Bound, Branded, & Brazen by Jaci Burton Read Free Book Online Page B

a good game, but when faced with the man she’d loved and left, she was toast.
    She couldn’t even convince herself she didn’t want him anymore. How was she going to convince Mason?
     
     
    mason tossed his gloves on the worn table in the main room of his small place just down the road from the main house. Only a few rooms and one bedroom, it suited him just fine. It gave him privacy, away from the hands after a long day.
    He left the lights off, needing the cool afternoon darkness of the house to quell the heat raging inside him. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and settled in on one of the old comfortable chairs in front of the fireplace, stretching out his legs so he could just breathe for a few minutes.
    How could touching Valerie spark such an inferno inside him? He’d have to get a handle on this and quick.
    Then again, he’d seen the fire light up in her eyes, the desire flame instant and hot just like it had been for him. It hadn’t been one-sided.
    He’d teased her last night in the barn, wanted to irritate her—anything to get some kind of reaction from her other than her usual polite, say-nothing conversation that drove him crazy. And earlier in her room . . . God, he hadn’t expected that wildcat, the woman she used to be. But she’d only given him a glimpse, and then as usual, she’d pulled back, locked herself up tight and wouldn’t let him in.
    So he’d done what he normally did when she drew back from him—he’d pissed her off. She’d always had spirit, but she banked it. He’d seen plenty of that spirit, that lust for life, when they were together, when things had been hot and heavy and good between them.
    He hadn’t been the one to give up, to run. That had been all her doing. And maybe he should man up and walk away, just let this thing between them die once and for all. But he was also old enough and smart enough to read a cry for help, and Val was screaming loud inside.
    He knew Valerie better than anyone ever had. He knew her pain, knew her fear. What he’d told her today was true—he knew her better than she knew herself.
    Maybe he’d let go too easily before. Maybe he hadn’t given her what she’d been really been asking for two years ago.
    Maybe it was time he did.
     
     
    “so what’s going on tonight, guys?”
    Twenty pairs of shocked eyes gaped up at her. Valerie stared the cowboys down, having marched to the bunkhouse in an effort to prove once and for all that she did not, in fact, need Mason in her life anymore. She figured the best way to do that was to actually get a life.
    “Uh, we’re headin’ into town for some pool and beer, Miss Valerie.”
    Bobby, one of the younger hands, nearly knocked over the chair at the long table where a bunch of the guys had been playing poker.
    “That sounds like fun. Can I catch a ride with you?”
    They all looked at one another. Not at her—at one another.
    “Um. We’ll check in with Mason first, see if that’s all right with him.”
    Her blood pressure ticked up a notch, but she kept the smile plastered to her face. “Oh, you don’t need to do that.”
    “Uh, yes, ma’am, we sure do. You’re his wife.”
    “Ex-wife.”
    “Don’t matter. We wouldn’t dare take you anywhere without askin’ him first.”
    They had all started to back away from her as if she was some kind of pariah with leprosy.
    What a bunch of pussies. Could they take a piss without Mason’s permission?
    “Fine,” she said, clenching her jaw. “I’ll just take the truck into town.”
    Imbeciles. Were they children or grown men? She stormed back into the house and stomped up the stairs, threw open her closet and glared at her clothes.
    “What bug crawled up your ass?”
    She ignored Jolene. Which, of course, meant Jolene came in and threw herself on Valerie’s bed.
    “Got a date?”
    “Hardly.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Into town. Some of the hands are hitting the bar for drinks and pool.”
    “Sounds great. I’m in.”
    “In for