Branded

By Emma Petersen

They'd always been there for each other, until a moment of comfort turned into something neither of them were prepared for.

Five years later tragedy has brought Jenny Gardner back home to Parsons' Pass and the man she walked away from.

Jenny's ready to face the past, forgive, forget and let go. Too bad Tyson isn't. He had done the honorable thing yet Jenny walked away. And now she's back and expects him to pretend nothing happened between them. Tyson can't do that, just like he can't deny himself the one thing he has always wanted.

Jenny.

Tragedy has brought them together again. But it's the past that may keep them apart.

Warning, this title contains the following: Explicit sex, Graphic language and Sexy barn loving with absolutely no animals involved. Seriously, its not THAT kind of book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emma Petersen
• Release date: Mar 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452469522

Emma Petersen

Emma Petersen wrote her first romance in high school after falling in love with historical romances and has been writing ever since. She lives in sunny California with a cool cat named Toussaint and is working through an addiction to shoes and internet porn.

Book preview

Branded

Emma Petersen

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Emma Petersen on Smashwords

Branded

Copyright © 2006 Emma Petersen

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Dedication

For Sable Grey, Deanna Lee and Cobblestone Press for giving Branded its first home and for Brandi Loyd, my very first editor. You never forget your firsts.

Branded

Prologue

The house was finally empty. Big Ty’s city relations had beat a hasty retreat back to their gated communities and mini mansions. The will had been read, and his only son had stayed silent throughout the entire ordeal, not really caring who got what or why.

Tyson Parsons, Jr. loved his father and, over the years, they’d become close. The first couple days after he arrived at the ranch following his mother’s death, he’d hated his father and what he’d done to his mother. His mother had never said a bad word against Big Ty, but he knew the story behind his birth. How his incredibly wealthy father had chosen to abandon his pregnant mother rather than risk being disinherited.

If his mother had had her way, he never would’ve learned the truth behind the circumstances of his birth. He found out accidentally when he overheard her brothers talking about how his mother had come home to Standing Ridge heartbroken, pregnant, and alone—how she refused to name the father of her child. The only thing her brothers knew about the man was she’d met him in Parsons’ Pass, where she’d been working as a substitute teacher.

Ty’s heart broke at the news. From the time he was old enough to remember, his mother had told him stories about his handsome father who’d died before he was born. The day after overhearing his uncles and, despite the feeling in the pit in his stomach, Ty asked his mother for the truth. And she gave it to him, holding him while he cried.

Ty had sworn he’d never forgive the man who fathered him. But here he was, more than twenty years later, mourning the man he’d sworn to hate.

He had spent more than half his life in the huge house that set at the foot of Parsons’ Pass. He’d laughed and cried in the house, and it had never been so silent. Memories filled him as he went room-to-room closing doors and shutting off lights. He remembered the lamp he’d knocked over racing to watch a ranch hand break in a new horse. It had been his second day at the ranch, and he thought the huge blond man with the cold blue eyes would punish him for his carelessness. Instead, his father had picked up the lamp’s mate and tossed it to the floor, saying he had always hated the lamps anyway.

Now, as he opened the door to his father’s study, he thought about his wedding, which was scheduled for less than a month away. When he spoke with Shanna earlier, he asked if they could postpone it, since a wedding should be a celebration and he didn’t feel much like celebrating. He backed down when she’d thrown one of her increasingly familiar temper tantrums, and he remained unsettled as he recalled how her tone changed when she found out Big Ty left him everything. The house, the ranch, the land, and some property in a few cities he hadn’t been aware his father owned. The uneasy feeling grew when she promised to cut the shopping trip with her mother short and fly back to be with him. The night he called to tell her his father had died, she hadn’t volunteered to return early;