“You and me both,” Brody replied. “His mother was always good at research. She usually handles this kind of thing.”

“He mentioned that,” Elisa said as she threw some trash in the garbage.

His eyes followed her graceful movements around the room. The gentle sway of her hips and high, swinging ponytail had his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “What else did he say?”

She glanced at him and paused before answering. “Nothing much.”

“No, that’s not all.” He came around the table and walked toward her. “What else did he say?”

Her full, kissable lips pursed together. “He just said he misses his mother.”

Kelly and Tyler had had an hour-long conversation last night before bedtime. Tyler told her about staying with Elisa, taking pictures, and getting a B+ on his vocabulary test. If Brody hadn’t overheard the conversation, he wouldn’t have known about the test.

“You look like you could use a drink,” Elisa said, pulling Brody out of his brooding thoughts. Did he look as bad on the outside as he felt on the inside? As if he’d been through the gauntlet of relentless fatigue and stress? Apparently so. If things didn’t turn around soon, his ass could be grass. In other words, Brody’s future was hinging on Anthony’s ability to bring customers back.

“Will white wine do?” she asked after he failed to answer her first question. Drinking wine, alone with Elisa when she turned him on more than he even thought possible? Why the hell not?

Under normal circumstances, Brody wouldn’t be caught dead with white wine. His brother Chase always called it a girly drink no man should ever touch. Considering it was all Elisa had, though, Brody accepted the glass and followed her to the couch. They sat down next to each other and sipped their drinks for several quiet moments. Elisa curled her long, fantasy-worthy legs under her and cradled her glass in her feminine little hands. Deep brown eyes gazed at him from underneath thick black lashes. Something about the way she looked at him made him feel vulnerable and exposed, like she wanted to know his deepest, darkest fears. If she knew those, she’d run screaming for the hills.

He glanced around the room and his eyes landed on papers on the coffee table. One set of papers were photos. The other set was a sizable stack, and the paper on top had the word “Mongolia” on it. Suddenly, Tyler’s announcement from the other night came back to him.

Brody jerked his head toward the papers. “Seems you have plans to do some globetrotting.”

Elisa lifted her glass to her lips but paused before taking a sip. Her gaze darted to the papers. “Yeah, I was offered this amazing opportunity to travel to Mongolia and take photos for Time Magazine. The piece covers nomadic shepherds.” She waved a hand in the air. “But it’s still a long way off. In fact, I haven’t totally decided on whether or not to go.”

He studied her for a moment, trying to ignore how luminous her skin looked, and focused on the wistful look on her face when she talked about the opportunity.

“Tyler told me you said you were going.” And why did that bother him? Why did the idea of her leaving and going so far away create a pain in his chest? He should be happy for her. Just the other day she’d admitted how much she desired this very thing.

She tugged on her earlobe. “To be honest, I’ve gone back and forth. If I go, I’d be gone for about five months. I’d most likely have to sell this house and…” Her words trailed off, and Brody suspected there was more.

“And what?” he pressed.

Her teeth worried her lower lip. “And then there’s the question of whether to come back at all.”

He stared at her, unsure of what to say, because the thought of Elisa leaving for good was like someone carving out his stomach with a spoon. Hell, he’d only known her for a short time, but he’d already developed a connection with her. A part of him had been hoping for something more than what they currently had. Even though Brody didn’t think himself capable of more, a part of him wanted to try.

He took a sip of his wine and tried not to let the disappointment show in his voice. “When you say ‘not come back,’ do you mean staying in Mongolia?”

She pursed her lips. “Not specifically Mongolia. But how can I be serious about having a kind of career that I want from Wyoming? The most successful photographers travel constantly.”

“And that’s what you want? To travel?”

Her delicate shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I think so, yes.”

“Are those the photos from the other day?” He changed the subject because the conversation was depressing him. After his disagreement with his father, Brody needed something harmless to concentrate on.

She glanced at the coffee table where several sheets of pictures lay. “Yeah. Do you want to see them?”

Did he have to answer that honestly? What he wanted to do was take her hair down, peel those hundred-year-old sweats down her lean hips, and lose himself inside her. Probably best not to make her think he was some obsessive psychotic. “Sure,” he said in a gruff voice.

She set her wineglass on the table and picked up one of the sheets. “They came out way better than the last ones. Anthony’s plating is so much simpler than Travis’s was, but it works. In fact, they make for better photos.”

They were better? Brody couldn’t tell anything past how good she smelled. The woman was going to send him comatose. He gulped his wine down faster than he should have, and some got caught in his throat. He coughed to force the liquid down.

“Are you okay?” she asked after replacing the sheet on the table.

“I’m fine. It just went down the wrong pipe.” That was nice and plausible and made him sound less pathetic.

“You’ve had a tough day, haven’t you?” Concern had her brows lowering over her eyes.

Tough day? Most people who had days like his went to bars and got shitfaced. In his youth, he would have. Now he had no choice but to leave his work at work so he wouldn’t come home grumbling like an ogre. His father had a way of sucking the humanity out of Brody. Going back and forth with him over whether or not Anthony was capable of handling the kitchen had done Brody in.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Elisa asked when Brody still failed to speak like a normal person.

He gazed into her worried eyes and found himself spilling his guts. “I told my father about putting Anthony in the kitchen and he’s not happy.”

“Maybe he’s just concerned about his business and doesn’t know how else to handle it.”

“I know he doesn’t know how. That’s why he’s been there all the time. He doesn’t know what else to do. On the outside he acts tough, but on the inside he’s worried.”

Elisa looked at him over the rim of her glass. She took a shallow sip before speaking. “And he’s projecting that onto you, right? Are you still worried about losing your job?”

Sharing his fears and concerns had never been comfortable for Brody. In that way he was more like his old man than his two brothers. But, sitting next to Elisa, sharing wine, he found himself in unfamiliar territory. Strangely enough, Elisa took the uncertainty away, just by talking to him. And she was leaving in a few months.

“Oh, yeah,” he admitted. “In fact, he told me that if Anthony doesn’t work out I’ll find myself without a job.”

“So, he’s still serious about letting you go,” she stated. “I’ll do what I can with the pictures, and the next photo shoot should be better. But I feel like I should be doing more.”

Brody glanced at her. Her knees were pulled to her chest, her chin resting on top of them. Her olive skin had a healthy glow like she’d spent the day in the sun. Had he ever laid eyes on a more beautiful woman?

“You’ve already done a lot. In fact, just talking about it has helped.” Shit, his life had become such a mess. He’d been irresponsible and gotten his college girlfriend pregnant. Then he couldn’t hold his family together, and now the business was on a rapid slide down the tubes. His father had never said as much, but Brody had the feeling the old man placed the majority of the blame on him. And he deserved it. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost himself and other things in the process, his son being one of them. As long as he was still Tyler’s hero, nothing else mattered. Even though he felt far from anyone’s hero.

“You don’t want to talk about this, do you?” Elisa asked in a soft voice. “It’s okay if you don’t.”

How did the woman read him so well? Kelly had always complained that Brody had been a closed book and she never had any idea of what went on inside his head. The lack of communication had been the ultimate downfall of their marriage. One of the last things she’d said to him as his wife had been “If you don’t learn to open up, you’re going to end up alone.”

Elisa got him. He had no clue how, and a part of him wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. But somehow she knew, like she had some extrasensory radar.

“Are those your parents?” he asked when his attention landed on a photograph of two forty-something people.

Elisa glanced at the picture. “Yeah.”

“Do they live close by?”

Her attention shifted back to him. “They died in a plane crash.”

“I’m sorry.” Didn’t he feel like the asshole? “I know what it’s like to lose a parent. How old were you?”

Elisa sipped her wine and waited. “Eighteen,” she finally admitted.

He studied her and noted the way her eyes had clouded over. Damn, he hadn’t meant to suck the light out of them. “You were close with them, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, they were…” She nibbled her lower lip. “They were really good parents. My dad was gone a lot, but when he was home, he was very attentive.”