Page 51 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“Well, how nice for you,” she said, rolling her eyes.

They looked at each other, and he could feel the heat arc and expand between them. “That’s a perk of living for yourself. Not much point in guilt.”

“Sounds potentially lonely.”

They both paused to watch Benny dramatically grunt as he set down a couple of pieces of wood by the door.

He cleared his throat. “I find ways to keep the loneliness at bay.”

Her breath caught, and he did his best not to fixate on it. On what she might be thinking. On just exactly what thoughts were going through her mind right now, and if they had anything to do with the kiss they’d shared.

Holy hell. He’d never once in all of his life fixated on a woman like this. Not even when he was a horny virgin. It had been about sex then. Not about a particular person.

Actually, it had been about sex in all the years since.

He’d never wanted one person like this, at the expense of any other woman, any other desire.

And here he was, overthinking a kiss. Playing it over and over in his mind. Wishing that had gone further. Hating himself for stopping it.

“I assume your anti-loneliness tactic has something to do with horses?”

“I don’t like horses like that,” he said, and he knew the grin that he gave her was wicked.

She flushed. “That wasn’t what I was implying. Remember? Double entendre isn’t my thing.”

“And remember, I’m incapable of avoiding it.”

“Yes. I do recall you saying something about that.”

He shrugged. “When your home life is no fun at all, you learn to make your own fun.”

Which he had done. It was one reason he had embraced alcohol and sex and every other indulgence he could find, like a needy child clinging to his mother. He hadn’t had a mother. So he’d gone with debauchery.

That had been Lachlan’s preferred form of dealing with things too. So the two of them had tested the bonds of propriety thoroughly since they were way too young to be doing the things they were doing.

As an older brother, Brody probably should have felt guilty about leading his younger brother down the wide path to perdition, but, when you’d been born into a particular sort of hell, it was tough to worry overmuch about damnation for drinking a whiskey.

Of course, you couldn’t use fake IDs in a town like Pyrite Falls. Everybody knew who you were. But they had gotten pretty skilled at stealing the exact truck that he had just driven here with, with all the wood in the back, and traveling a few towns over.

“I imagine that is a valuable skill to have.”

“It is. Look, life can be a...” He looked over at the kid. “A really mean person.” Elizabeth laughed at him. But he continued anyway. “But, there are things you can do to make it a little bit better.”

Like kissing beautiful women in tack rooms. But he didn’t say that. Because he had been the one to cut it off. But he was just... He was worried. That was the thing. And he wasn’t the kind of guy who went through life with a lot of worry. But he was worried about this. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who was used to casual physical relationships. And those were all he did.

Throw in the added complication of her living on the ranch, working for their family, depending on them, and being in the kind of position she was in, with her son, with issues with her ex-husband...

He just felt like she needed a lot more than he could give, and he was a bigger gamble than a woman like her would ever want to take. All for an hour of pleasure. A few hours of pleasure. Hell, maybe a dirty weekend.

Except, there couldn’t even be a dirty weekend, because there was a kid. A kid who would be home all day on the weekend.

And Lord knew, he would make her scream so loud it would echo throughout that whole tiny house. There would be no way to cover it up.

Well, now he was lost in thought about how loud he would like to make her scream. He wondered if she was a screamer. She looked a little bit too sophisticated for that, but the way she had kissed him... The way she had let her hands move all over his body, the way she had been ready to undo the buckle on his jeans and...

He really needed to get his head on straight.

She was not a woman he could mess around with. She had been hurt and...

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