Breaking Brent

Dedication

To my husband…who broke my heart and then made it whole again.

Prologue

“This is bullshit,” Peyton James muttered the curse under her breath and then scanned the cluttered and utterly claustrophobic confines of the office she had recently taken over. Leave it to her father and her brothers to have all the fun while she was stuck being the adult. This is what four years of college had gotten her? “I hate being a grownup.”

Giving over to a childish gesture, she flung the pencil she was holding across the room and laid her head on the scarred wooden top of the desk. It wasn’t even really a desk. It was a piece of plywood, stained a dark color, sitting on cinder blocks. Again, the work of the males in her family tree. She had only agreed to take the job at Big Jack’s Bar and Grill, her daddy’s business, because she liked being home, she could deal with the hours and she loved the money she made. It also helped that, in effect, she was her own boss. If she wanted to push paper, she could push paper. If she wanted to spend the night behind the bar watching all the action taking place, she could do just that.

Lately though, she had been shut inside the office more than she would have liked. Being shut in the cramped space only allowed her to do one of two things—paperwork and think. She had been doing too much of the latter the last few days. Her mind would drift away from her work for only a minute and end up in the place she had no desire for it to be—on him. Brent Kiel. His name would roll across her mind and then his face and then the memories. The good and the bad.

It had been nearly a month since she had talked to him. The last time they had spoken they had fought. Horribly. Her mama would have turned ten different shades of red if she could have heard the words they had thrown back and forth between them. His mama would have washed their mouths out with the nearest bar of soap.

The funny thing was, she didn’t remember what had started that fight, only that it had ended when she’d slammed the door in his face. He had given her every excuse in the book for wanting to break up. He needed time. He needed space. It wasn’t her—it was him. It was all bullshit as far as she was concerned. The truth was he just didn’t want to be with
her
anymore. She was an adult. She could handle it and she did handle it until they crossed paths in town or someone brought up his name. That was when the edges of her tough exterior started to crumble.

Since that night she had only seen him a few times, but each encounter with him was worse than the one before. He had always ignored or avoided her. She had put up with it in the beginning, but ever so slowly and surely her mood had descended into a realm of pissed off that she had only been in a few times in her life.

Whenever her temper flared, which it did more often than not, she took it out on the walls of the office. Since she was situated in the back of the bar, far from the patrons, she called him every name in the book. Every name she had ever heard used as an insult and even some she had made up on her own. She complimented herself every so often for having such a vivid imagination and vocabulary.

The tirades never lasted long and when they were over all she was left with was an elevated blood pressure level and paperwork. She hated paperwork.

“Think about the money. Think about the money.” She muttered the mantra, picked her head up from the desk and retrieved her pencil from the floor. She had just begun scanning yet another inventory report when there was a subtle but definite knock on the door.

“Come in.” The door opened and the music, which had been muffled before, now filled the space. The band playing tonight was a few local boys, but they were decent and they could put on a show. Standing in the doorway with a towel flung over his shoulder and a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth was Wade Vaughn. Wade had bartended in venues from Charleston to Seattle, but was a Texas boy at heart. When he had returned to Texas a few years back her daddy had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Wade had been a fixture behind the bar ever since. He was a large and impressive-looking man who could be anywhere from the age of twenty-five to thirty-five, Peyton couldn’t tell.

“Can I do something for you, Wade?” She smiled at him and wasn’t surprised when she got nothing in return. She watched as he rolled the thin wooden stick from one side of his mouth to the other and wiped his hands on the pristine white towel before looking at her. “You might want to do something about your friend.”

“Is he still out there?” She rose to her feet, dropped the pencil onto the desk and hopped over the stack of papers at her feet.

“He’s still out there.” He stepped out of the way so that she could pass. As she made her way down the darkened hallway that led from the office into the main part of the bar and grill, she felt a sense of dread overcome her. He was still here. What a fucking mess. When she rounded the corner, she stopped and scanned the interior of the place, trying her best to avoid the one place she needed to be looking.

The bar was packed tonight—it was always packed on the weekends. Big Jack’s was the only bar in Millbrook, Texas. It was the only bar for over a hundred miles besides the seedy little spot known as The Rusty Spur ten miles outside of town. The only reason anyone went to The Spur was to get rip-roaring drunk, get into a fight or to get laid—the choices didn’t always occur in that order.

She surveyed the massive number of couples twirling and spinning around the dance floor to a Tim McGraw number. She saw a few pool games being played between friends at the back of the room and she prayed those games remained civil. She wasn’t in the mood to break up a fight. Her eyes drifted from left to right and then back once again before she finally had courage enough to lay them on the man slumped at the bar.

“Shit.” The curse was barely audible, but Wade evidently heard her.

“My thoughts exactly.”

She waited as he passed in front of her, lifted the heavy divider that separated the back of the bar from the rest of the place and held it until she too walked under it.

She remained at the far end of the bar, miles away from the man she watched, as Wade went on about his bartending business. She didn’t know how long she stood there staring, but she knew how many shots he had taken from the whiskey bottle in front of him—too many.

She was in the middle of analyzing how she was going to handle this little situation when she saw Wade from the corner of her eye. The instant she met his gaze he inclined his head toward the man. Without words, he told her to get on with it. Holding up both of her hands in a move of surrender, she walked toward the corner of the bar and stood right in front of him.

He raised his dark head and she wished that he’d kept it down. His hair was disheveled, his face was in bad need of a shave and the dark eyes she had known all her life were ringed in red and glazed from booze.

“How you doin’, darlin’?” The slurred voice was still sexy as hell and the crooked smile that creased his face was one that could still make a girl drop her panties in a heartbeat. They all had that crooked, shit-eating smile.

“I’m fine, but you look like you’ve seen better days.”

Chase Kiel stared at her for only a moment before he tipped the bottle and poured himself another drink.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” It was a loaded question, but it was the only one she could think of at the present.

“Nope,” he said as he brought the small glass full of amber liquid to his mouth, “I can still feel so it’s not nearly enough.” She watched him down the liquid, wince and then reach for the bottle again.
Like hell
. She snatched the bottle before he could and handed it to Wade who appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly.

The look she earned was not one she had ever wanted in her entire life. Chase clenched his hard jaw, fisted his hands and stared her down. The mask of anger on his face was more than enough to crumple a lesser opponent, but Peyton wasn’t a lesser opponent.

“Shit, Peyton.” He hissed through his clenched teeth. “I paid for that bottle and I intend to drink it.”

“Well, I think you’ve had enough for one night. When you’re ready to finish it off, it’ll be here waiting on you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and did her best to give him an I-mean-business look.

“I’m ready now.”

“The hell you are. You’ve had enough.” She grabbed the glass from the bar top and placed it out of sight. She hoped that it would soon be out of mind as well.

“What am I supposed to do now?” She saw defeat rake his body and come to rest on his shoulders. Her heart burned and ached for him, but she wasn’t about to let him drown himself any longer. He had done that enough over the past couple of months.

“Give me your keys.”

His eyes snapped to hers, and for a minute she thought she had overstepped her boundaries as far as Chase Kiel was concerned. When she saw him move to dig the keys from his pocket, she released the pent-up breath and extended her hand. “Thank you, Chase.”

“Anytime.” The grumble was less than enthusiastic, but he would thank her for this one day—if she were lucky.

“Come on, cowboy. It’s time to go.” She grabbed her purse from her hidey-hole under the counter and then hopped over the width of the bar as she had so many times before. Her booted heels landed with little more than a thud against the wooden floor and she had Chase’s arm before his sodden brain could catch up with her actions.

“Where’re we going?”

“I’m taking you home. Where you should have stayed to begin with. Do they know that you’ve snuck out?” She opened the door for him and was glad to see that he could still walk straight. When they hit the gravel of the parking lot and headed toward her car, he finally answered her.

“I’m a grown fucking man. I can come and go as I please. Everyone else can. Why shouldn’t I be able to?” She thought about answering his question, but she didn’t know what to say, and didn’t know if he really wanted her to speak or not, so she took her daddy’s advice and just kept her trap shut.

She let him climb into the car first and shut the door behind him and then made her way to the driver’s side. She was dreading the drive to the Kiel ranch. She was dreading taking him home to them. To him, but she’d do it anyway.

Twenty minutes later, she pulled onto the graveled driveway and parked her car behind one of the massive trucks all of them drove. She noticed it had a brand new dent in the side and chuckled to herself without thinking. Evidently the driving lessons weren’t going so well.

When she got out of the car, she saw that none of the lights in the main house were on, but she knew they would be shortly. She took a deep breath as she reached the passenger side door and pulled it opened. She was glad as hell Chase was still coherent enough to step out of the car and walk to the front door on his own accord. She helped a little when he stumbled on the steps and knew then that her journey with him was not at an end. If he couldn’t make it up four steps he was never going to make it up an entire flight of stairs.

When they reached the door, she fished his keys from her pocket, found the house key quickly and had the door open even quicker. Together they took the stairs—side-by-side, step by step. He only swayed once and she was there to catch him before he took a nose dive south. She was more careful with him on the rest of the steps.

At the top of the staircase she noticed that all of the bedroom doors were closed except for one—his. She entered the room first and turned on a lamp that sat on the bedside table. The soft white light illuminated the massive bedroom and she had to admit she was impressed. The room had a woman’s touch—it had his fiancée’s touch. Willa Tate had left her mark behind whether she knew it or not.

As she scanned the room and what memories had been left behind, she felt an aching in her heart for Chase.

The breaking of glass and the flash of a blown bulb pulled her from her complicated race of thoughts and back to where they should have been to begin with—on the man stumbling around drunkenly on broken glass.

“Here let me get that. Just sit down before you fall.” She squatted by the bedside table and gathered the remains of the lamp that had once been intact. Leave it to a drunk to destroy a seventy-dollar lamp.

“Sorry,” he whispered. His apology brought her eyes to his and even in the dim light she could see the pain and remorse reflected in them.

“It’s not your fault. Things happen sometimes.” The lamp had broken in only a few large pieces and she laid those on the table and checked to make sure there were no shards left behind to be felt in the morning.

She stood still and silent as he sat gently on the side of the overly large bed with its abundance of throw pillows. What did a man need with that many pillows anyway? They both didn’t speak for the longest and most unbearable of minutes. The moment was both heartbreaking and a little awkward. To speak or not to speak—that was the question.

“Listen,” She had never been accused of being tender-hearted before, but for the moment her heart went out to him and she wanted to do all in her power to console him. If she could. “I need you to do me a favor.” She waited for a response and wasn’t surprised when she didn’t get one. She knelt in front of him and thought about taking the hands he held clasped in between his knees, but didn’t. “I need you to stop this. If I see you at the bar I don’t want to worry if you’re going to make it home all right. I need you to promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”