Free Branding the Virgin by Alexa Riley Page A

him with someone else and came up with nothing. I’d read article after article on his bull-riding days and never was a woman mentioned or pictured with him. He had a hard look on his very handsome face, so I’m not sure I’d want to stand next to him and pose for a picture either.
    It was hard to see his face in a lot of pictures with the cowboy hat, but I could always see the grim line of his mouth and hard jaw. It always seemed locked in place. You’d think if you just won some big competition you’d at least smile or something. Nope. Not him. Picture after picture he still had that hard, locked jaw. Almost like he couldn't talk. He’s scary and intimidating. I don’t know how I’m going to tell him about this baby.
    Worse is thinking maybe he does want to be in this baby’s life and he’ll be cold and hard to my little boy. I’d grown up with a father like that and it wasn't easy. Even to this day I can’t say whether or not he loved me. Did he take care of me? Yes. But I feel more like he put up with me because he had to. It didn’t matter if I was there or not.
    I think I would rather him at least be angry or something. The indifference and coldness left me empty and numb.
    What I did find during my internet search was a job opening on his ranch. Someone to help around the house for the summer and do some of the books. I could get an up-close look at the father of my child before I had to tell him the truth.
    “Ma’am, I think that’s everything.” I look up at one of the movers who’s been packing up my stuff to put into storage. I take the clipboard he’s holding out and sign on the dotted line. He hands me the key to the storage unit they’d put it all in.
    My hand closes around the key that holds almost everything I own except two suitcases I have packed away in the trunk of my car. Even the stuff for the baby room I’d started to put together has been packed away in here. I hold back a tear, not wanting to make this poor man uncomfortable.
    “Thank you,” I tell him, handing back the clipboard.
    He nods before turning to leave.
    I stand in my empty house. The place where I thought I’d be raising my son. A home that would have been filled with so much love. He’d never feel the coldness like I had.
    Even without the donor mix-up I would have been leaving anyway. I’d moved to this little town because I wanted to get away from the big city. I dreamed of living somewhere where everyone knew everyone. I wanted to have a family in a place like this.
    Problem was, I couldn’t find anyone I wanted to have a family with.

2
Ty
    I toss the rope into the back of my truck and head for the house. I’ve got a new mare that just won’t break and I’m about out of options with her. Stallions and bulls, I can handle, but give me a stubborn female horse and I might as well hang up my saddle. It was a mix-up, and I’m trying to make the best of it. I wanted a new horse for the ranch and I made a deal with another rancher a few hours away to buy his foal in the spring. He’d promised me a stud, but when a mare popped out, he told me I could take it or wait another two years. I didn’t have much of a choice and agreed.
    My home, the Branding Ranch, is located in south Texas. I retired on this piece of land right after I won my last rodeo championship. I was in it to make enough money to buy myself some cattle and got out. It’s a hard life working rodeos, and a dangerous one at that. I was lucky enough to walk away with my nuts intact, but even I got close with that one.
    My last ride was on Hercules, the circuit’s biggest and meanest bull. He threw me off just after I set my eight-second record, and stomped right on my boys. They rushed me to the closest hospital and I had to stay there for a week. They had to take sperm samples from me, because I couldn’t get hard to ejaculate. I haven’t been able to get hard since before the accident. I thought I’d lost my dick that day, and though it’s