Maybe that was why she could never get over Brandon. He had a true, pure heart. He had honor and integrity. Even when he was fooling himself into solitude, he was a man to respect.
She looked over at him, her gaze drifting down his trim and muscular shoulders and arms, to flat abs and thick thighs straddling the horse. The candy that was always out of reach, denied her. She was denied her perfect match. All the men she’d wanted hadn’t wanted her. Brandon had been one of those men, one who didn’t want her. That was why she’d agreed to marry David. Didn’t he see that?
“I was ready to share my life with a man when David came along,” she finally said. She’d given up on finding her perfect match.
“Were you?” In her peripheral vision she was aware of him turning his head, waiting patiently for her to respond.
“Yes.”
“You married my brother.” Disbelief dripped from his tone.
She’d married David to fill a void and to spite Brandon. Because she wasn’t over him. She’d never be over him. So, yes, parties were a surrogate to love. If he couldn’t see the real and true reason for that, then she wasn’t going to explain it to him.
Lightning flashed and thunder followed not long after.
“I think you’re running from it,” Brandon said, briefly noticing the lightning.
From love? She returned her gaze to him. “That’s priceless coming from you.”
“I’m not confused over what I want.”
“Yeah, well, love isn’t what you want.”
“I’ll take love—if it’s right.”
“What’s right for you, Brandon? Someone who doesn’t challenge you? Someone who won’t pry you off this land, even for a night out?”
“I go out.”
“You’re so quick to ridicule me for making a career out of party planning—look at you. You’ve made a career out of being a loner. There’s no bridge over the moat around your cold heart. No wonder Jillian turned to your brother. I bet she wasn’t the first one!”
“Jillian didn’t turn to him.”
“Why was she with him then?” She was probably still with him. “She doesn’t have to sleep with him, or even love him, to use him to get to you.”
“Sounds just like you, except you slept with David.”
Eliza stopped arguing, stunned that he’d voiced his jealousy.
“Yeah, it bothered me that you married him.”
“Why?”
He scowled at her as though she should know.
She didn’t. How could she? Unless he still had feelings for her. And Eliza could not allow herself one crumb of hope that he did. She could not endure another heartbreak over him. The original one was still wreaking havoc on her life.
An outbuilding came into view. It was a yurt, and not just any yurt. It was designed much like a cottage, a warm and welcoming refuge in bad weather. With a quick check on the sky, she wondered if they were going to need it. There was even a small barn for horses. The charm went against her perception of Brandon. To her he was a hard worker with a great capacity for love that he shut himself off to. Why did he shy away from love so much? There had to be a reason.
She dismounted near the stream and let Willow drink. Brandon did the same.
“How come you never got married, anyway?” Willow’s ears twitched with the sound of her voice and her whiskers moved as she drank.
“I haven’t met the right one.”
Such a simple answer, one that stung but also didn’t dig deep enough into the truth. “Have you ever thought you were close?”
“Why do you ask?” he sounded wary.
Thunder rolled in the sky again. Willow lifted her head and perked her ears.
“You accuse me of using parties as a surrogate. I’m just curious as to what your excuse is.”
“I have none.”
When he didn’t meet her eyes and instead scanned the land ahead, Eliza was sure she was onto something. Something about love scared him. It made her think of the day her dad had died.
She’d been a sophomore in high school. Ryker had come to her classroom and interrupted the teacher, telling her it was an emergency. Several possibilities sprang to mind, none of them involving her father in a tractor accident. Their dog had died. A horse had been seriously injured. One of her grandparents had fallen to old age. Never had it crossed her mind that either of her parents had died.
She’d gone with Ryker to the hospital, only to find their mother hysterical and in tears. She’d had to be sedated. The next week had been surreal. The funeral. Her mother’s grief-stricken lethargy. Her sorrow had been all-encompassing. Eliza and Ryker had talked about their concern. Would she die, too?
Ryker had stepped in and taken care of her from the start. He’d taken care of his little sister, too. She could imagine the burden that had caused. She also had seen how the deepest love could destroy a person. Seeing the destruction of her mother’s heart and soul, Eliza had feared falling in love. After Brandon had rejected her, she’d sworn off it altogether.
Had Brandon experienced something similar in his past? Remembering his mother had committed suicide when he and David were young boys, she wondered if that had played any kind of role in influencing him as a man. He’d grown up with only a father, one who’d gone to prison. What had his mother’s life been like in those early years?
“Why did your mother kill herself?” she asked.
He swung his head to look at her, no doubt wondering where that question had come from. That brooding look that was his trademark descended. “Any woman who was married to my father probably would have killed herself.”
She felt raindrops on her skin. “She did it because of him?” Talk around town had painted Brandon and David’s father as a 24/7 drunk. The hit-and-run that had sent him to prison had confirmed it. “Because he drank?”
He mounted his horse. “Come on. Let’s go into the yurt until this passes.”
Scowling up at the sky for the interruption, she climbed up onto Willow and followed Brandon across the stream. At the yurt, they put the horses in the barn. The anticipation of being alone with Brandon kept her edgy and a little too excited. If her cavorting with him had ended badly in her teens, it was sure to end worse now if she allowed anything to happen. As easy as that kiss in the driveway had been, waiting out a thunderstorm in a remote yurt was pure folly...and enticement.
Chapter 4
Thunder accompanied lightning, and rain poured from the sky, splattering the dry ground. Brandon took Eliza’s hand and ran with her to the yurt door, which had been left unlocked. Slamming the door, Eliza caught sight of a rough kitchen that took up one side and two cots on the other. Above and ahead, a loft provided cramped but extra sleeping space. A woodstove in the middle guaranteed warmth if it was ever needed.
She went to one of two front windows and watched the torrent outside.
“What was your dad like?” she asked idly. “You never talked much about him.”
“With good reason.”
Only then did she realize he stood right behind her. He moved to another window, removing his hat and putting it on the cot.
“Was he abusive?”
Something dark and forbidding emanated from him as he turned only his head to look at her. She’d received a similar reaction from David every time she tried to get him to talk about their father. Except David had always relied on distractions and his sense of humor to get her off the topic. Brandon relied on menace. Silent menace.
Eliza faced the window again.
So, their father had been abusive. She’d guessed as much a long time ago. Their mother had committed suicide, and now David was a cheating drunk and his brother was a surly recluse. The aftereffects of their miserable childhood? Losing their mother that way had to have been terrible for both of them. Things like that split families apart. But would it keep Brandon from finding love? From finding happiness?
She looked over at him watching the rain. Had he ever been happy?
> The time he’d dared her to dance in her underwear in the city park came over her. They’d just started seeing each other. It was after one of her Friday parties. Brandon had always teased her about her wildness. She couldn’t walk away from any of his dares.
She’d stripped to her bra and underwear, tossing her clothes at him. Very aware of him standing there holding her clothes and looking at her, she’d danced for him. Slow and sultry around the stop sign. She was a good dancer, party girl that she’d been, and he’d been entranced with her. His own personal pole dance. It wasn’t long before her English teacher had strolled by with her husband.
“Eliza Harvey?” she’d called from across the street.
Brandon had taken her hand and run with her deep into the park, laughing as she dressed behind some bushes. She hadn’t heard him laugh that hard since. She hadn’t been around to.
Growing aware that she was still watching him, she saw that he was now watching her back.
“What were you just thinking about?” he asked, moving toward her.
He must have picked up on something or he wouldn’t have approached her. “That time you dared me to dance in my underwear.”
Stopping before her, he chuckled. “You did everything I dared you to do.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Her wildness had been what had driven him away. Why had he dared her and taken such pleasure in doing so if he didn’t like it? Her wildness. Her daring. It was as if he’d needed a safe place. Safe from violence or anything resembling it.
Peace. Everything that surrounded him here.
The rain was beginning to abate.
“You mooned an old man, stole a neglected dog and took pictures of your brother’s best friend with another girl.”
She turned and leaned against the window frame. “And you loved it.”
A happy light touched his eyes and remained, memories filling him whether he accepted them or not. For now he did because they made him feel good.
“My mother took care of that dog until the day it died, warm and safe and dry in her house.” The old man who’d beaten him couldn’t hurt him anymore.
The light in his eyes warmed her.
“Booger.” That’s what her mother had named the poor creature. Eliza laughed.
“I heard that old fart was kicked out of his house when they foreclosed on his mortgage.”
“Moved to Kansas and died in a tornado,” she finished. “I kept track of him, mainly to make sure he didn’t buy any more dogs.”
“Karma exists.”
Her smile matched his as she met his eyes. His shaggy hair stuck out in all the right places. His broad shoulders loomed over her. Working on his ranch had sculpted his muscles over the years.
The joviality eased into another kind of warmth. Eliza was stuck back in time when all their cares and concerns were easily forgotten when they were together. They had good memories from back then. Eliza had focused on the negative ones until now, and she guessed Brandon had done the same.
“Do you remember the first time you kissed me?”
“I drove you home from school.”
“About thirty times before you actually tried.”
“Your dad saw us.”
Her dad had died shortly after that. She’d started her Friday Party Club and Brandon had begun daring her.
With his index finger, he coaxed her head back to him. “I know how much you miss him.”
If it hadn’t been for Brandon, she might have been worse off than she already had been.
“He came out onto the porch to stop us.”
“He liked me.”
Eliza laughed. “He did not. You were too old for me.”
“Senior. You were a sophomore.”
“I was his baby girl.”
“And then you were my girl.”
She nearly blushed with the memory of the first time they’d had sex. He’d been her first. She’d never told anyone that, not even David. She’d lied and said a boy who was a junior had been the first, when she hadn’t had sex with anyone else until she was twenty.
While she grieved for her father, Brandon was careful not to take advantage. It had been months later, the summer after her sophomore year. The same summer he’d broken her heart. By then her Friday Party Club had really taken off. By the time she had graduated from high school, the police were onto her and she’d had to stop.
As Brandon’s hand slid to the back of her neck and his thumb caressed her jaw, Eliza knew he was traveling down the same path in history as her. She melted in his eyes, so much passion there. Rewind to yesterday when he’d kissed her in the driveway and the truck, and the dynamics changed.
If he kissed her now, again, it would be as a man, not the eighteen-year-old who’d taken her virginity and her heart. First loves were always unforgettable, but he was more than that to her. Somewhere in their youth, their souls had met and melded. There was no denying that. Even during those darkest months following his rejection, the truth remained doggedly in place. Theirs had been a rare joining.
Eliza waited with bated breath, lifting her head a bit to encourage him. She couldn’t stop the desire racing through her.
He did kiss her.
Her breath whooshed through her nose, and she welcomed him deeper. His soft mouth moved over hers, so different from her memory. The foundation that had formed back then caught fire now. She looped her arms around him, her body pressing close to his. He slid his strong arm around her, bringing her firmly against him.
Eliza raked her fingers through his hair, loving the soft thickness, urging him for more. He gave her more, his tongue seeking hers. She’d dreamed of this.
Planting fevered kisses down her neck, he moved his hand from her head to her breast. She let her head fall back and moaned.
Breathing raggedly, Brandon lifted his head and stared down at her. Uncertainty made him hesitate.
Eliza couldn’t bear for reality to intrude. Not yet. She moved her head to put her face under his ear, breathing him in. She kissed his skin.
An instant later, he lifted her and carried her to one of the cots. She reveled in all the masculine desire coming down on top of her, kissing her, ravaging her. She could feel his hardness through their jeans.
When he began to unfasten her blouse, a horse’s snorting broke them apart. The sound hadn’t come from the small stable.
Hissing a curse, Brandon got up off her and hauled her up after him.
She expected it to be David, out looking for her and Brandon, and wished she could hop on Willow and gallop away before he saw her. She wondered if he’d had that much decency this morning when he’d woken up in another woman’s bed.
Brandon opened the yurt door.
The rain had stopped and the sun was peeking out, brushing the rolling landscape in vibrant shades of green and gold. One of his ranch hands guided his horse up from the stream.
He drew his horse to a halt. “Saw the lightning and came back to make sure you were okay. I didn’t see you follow like you said you were going to do.” His gaze passed over Eliza before returning to Brandon. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Now Eliza’s skin did flame to red. He thought they’d—
“It started to rain,” Brandon said.
The cowboy nodded once, an awkward movement and a poor attempt to cover what must be obvious to him. “See you back at the house then.”
The cowboy turned his horse back for the stream.
Brandon glanced at her, brooding as though this were all her fault. Sparked to annoyance, she pivoted and went to the small barn. If kissing her made him upset, then he should stop doing it!
* * *
Back at the ranch stable, Brandon suffered Eliza’s help with the horses despite his insistence that he could do it without her. Ever since they were interrupted at the yurt, he felt like punching a hole in the wall. What was it about her that kept melting his self-control? She was his brother’s wife.
“You shouldn’t
be here with me right now.” Why didn’t she just leave him alone?
She paused in brushing down Willow. “Why?”
“Because I feel like hitting something right now.”
“Why do you feel like hitting something?”
“You have to ask?”
After a more lengthy pause, she faced him. “We keep kissing. Your ranch hand caught us. Why does that make you so mad?”
He stopped working on his horse and stood toe-to-toe with her. “Do you even care that David is missing?”
“He isn’t missing. He’s screwing another woman!”
He could understand her anger over that, but she had to be dealing with guilt of her own. “That makes it okay to sleep with me?”
“We didn’t sleep together.”
She needed more pushing. “David is my brother. Nothing is going to change that.”
“And that’s what makes you want to hit something?” She scrutinized him, disbelieving, fishing for information, for the real root cause of his turmoil.
“Go inside, Eliza.”
“No. Go ahead and push me away because I’m getting too close. I care about David, but that isn’t the only reason that has you so mad.”
Stubborn woman. He resumed brushing his horse. That was better than acknowledging what she said. Any minute she’d have him kissing her again. Yes, that made him mad. Mad at himself. It hadn’t been this hard to resist her when he was eighteen; why was it so different now?
His opinion hadn’t changed about her. He didn’t want her life. He wanted this life. Alone. With no danger of falling into the same patterns his father had fallen into. What he’d learned about raising a family terrified him. He never, ever would allow even the slightest chance of that occurring. That’s why he was so careful about the women he dated. Only the one who struck the right chords, who fit into his life, would last. And so far he hadn’t met her.
She had to be calm and quiet. Not extroverted, bold and outspoken. He and David had both been out of control growing up, especially after their mother died. His father had turned to violence to force control on them. Violence was never the answer to controlling your kids. Brandon preferred no family to one he had to control with force. He needed a woman who balanced him, one who’d keep him calm, not bring out every gene he’d inherited from his kid-beating father.
A Rancher's Dangerous Affair Page 6