“I hardly think you’re a mistake, gorgeous, but I do understand what you meant.” Bran kissed her again. “I’m glad, damn glad we’re covered. I ain’t anywhere close to ready to start a family.” He eased out of her and grabbed tissues to clean up. Then he tugged the covers over them and wrapped his arms around her.

She lay her head on his chest, lulled by a feeling of contentment. “So, since you’re not ready to have a family of your own, tell me about your family, Bran Turner.”

Chapter Eleven

His family story would be short, if he had his way. He caressed the curve of her spine. “What would you like to know?”

“The sign above the entrance says ‘Turner Ranch—Established 1907,’ which is a long time to be in the ranching business.”

“We’re one of the oldest ranches in the county still in existence. Though according to my grandparents, it was touch and go there for a few years for my great-grandparents during the dirty thirties when their neighbors lost their places.”

“Did they buy up more land?”

“Couldn’t afford to. When things started to look up, they bought a couple of sections that’d been foreclosed on and the government wanted to recoup their losses. But it’s been the same size since the start of World War II.”

“So you’ve always known what you’d end up doing with your life?”

That was tricky to answer. As a teen he’d lashed out at his grandparents, threatening to sell the whole shooting match after they died. A pang of sadness punched him in the gut when he recalled the shock on his grandmother’s face after he’d issued that selfish statement. Pearl Turner had just looked at him and said quietly, “Land is the only thing that’s forever.”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to pry.”

Bran swept his hand down Harper’s back and absentmindedly kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay. I was just thinking that like most ranch kids, part of me wanted to rebel. Do something—anything—other than be tied to this land until the day I died. But the bigger part of me couldn’t imagine doin’ anything else.”

“Did your parents feel the same way?”

His body stiffened.

Harper felt it and lifted her head to look at him. “What?”

Normally he breezed over this part of his family backstory, because it wasn’t exactly a secret. But the scandal about his birth had happened so long ago, and his grandparents had been so well respected in the community, that the only part of his lineage that mattered now was his last name.

“You think I’m snoopy, don’t you?”

“Yep.” He kissed her nose. “But it’s okay. The truth is, I don’t have a f**kin’ clue who my dad was. My mom ran away from here the week after she turned eighteen. My grandparents never heard from her until she returned to Wyoming five years later carting a six-month-old baby with her. She told them my father was out of the picture and she’d named me Branford after her favorite bar in San Francisco.”

“Your real name is Branford?”

“Weird as it is, at least it could be shortened into something more normal, like Bran. I tell myself it could’ve been much worse, given that my mother had turned into a total hippie.”

“I hearya. My mom claims she came up with our names because of where we were conceived. But I suspect we were all named after the booze she was drinking when she got knocked up.”

Bran laughed softly. “I doubt my grandparents were happy that she’d given her out-of-wedlock child their last name.”

“But you grew on them, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t like they had a choice. Evidently my mother stuck around for two weeks before she told her parents they were animal murderers, since she’d become a vegetarian. So she dumped me with them. My mother was an only child, and I suspect she’d been breaking my grandparents’ hearts since the day she was born.”

Harper squeezed his arm in a show of sympathy. “Did she ever come back?”

“Once. When I was about four, I guess. Didn’t stay more than two days. She died of a drug overdose a couple of years later. And without sounding crass, I can say my grandparents were relieved. There was always the fear that she’d try to take me away from them. I don’t remember her at all.”

“Did your grandparents adopt you?”

“No need to after she died. In fact, it would’ve put the ranch in some kind of weird legal limbo, as far as estate taxes. So as the sole heir, I inherited everything.”

“How old were you when they died?”

“Grandpa died when I was eighteen. Grandma didn’t last quite a year after he passed on. I know she died of a broken heart.”

Harper kissed his chest. “I’m sorry. Although it’s sad, it is sort of beautiful too. To love someone that much that you’d rather die than be without them.”

“Worst year of my life when they both passed. I couldn’t stand to be in their house without them in it. So I did the mature thing. Boarded it up and bought a trailer.”

Again Harper sweetly kissed the area above his heart, and it warmed something inside him he’d suspected was long dead.

“Do you have any intention of ever living there again? Or would it cost too much money to fix up?”

Money. That was one thing Bran had plenty of.

After the lawyer had read the will, he’d spent the next week in a stupor. He’d had no idea his grandparents had squirreled away that much cash. He’d had no clue what the ranch he’d inherited was worth. It’d boggled his mind. He was rich.




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