen door swung open. But as he cut the engine and stepped out into the merciless glare of the Texas summer sun, it was the cane-toting, birdlike Heavenly Smiley that tottered out to greet him, not Winnie.

  “Ma’am.” Politely he touched the brim of his hat and made a lightning-fast assessment of the expression carved into her sunken, wrinkled face. Survivor that he was, he’d long ago learned to spot the telltale signs of danger in his fellow human beings. Heavenly Smiley’s hostile expression displayed just about all of them. “Winsome is expecting me, in case you’re wondering why I’m here.”

  “I know exactly why you’re here, young man, and I want you to know that I’m not at all happy about it.” Heavenly’s sparse blue-silver curls blew in the blast furnace-like breeze, and he almost reached for her when she seemed in danger of blowing over. “Able’s father, Earnest, called you Brodys a den of rattlers over there on your swanky ranch, just waiting for a time to strike and get this homestead. Well, the Smiley menfolk might be gone from this world, but I’m still here. I see what you’re doing, and I feel it’s only fair to put you on notice that I will not stand for it.”

  Great. Winnie’s granny was just as batshit crazy as her stepson. “Ma’am, I don’t know what you think I’m doing, but all I’m here to do is pick up Winsome for a lunch date.”

  “Didn’t see hide nor hair of you while Able was alive,” came the hot accusation. “Didn’t once acknowledge that girl’s existence. She was too beneath you, wasn’t she? But now all of a sudden here you are, thinking my darling Winnie is going to be easy pickings for the likes of you. But I guarantee she knows what you’re really after, because I told her. I told her that you’re nothing but a Brody man with an eye on this property, and that you’ll go through her to get it. The only thing any of you rattlers care about is your precious ranch.”