Page 32 of At the Rancher's Pleasure

“Well, if you’d shut up and let me get a word in, I would,” Brett retorted, leaning sideways to drop a quick kiss on her pursed lips. Quickly, and without embellishment, he recounted the evening’s events.

Sarabeth placed her hand on her heart. “So you were defending me?”

He rolled his shoulders, feeling uncomfortable with the affection in her eyes. “Sort of, I mean, yes, I suppose so. Rusty is a jerk, and somebody needed to teach him a lesson in respect.” Honesty had Brett adding another sentence. “He also made some disparaging comments about my mother.”

“Ah.” Sarabeth looked down and he saw her shoulders slump. Oh, no, he wasn’t going to let her think that she wasn’t worth defending.

“He started on my mom and moved on to you and then I lost it and punched him.”

“Thank you for defending me,” she said softly, looking ridiculously young. “It wasn’t necessary, but I appreciate it and I’m sure your mom would too.”

Not wanting her to think he was prone to violence, Brett had to clear the air. “I learned to control my temper in my teens because if I punched everyone who made a comment about my mom, I would’ve spent most of my time in jail,” he admitted, feeling weary. “As the town drunk, she was a soft target and easy to disparage. Hell, most of the time I agreed with what they said about her.”

“But you still defended her.”

“Somebody had to.” Brett slid his tired body down the seat to rest his head on the backrest, his legs extended. Then he placed his free hand on Sarabeth’s knee. “When she was sober, she tried to be a good mom but when she drank, she became a monster. Life with her was...volatile.”

So much for not talking about his mom. But recounting his past to Sarabeth felt like he was lancing a wound, allowing the poison to drain.

“Did family services never get involved?” Sarabeth asked him.

“Back then Royal was a lot more rural than it is now and I think I only remember a lady visiting, twice...maybe three times? Incredibly and coincidentally, my mom was sober every single time she arrived and because there was food in the fridge and the place was clean, and I was attending school, they left me where I was.”

“Did you want to leave her?”

It was such a direct, honest question and Brett knew that, no matter his answer, Sarabeth wouldn’t judge him. She’d been judged too often—as a wife and a mother—to do that to anyone else. There were, as they both knew, a hundred shades between black and white.

There had been so many times he’d wanted to run away, to leave, but he knew he couldn’t. It was his job to look after his mom, to try to save her, and he couldn’t do that if he was in foster care or tangled up in the system. And, by the time she got to the point where she was more drunk than sober, he was eighteen and juggling his job with Tweed, his relationship with Lexi and graduating high school.

Shortly after he graduated high school, she got sick. And then a lot sicker. And her mental health rapidly deteriorated.

“No, I wouldn’t have gone,” he finally answered.

“I didn’t think so...”

Brett, enjoying her head resting on his arm, handed over her wineglass and gripped her slim thighs. “I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, and how she influenced my life,” he said, his voice low. She was the only person he’d ever spoken to about his past and, inexplicably, he wasn’t ready to stop, not just yet.

“How so?”

He drew patterns on her thighs with his fingers. “I’ve been looking at my relationships, starting and ending with Lexi twenty years later. I’ve noticed a pattern that I seemed to have missed.”

“That you are a rescuer and you like to save people?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Have you been talking to Jules?”

“You’re not that difficult to figure out, Brett,” she said, giving him a soft smile. “But carry on, please.”

He sighed. “As I was trying to explain, I have a habit of falling for waifs and strays, for women who needed something from me. Then, after I patch them up and make them stronger, I lose interest in them.”

Brett felt heat move up his face, uncomfortable with the way he was running his mouth. But he couldn’t seem to stop.

“So, you’re saying that you are attracted to vulnerability?”

“Seems like it,” he reluctantly admitted. “And, before you point it out, I know it’s damn condescending to treat people like my pet project.”

“So why do you do it?” Sarabeth quietly asked. “Because we don’t do something unless we get something out of it.”

He thought for a minute, knowing the answer but unwilling to admit the truth. When she didn’t speak, he felt the urge to fill the silence. “I think I did it because it lessened the guilt, at least for a while.”

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