Page 28 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“Who do you like?” Lachlan asked.

And he wondered for a second if he should feel guilty about this. About looking at this whole hookup lifestyle as a sporting event. Except... There wasn’t much else to do here. And the sameness of his life was... Well, it was what it was. He had chosen to stay in Pyrite Falls. He had chosen to stay at Four Corners.

The bottom line was, he owed Gus. However much he gave his brother a hard time, he owed him. Gus had single-handedly saved Lachlan’s life. Gus had taken care of them. He had been the oldest, and he had taken the worst of everything. And Brody had been passed over completely. For reasons he still couldn’t understand. For reasons he would never understand. And he just... He had to stay. He had to stay and work off that debt. And there would be no amount of time that ever felt sufficient. Not really.

He could remember the conversation he’d had with Gus just a month or so ago. When Gus was screwing things up with Alaina, like a champ.

Gus had told him that not every scar was worn on your skin.

And that might be, but his brothers had scars outside, and the scars inside that came from someone who was supposed to care for you hurting you.

And he didn’t have those scars.

“Haven’t decided yet,” he said.

There was a girl by the jukebox who was clearly the bubbly one of the group. Her giggle rose loud over the top of her friends’, and every time she moved, she shimmied her shoulders and her breasts bounced. Which was interesting. He knew exactly what kind of lay she would be. Bouncy.

Fun, that was how he would’ve normally looked at it.

Then there was a woman scanning the bar, and her gaze had landed on Brody and Lachlan a couple of times. She was looking at them with some intensity. She was here to seduce somebody. He knew exactly how an evening with her in the sack would go, too.

She would attack whichever guy she ended up with.

She would definitely want to be on top.

Again, all fine. It just didn’t fire up his blood. Not right now.

He sat there for a minute, his beer in his hand, the glass getting sweaty beneath his fingertips. He couldn’t guess how Elizabeth would be in bed. She was strong-willed, but that wasn’t the first thing that you saw when you looked at her. She was well put together, almost prim, but she was great with horses. She didn’t shy away from hard work. She looked soft, but she was in athletic shape. At least, he assumed, because doing the kind of labor they did tended to build pretty good muscle tone.

He had observed some of that muscle tone when she’d been wearing those jeans earlier today. She definitely had toned thighs and a really good ass.

But he couldn’t guess what she would want. If she’d want to be on top, if she would be a bouncy girl. Aggressive. Timid. Pretend that she needed him to be the aggressor.

“Are you here?” Lachlan asked.

“What?”

“You drifted off to somewhere, somewhere I couldn’t follow you.”

“Looking at our options,” he said.

“The bouncy girl is cute,” Lachlan said. “Or do you want the one who looks like she wants to tear some clothes off tonight?”

His brother had noticed the same two women he had. And they had the same assessments of those women. The thought made him feel vaguely unclean.

Maybe they needed to quit going out together.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Brody said.

“Does that mean I get first pick? Because I’m leaning toward the one who looks like she wants to take a bite out of somebody.”

“By all means,” Brody said. “Take the attacker.”

“Good deal,” Lachlan said, draining the rest of his beer before getting up. “See you later.”

He got up and crossed the bar, and the whole group of women straightened as he started to get closer to them. But the woman he was aiming for took a step toward him, and Brody had to laugh. That was fate.

Well, as much fate as a one-night stand could be. Because that was all it would be. That was all it would ever be.

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