Page 115 of The Guy Who Stole My Ranch

“But not great?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, he’s put something strange in here, and it’s making the whole thing too sweet.” After another bite, she shrugged. “I stand by my previous statement.”

“I agree,” I said. We would let Lorenzo know when he came back. Until then, I had Brooke all to myself. I’d amassed a list of questions to ask her and had even prioritized them on my phone. I cleared my throat and said, “May I ask you something?”

“Go for it.” She was now happily chewing a pancake.

“Why did you decide to leave law?”

Her expression fell into the suspicious category.

I continued. “I know you told me that it didn’t end up being a fulfilling career for you, but I have a feeling there was more to it.”

Brooke finished chewing, swallowed, and took a drink of orange juice before she spoke. “You’re breeching into truth bomb territory here, William. Are you sure you want to know this?”

I wanted to know everything about her. “I’m sure.”

“Okay.” She held up a finger. “But if I tell you this then I get to ask you a question, and you have to answer honestly.”

“Fair enough.”

Brooke sighed and sat up straight. “When I was a kid, I decided I didn’t want to be a rancher.”

I raised an eyebrow. I couldn’t imagine her not wanting that.

“I know, I know.” She waved a hand around. “Hard to imagine now, but back then, my brothers did everything they could to put me down. I’m not even sure they were consciously doing it, but they would always make me fight for respect. The stall mucking tiara? I had to set up an official challenge that my dad supervised so they would admit I was just as good, if not better, than they were at working. Without that public validation, they never thought I was good enough.”

Brooke’s voice had taken on a hard edge, and I reached out and stroked her arm.

She smiled and kept going. “I always got excellent grades and ended up being the captain of the debate club all through high school. I figured if I was good at that, I’d be a great lawyer, so I went to a university in Texas, graduated with high honors, and transferred to Harvard Law.”

For a moment she lapsed into silence, and I could see the memories flickering in her eyes. I couldn’t tell if they were good or bad, so I nudged her. “Did you enjoy Harvard?”

Brooke shrugged a shoulder. “I loved the work and didn’t have any problems with my grades. It took me a little bit to get used to the Eastern attitude, but I eventually settled in.”

She’d told me she’d left Harvard because being a lawyer wasn’t for her, and I wondered where the break would be.

“Eventually I was offered an internship to a prestigious firm that specialized in corporate law. It was like a dream come true.” She smiled at me, but her eyes filled with sadness. “I thought the man who asked for me was impressed by my resume, my grades, and my work ethic.”

“He wasn’t?” I asked.

“No.” Brooke shook her head. “He’d hired me to tick off diversity boxes.” She pointed at herself. “A female? Check. A non-traditional body type? Check.”

I frowned. “He hired you because you were an overweight woman?”

Brooke didn’t bat an eye at my blunt question. “Yes.” She shifted in her chair and looked away. “But there was more to it.” For the first time, her voice wavered. “Had he just wanted to use me to check off boxes, I might have stayed, but when he told me he was into bigger women and offered me a position as his no-commitment mistress, I had to leave.”

My thoughts ground to a halt, and my fingers curled into a fist. Was it acceptable for me to ask if anything had happened between them? If he’d forced her to…

As if reading my anger, Brooke kept talking. “He said it was optional, and when I politely declined, he put me on coffee and clerk duty for the rest of the time with his firm.” The next words came out in a tumble. “I’d been through years of schooling. I’d worked as hard as I could to prove that I could be someone in the law field. I’d thought that I’d garnered the respect that I wanted, but in the end, it wasn’t there.”

She shook her head. “I never imagined being propositioned like that. I figured that only happened to thin, fit girls. Of course I was furious, so I graduated, got certified in Texas, and never used my degree again.”

The thought of someone doing that to Brooke made my blood boil, and I squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

She smiled. “It ended up being a good thing. My mom had passed away, and I came back to the ranch without my brothers.” Her expression softened, and her eyes sparkled. “That’s when I realized I loved working with the animals and on the land. It gave me the chance to find what I truly had a passion for.”

I wanted to hug her. To comfort her. To draw her to me and tell her how amazing I thought she was, but I knew her well enough to understand that she needed something different. She wanted space. She wanted respect. “Thank you for telling me.”

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