Page 8 of At the Rancher's Pleasure

Brett’s eyes met hers and she saw the tiny shake of his head. Too much? Yep, apparently so. Damn. But, because she was an adult, Sarabeth lifted her chin. “I’m renting his cottage, ladies, that’s all,” she told them, keeping her voice flat.

“We didn’t, for one minute, think anything else,” Flora huffed, her eyes bright with dislike. “You are, after all, far too old for him, my dear. He’s a man in his prime and you are, well...not.”

Wow, okay then. They’d definitely honed their bitch skills.

Sarabeth raked her hands through her hair, thinking that she should never have engaged them in conversation. Sometimes it was better not to poke the hornet’s nest with a short stick. “Have a good day, ladies.” She turned to Brett. “I’ll see you in about an hour?”

“Yeah. Enjoy your chat with your friend,” Brett replied.

“Thanks.” Sarabeth dropped her foot off the bumper, and as she was about to turn away, she felt his hand on her arm. She turned and he lifted his palm to hold the back of her head, tipping her face up. Before she could make sense of what he was doing, his surprisingly soft, delectable lips were on hers. Sarabeth held on to his forearms, her mouth dropping open in shock.

What. The. Holy. Hell?

Brett took advantage of her open mouth and slid his tongue past her teeth and Sarabeth, right there on Main Street, in front of three of its biggest gossips, released what she was sure was an audible moan.

Then her surroundings faded away and all she could think of was getting closer, seeing how her body fit into his. As she was about to draw nearer, Brett took a step back, his hand on the side of her face, his thumb drifting over her cheekbone.

“I will see you later, gorgeous.”

He released her and tipped his hat again to the astounded ladies in front of them. “Have a good day, ladies.”

Then four sets of female eyes, including Sarabeth’s, watched his unbelievably delicious backside, covered by formfitting jeans, walk away.

Three

Brett could feel eyes on his back and on his butt, and forced himself not to scurry away, to keep his gait as normal as possible. He was finding that a bit difficult since the hair on the back of his neck and on his arms was waving in the wind, his mouth was dry and his jeans felt snug across the crotch area.

And that was the only reason why he’d stopped himself from bending Sarabeth over the hood of her vehicle; another few seconds and he would’ve popped the buttons on his jeans.

Holy hell.

He’d kissed Sarabeth because he’d been pissed at the Royal Reporters’ insinuation that this drop-dead gorgeous woman was too old for him—and because he’d seen the hurt in her eyes at their bitchiness. Brett loathed bullies and was ultrasensitive to verbal harassment, and hearing that coven of witches aim their fire at Sarabeth raised his protective instincts and took him straight back to his childhood.

They, or women just like them, verbally stabbed his mom every time she came into town to do their meager shopping, whispering behind hands and closed fists...

Is she sober?

Disgraceful! Why can’t she just leave town?

She’s hurrying through her shopping so that she can go home to that vodka bottle.

No one bothered to find out the cause of her addiction. She’d been T-boned by a drunk driver—irony was such a bitch!—and broke her back. The doctors said it was a miracle she was able to walk again. But mobility came with a hell of a price, constant and debilitating pain, and after trying a regimen of painkillers—and wiping out all their financial resources—she discovered that vodka and opioids somewhat dulled the pain.

Although he’d just turned twelve, he wasn’t surprised when she quickly became addicted to both. But, after a year or two, she lost her job, started drinking in the morning and popping more pills. She spiraled and, a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday, he’d walked into the house in the early hours of the morning after a blissful night spent with Lexi and found her unresponsive on the living room floor, various empty bottles of pills on the worn carpet.

He’d called for an ambulance and started CPR, pumping her heart and blowing air into her lungs. She passed away as the ambulance turned into their drive and Brett blamed himself for not coming home earlier, for not being able to save her.

For not listening, for dismissing her words and brushing her off. If he’d just taken a little time she’d still be here.

Sorry, Mom.

Brett swallowed the lump in his throat as he walked the familiar route to his lawyer’s office where he’d arranged to meet Billy, still lost in thought. Seeing his mom in such pain—a shell of the fun, happy, vivacious person she’d been prior to the life-altering car accident—had kick-started his rescue gene.

As a result, he was a sucker for women in trouble, instinctively drawn to gals who needed rescuing, desperate to make things better, to rebalance the scales he’d let tip.

In his early twenties, he’d lent a girlfriend money to fix her car, bought another a plane ticket to New York City to see her sick brother only to realize that there had been no sick brother. He now suspected there wasn’t a broken car either. In his midtwenties, he started to wise up, not to fall for every pretty face’s sob story and, by his thirties, had developed a pretty good bullshit meter.

But his white knight personality trait had played a part in his hooking up with Lexi again, that and gratitude. Along with Tweed Huggins and Jules, his childhood friend, Lexi attended his mom’s funeral, had held his hand as they lowered her cheap coffin into the ground. So when she dropped back into his life, sad after her divorce, he’d confused wanting to help her with true attraction.

---