Ruining the Rancher
Calle J. Brookes
Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C.
Contents
Also by Calle J. Brookes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Epilogue
Excerpt from Calle’s PNR Series
Also by Calle J. Brookes
Other Titles by Calle J. Brookes
Paranormal
DARDANOS Paranormal Romance
Live or Die
The Blood King
The Seer’s Strength
The Warrior’s Woman
The Healer’s Heart
Once Wolf Bitten
Awakening the Demon’s Queen
The Wolf’s Redemption
The Wolf God & His Mate
God of Nightmares
DARDANOS: THE LAQUAZZEANA
A Warrior’s Quest
Out of the Darkness
Warrior Blind
The Witch
Balance of the Worlds
The Healer’s Soul
DARDANOS: THE ADRASTOS
The Outcast
The Forlorn
The Beloved
The Betrayed
Romantic Suspense
PAVAD: FBI ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
Beginning (Prequel 1)
Waiting (Prequel 2)
Watching
Wanting
Second Chances
Hunting
Running
Redeeming
Revealing
Stalking
Ghosting
Burning
Gathering
Falling
Hiding
Suspense/Thriller
PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0001
“Knocked Out”
PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0002
“Knocked Down”
PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0003
“Knocked Around”
FINLEY CREEK SERIES
TRILOGY ONE
Her Best Friend’s Keeper
Shelter from the Storm
The Price of Silence
TRILOGY TWO
If the Dark Wins
Wounds That Won’t Heal
MASTERSON COUNTY SERIES
Seeking the Sheriff
Discovering the Doctor
Ruining the Rancher
COMING SOON
As the Night Ends (Finley Creek Trilogy 2)
Seeking (PAVAD: FBI Romantic Suspense 15)
Denying the Devil (Masterson County)
Calle J. Brookes is first and foremost a fiction writer. She enjoys crafting paranormal romance and romantic suspense. She reads almost every genre except horror. She spends most of her time juggling family life and writing while reminding herself that she can’t spend all of her time in the worlds found within books. Calle J. loves to be contacted by her readers via email and at www.CalleJBrookes.com.
Calle has several free reads available at CalleJBrookesReads.com
For my grandfather, the best man I have ever known.
You will be missed.
Oct. 2015
For my grandmother, who gave me the courage to try. Without you and your love of romance, I never would have made it this far.
Feb. 2016
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Wounds That Won’t Heal
Calle J. Brookes
Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C.
Springs Valley, Indiana
Est. 2011
The Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C. name and imprint are the sole properties of independent publishers Calle J. Brookes and B.G. Lashbrooks. They cannot be reproduced or used in any manner; nor can any of their publications or designs be used without expressed written permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, or locations, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Copyright © 2017 Calle J. Brookes
Cover by Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C.
All rights reserved.
Wounds That Won’t Heal
Finley Creek
Book 5
FINLEY CREEK
BOOK 5
“O what to me my mother’s care,
The house where I was safe and warm;
The shadowy blossom of my hair
Will hide us from the bitter storm.”
-WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
1
There was a movie being made in Levi Masterson's front yard. And Levi’s sweet, innocent, beautiful, wonderful, devilishly stubborn, twenty-two-year-old housekeeper was dressed in a skimpy fairy witch costume. Parading around in front of at least three dozen people.
Distracting him from what he actually needed to be doing.
He didn't know what drove him more insane--the inconvenience of the movie crew, or the woman he had been wanting for months.
Levi watched as that damned film director Rowland Bowles, Hollywood’s favorite hotshot, ordered everyone around in Levi’s own front yard.
Including his older brother Matt, and sweet little sister-in-law.
Matt had been cast into the role of Clark’s best friend, a struggling rancher trying to make ends meet at the property next to the more thriving one where Gretta—played by Pip—had grown up. Matt was Gretta’s love interest.
Like Bowles would have ever been able to unwrap Matt and Pip long enough for another actor to take Matt’s place.
They were using Pip's father's homestead as Matt’s family ranch. Levi snorted at how that copied their real life. Pip was instrumental in running that ranch day to day, along with their father.
Everything was complicated and connected lately. Levi half-felt he wasn’t quite finding his way through.
Es
pecially with her.
Almost from the moment he had met Pip's youngest sister Pandora, he had known what he wanted. What was supposed to be, even. Levi was like that; when he knew what direction his life was going to take he went after it full throttle.
Until he had what he wanted. Needed.
Unfortunately, Pandora wasn't cooperating
No matter what Levi did, that girl just didn't seem to get the message that he was interested.
Levi was fast becoming the joke of their entire family.
Well, next to his brother Nate, anyway. Nate and Pip's identical twin sister Perci jointly held that title. The two of them fought and bickered constantly. Levi suspected it was because of the obvious and intense attraction between the two of them. They practically caught the room on fire the moment they entered. He wished he could say the same thing about him and Pan.
They could. If she would just stop being
It was too far-fetched, too crazy to even contemplate that their eldest brother Joel would fall for Phoebe Tyler. Shortly after, Matt went head over heels for Pip, Phoebe’s younger sister. Nate and Perci seemed made for each other—and then there was Levi and Pandora.
Four brothers, four sisters. Crazy, far-fetched. Not really all that possible. But it had happened—or it would, if Pan ever caught on. And Nate stopped fighting Perci.
No wonder the entire town was talking.
It was no wonder some of his own friends had threatened to kick his ass for taking the last Tyler sister off the market—everyone just assumed Nate and Perci were inevitable.
Well, what was a man supposed to do? They lived in Masterson County, where attractive women—women in general—were outnumbered almost three to one. Pandora was the most gorgeous woman in the entire county. Gorgeous, sweet, loyal, brave, hard-working, beautiful, gorgeous, gorgeous, beautiful, wonderful. Perfect for him.
It might have been a mistake to tell his buddies to keep their paws off of her at a county dance once, but how was he to know the woman would hold a grudge for more than six weeks? All through Pip’s, Perci’s, and Matt’s recuperation after the barn had burned and they'd all been injured, after Pip and Matt's wedding, after all of that, you would think the woman would've forgiven him by now.
She still continued to question him about why he would do such a thing. She alternated between that and ignoring him, or treating him like a slightly stupid younger brother.
Dammit, Levi was tired of her looking at him like a brother. He was also tired of that idiot director Bowles putting his hands on her.
Something had to change, and soon. Before he went totally bonkers, gave his share of his ranch to his brothers, and moved to Australia to raise crocodiles or something. Or maybe head to Antarctica. Maybe that would put enough distance between him and the woman who invaded his dreams at night.
2
Pandora Tyler knew Levi was watching her from the window. He kind of stuck out around here. Taller than many of the men crowding onto the ranch now, stronger, broader, less polished—Levi would stand out wherever he was. He might have thought that he was hidden, but he wasn't. She could have told him that.
If she wasn't getting such a kick out of upsetting him, she would have.
Levi, the biggest player in Masterson County, deserved everything he got.
She’d finally figured him out.
The entire reason he’d hired her as his housekeeper wasn’t because she had worked her tail off to build a cleaning business in Masterson like she had originally thought. Taken pride in.
It wasn’t that at all.
Nope; that jerk wanted her at his place where he could seduce her. Levi had planned it out, plotted all of it. Schemed from the very beginning. Gotten her right where he wanted her.
Except for one thing.
Tylers were not easily seduced. Every choice they made was because they believed in it. Even her older sisters Pip and Phoebe—who had fallen for two of the nicer Masterson brothers—had done so out of choice.
If Levi thought Pan was an easy mark simply because she was a Tyler and young and living on his ranch, well he had another thought coming. Someone called her name and Pan spun, the gossamer dress she wore shimmering out behind her.
She had to admit she was having a blast playing a fairy in a Rowland Bowles’ movie. A Rowland Bowles’ movie, of all things. Six months ago, she never would've imagined it. But she, all three of her sisters, and all four of her brothers had parts. As did all four of her female cousins. She and Nikki even had major roles. Well, semi-major roles. The biggest supporting roles had gone to the twins. They played royal fairy twins who had been separated at birth to protect them. Pip was Gretta. It was perfectly suited for her painfully quiet and shy sister. Perci played the fiery new fairy queen who was in search of her missing sister.
But it was little Parker who had surprised them all with how well he had taken to acting. He was doing so well that Rowland Bowles had modified Parker's part to be a larger piece of the entire movie. He had done the same to Pan, though she hadn't wanted him to.
While she was enjoying herself, and she thought most of her siblings were as well, acting was not something Pan ever intended to do again.
The only reason why she'd agreed to do it in the first place was because of the cold hard cash. Rowland Bowles paid very well, and with every one of her siblings in the movie, and their family homestead being used as the location, they were going to make just enough money to be able to finally pay off the massive amount of medical bills that had hovered over their heads since her mother's death almost two-and-a-half years ago. They needed that cash to fix everything.
Pan was in charge of the family finances, and she had spent those last two years sick with worry over where the money was going to come from. The scheming and the worrying and the fear was finally almost over.
And then she’d be able to get on with her life.
Pan wasn’t about to let that life be tied to a man ten years older than she was and rooted in Masterson County, Wyoming.
Not that Pan wanted to leave her hometown. She just wanted to explore all of her options first. Before considering a man like Levi. She had goals. And for the first time in two years, a way to achieve them.
Levi could derail all of that.
She’d scrimped and saved to even take a few business classes online, and if the college hadn’t offered some minimum financial aid she wouldn’t have been able to afford it at all.
She’d finished those classes a few weeks ago. Now it was time to take that knowledge and apply it. Somehow.
Not that it was all that easy to use business skills scrubbing Levi Masterson’s kitchen floor and folding his underwear.
That it was now her oldest sister’s floor didn’t really matter in the scheme of things.
Levi had hired her to do a job and she did it to the best of her ability.
But the jerk had also hired her under false, nefarious, male circumstances. She was going to teach him a lesson about that.
As soon as she figured out how.
“Pandora, my sweet sexy little fairy, I need you right here.” The director stepped up behind her. Bowles was a touchy idiot, that was for sure. He put his hands on her hips and moved her into position for the next shot.
Good thing Pan was flexible. But it was close. The guy expected too much; she wasn’t a contortionist.
Nor was there anything sexual in his hands on her hips. The instant she’d signed the contract with his company—and her siblings had done the same—he turned into a ruthless professional.
The man was good at what he did, and that was entertaining the masses.
Pan would never forget this experience.
She said her lines and knew she nailed it when Rowland crowed his pleasure. Then it was Parker’s turn and her smallest brother, dressed in a fairy archer’s costume, ran across the scene with panic in his movements. Just like he should have. Just like they’d rehearsed.
“They are coming! You must run!” he
said, frantically. “You must go. Take this.” He thrust the prop into her hand, then turned. The camera focused on her then, and Parker hurried out of the way, another camera capturing his movements.
He was enjoying himself, and wasn’t quite old enough to feel all the nerves that Pan was feeling. She was enjoying this gig, but it wasn’t easy.
The money was good. And that mattered.
And that money was going to buy her family’s freedom. Get her brothers a better chance at a future than she and her three sisters had had.
That was Pan’s ultimate goal. To see to it that her little brothers were free to achieve their dreams.
The way she, Perci, Phoebe, and Pip hadn’t been able to.
3