Page 25 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“Is that okay?” He gestured to Benny, looking at Elizabeth. “Well, I guess I have to ask you too, Gus. Can he play with the army men?”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “As long as he doesn’t break them.”

“You heard him. Just don’t break the army men.” He ushered the kid from the table and hustled up the stairs, hearing the smaller footsteps behind him.

“Right in here,” he said, pushing open the door to what was going to be the nursery. This room had been their room when they were kids. He could remember, clearly, the bed that Gus had slept on in the corner, the trundle for Tag and Hunter, and the other for himself and Lachlan.

In hindsight, it was kind of a miracle they’d all had beds. It was difficult for him to imagine them now, with the opinions he had formed on his parents, shopping for children’s furniture, and giving any kind of a shit about how the room was outfitted. But they’d had army men, he supposed.

That was the problem. Everything was a lot more...a lot more complicated than anybody liked to remember.

“These are great,” Benny said, seeing the shelves filled with old toys.

Brody hadn’t realized that Gus had saved so many. He’d kept all of them. And it was good stuff.

A strange weight settled on his chest as he looked around the room. Yeah. Childhood. That was supposed to be the easiest time of your life. The lightest time. It hadn’t been the case for the McCloud boys.

And yet, there had been army men.

“You all right here, kid?” he asked.

He didn’t really want to linger. He wasn’t sure how Gus did it. How he lived in this house. Hell, he was going to put his kid in here.

Of course, Brody couldn’t even imagine having a child, so he supposed the real thing was that Gus was light-years ahead of him in terms of emotional stability. Which was a strange thing. Because he never would’ve thought that about Gus.

He walked out of the bedroom, and left the door partly cracked, then started to walk down the hall.

He heard footsteps on the stairs, and stopped. It was Elizabeth.

She saw him, her blue eyes going wide, her breath hitching on a sharp intake. It made her breasts rise up and he could not help himself. He looked.

He realized then that they were in a very tight, enclosed space. Together. But his family was behind her back, and her son was behind his.

“Oh. Thank you. For...for getting him some toys, I was just going to look in on him.”

“He’s good,” Brody said. “He’s just sitting on the floor with the army men.”

“It’s a few weeks early for a Christmas miracle,” she said. “He’s playing with toys that aren’t electronics.”

“I weep for the youth of today,” he said.

He took a step forward, as if he was going to go past her, at the same time she took a step toward the door, and it brought them into even closer proximity. He could smell her then. She smelled as delicate as she looked. And rich. Expensive.

He wondered what the scent was, he couldn’t say that he’d ever smelled it before. Probably something the kind of women he normally hooked up with couldn’t afford.

But she’d lived in an apartment.

Still, she had the look of a woman who had money. She exuded that.

She was an interesting collection of contradictions, was Elizabeth Colfax. And if he was the kind of man who wanted to find out more about a woman’s contradictions, she would definitely be the one that he would want to learn more about.

But it wasn’t contradictions Brody wanted to know about.

He let his eyes drop down again. Reinforcing that point. To her and to him.

But instead of getting mad, her breath seemed to catch and hold.

They had been standing there for too long. Too long for her to be anything other than lost in the same kind of thoughts he was.

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