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Chapter One

One Year Later

Brenna stood silently, alone in the hanger of the small, private landing strip. The pilot had been taciturn and too quiet on the flight from New York. He’d insisted he’d been hired to fly her outside the small Texas town of Samuels Creek, not to entertain her during the flight.

He had to be a close friend of her stepbrother Jase, she thought. Her and Jase’s relationship hadn’t been the best in the past nine months, she had to admit. And there were too many people who were aware of that fact. Somehow—and she knew it hadn’t been her or Jase, though she was the one accused of it—word had leaked of the reason for the conflict between them.

Those who knew the terms of Poppa Jason’s will hadn’t been at all pleased. Even those who knew her felt she should have released the portion of the sizeable ranch her stepfather had left her and simply faded from Jase’s life.

It wasn’t something she could do—even if she wanted to. There were times she wished she could. There had been times she might have even done so if it were possible. There were terms of the will that Jase and his friends were unaware of though. Terms that even Brenna wasn’t completely clear on.

The one thing she was clear on, though, was that the man who had protected her, loved her and cared for her after her mother’s death, had made one request of her. He’d asked one favor, and she couldn’t find it within herself to refuse him, despite her confusion over it. That under no circumstances, no matter Jase’s anger or possibly his hatred, could she turn back if she agreed.

Her part of the stipulation was a gag order that she was prohibited from telling Jase about any part of the will he was unaware of. Terms the lawyer, a personal friend of her stepfather’s, had assured her he would see were upheld for the same reason she had agreed to it. Because they both had loved Poppa Jason.

There were repercussions if Brenna told Jase the terms of the will as well, but even those repercussions hadn’t mattered as much as the fact that she couldn’t repay Poppa Jason by saying no. The will stated she would not only lose her portion of the ranch, which wasn’t so bad, but it would then be sold rather than given back to Jase. And added to that were the stipulations that if Brenna did tell, then the college tuition, apartment expenses and the car Poppa Jason had bought her just before his death would all be repossessed.

She could have handled that, but she couldn’t bear the thought of Jase losing the ranch. It would kill him, she knew it would.

She couldn’t sign the ranch over to him for a period of one full year either. And before she could sign it over, she had to stay at the ranch, in the main house with Jase, for a period of three months. That meant no overnight shopping trips, no overnight parties. It meant she had to live with Jase. Under the same roof. Facing his ire and possibly even his hatred every single day of those three months.

The lawyer had assured her that Poppa Jason had others watching to ensure the will was enforced, as well. That Jason Samuels the fourth had made certain she couldn’t deceive his wishes or the lawyer hired to enforce them.

That had been the information she had been given before the formal reading of the will where Jase had learned that Brenna supposedly inherited forty percent of the ranch, property and holdings that he’d worked his entire life to inherit.

Brenna had been forced to sit silently as the man she adored since childhood stared at her as though she were a traitor. Dark, icy eyes had glittered with anger, and that look hadn’t changed in the nine months since the will had been read. Every time she had seen him, he’d acted as though she didn’t exist, except for that look of dislike.

He had acted as though those few, so-precious-to-her minutes hadn’t existed the night of his birthday. That memory was still relived every night in her dreams, every day in her memories. The feel of his kiss, his touch, the exquisite ecstasy she had found when she had climaxed for the first time in his arms. What had happened seconds later, she tried desperately not to think about.

Staring around the hanger again, she sighed morosely.

There wasn’t even a chair for her to sit on. Not that she should have expected one. The hanger and the landing strip belonged to a friend of Jase’s. A corporate CEO, Ron Harold, who owned a lake house close to the Arrow S ranch Jase’s family had owned for generations.

They had probably taken the chair out of the hanger, or hidden it, just for her arrival.

Her bags sat at the wide, open entrance, the sunlight pouring through, baking the leather and her. The summer sun beat into the hanger with a fierce, blazing heat that only this time of the year brought. July wasn’t exactly the kindest month of the season in Texas.

Perspiration gathered and dampened her skin as she waited, the heels she wore had her ankles aching as she moved back to her bags, pushed one to its side and sat down. At least the heavy luggage had its uses sometimes, other than simply being large enough to carry the majority of what she needed for this trip.

Three months. Did she really think she could bear Jase’s hatred for three long months? Long enough to ensure she could sign over the ranch and just be finished with it? To be finished with the only family she’d ever had and the man she loved?

Perhaps she could have secretly told him about the will and gained his cooperation until the deadline ended, but he just pissed her off. It wasn’t fair that he treated her as though she were a stranger, an interloper simply because his father had him convinced that he had cared enough about his stepdaughter to leave her a small portion of the ranch to ensure her security.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so small.

Forty percent was a rather large portion, but it wasn’t as though it were forty percent of the profit whenever she wanted it.

She didn’t actually receive anything from that forty percent except her college tuition and the allowance Poppa Jason had set aside for her when she first began college.

She couldn’t collect a penny until she was thirty and showed that she could support herself. Only then could she draw yet another allowance. At no time was that percentage an actual money amount, because of the operating capital needed to run the ranch and the fact that Poppa Jason would have never actually given away any part of the property.

What the forty percent would eventually amount to was no more than a basic security net. The language of the final will, which only the lawyer and Brenna seemed to be aware of, was that in four years’ time, another reading of the final will would take place that would make everything much clearer to both Jason as well as to Brenna.

That final will, as the lawyer explained, laid out the reasons why Poppa Jason had set up his wishes as he had and would then attempt to rectify whatever problems the original will had caused between Brenna and Jase.

She had a feeling there was no rectifying anything in four years or forty. Brenna had destroyed that relationship months before Poppa Jason had died. She had destroyed it so effectively that the few times she had returned to the ranch, Jase had ensured he was rarely around.

She had lived at the ranch since her mother married Poppa Jason, fourteen years before. A week before their sixth anniversary, her mother, Lillian, had died in a car accident when a drunk driver had crossed the median and crashed headlong into her little sports car while she had been in Houston.

Her mother was buried on the Arrow S ranch. Her marker was placed in a manner that allowed Jason Samuels the fourth to rest between what he called his two favorite women. Jase’s mother and Brenna’s.

The love of his youth, and the love of his old age, he’d once said.

And Brenna, he had always claimed, was the daughter he’d never had. He had taken care of her, spoiled her, laughed with her. He taught her the Samuels’ history from the first Jason Samuels, nearly two hundred years before, who had married a Cheyenne princess to ensure peace with the Native Americans, to his father who had married an English lord’s daughter, whose inheritance ensured the prosperity of the ranch.

Generations of Samuels’ men had worked the ranch, the land and the law to ensure the Arrow S remained a private, thriving business. A business with fingers that reached into so many different pies Brenna often wondered how Jase kept up with it all.

Breathing out wearily, she pulled her cell phone from her pack and once again called Jase’s number. She’d already called several times, after the pilot had deposited her there.

It went straight to voice mail once again, which meant his phone was turned off. Jase rarely turned his phone off.

“I know you’re still angry with me,” she said quietly. “But I’ve been here for hours, Jase, and it’s really hot. Please have someone pick me up.”

Disconnecting the call, she stared out of the building to the sun-baked expanse of ground and the landing strip beyond. Heat rose in waves from the asphalt and cracked the dirt around it. It encased the land like an oven, sucking the moisture from it and leaving nothing but dust in its wake.

The noonday sun was kicking in, and she knew the temperature would only rise. This summer had been the hottest on record for nearly a century, and it was just her luck that she was stuck beneath a tin roof in a metal building, for God only knew how long.

And she was tired of burning alive.

High heels came off.

Flipping the suitcase over to open it, she drew a pair of cutoffs and a camisole from inside.

The landing strip was deserted so she didn’t bother trying to find privacy to change. Stripping the skirt and silky, sleeveless blouse off, she dropped them into the opened luggage before removing her bra and redressing.

The cutoffs and tank were a hell of a lot cooler, and the strappy sandals were flat and a damn sight more comfortable.