Free Boots and The Rogue: Ugly Stick Saloon, Book 10 by Myla Jackson

been happy about that, she was left with an emptiness in her chest, and she lost her appetite for the wonderful chicken cooked by the best chef in Temptation.

Chapter Six
    Brody floored the accelerator all the way back to the ranch and didn’t stop there.
    Angus was out hooking up mares to the exercise walker when Brody opened the gate, drove through and closed it behind him. He didn’t want to stop and chat with his older brother. He had nothing to say. Fancy was back in town and Colin had already sniffed her out.
    Not until he’d reached the cabin did Brody stop and analyze how he’d felt when he walked into that diner.
    His first reaction had been the swell of excitement at catching Jessie in town, followed by a sharp stab of jealousy when he’d seen Colin had beat him to her.
    When Fancy came into view, the old anger and resentment resurfaced like heated lava through a narrow vent. Had Colin decided he wanted both women? Was it his way of taking away anything Brody might want?
    As he climbed down from his SUV, he paused. Fancy had been even more beautiful than he remembered from the last time he’d seen her eight years ago. But it was Jessie he thought of now. Her tall, lithe figure, the hay-colored, silky hair pulled back in a ponytail and the love she had for a horse so ugly Brody was surprised Angus allowed her to keep him in the barn alongside the prize mares of his breeding program.
    In the few short days he’d known her, Jessie, the cook who burned everything, had thrown a punch knocking him flat on his ass and wiggled her way into his conscious and subconscious thoughts. Though he’d made it his mission to avoid her, Brody managed to bump into her every time he turned around. And he found Jessie to be more real and desirable than a dozen Fancys.
    He grabbed the can of paint thinner from the sack on the back floorboard of his truck and hurried into the hunting cabin. Within minutes, he’d set up his easel outside in the sunshine, squirted globs of oil paint onto his palette and jabbed his paintbrush into the rich colors. Channeling all his frustration, he slashed paint onto a blank canvas in bold strokes. All the anger he’d felt over the eight years he’d been gone funneled through his fingers, through the brush and onto the canvas.
    For several hours, he focused on his work, ignoring everything else around him. When he touched the last dab of paint onto the picture, he let go of the tension and stepped back.
    “I didn’t realize you were so good,” a voice said over his shoulder.
    Angus stood a few feet behind him, holding the reins of a palomino mare.
    Brody stepped in front of the canvas to block his brother’s view of something so personal he’d never shared it with his family.
    “Please. Let me see.” Angus tied the mare’s reins to the hitching post in front of the cabin, stepped around Brody and stared at the painting of a brindle horse, rearing on a windblown, grassy knoll, storm clouds billowing in the background. In front of the horse stood a young woman with long, straight blonde hair, wearing jeans and cowboy boots, her back to the viewer, her arm raised as if to gentle the animal.
    As Brody really looked at the painting, he realized nowhere in the composition was Colin or Fancy.
    “You even made Scout look amazing.” Angus turned to Brody. “Is this what you’ve been doing in Seattle? Painting?”
    Still too wound up from the outpouring of emotion he invariably released into his work, Brody shook his head. “I’d rather you didn’t say anything to anyone else about this.”
    Angus’s brows knit and he glanced back at the painting. “It’s incredible. I feel like the horse could leap off the page, and Jessie… I can see why you don’t want to fire her. You’ve captured something I would feel but couldn’t put into words to describe.”
    “It’s just a picture.” Brody lifted the easel, painting and all, and carried it into the hunting cabin.
    His older brother