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.
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