Renegade: A Taggart Brothers Novel by Lisa Bingham

told me to give you this.” His face screwed up into a caricature of concentration as he tried to remember Prairie Dawn’s exact words. “She said, ‘Tell him not to bother with his own nasty cooking. And don’t you dare spend a blessed . . .’” Barry paused to think. “‘. . . a blessed minute of this ideal doing ranch burps or pest reports.’” Barry’s eyes blinked in rapid succession, his lips twisting into a frown. “I don’t know what that means. And who’s Ed?”
    It took a few seconds, but then, as if he could hear P.D. herself scolding him, Jace understood.
And don’t you dare spend a blessed minute of your idyll doing ranch books or pesticide reports.
    Jace’s lips twitched, but rather than answering Barry directly, he decided to have some fun and said, “I’m not sure who Ed is. Why don’t you ask Elam?”
    “Oh-
kay
!”
    Without taking a breath, Barry whirled and thunderedback the way he’d come. But he must have gone only midway down the staircase before he turned around and came running back again. Jace barely had time to brace himself before Barry wrapped his arms around his waist and squeezed him with the unrestrained force of a sixteen-year-old boy who didn’t know his own strength.
    “Love you, Jace,” Barry said. Then, he raced back down the stairs and out the front door, slamming the screen behind him.
    Jace stood rooted to the spot, his chest seeming several sizes too small.
    Shit, shit, shit.
    In that display of uninhibited affection, his brother had once again wrapped Jace around his finger, and all the “coulda, woulda, shouldas” turned to ashes on his tongue.
    Turning his back on the staircase to the attic and past choices that still haunted him, Jace followed Barry’s path much more slowly. The scent of pizza and garlic wafted up from the sack—homey and comforting. Some borrowed affection.
    That would have to be enough.
    Jace had knowingly charted his current course when his brother had reached toward him from a hospital bed, his cheeks streaked with tears.
    “Wait for me, Jace! Please wait for me!”
    Jace had made his brother a promise all those years ago. Since then, he’d tried his best to keep it. So what if his future had veered away from the path he’d originally planned? He’d built a career and a life for himself that he could be proud of.
    He was happy enough. He
had
to be happy enough.
    Because there was no turning back now.
    *   *   *
    BRONTE woke to sunlight streaming through lacy Priscilla curtains, flowered wallpaper . . . and the smell of bacon.
    Bacon.
    She couldn’t remember the last time she’d awakened to that heady scent. A year into her marriage, Phillip hadgrown rabid in his attempts to best his own marathon scores. He’d insisted on lean, center-cut bacon at first, then turkey bacon, then no bacon at all, merely a tofu bacon-flavored substitute with the consistency of overcooked liver.
    She couldn’t abide liver.
    She couldn’t abide tofu.
    But that hadn’t seemed to matter to Phillip. Just as, a few years later, the marathon scores would drop by the wayside as well.
    “That man is here again.”
    Bronte started, twisting on the bed to find Kari looming over her like one of those vultures in a Snoopy cartoon. Her daughter must have retrieved her bag because Kari’s hair was carefully arranged and her makeup firmly in place. She was wearing her favorite tight jeans and at least three layers of shirts. Obviously, she hadn’t figured out yet that the chances of her meeting anyone she could impress with her efforts were slim.
    “You look nice,” Bronte said, her voice still thick with sleep.
    If Kari heard the compliment, she gave no indication.
    “Grandma doesn’t have Wi-Fi,” she said, disbelief coating every word.
    “I wouldn’t imagine that she would,” Bronte mumbled in return. If Annie refused to buy presliced bread, Bronte doubted her grandmother had an iPad stashed away somewhere.
    Kari stamped her foot