horses. He not only got that, Roman also got a jolt from the memories. There were memories everywhere on the ranch, but there was a bad one here.
This was where he’d had one of those pivotal moments in his life. Well, actually, the pivoting had started earlier that day. He’d been about the same age as Tate and had ridden his bicycle over to his great-grandfather’s old house. Not far, just a half mile or so, and it was a trip he’d made plenty of times before. That day, however, he’d seen his father’s truck, pulled off onto one of the trails that led to the house. Roman had stopped because he thought his dad had broken down, and he’d looked around, expecting to see his father fixing a flat tire or something.
But Roman hadn’t seen that.
Instead, he’d gotten an eyeful of his father making out with the new waitress from the Maverick Café. Roman couldn’t remember her name, but he sure as hell could remember seeing his dad kissing her and running his hand into her unbuttoned squirrel-brown uniform top. Even though Roman knew little about sex in those days, he was well aware of what was going on and recognized the heat-glazed eyes and the groping.
When his dad had spotted him, he’d stopped, bolted from his truck and gone after him, but Roman had ridden his bike into the woods and hidden.
Roman had also cried.
He hadn’t exactly put his dad on a pedestal because, in addition to being his father, his dad was also an asshole. Always wheeling and dealing. Always playing mind games. But the bottom line was he was still his dad. And Belle had still been his mom. In those days, Roman had had her on a pedestal. That had been before the harping, before the constant flood of criticism. When he still had respect for her.
But it all changed that day.
His dad had finally found him a few hours later, right here, next to the corral fence. He’d been neither apologetic nor remorseful. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d simply said to Roman if he told anyone what he’d seen in that truck, that he would ground him and sell his favorite horse, Lobo. After that, his father had walked away as if he’d just delivered some kind of decree that Roman would obey.
He didn’t.
That “decree” had made Roman feel dirty, as if he’d been the one to do something wrong. It hadn’t been fair, and in those days, Roman still believed in fairness.
It’d taken a week for him to build up the courage, but Roman had finally gone to Belle to tell her. He had waited until she was alone in her rose garden, and even though he’d fumbled with what he was saying, Roman had spelled it out for her.
Her husband was cheating on her with a woman—a girl, really—who probably wasn’t old enough to vote. And not only that, he’d threatened Roman into keeping his secret. A secret that was twisting and tearing his insides apart as only bad secrets could.
His mother hadn’t even looked at him the whole time he was talking. She’d kept clipping those roses, kept placing the flowers in a perfect, flat row on the basket looped over her arm. No tears, no denials, no falling apart as he had feared she would. She simply said the words that still echoed in his head.
“Go inside and wash up, Roman. Your hands are filthy.”
Even now, her reaction stunned him, and he’d tried to repeat what he’d told her, in case she hadn’t understood. But she had. When her watery blue eyes had finally met his, Roman had seen it all. She not only knew about her husband’s cheating, but she also wasn’t going to do anything about it.
He’d gone to his room and cried again.
The last tears he had ever shed.
Roman had tried to make sense of it. Hard to do that with his thirteen-year-old’s mind. And he hadn’t wanted to tell Garrett, his big brother, because he had known that Garrett would confront their dad. Garrett was the good guy even back then. He would have confronted their father, who would have given him a punishment equal to or possibly worse than the threats he’d issued to Roman, and it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Belle would have condoned the cheating with her silence.
Maybe his mother hadn’t wanted to give up being a Granger. Maybe all of this—the house, ranch and money—meant more to her than her self-respect. Maybe she’d just been too weak to walk out of the marriage.
Whatever it was, Roman had lost respect for her that day, too. And for his father. Because his dad had indeed grounded him and sold Lobo.
Roman hadn’t expected Belle to go to his father and tell him what he’d said. But obviously she had, and she didn’t lift a finger to stop her husband from carrying through on his unfair threats. Then she’d tried to fix things by leaving him a picture of Lobo on his bed.
As if that would help.
It hadn’t. Not that day, anyway. But he’d kept the picture and looked at it from time to time. Still did. Because it was a reminder that things you loved could be snatched away. It was also a reminder, though, that there’d been something important enough in his life to love.
After that, Roman said fuck-you to fairness and to his mom and dad. He’d said fuck-you to a lot of things. And he had done that right here, standing at this very corral fence.
His father had continued the unfair shit for the next ten years before cancer claimed him. He’d made Roman the owner of the ranch when Garrett was the one who wanted it. Maybe that had been his father’s way of trying to pull Roman back into the family, but it hadn’t worked.
Ironic, though, that Tate had been the one to get Roman back here.
His father was probably laughing his butt off in the grave.
He was so deep in thought that he didn’t hear the footsteps until it was too late to duck for cover. But at least it wasn’t his mother. It was his cousin Lawson.
“Pretty, aren’t they?” he asked, tipping his head toward the horses. He walked to the fence, stood next to Roman.
They were the same age and looked more like brothers than cousins. On occasion, they’d raised hell together by drinking and making time with some of the more willing girls in Wrangler’s Creek.
“Garrett loves this place,” Lawson went on.
That caused Roman to look at his cousin. Because it sounded as if there was a “but” coming.
Roman cursed. “Please tell me Garrett’s not thinking about leaving here once Nicky and he get married.”
“No way. Nicky and her kid love it here, too, and you couldn’t get Garrett to move away if you stuck dynamite up his ass. There might be trouble coming, though.”
Hell. “What kind of trouble?”
He motioned to the back part of the ranch. “You know that land by the creek?”
With just that question, Roman got an inkling of what this was about. Because that land had been in dispute for more than six decades. It was an old family history lesson, but Roman’s great-grandfather, Zachariah Taylor Granger, or Z.T. as people called him, had a brother, Jerimiah, who was Lawson’s great-grandfather. Both Z.T. and his brother had built not only the town of Wrangler’s Creek but the ranch, as well. However, after a falling out, they’d split the
