Branded as Trouble Page 2

  The Busby boys, and apparently every other eligible male in town, were on some kind of quest to rid her of her virginal condition. Maybe because they thought that since she was thirty-one she was desperate. And that she had therefore lowered her standards to rock bottom.

  She hadn’t.

  Just the opposite. It was those high standards that had left her in this condition in the first place, and if she were to loosen those standards, it wouldn’t be with somebody like Ian.

  “But I really like you,” he went on. “And you’re one of the prettiest women in town.”

  If that was true, which it wasn’t, then she could have pointed out then that her beauty gave her far better options than his gene pool. The Busby brothers’ claims to fame were cow-tipping, peeing on electric fences and wearing T-shirts with horny written on them.

  “I won’t go out with you,” Mila stated, and kept walking. She couldn’t get home fast enough. Then she could change into yoga pants and watch one of her favorite movies. She was in a Titanic sort of mood, but she only watched the romantic parts.

  Ah, Jack.

  Now, why hadn’t he survived, moved to Wrangler’s Creek and frozen time so she could meet him?

  Of course, time had frozen in a different kind of way. Not just because it was taking forever for her to get home, but because she was walking down Main Street, which looked almost identical to the way it had over three decades ago when Mila was born. No big-box stores here. In fact, no chain stores of any kind. This was the mom-and-pop business model where everybody knew everybody and bought local as much as possible. That was good for her bookstore, but there were times when Mila dreamed about ditching everything and starting fresh.

  “I wish you’d change your mind about going out with me,” Ian went on. “I got a real nice date planned. Friday is two-for-one corn dogs at the Longhorn Bar. Two-for-one beers, too, if we get there early enough. Then I could take you to that pretty spot out by the creek where we could look at UFOs.”

  She mentally stumbled over that last word. He probably thought he was being cute by not saying something expected like stars or moonlight on the water. Then again, UFO could be code for his penis. Maybe Uncovered F-ing Object or Unzipped Firehose Organ.

  Mila huffed. “I don’t eat corn dogs, don’t drink beer and I have a phobia about UFOs.”

  He nodded as if he got all of that. Which should have stopped him and caused him to turn around. It didn’t. He just kept on walking. Talking, too.

  “Say, you’re not still into that pretend stuff, are you?” he asked.

  Mila made sure she didn’t hesitate a step. In fact, she sped up. And she didn’t dignify his insult with an answer.

  “Because I heard about it,” Ian went on. “Somebody said you dress up like people in the movies. Like Dirty Dancing kind of dress up. But that you don’t do the nasty with any of those fellas, that you just do the dancing parts. Well, if you want, I could dress up like somebody from the movies and dance with you.”

  She wanted to say she had a phobia about dancing with him, but they both knew this wasn’t about dancing. It was about his wanting to get in her pants.

  “I don’t do that pretend stuff anymore,” she assured him.

  That was a lie. But she was taking a minibreak from it because the previous night’s enactment hadn’t played out so well. Apparently, her fantasy partner had a different interpretation of Buttercup and Wesley rolling down the hill. He thought it should involve clothing removal while he yelled, “As you wish.”

  “Guess you’re still hung up on Roman Granger, huh?” Ian asked several moments later.

  Mila hadn’t thought there was anything to get her to slow her lightning-fast pace, but that did it. “Roman?” she repeated as if that were impossible.

  Of course, Ian knew it was more than possible. Everyone in town did, just as they knew about her fantasy role-play. She’d had a crush on Roman since she was old enough to realize that boys and girls had different parts.

  Or “secret places” as her mother called them.

  And speaking of her mother, Mila saw Vita sitting on her front porch as she approached her house.

  “Oh, I gotta go,” Ian said. He pretended to check his watch, no doubt to make her believe that he had somewhere else to be.

  Which wasn’t that far off the mark.

  When it came to her mother, most people wanted to be anywhere else. Vita was the ultimate person-repellant, and while that had caused Mila plenty of problems in her life, she was thankful for it now because it sent Ian scurrying away.

  Vita wasn’t your ordinary mother. Nope. She had her freaky flag flying with her Bohemian clothes—a long brown shirt, peasant blouse and dozens of cheap bead necklaces and bracelets. When she walked, she sounded like a chained Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol.

  But it wasn’t just the clothes that made her odd. Vita claimed to come from a long line of Romanian fortune-tellers. Even though Mila had never met any of her kin, the story that Vita liked to tell was that her family had stowed away on a pirate ship from Romania when Vita was just a baby. Mila doubted the story, mainly because her mother was only in her fifties, and that mode of transportation probably wasn’t possible in modern times.

  Of course, there was nothing modern about her mother.

  Or normal.

  Vita did charms, exorcised spirits, blessed houses and read palms. Surprisingly, people paid her for those things, which only proved that some residents of Wrangler’s Creek weren’t normal, either. Even those people, though, thought her mother was weird.

  And that meant Mila was weird by genetic association.

  It didn’t matter that Mila owned her own business and never chanted, exorcised spirits or read palms. She would always be her mother’s daughter. It didn’t help, either, that Mila’s father had died in a car accident when she was just a kid, only five. He might have added some normalcy to her life if he were still alive.

  Or at least that’s what she liked to tell herself.

  It was just as possible that he would have only added another level of weirdness. After all, he’d married Vita.

  Still, Mila had some incredible memories of Frankie Michael Banchini. He’d done funny faces to make her laugh, had secretly eaten those much-hated Brussels sprouts that Vita had insisted on serving her. And he’d never turned her away when she wanted him to read her a story. Mila was certain that’s where her love of books had started, and being around them was a way of keeping her father close.

  She had loved him. Always would. And she loved her mother, too. Sometimes, though, Vita didn’t always make loving her that easy.

  “There’s an ill wind blowing,” her mother greeted her. She lifted her head, looked at the cloudless sky. There wasn’t so much as a wisp of a breeze. “Bad juju. That might help.”

  Vita tipped her head to a small white box on Mila’s doorstep. The kind of box that someone might use to gift a small piece of jewelry.

  Since the porch wasn’t that big, Mila leaned in and had a look. Not jewelry. It appeared to be a blob of some kind of animal poop. Chicken, probably, since her mother raised them.

  “Sometimes, you have to fight caca with caca,” her mother added.

  Mila could only sigh, and she sank down on the step next to her mother. She considered asking her if she wanted to go inside, but she’d left her Buttercup clothes on the sofa and didn’t want to have to explain it.

  “So, what bad juju should I expect?” Mila asked.

  “I had a vision. Within thirty days, your life will be turned upside down.”

  Oh, this was such a cheery conversation. Mila hadn’t lied to Ian when she had told him she didn’t drink beer, but there was a bottle of wine in her fridge that she’d need after this visit.

  It wasn’t fun to encourage this conversation thread, but he
r mother wasn’t going to leave until she had said whatever it was she’d come to say. Best to get that “say” started.

  “Are we talking a tornado here?” Mila asked. “Or something more personal, like me tripping and falling?”

  Vita lifted her shoulder. “The vision doesn’t always dot the i’s or cross the t’s. But in these same thirty days, you’ll be on a quest to find the truth.”

  Well, she was sort of heading in that direction, anyway. The fantasy stuff just wasn’t working for her anymore. Lately, she’d been thinking about being kissed. For real. Not as part of some reenactment.

  “And after thirty days, you’ll no longer be a virgin,” her mother added in a discussing-the-weather tone. Vita took something from her pocket—a foil-wrapped condom—and handed it to her. “Use this, though. It’s a rubber, and it’ll stop you from getting knocked up. You put it on the man’s secret place when he’s decided not to keep it secret from you any longer.”

  Mila stared at her. “I know what a condom is.”

  “Well, good.” Vita patted her hand. And kept on patting. It went on for so long that Mila had to stop her or else she was going to have a red mark.

  “Is something wrong?” Mila came out and asked.

  Vita nodded, got to her feet, but not before patting her hand again. “I need to take a little trip back to see my family.”

  She might as well have announced she was going to Pluto. Vita never traveled. Heck, her mother never left Wrangler’s Creek. “To Romania?”

  Another nod. “I want to see them while they’re still around to be seen. Just don’t hate me when the shit happens. I had my reasons for doing what I did.”

  Color her confused. What did Romanians, upside down, devirgining and bad juju have to do with her hating her mother?

  “All will be revealed in time,” Vita added, and she started to walk to her bicycle, which was next to Mila’s fence.

  She was still confused. “Want me to give you a ride home?” Her mother owned a car but rarely used it. Instead, Vita preferred to pedal the two miles from her place and into town.

  Vita shook her head and kept moving. Mila would have gone after her if her phone hadn’t rung, and she saw her best friend’s name on the screen. Sophie Granger McKinnon.

  “I’m at the hospital,” Sophie said the moment that Mila answered.

  That was not something she wanted to hear from anyone but especially one who was seven and a half months pregnant with twins. “Are you in labor?”

  “No. I’m fine. It’s not me. It’s my mom. She had some chest pains so I brought her in.” It sounded as if Sophie was crying. “Mila, they think she might have had a heart attack.”

  Oh, mercy. “Just stay calm. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Who’s with you now?”

  “Clay.”

  Good. Clay was police chief Clay McKinnon, Sophie’s husband and a rock under pressure. He would help Sophie rein in her worst fears. Still, Mila needed to be there, too. She’d known Sophie’s mother, Belle, her entire life, and while Belle wasn’t exactly Miss Sunshine, she didn’t put curses on people.

  “Garrett and Nicky are on the way, too,” Sophie added. Her brother and his fiancée. “Garrett was off buying some cattle, but he should be here soon. Anyway, I’ve tried to call Roman, but he’s not answering. I hate to ask you to do this, but could you try calling him again for me? If he still doesn’t answer, would you drive to his house in San Antonio and tell him what’s going on?”

  “Of course,” Mila said without hesitation.

  “I know Roman and Mom are at odds, but he’ll want to know. Convince him to come home.”

  “I will.”

  Mila wasn’t sure she could do that. Roman wasn’t an easy-to-convince sort of person. Plus, she always got a little tongue-tied around him. But surely once he heard about his mother, Mila wouldn’t need to do much convincing. He would hurry to be by her side.

  She scrolled through her “favorites” contacts, found Roman’s number and pressed it. Since he hadn’t answered his sister’s call, Mila expected this to go to voice mail, but she was surprised when he immediately answered.

  “Mila,” he said.

  One word. Her name. There was nothing unusual about it, other than Roman had been the one to say it. And, like any other time she heard him speak, her stomach did a flip-flop. She so wished there was some way to make herself immune to him.

  Mila gathered her breath, ready to tell him about his mom, but Roman continued first. “It’s Tate,” he said.

  Her stomach did another flip-flop but for a different reason this time. That’s because she heard the concern in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “He ran away again, and I’ve been looking all over for him. By any chance, did he go to your place?”

  It wasn’t an out-there kind of question. Tate had run away before, nearly two years ago, and he’d gotten someone to drive him to her house. That’s because Tate’s mother, and therefore, Tate, were Mila’s cousins.

  Once Valerie and she had been close, too, since Vita had raised Valerie as her own. But it didn’t matter that Mila had once thought of her as a sister because she hadn’t seen Valerie in years. That didn’t matter to Tate, either. He just seemed to want a connection with anyone who was blood kin with his mother.

  Something Mila understood, because she missed having that with her father.

  Plus, Tate knew that Mila kept a spare key in the verbena plant so he’d be able to get into her house. She checked, and it wasn’t there now.

  “I’m going inside to see if he’s here,” she assured Roman.

  Mila got the door unlocked as fast as she could, and her gaze fired all around. Her house wasn’t that large—two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bath. So, it didn’t take her long to check out the place.

  And spot him.

  Tate was on the sofa, asleep on top of her Buttercup dress.

  “He’s here,” she told Roman.

  Roman said something she didn’t catch. Profanity mixed with a prayer, maybe. “Put him on the phone. I want to talk to him.” That didn’t sound like a prayer, though. More like the profanity tone.

  Mila was about to tell him to take it easy on the boy, but she froze. “Oh, God.”

  That’s because she spotted something else. Something in Tate’s hand.

  A bottle of pills.

  Tate didn’t have a firm grip on it. In fact, he didn’t have a firm grip on anything. His hand was limp, the bottle resting on its side in his palm, and he was as white as a sheet of paper.

  “Call an ambulance,” she managed to say to Roman.

  Mila dropped the phone and ran to Tate.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THAT WHOLE LIFE flashing before a dying person’s eyes applied to fathers, too. Roman now had firsthand proof of that.

  In that moment when Mila had shouted for him to call an ambulance, Roman saw it all. His childhood on the ranch. His screw-ups. His arrest for underage drinking. Another arrest for reckless driving only a year after that. The arguments with his parents those things had caused.

  He was probably being punished for all the crap he’d done, but Roman wished to hell that the powers that be had taken that punishment out on him instead of Tate.

  In that life-flash, Roman had seen Valerie telling him that she was pregnant. They’d both been just eighteen and in their senior year of high school. He’d felt the sickening feeling of dread that this was yet something else he had screwed up. The feeling hadn’t lasted though, not after Tate had been born. The moment Roman held his boy in his arms, he knew he’d never love anything or anybody the way he did his son.

  And now he might lose him.

  Tate was breathing, that much he knew, and Mila had said something about Tate holding a bottle of medicine. Roman didn’t
know what he’d taken or how much, but he knew what this meant.

  His son had attempted suicide.

  Hell.

  Roman was damn perceptive when it came to his job, but he hadn’t seen that his own son was on the brink of doing something like this. It made the fight at school and being expelled fade way, way to the background.

  “How far out are you now?” Mila asked from the other end of the phone line.

  Roman wasn’t sure he could speak because his chest and throat were so tight. “About five miles. Anything from the doctor yet?”

  Though he knew the answer to that. If there’d been something, anything, Mila would have told him. After he’d called the ambulance about thirty minutes ago, he had called her right back. She hadn’t gotten off the phone with him since then and had been updating him every step of the way.

  The ambulance’s arrival.

  The drive to the hospital, which thankfully was only a few minutes from her house.

  And Tate and her going into the emergency room.

  The medics had immediately whisked Tate away, but they hadn’t allowed Mila in there with him. Instead, she was outside the examining room.

  “Nothing yet from the doctor, but I’m certain that Tate will be fine,” Mila said. It was hard to tell if she was BS-ing, but Roman decided to take her at her word. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around anything else right now. “Focus on your driving,” she added. “Make sure you get here in one piece because we don’t need another Granger in the hospital.”

  That was for sure. One was more than enough.

  He wanted to know if Mila had learned what meds Tate had taken. Or where he’d gotten them. But again, if she knew something she would have told him.

  Unless it was bad, that is.

  People kept all kinds of old meds in their bathrooms. Maybe Tate had even gotten into the Percocet that was left over from when Roman wrenched his knee. Or, hell, he could have gotten it from some kid at school or stolen something from the nurse who’d been cleaning his busted lip. Tate could have taken something that could kill him.