Page 6 of Tempted at Thoroughbred Lake

“I’m not sure we have a legal option to get the marriage annulled,” he threw out there. Brennan hoped by talking this out, Ruby and he could come up with a way to undo what had been done.

She made another sound of agreement. “They’re both going to school on scholarships, but we’re ponying up part of the expenses. If we threaten to withhold the money, that could cause a rift we might not be able to fix.”

“Yeah, I’ve already gone there.” Gone there and dismissed it. The only thing withholding money would accomplish would be to make Seth and Vivian broke and estranged from their parents.

Groaning and shaking her head, Ruby turned and met his gaze. “This isn’t easy for me to say, but we might just have to swallow this until...”

She stopped, but Brennan had no trouble filling in that particular blank. Either their kids would make the marriage work—a slim chance at their ages—or the marriage would fail, and they’d have to go through the hell and back that Ruby and he had been through when their own relationships had tanked.

“We’ll have to swallow it,” he muttered. Brennan paused and had a quick debate as to what to say about the other thing their kids had thrown in their faces. “They were right, though, about us having a thing for each other.”

Her gaze stayed locked with his. Firmly locked. And she didn’t dispute what he’d just said. She couldn’t because even now, when things were nowhere near being rosy, the heat was there.

Ruby’s nod was slow and hesitant, but it was still an acknowledgment of the truth. “Yes, they were right. Well, right-ish, anyway.”

Brennan frowned, not caring much for theishshe’d tacked on to that. There was noishwhen it came to the way Ruby caused all these stirrings inside him.

“We’d be stupid to act on an attraction now,” she went on. “Not when we already have so much to deal with.”

Again, no argument from him. Jumping in headfirst would be reckless, and they did have plenty to deal with. But apparently Brennan was feeling both stupid and reckless.

And that was why he leaned in and kissed Ruby.

CHAPTER THREE

EVENTHOUGHRUBYsaw the kiss coming, she still froze. For a second, anyway. Then she felt the kick of heat from Brennan’s mouth.

Amazing heat.

Heat that put her in a time machine and sent her zooming back to their days in high school. Oh, the man had not lost his particular skill in this area. Nope. Plenty of skill that did an immediate job of firing her up.

Ruby heard herself moan. A sound of both pleasure and need. And her body reacted. Mercy, did it. She felt the blaze turn into a wildfire, and it settled in all the wrong parts of her. One part in particular. That should have been a Texas-sized red flag since this was definitely something they shouldn’t be doing.

Should they?

She had to force herself to push aside the heat and recall they were in the middle of a crisis with their kids. Added to that, there was a reason Brennan and she had stayed apart all those years. The problem was Ruby was having a tough time recalling exactly the reason she’d kept her distance from him.

Brennan made it even harder for her by sliding his hand around the back of her neck and deepening the kiss. He moaned, too, but his sounded a whole lot hotter than hers, and she could have sworn that all that extra heat went straight into the kiss.

He tasted good. Like something she hadn’t had for a very long time. Like something she desperately wanted.

Like something she shouldn’t be having or wanting.

It was that last thought that finally gave her the jolt of good sense to make her aware that she’d obviously gone wrong on this particular adventure. Ruby forced herself to move back. It wasn’t easy. But she finally convinced her mouth to leave Brennan’s. Unfortunately, eliminating the contact didn’t erase the sensations Brennan and his clever mouth had caused.

“Uh,” she managed to say.

Brennan looked into her eyes, and the corner of that pleasure-giving mouth lifted into a smile. “You aren’t going to regret that,” he insisted.

Ruby might have disputed that,might have, but she heard a sound that had her deciding to table any discussions about the scalding kiss Brennan and she had just shared. That was because she heard the front door open.

“It’s me,” Vivian called out. “I’m just here to get my things.”

There was no mistaking the anger Ruby heard in her daughter’s voice. No mistaking, either, Vivian’s quickly approaching footsteps. Ruby managed to get to her feet. So did Brennan. But when Vivian rounded the corner of the hall, she came to a quick stop and eyed them both.

Ruby knew Brennan and she weren’t sporting neon signs that they’d just kissed, but they must have looked guilty of doing just that, because Vivian smiled a little. Then she must have recalled that she was seriously pissed off at them, because the smile vanished and her eyes narrowed.

“You aren’t going to stop me from getting my things,” Vivian insisted.

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