Page 5 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

She hadn’t had a consistent model for what it meant to be a family, to be a mother, and having Benny was her chance for that. She’d wanted something better for him. The nuclear family she’d never had and...

Well, she hadn’t been able to give him that.

Consequently, she probably hovered over him more than she should.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the little house came into view. It was rustic, but neat, and Gus had told her that there would be some updates made before she and Benny moved in, which were now presumably there.

But her relief was cut short when she saw a blue truck parked in the driveway.

She had been here for months, and she knew exactly whose truck it was.

It wasn’t Gus who had come to greet her, or any of the other myriad McClouds who it might have been. Of course not.

It was Brody.

THE PRETTY LITTLE ice queen was right on time, but Brody wouldn’t expect anything different. Not from her. She had been officious and sniffy from the moment he’d first met her.

He had the strong urge to ask her why she was so damned uptight.

He also had the strong urge to undo the neat, low ponytail that she kept her blond hair in.

He could see, even as she pulled up to where he was standing, that her hair was styled in that same fashion now. He wondered at that. At the commitment to being quite so sedate.

Her car came to a stop, and she looked through the windshield, right at him.

He felt it.

That was the problem. The urge to undo that ponytail was a very grown-up version of wanting to pull her pigtails.

Of course, the attraction that he felt for Elizabeth Colfax was clearly not reciprocated, and if it was, it wasn’t reciprocated happily.

She had been prickly and dismissive of him from the get-go.

Him, specifically. She seemed much friendlier to each and every one of his brothers. But yeah, friendly was not a word you would use to describe the way that she treated him.

She turned the engine off and got out of the car.

Her blond hair was sleek and shiny, her face colored by only the slightest bit of makeup, a hint of blush, a pale pink lip gloss. She was wearing a navy blue top and white pants. She was dressed a good twenty years older than she actually was.

A single string of pearls completed the look.

They made him think dirty, dirty thoughts.

“Nice to see you,” he said.

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Yes. Nice to see you too.”

The back door of the car opened, and a little boy tumbled out. Blond, just like her.

For a moment, he felt disoriented. He hadn’t realized she had a kid. Did that mean she had a husband? Because that sure put a damper on some of his fantasies.

Well, depending on how happily married she was.

But no. He wasn’t a homewrecker. Wasn’t his style.

There was no point to go in for any drama when a man could just as easily go in for a no-strings-attached, simple affair that didn’t hurt anyone.

“Who is this?” he asked, smiling, because he was good at that. He was a charming son of a bitch. It was his best quality.

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