Page 23 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

Except she felt like she might be flirting. And she didn’t know how to do that either.

“That’s a shame. If you want, I’m happy to teach you double entendre, because it is my second language.”

She laughed, and it came out like a giggle, and she had no idea what was going on. “Right. Well. I will... I’ll see you at dinner.”

“See you at dinner.”

It was clear, when she went back into the house and heard Benny mention Brody’s name twenty times in about ten minutes, that her son had a serious case of hero worship on the pirate cowboy.

She was afraid he wasn’t the only one.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I INVITED ELIZABETH to dinner,” Brody said to Gus when he saw him again later that day. Gus was hunched over a computer, standing in the barn, obviously trying to work on those certification classes.

“Good,” he said, the word more of a grunt.

“Her kid seems to like you,” Lachlan said, a note of caution in his voice that Brody understood, given their conversation last night.

“He’s a good kid,” Brody said.

He thought about the things that he’d learned about her today. That her ex-husband was remarried, that he had other children.

It was impossible to tell what Elizabeth thought about that. It was impossible to tell what she thought about anything.

Except that she was attracted to him.

He could read that in her eyes. The way her lips parted when she looked at him. The way she blushed just a little when their gazes clashed. The way her breath quickened and...

Yeah. He could tell.

He wondered if she even knew that she was attracted to him. She had been flirting before she’d gone into the house, but he had a feeling that she hadn’t intended to.

“How can you tell?” Lachlan asked. “He hasn’t been here long enough to start killing small animals and prove that he’s a bad seed.”

Brody shrugged. “I assume all of ’em are good unless they prove otherwise.”

“Interesting. I assume all kids are a pain in the ass until they prove otherwise,” Gus said.

“It’s a really good thing that you’re about to be a father, and that you’ll be giving therapy to a child, Angus,” Lachlan said.

“I’m realistic,” Gus said. “I’m not going to treat a kid like he’s great, just because he showed up. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

“Heads up, Benny is going to ask you about your scars.” It seemed like a fair thing to warn his brother about.

Gus looked thoughtful. “Am I trying to scare him or...?”

“Just tell him the story,” Brody said. “I mean, sans gory details. You don’t have to tell him that our dad did it to you.”

The whole subject was a tricky one for Brody.

Especially standing between these two brothers, who had gotten it so badly. Gus had earned their father’s wrath that day because he had saved Lachlan from a hell of a beating. A beating that Brody was sure would’ve killed Lachlan.

And Brody was just on the sidelines of all that.

He’d always been too afraid to put a wrong foot out. Too afraid of being treated the way his brothers were, while feeling hideously guilty that he wasn’t.

“His mother may not like that.”

---