Jennifer Morey - A Rancher's Dangerous Affair

“He doesn’t care about you,” David said and sneered. “He doesn’t care about any woman. Except maybe Eliza here. Other than her, all he cares about is himself and that ranch of his.”

Eliza’s face had gone pale. “That isn’t true.”

David got up from the booth and staggered to her, making a show of running his gaze down to her hand still gripping Brandon’s sleeve and back up again. “Yes, it is.”

Jillian slid out of the booth and hooked her arm with David’s. She said to Brandon, “I’ll drive him home.”

“I don’t want to go back to the ranch. Let’s go to your place.”

“David—”

“Now,” David growled, making Jillian’s head flinch ever so slightly.

This was not the brother Brandon had grown up with. This man Brandon felt like punching. The way he’d just given Jillian another order kept him from acting. It was as if David had something on her, whatever she had stopped him from saying earlier.

David rounded on Eliza, cold eyes scathing. “I want an annulment. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to marry you.” And then he began walking toward the door, his arm around Jillian’s waist.

Jillian looked back apologetically at Brandon and mouthed, “I’ll take him home.”

They left through the door. David didn’t want to be anywhere near him or Eliza. What bothered Brandon was that all it had taken to send his brother walking was seeing Eliza with him. The friction hadn’t been there after they’d first been married. Clearly David had worried his wife still felt something for his brother. Seeing them together had confirmed his suspicion.

Beside him, Eliza silently cried.

Anger boiled up hotly in him. He had sound reasons for letting Eliza go all those years ago. She may not be as wild as she once was, but she still put her parties ahead of anything else, just as he’d predicted. David hadn’t seen that about her. He was accustomed to women falling all over him. He was a good-looking man. And now he thought Brandon and Eliza wanted to be together.

When had David become so vulnerable? Since he’d started gambling and drinking and doing drugs? Or since he’d married Eliza, the one and only woman who didn’t worship him? That had to be it. He must have discovered that her parties came first. She didn’t care about him as much as he needed her to. It wasn’t that she wanted Brandon more. In the morning, he’d make sure David understood that.

As David and Jillian left the bar, Eliza turned to him, still crying. Brandon took her into his arms, all his conviction to stay away from her vanishing. She buried her head against his chest and cried while everyone in the bar watched. In grade school some boys had bullied her and he’d comforted her after chasing them away. Now she was a grown woman with grown-woman tears pouring out of her.

Would she be this upset if she didn’t love his brother? He hoped she did. How terrible would it be if David was right about them? Seeing her for the first time in years had struck him intensely. More intensely than he’d anticipated. He thought he was long over her. Seeing her stirred up too much old chemistry.

Sparing her any more of this public display, Brandon guided her outside. At his truck, he lifted her onto the seat, her legs over the side. He brushed her heavy, silky dark brown hair away from her face. It fell back down, swooping across her face. He tipped her chin up a bit.

She sniffled and those sad eyes met his. “He doesn’t think our marriage is real.”

Was it? Brandon would have guessed not. But Eliza obviously had believed it was. Despite her unspoken motive to make Brandon jealous or otherwise regretful for ever letting her go, she’d intended to stay with David. Maybe she really did love him.

“He’s been drinking. People say things they don’t really mean when they drink.”

“I should have known better,” she said. “I shouldn’t have married him.” She wiped tears from one cheek and then the other.

He wished she hadn’t married him. None of this would be happening if she hadn’t. “It was a little impulsive.”

She wiped another tear with the back of her hand. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

Was that why she was crying? Her sweet sincerity cracked his resolve. He was tall enough to be eye level with her. He touched her damp cheek and let his hand rest on her shoulder, wanting to comfort her.

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow.” He’d set him straight.

With his deep murmur, Eliza’s sniffling stopped and she blinked away the last of her tears. “You will?” Her gaze drifted softly over his face.

“Of course.”

She was his brother’s wife, and he’d do all he could not to get between them. Looking into her blue eyes, the energy shifted. He slid his hand to the base of her head. In the warmth of the moment, she leaned closer. Relentless desire made him close the distance.

Their lips melded together, slow and tender. She ran her fingers into his hair, and he both heard and felt her breath.

He wrapped his free hand around her waist and pressed her torso closer. She responded by parting her legs to make more room for him. He kissed her harder, fisting some of her hair and tugging her head back so that he could kiss her neck.

“Brandon.”

He wanted her so much. Kissing her mouth again, he drank in the sound of his name.

Headlights shone as a car passed in the street.

Brandon pulled back. Eliza’s beautiful eyes were droopy with desire. Her breasts were crushed against his chest. His hardness lodged against the heat between her legs.

“Damn it,” he hissed, pushing back and walking to the front of his truck, where he paused to pound the hood and lean over with his hands braced there, head bent, furious with his loss of control.

How could he vow to talk sense into his brother one second and get between the same brother’s wife’s legs the next? This persistent attraction had to stop. And yet he felt powerless in its grasp. When he was kissing Eliza, the world retreated to an untouchable place.

He lifted his head and saw Eliza watching him, her hand over her mouth, equally appalled.

Having showered and dressed more than an hour ago, Eliza sat curled in a chair near one of the windows in the guest room. There was a beautiful view of a rolling, tree-lined pasture through the giant bedroom window. Cattle grazed beneath a partly cloudy sky. The scene of such peace clashed with the confusion singeing her on the inside.

David hadn’t come back to the ranch last night. It was after lunch already. He was probably still with Jillian. Punishing his wife and brother.

And how could she fault him? Twice now she’d kissed Brandon. She hadn’t been back in Vengeance three days and already she was carousing with another man. David didn’t know what she’d done. He didn’t have to. He accused her of being stuck on his brother. She was, in a way, but things were different now. And then not. Brandon still wouldn’t want her, but Eliza wasn’t an over-the-moon adolescent anymore.

While she didn’t fully understand why Brandon had allowed the second kiss to happen, the way he’d looked at her through the windshield of his truck would be permanently scorched into her memory. One more to add to the fantasy that was Brandon. He desired her. Passion had never been their shortcoming. But what they’d done was wrong. David was Brandon’s brother.

Would David even care? He wanted an annulment. Their marriage hadn’t meant enough to him to call it a divorce, and she had no right to be angry with him.

Their marriage was going sour because of her Brandon fantasies. For years she hadn’t been able to keep them away. Every once in a while they transported her to a fictional world, one where he was with her. She secretly yearned for him. Everybody wanted what they couldn’t have, right? That was her only problem. Had it truly led to the poor state of her marriage? She found it difficult to accept.