Branded as Trouble

Every town needs a bad boy, and Wrangler’s Creek’s has been gone far too long...

Getting his high school girlfriend pregnant was just one square in Roman Granger’s checkered past, but it changed him forever. When his son’s mother skipped town after the birth, Roman decided to do the same, baby Tate in tow, hoping for a fresh start.

Now Roman fears his teenage son is following in his wayward footsteps, so he returns home to Wrangler’s Creek, aiming to set him straight. It’s there he encounters Tate’s cousin Mila Banchini, the good-girl opposite of Roman who’s had a crush on him since childhood. The old spark between them undeniably never died, though Roman worries it’ll only lead to heartache. But if falling for Mila is such a bad idea, why does everything about holding her feel so right?

Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Delores Fossen

“Clear off space on your keeper shelf, Fossen has arrived.”

—New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde

“Delores Fossen takes you on a wild Texas ride with a hot cowboy.”

—New York Times bestselling author B.J. Daniels

“You will be sold!”

—RT Book Reviews on Blame It on the Cowboy

“In the first McCord Brothers contemporary, bestseller Fossen strikes a patriotic chord that makes this story stand out.”

—Publishers Weekly on Texas on My Mind

“Fossen delivers an entertaining romance between two people with real-life issues.”

—RT Book Reviews on Texas on My Mind

“Fossen’s stories are known for non-stop, explosive action with nail-biting close calls.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Deputy’s Redemption

Branded as Trouble/ Just Like a Cowboy

Delores Fossen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Branded as Trouble

Just Like a Cowboy

Copyright

Branded as Trouble

Delores Fossen

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER ONE

ROMAN GRANGER KNEW there were few advantages to being a badass over the age of thirty. Especially when you had a thirteen-year-old son. But this was one of those times when he could put his bad-assery skill set to good use.

“No,” he told the naked woman standing in his living room. “I don’t want whipped cream sprayed in my boxer shorts.”

Roman added “the look.” The slight sneer, chin down, the stare that he hoped conveyed that this whole whipped cream thing stood no chance whatsoever of happening.

The naked woman—Tiffany Ann Baker—stuck out her bottom lip in what he supposed was meant to be a playful pout, and she crooked her index finger, also playfully, for him to come to her. Roman wanted to tell her that if seeing her stark naked hadn’t already caused him to move in her direction, then a crooked finger sure wasn’t going to do the trick.

“How’d you get in my house?” he asked.

She smiled as if that was a good response to his snarled question. “Your housekeeper let me in before she left to do some errands. Oh, and she said to tell you that the upstairs toilet is making a gurgling sound. She jiggled the handle, but that didn’t work.”

Then he needed to have a chat with his live-in housekeeper, Anita, about allowing in women with whipped cream cans. Apparently, he also needed to call a plumber.

“You can’t stay,” Roman spelled out to Tiffany Ann. “My son, Tate, will be home from school soon.”

Plus, even if Tate hadn’t been on his way, Roman would have passed on the whipped cream sex. He’d just walked in from an overnight business trip where he’d gotten kicked by a rodeo bronco that he’d been in the process of buying. He was in pain, tired and hungry. Tiffany Ann would have stood a better chance of enticing him into having sex if she’d brought him a cheeseburger and some extra-strength ibuprofen.

“Oh, you devil, you,” Tiffany Ann purred. Using the nozzle of the whipped cream like a wand, she waved it over her body. “You can’t make me believe that you don’t want more of this.”

Believe it.

Since the badass look wasn’t working, Roman tried a different approach. He picked up her clothes that she’d tossed on the back of his sofa and handed them to her. “Get dressed and leave. Sorry, but I don’t want to have to explain a Brazilian strip wax and nipple piercings to my son when he comes through that door.”

Of course, Tate probably knew all about it. He was thirteen, after all—almost fourteen—but Roman didn’t want him to have a visual of the woman his dad had hooked up with twice.

Tiffany Ann stared as if waiting for him to change his mind. When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she huffed, threw the whipped cream and started dressing. The can smacked into the fireplace and started spewing. Tiffany Ann was spewing in her own way, too, because her eyes narrowed, and she jerked on her clothes as if she’d declared war on them.