New Release and Giveaway! BRANDED AS TROUBLE by Delores Fossen (A Wrangler’s Creek novel)

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 aunt, 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?

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Excerpt:

Mila Banchini knew there were few advantages to being a virgin over the age of thirty. Especially not in a small ranching town like Wrangler’s Creek.

One of those nonadvantages was waiting for her when she stepped outside her bookstore to close up for the day.

Ian Busby.

He was in his early twenties, as skinny as a zipper, and his pinched, flushed face reminded her of a rooster. He also had horny written all over him. Literally. Well, it was printed on his T-shirt, anyway.

Me So Horny was emblazoned above a picture of a rhino.

She doubted the shirt was a bad gift from a friend. Or that he’d lost a bet and been forced to wear it. No, he’d probably picked it out himself and was proud of not only the sentiment but also the butchered grammar.

Mila didn’t acknowledge he was there. She locked up and started walking home. Normally, she drove the quarter of a mile or so to her house, but the spring weather had been so nice that morning that she’d de­cided to walk. Bad idea. Because now she had to walk back, and with each step Ian was trailing along be­side her.

“Did you give any more thought to going out with me?” Ian asked.

“No. Because I told you when you asked that it wasn’t going to happen.” She didn’t try to sound even remotely pleasant because Mila had learned the hard way that pleasantness only encouraged Ian and the rest of his brothers. Of course, ignoring them seemed to en­courage them, as well. Her breathing did, too.

The Busby boys, and apparently every other eligible male in town, were on some kind of quest to rid her of her virginal condition. Maybe because they thought that since she was thirty-one she was desperate. And that she had therefore lowered her standards to rock bottom.

She hadn’t.

Just the opposite. It was those high standards that had left her in this condition in the first place, and if she were to loosen those standards, it wouldn’t be with somebody like Ian.

“But I really like you,” he went on. “And you’re one of the prettiest women in town.”

If that was true, which it wasn’t, then she could have pointed out then that her beauty gave her far better op­tions than his gene pool. The Busby brothers’ claims to fame were cow-tipping, peeing on electric fences and wearing T-shirts with horny written on them.

“I won’t go out with you,” Mila stated, and kept walking. She couldn’t get home fast enough. Then she could change into yoga pants and watch one of her fa­vorite movies. She was in a Titanic sort of mood, but she only watched the romantic parts.

Ah, Jack.

Now, why hadn’t he survived, moved to Wrangler’s Creek and frozen time so she could meet him?

Of course, time had frozen in a different kind of way. Not just because it was taking forever for her to get home, but because she was walking down Main Street, which looked almost identical to the way it had over three decades ago when Mila was born. No big-box stores here. In fact, no chain stores of any kind. This was the mom-and-pop business model where everybody knew everybody and bought local as much as pos­sible. That was good for her bookstore, but there were times when Mila dreamed about ditching everything and starting fresh.

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