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Chapter 1
Rowan
"Ace, you don't bring the trash you fuck home," I admonished my brother.
The woman Ace had introduced as his girlfriend, after knowing her for eight weeks in London, had a British accent, was stunningly beautiful, was suave and sophisticated, and a bona fide gold digger.
Women saw the Ledger last name and saw dollar signs. She wasn't the first; she probably wouldn't be the last.
What shocked me was that Ace had had the nerve to bring her to the Ledger Ranch, where he knew neither his mother nor I would accept her.
Before he left for London for a course in economics at the London School of Business, he'd ended a five-year relationship with his high school sweetheart, Caitlyn Mason, who my stepmother wholeheartedly approved of, but I thought Caitlyn was vapid and spoilt. Her father owned a nearby ranch that wasn't as big or profitable as ours, but they were certainly well off.
The Masons had been as excited as my stepmother about Ace and Caitlyn being a couple. I was glad that Ace wanted to marry Caitlyn, so there would be an heir to the Ledger legacy. Eight years older than Ace's twenty-one, I wasn't interested in marriage. I'd seen what it did to people. My father and his second wife, Ace's mother, had had a dismal marriage that made neither of them happy. He remained sour about that until he died, and Deb continued to be bitter to this day.
The problem had been incompatibility, as my father was a third-generation rancher and his new wife a fifth-generation New York socialite, whose family had fallen on hard times. He fell in lust, she fell in love with a pot of money, and after a whirlwind romance, they married. Within six months, she was pregnant. A year later, she hated Montana, the ranch, and my father, and not in that order.
I disliked my stepmother, but I'd been devoted to Ace since he'd come into the world. He was the apple of his mother's eye. He was also a lot like her. He liked the big city flash and had decided that he'd be involved in the business end of ranching, and leave the actual ranching to me. The truth was, Ace was lazy and didn't work very hard at anything. I didn't mind. As he grew older, I was certain he'd make something out of his life.
I'd been happy to see him apply himself when he went to London. But then he came back with a fucking starry-eyed girl, pissing us all off.
Isha George was twenty-one and breathtakingly beautiful. I had no doubt she traded on that. She had little money, which was easy to see in the clothes she wore. Ace had mentioned she had no family and had grown up in an orphanage.
"She's naïve about a lot of things," Ace told me enigmatically.
Yeah, sure! She had somehow managed to be in Montana eight weeks after meeting my brother—that required some skill. She probably gave good head, considering those plump lips of hers.
"You're out of your mind. Is her pussy that amazing that you brought her home?"
"Rowan, don't talk like that, bro."
"She's hot, and I'm sure a good lay, but—"
"Cut it out," he groaned. "She's a nice girl. Okay? She's had a hard life."
"And does she want you to make her life easy for her?" I taunted.
"So, what if she does?"
"Christ, Ace, tell me you're not that stupid? And please tell me you're wrapping it up when you fuck her. She gets pregnant, honest to God, it's goin' to be a clusterfuck."
"Mind your own business, Ro." Ace slammed the door leading out to the wraparound porch on his way out.
We'd been in the living room as I tried to talk to him to assess the damage he'd already done. Was the bitch already pregnant?
Ace's mother came into the living room, a sneer on her face. "Did you talk to him?"
“Yeah."
"What did he say?"
"He asked me to mind my own business."
"How could he do this to Caitlyn?" Deb muttered. "I'm very disappointed, Rowan."
"Then talk to him, not me. I'm not the one who dragged some two-bit slut with a British accent home to meet the family."
"She's so stiff and cold. How does he find her interesting after Caitlyn?"
