Page 9 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

Benny disappeared into his room, and honestly, she couldn’t blame him. It was an incredible room. So far beyond anything that she had imagined. Gus had promised that they would fix the place up last time she was here, and he had not disappointed.

She wanted to thank him. Of course, she hadn’t seen Gus. Or any of the other McClouds. Just Brody. A one-man welcome wagon. It made her feel... Off-put. Not in a terrible way, it was just that...

You think he’s hot.

No. She was twenty-nine years old, she was divorced. She was a mother. She did not think men were hot.

Okay, she thought men were hot. There was a reason she watched superhero movies and it wasn’t for the plot. It was the one perk of having a child who was obsessed with that kind of thing. She thought those men were hot. But those men were actors. They lived far, far away, they didn’t really have superpowers, and they had nothing to do with her real life. She could fantasize about them all she wanted.

No. She didn’t think that men that she actually had to deal with were hot. There was no point to it. She was raising a child, and things were complicated enough without introducing...

She leaned over the kitchen counter and groaned when she thought about what Benny had said about Brody being her new husband.

And really, she needed to ask him what else his little friend at school had told him about his mother. Because she had follow-up questions.

She didn’t do that kind of thing. For six years she had done nothing but concentrate on raising Benny and working as hard as she could to keep their life stable. She did get child support from Carter, but she still had to work full-time. She had experience at several ranches in the area and had given private lessons. At one of the ranches she’d gotten to observe the STRIDE program, and she’d become fascinated with it. So she’d decided to work toward getting certification as a STRIDE instructor. Which was an acronym for Successful Training Rehabilitation Integrating Disability Education. Kind of a mouthful. But it was something that she believed in really deeply. She had gotten her start working with veterans, and the whole program had been incredibly successful.

And when she had seen the ad go up on a job website for the position at McCloud’s Landing nearly a year ago, she had replied to it, beginning her communications with Gus. The thing was, the move here was well considered. She was tired of feeling stuck. She was tired of feeling like she was living a life she hadn’t chosen.

So she had chosen this.

She looked around the kitchen, which was small, but brightly lit and absolutely beautiful. The cabinets were white, with a marble backsplash behind a gas stove with beautiful gold knobs. She wandered over to the white fridge, all smooth and fancy with handles that matched the stovetop, and opened it up. There was food.

A loaf of bread wrapped in cloth, pre-prepared stew.

And it would taste really good on a night this cold.

She gave thanks to whoever had provided that, and set about heating it up. When she got dinner on the table, she hoped that when Benny appeared his mood would be improved.

Well, it wasn’t his overall mood, because he was perfectly happy when talking to Brody. He was impressed with Brody. Brody was a pirate cowboy.

In spite of herself, she laughed as she ladled stew into the two bowls for herself and her son.

She had not expected Brody to be that good with kids.

But he seemed to talk to Benny easily. Even if he had used a little bit of salty language. It had only increased Benny’s awe of him. She could tell, because Benny wasn’t in awe of her at all.

“Dinner,” she called.

When Benny didn’t appear, she walked down the hall to his room, where he was tucked away in the tent bed. “Dinner,” she repeated.

He poked his head out between the flaps. “I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t care. You have to come and at least sit at the bowl and look at it. And take two bites.”

“That’s not fair,” he said, worming his way out of the bed and falling to the floor in a dramatic fashion.

She ignored it. He finally stood up and padded down the hallway, then flung his chair out with far too much force and plopped down onto it. “This looks gross,” he said.

“Joke’s on you, kid. I didn’t make it, so it doesn’t hurt my feelings. But I don’t know who did make it. And you better be careful saying something like that, because it might hurt their feelings.”

“Do you think Brody made it?”

“I don’t,” she said. “But, we can’t be sure. You wouldn’t want to hurt a pirate cowboy’s feelings.”

“You probably can’t,” Benny said, putting his elbow on the table and resting his cheek on his hand as he dug his spoon into the stew.

Well. That was probably true. Brody McCloud was likely one of those men whose hearts were like Teflon. She would never have thought that her ex-husband’s heart was like that, but then it had turned out it was. At least where she was concerned.

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