Branded

Prologue

IN HIS LETTER, he told me to wear something white.

It sounded like an innocent enough request, something to help him recognize me when he saw me for the first time. But now that I’m here, standing at the door of the café, it feels like…

I’m a lamb being led to slaughter.

I know. I know I’m painting a pretty dramatic picture. And I’m not someone who gives in to drama at all. In fact, I try to stay away from it as much as I can. But this has to be the most dramatic thing I’ve ever done.

By this, I mean going to meet a man that I’ve only ever talked to in letters.

Actually, no. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not going to meet some man that I’ve been talking to in letters for the past six months.

I’m going to meet a man who up until last Friday called Montana State Prison his home.

So, basically, I’ve come to this café, wearing a white dress with a delicate lace overlay and a swishy skirt, to meet a convicted felon that I’ve only ever talked to using the prison pen pal system.

Well, ex-felon, since he got out on parole last week.

In any case, I’m stupid, aren’t I? This is stupid. More than that, this is dangerous.

So what if it’s broad daylight and the café, from what I can see through the glass door, looks fairly busy?

He was the one who picked this place and told me to meet him here.

Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe he’s got his friend watching, ready to pounce on me when I go to the bathroom.

Maybe there’s a secret hallway in this establishment that he can drag me into as I’m coming out of the restroom.

Except… it doesn’t feel dangerous. Just terrifying.

So despite myself, I push open the door and step inside.

For the first few seconds, my vision seems blurry.

All I can make out is fuzzy colors and shapes, but slowly things become clear.

I see red leather seats and wooden walls.

I see people, tons of them. Almost all of the tables are occupied, and there’s a long line of customers at the counter, ordering and waiting for their coffee.

Witnesses. It should be a relief.

But how on earth am I going to find him in a churning sea of broad shoulders and tall bodies, most of them wearing Stetsons? Maybe if I was taller than my five-foot-two frame or wearing heels rather than these stupid schoolgirl Mary Janes, I’d be…

Oh, but wait a second.

I don’t need to worry about finding him because I think that he found me.

See, there’s a man.

In the center of all the chaos.

Still and unmoving.

He has a trucker’s cap on, black with an intricate R in white.

Even though he’s sitting down and there’s no way for me to know, I can tell he’s the tallest man in here.

At least he’s certainly the broadest, given how his shoulders span and block the top of his high-backed chair and almost all of the potted fern behind him.

And I think, I think, it’s him.

Even though he looks… wrong. He looks nothing like what I imagined.

I never thought he’d be this large, busting out of his black T-shirt. Or that his skin would be so tan that you’d guess he’d been living under the open, free sky rather than inside a concrete block and barred windows. I definitely never thought his face would look that… merciless.

The upper part of his face is hidden, courtesy of the cap, but whatever I can see makes me think that like his body, his face is also a study of superlatives.

Like that stubbled jaw of his quite possibly is the most angular jaw I’ve ever seen.

And his lips, dusky rose, may be the fullest set of lips that I’ve ever come across.

It’s laughable to call him beautiful, given how aggressively masculine everything about him is, but that’s what he is. Beautiful. Ruggedly so. Like the mountain range that you can see wherever you go in Montana.

Before I can really question my thoughts, I’m walking toward him.

While my footsteps are drowned by the din of the crowd, I can hear my heartbeats clearly. There’s a stampede in my chest, wild heart, wilder beats, and strangely, I think he can sense it from afar.

I’m sure he’s watching me walk over.

Again, I don’t know how I know this because his eyes are hidden by the cap he’s wearing, but I do. I can feel their gaze, all heavy and charged, through the space. The intensity only growing the closer I get to him.

Until it feels like a calloused hand sliding over my skin. As soon as I reach him, he looks up and that hand tightens.

No, that phantom grip around my neck turns hot.

Branding me.

Much like his pitch-black stare.

For some reason, I gave him blue eyes in my head. Probably because of the ranch he said he grew up on, and when I think of a ranch, I think of blue skies and vast lands.

So, no, he does not look like the man from my dreams at all.

And yet, yet, somehow, he feels so familiar too. I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel it. God, I’m losing my mind, aren’t I? Shaking my head slightly, I begin, “You’re…” I grab the back of the chair I’m standing by and steady myself so I can continue. “Are you… Bo? Bo P-Porter?”

Something flickers through his face.

Or so I think.

It comes and goes so quickly that I can’t be sure. But I think it was in response to my question, my voice. It makes me feel stupid—and relieved—because what if he isn’t the man I’m supposed to meet at all? I probably should’ve thought of that before I walked over.

Maybe that’s why my belly has been churning and I’m hearing alarm bells in my head.

“I, ah, I’m sorry.” I clear my throat. “I’m supposed to meet a Bo Porter here, and uh”—I dig my nails farther into the chair as his charcoal eyes turn even more intense—“but maybe you’re not—”

“Peyton.”

I think I break my nail at that.

At his voice.

If my voice caused a reaction in him—and I’m not saying that it did—his voice makes my knees go weak. It’s all deep and scratchy. Like along with keeping him locked away, someone locked up his voice too. And this is the first time he’s spoken in the eight years since he got put away.

I try not to dwell too much on that. Or the fact that once again, his voice is nothing like I’d imagined. I imagined it to be deep but not bottomless deep, and I imagined it to be rough but not so gravelly rough.The more important point is that he is the right man after all.

He is my Bo.

Well, not my Bo, but still.

The confirmation doesn’t put me as much at ease as I’d hoped. Not only because of these conflicting feelings that I have about him but also because he said Peyton.

I throw him a jerky nod. “Y-yeah. Yes. Peyton. I’m… Peyton.”

I give him a shaky smile to make it look convincing before quickly looking away and taking a seat at the table.

But then my gaze lands on something, and my heart that was already pounding in my chest speeds up even more.

There’s a teapot and a cup sitting in front of me, presumably for the person he was waiting for: me.

Along with a muffin.

More than the tea, that muffin does it for me.

It makes my pounding heart squeeze and my voice go wobbly. “Is that…? That’s tea.” I don’t wait for him to reply before saying, “And that’s… that’s a strawberry crumb muffin. It is, isn’t it?” I swallow thickly, still staring at it. “It’s so hard to find. It’s… I told you that.”

Finally, I look up.

Only to find he’s gone rigid. Which, if I’m being honest, isn’t all that different from how he’s been all this time, spine straight, shoulders back, his eyes alert. But now I notice the muscle in his cheek beating like a heart.

Almost like my heart.

I’m not sure what it means, though.

I’m not sure what any of this means, him ordering me tea because I told him I like it better than coffee and that if I can find a strawberry crumb muffin at a café, then that’s the only thing I’ll eat because they usually have the apple crumb but very rarely the strawberry crumb.

Except that my heart is racing and there’s a mad rush in my veins.

“In my letters. I told you what I like to order and… and you…” I fist my hands in my lap. “How did you know I’d even show up?”

Because I never said yes.

Three weeks ago, he sent me a letter saying that he was getting out and that he’d like to meet me here. But I never replied. I didn’t know what to say when seeing each other wasn’t ever in the cards. I mean, he’s the man I met through the prison pen pal system.

Prison.

Our lives were separated by metal bars, and up until this morning, I had all the plans of never having them merge. Of forgetting about him and being smart. Like I always am about everything.

But here I am.

“I didn’t,” he says back, his gaze just as steady and analyzing as ever.

Fuck, his voice.

It’s a truth serum. Has to be. Because words spill out of me without my own volition. “I’m sorry about that. For not writing back. I just… I got scared.”

“Not enough.”

“What?”

“To stay away.”

Again, I can’t read his tone.

I can’t read him, period. But maybe I’m not supposed to. Not yet.

Even though we’ve known each other on paper, this is our first meeting. So maybe it’s supposed to go like this. Maybe he’s supposed to be all aloof and dark, wrong-looking—no, just different than what I’d imagined—and make me shiver and shake.

Maybe his dark and not-blue eyes are supposed to feel like a branding iron.

“I wanted to see you,” I say. “I couldn’t…”

His voice goes even lower, if that’s possible. “You couldn’t what?”

My belly trembles in response. “Stop myself.”

And in turn, the muscle in his cheek jumps.

Clearing my throat, I continue, “I hated the idea of you just sitting here, waiting for me to show up and I… I couldn’t take that. Not after everything we’ve shared and—”

“Get up.”

“What?”

“Get up,” he repeats on a deep growl. “And leave.”

I draw back. “I-I’m sorry. Did I—”

He leans forward a little, his eyes fiery.

It happened in an instant, too, the charcoal going up in flames. As if there’s a fire inside of him and it’s raging.

God, he looks so intimidating like this.

That’s what it is, isn’t it?

That’s why he looks so wrong and different and whatnot.

It’s the fact that he appears threatening, sitting here, with his large and muscular body and a brutally beautiful face. All this time that I talked to him in letters, he never felt dangerous. Even though I knew the man I was corresponding with was a convicted felon, I never once felt afraid.

I do now.

“Get the fuck up and go.”

I flinch. “But I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to.”

My hands begin to tremble. “I—”

“This was a mistake.”

This time, I go still. “Mistake?”

His nostrils flare, his face cruel. “Yeah. So what you need to do is listen to me and leave.” He growls again when I don’t move, “Now.”

“Is it…” I twist my fists in my lap as my cheeks burn and burn and burn. But not enough to stop me from asking, “Did you picture someone d-different? Than me.”

Because if I was picturing him in my head all this time, he was probably picturing me too. While I found him different from my imagination, he probably found me different too.

And different, when it comes to me, is the code word for lacking.

Guys usually don’t find me or my body very appealing. A body made of pasty flesh and jiggly curves. A body less than perfect.

So maybe I should listen to him and leave.

But again, instead of doing the smart thing, I sit there and let him peruse me.

At my question, his burning stare moves to my blond hair, which is in a braid that falls to my waist. A few loose tendrils caress the base of my throat where I can feel my pulse fluttering under his gaze.

He takes in my trembling chest, the wide square neck of the dress he asked me to wear exposing more than I’d like.

He stays there for a bit before coming back up to my face.

But when it’s over, his perusal, it feels like it went too fast. Like he was taking me in only to dismiss me more than to study me.

“Yes.”

So there it is then. His only answer harsh and curt.

Like me, he had pictured someone different.

Except he still made my heart race with both ecstasy and apprehension. While I probably repelled him.

So, at long last, after six months and within two minutes of meeting the man I dream about every night, I force myself to be smart and do as he says.

I get up, the scrape of the chair dragging against the floor sounding louder than the noises of this crowded café.

Feeling weak and dejected—completely opposite of what I felt when I walked in—I walk out.

And promise—God, I promise—to forget about Bo Porter.