Page 47 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

And she hadn’t been.

She still didn’t want to. Her heart was thundering, and she was shaking. Shaking with unsatisfied desire.

“I don’t want to take a breath,” she said.

“Yeah, I don’t really want to either, but I think that we maybe should.”

“I... What are you, a prude?” And she was shocked to hear that come out of her mouth. Shocked that her embarrassment right now was making her feel mean. But it did. He had kissed her. She had kissed him. It was all a little bit muddled in her head who had started it, but it had happened. She hadn’t kissed any man other than Carter, and now she had kissed Brody, and they had really kissed, and he was the one to break it off. She felt dismayed.

Dismayed was a completely understated word for what she felt. She felt demolished.

Like everything inside her had been bulldozed, everything that she had ever thought about herself, and it had all made room for... This need. This deep, fiery need, and he was acting like stopping was easy.

“No. I’m not. But you shared some pretty vulnerable stuff with me, and I’m afraid...” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“What?”

“I’m not a... I’m not a relationship guy.”

She felt like the floor had been upended. She was actually getting a talk. From a very handsome man who thought she needed to know that he didn’t want to marry her just because they had kissed. And in fairness, she had no real experience with dating.

She had fallen into a relationship. One that had turned into marriage and motherhood. And she had no actual experience with relationships outside that. She had never hooked up, she had never... Any of that. So it was surreal to an insane degree that this was happening to her at all. And that her heart was still pounding and that place between her thighs throbbed.

“I told you I had a really terrible experience with love and commitment. I’m not naïve.”

“Sure. But I did think that I should probably put my cards on the table. You have Benny, and I respect that. That responsibility. He’s a great kid. Also... You live here.”

Then she was just ashamed, because this man had outlined all kinds of things that she should have thought of on her own. Things that she should have been conscious of. Aware of. Things that should have mattered a lot more to her than they did to him.

She was letting her body lead. And when had she ever done that in all of her life? If she wasn’t so appalled, she might be kind of proud of herself. Or at least in awe of her own capacity for debauchery, heretofore undiscovered and unexplored.

“You’re right.” She took a step back from him. “You are... You’re right. I got carried away. I think... You’re an attractive man.”

“I got carried away,” he said. “And you are the sexiest damn woman I’ve ever seen.”

She really wished he hadn’t said that, because it made her throat go tight, made her stomach get tense. Made her hungry for him all over again.

How long had it been since she’d felt beautiful? Desireable? She’d been replaced by another woman and she might not linger on what that had done to her self-esteem, but the damage was there for sure.

He thought she was sexy.

“Well. I guess we can both agree that we can’t get carried away again.”

“Right. Agreed.”

Suddenly, she just needed to get away from him. All of the comfort that she had felt in his presence had vanished, and she needed to... To get her head on straight. To figure out what had happened, what she was thinking. Somehow she had a feeling it would take a lot more than a couple of hours between now and when she had to pick up Benny to figure it out.

THE SNOW FELT like insult to injury. It was early in the year to get this kind of snowfall, and Brody didn’t care for it. Not at all. He didn’t like snow. People said it was picturesque. Peaceful, beautiful. His brother Gus loved the snow. But Gus was a secret sap, and Brody wasn’t anything of the kind.

It was cold, it was wet, and he wanted nothing to do with it ever, and there it was, sludging down and building up quickly. Little white flakes of freezing hell that were guaranteed to worm themselves down into his boots and make him cold and soggy long before he had to come in from the grind.

This time of year just wasn’t his favorite. It got dark so early. And he didn’t care for Christmas all that much. There was no point to it. It was just an interruption as far as he was concerned. They hadn’t really celebrated it ever in his family. That would have been far too functional for the McClouds.

So basically, it was just a long dark slog as far as he was concerned. And when the sun started to shine back through and the first vestiges of life began to appear in the form of flowers pushing up through the ground, he gave thanks to whatever deity changed the seasons.

Snow.

He needed to cut some wood for his cabin. It was going to be freezing. Elizabeth was going to need some wood.

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