Branded as Trouble. Delores Fossen

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      “I wish you’d change your mind about going out with me,” Ian went on. “I got a real nice date planned. Friday is two-for-one corn dogs at the Longhorn Bar. Two-for-one beers, too, if we get there early enough. Then I could take you to that pretty spot out by the creek where we could look at UFOs.”

      She mentally stumbled over that last word. He probably thought he was being cute by not saying something expected like stars or moonlight on the water. Then again, UFO could be code for his penis. Maybe Uncovered F-ing Object or Unzipped Firehose Organ.

      Mila huffed. “I don’t eat corn dogs, don’t drink beer and I have a phobia about UFOs.”

      He nodded as if he got all of that. Which should have stopped him and caused him to turn around. It didn’t. He just kept on walking. Talking, too.

      “Say, you’re not still into that pretend stuff, are you?” he asked.

      Mila made sure she didn’t hesitate a step. In fact, she sped up. And she didn’t dignify his insult with an answer.

      “Because I heard about it,” Ian went on. “Somebody said you dress up like people in the movies. Like Dirty Dancing kind of dress up. But that you don’t do the nasty with any of those fellas, that you just do the dancing parts. Well, if you want, I could dress up like somebody from the movies and dance with you.”

      She wanted to say she had a phobia about dancing with him, but they both knew this wasn’t about dancing. It was about his wanting to get in her pants.

      “I don’t do that pretend stuff anymore,” she assured him.

      That was a lie. But she was taking a minibreak from it because the previous night’s enactment hadn’t played out so well. Apparently, her fantasy partner had a different interpretation of Buttercup and Wesley rolling down the hill. He thought it should involve clothing removal while he yelled, “As you wish.”

      “Guess you’re still hung up on Roman Granger, huh?” Ian asked several moments later.

      Mila hadn’t thought there was anything to get her to slow her lightning-fast pace, but that did it. “Roman?” she repeated as if that were impossible.

      Of course, Ian knew it was more than possible. Everyone in town did, just as they knew about her fantasy role-play. She’d had a crush on Roman since she was old enough to realize that boys and girls had different parts.

      Or “secret places” as her mother called them.

      And speaking of her mother, Mila saw Vita sitting on her front porch as she approached her house.

      “Oh, I gotta go,” Ian said. He pretended to check his watch, no doubt to make her believe that he had somewhere else to be.

      Which wasn’t that far off the mark.

      When it came to her mother, most people wanted to be anywhere else. Vita was the ultimate person-repellant, and while that had caused Mila plenty of problems in her life, she was thankful for it now because it sent Ian scurrying away.

      Vita wasn’t your ordinary mother. Nope. She had her freaky flag flying with her Bohemian clothes—a long brown shirt, peasant blouse and dozens of cheap bead necklaces and bracelets. When she walked, she sounded like a chained Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol.

      But it wasn’t just the clothes that made her odd. Vita claimed to come from a long line of Romanian fortune-tellers. Even though Mila had never met any of her kin, the story that Vita liked to tell was that her family had stowed away on a pirate ship from Romania when Vita was just a baby. Mila doubted the story, mainly because her mother was only in her fifties, and that mode of transportation probably wasn’t possible in modern times.

      Of course, there was nothing modern about her mother.

      Or normal.

      Vita did charms, exorcised spirits, blessed houses and read palms. Surprisingly, people paid her for those things, which only proved that some residents of Wrangler’s Creek weren’t normal, either. Even those people, though, thought her mother was weird.

      And that meant Mila was weird by genetic association.

      It didn’t matter that Mila owned her own business and never chanted, exorcised spirits or read palms. She would always be her mother’s daughter. It didn’t help, either, that Mila’s father had died in a car accident when she was just a kid, only five. He might have added some normalcy to her life if he were still alive.

      Or at least that’s what she liked to tell herself.

      It was just as possible that he would have only added another level of weirdness. After all, he’d married Vita.

      Still, Mila had some incredible memories of Frankie Michael Banchini. He’d done funny faces to make her laugh, had secretly eaten those much-hated Brussels sprouts that Vita had insisted on serving her. And he’d never turned her away when she wanted him to read her a story. Mila was certain that’s where her love of books had started, and being around them was a way of keeping her father close.

      She had loved him. Always would. And she loved her mother, too. Sometimes, though, Vita didn’t always make loving her that easy.

      “There’s an ill wind blowing,” her mother greeted her. She lifted her head, looked at the cloudless sky. There wasn’t so much as a wisp of a breeze. “Bad juju. That might help.”

      Vita tipped her head to a small white box on СКАЧАТЬ