Branded as Trouble (Rough Riders #6)(37)

“Whoa.”


“Yeah. And it worked. For years. Might sound cocky as shit, but I barely had to wink at a woman and I could have her on her knees or on her back in no time flat.”


“Didn’t the easy pickin’s get old?”


He grinned at her. “Are you kiddin’ me?”


India whapped him on the arm. “I’m serious.”


“Yeah, I guess it did. It all changed when my brothers started pairing off. I was jealous, but rather than try to settle down, I got wilder. In my way of thinkin’, if one woman was good, two would be even better. I’d make them jealous of my lifestyle. I’d be the Hugh Hefner of the notorious McKay clan, charming, sexy, with a rocket in my pocket ready to blow at the first spark and a legion of women lined up to light that match.”


“So what happened?”


“Besides getting hooked on all the booze I had to drink to maintain the illusion?”


She nodded.


“I woke up in the middle of a pile of nekkid bodies. Not all of them female.”


Silence.


He closed his eyes. Way to toss that embarrassing fact out there like a rotten fish, McKay.


A cool hand touched his cheek. “No judgment, remember?”


“Good thing, because I don’t remember a damn thing. I could’ve had sex with any one of those guys, or all of them. I blacked out.”


“Was that the first time you’d blacked out?”


“I wish. So, I was totally hungover, I couldn’t find my clothes, had no f*ckin’ clue where I even was. I managed to hit a familiar road outside of Wheatland, more than a hundred miles from my house—with no memory of how I’d gotten there. When I got home, I found out my mother and my aunt spent the day cleaning my house.


“We’re talkin’ bags of beer bottles and cans. Bags of liquor bottles. Empty condom wrappers, empty condom boxes. Hell, we even left used condoms all over the whole house. Even though it was a pigsty, I was livid. Probably out of embarrassment, but at the time, it felt like a total breach of privacy.”


“Why?”


“Because I wasn’t some fifteen-year-old kid. I was a thirty-year-old man, who owned a house and held a job that required more responsibility than I ever wanted. I was a landowner in my own right, outside of the McKay Ranch, with money in the bank, and a brand new truck. I had the adoration of women and the envy of men.


Who the f*ck was my mommy to stick her big goddamn nose into my business?”


“Oh Colt.”


“I called her up and said all that shit to her. Really let her have it. And by that time of day, I’d sobered up some, which upset her even more, which pissed my father and my brothers off and they all but kicked me out of the damn family.”


“Then what happened?”


“My cousin Dag basically killed himself in a stupid f*ckin’ accident. But it was almost like…he’d wanted to die. I figured it’d be the best thing for me—and everyone else in my family—if I followed his lead. It wasn’t the cold bucket of water Kade dumped on me that woke me up. It was the truth that Kade seemed to be the only person who cared whether I lived or died, when he should’ve hated me for f*cking up things with Skylar.


“Might sound sappy as shit, but I wanted to be the kind of man Kade was. A stand-up guy. He and Keely and our cousin Nick West got me into rehab. A month later I came back here and met you.”