Free Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) by Shiloh Walker

front of him.
    That was when she saw the glint of gold on his finger.
    His ring finger.
    On his left hand.
    Hands that had always been covered by the gloves he wore—the gloves made sense now. Therapeutic gloves, she imagined. The kind worn by writers to help with their wrists.
    And they’d hidden that ring.
    An ice-cold bucket of water splashing in her face wouldn’t have been more effective. Abruptly, she shoved back from the table. “Please excuse me for a moment.”
    Okay, Farrah had rambled on and on about how private the man was, even more so over the past few years. And Ressa knew—obviously—that there had been a woman in his life. But nobody ever came to the library. Clayton never talked about his mother.
    It was like she just . . . didn’t exist.
    And how he’d given her that little paperweight for Mother’s Day.
    She’d assumed . . .
    That’s it, you
assumed.
    Feeling the weight of their combined gazes on her, she sought out the restroom. Once inside, she moved to the sink and braced her hands on it.
    She’d almost made a move on a married man.
    “You’ve done gone and lost it, honey.”
    All because a man had a beautiful pair of eyes and a slow, sexy smile.
    Of course, she’d always been a sucker for a man with a beautiful pair of eyes and a slow, sexy smile.
    Beautiful eyes, a slow sexy smile had damn near ruined her before and she’d fought long and hard to rebuild the mess that bastard had made of her life.
    Her heart hammered and she sucked in a breath.
    That man—she’d been right. She really
had
been better off getting away from him months ago.
    He was dangerous.
    “Just get through the weekend and you’ll never have to see him again.” The thought caused a hollow ache to settle inside her chest, though.
    And instead of making her feel any better at all, it only made her feel worse.
    *   *   *
    Trey spent the next ninety minutes trying to puzzle out just what had happened.
    One minute, she’d been easy and relaxed—oh, Baron—the prick—had gotten under her skin, but she’d handled him, and unless Trey had forgotten how to read people, she’d enjoyed knocking him down a peg, too.
    She’d been warm, easy, relaxed.
    And then, within the span of a heartbeat, something had changed.
    He couldn’t even put his finger on it, try as he might. And he wanted to know what it was. Part of him had kept thinking that maybe he should . . . should . . .
    Should what
?
    Travis’s voice seemed to nag him—a brotherly earworm—
    Are you just going to bite the bullet and ask her out?
    He’d almost done it. That last day, before Clayton had gotten so upset.
    There was nothing in the way now.
    Nothing except for that one thing. The one that made his brain shut down, panic crowding out everything. That,combined with the humiliation that had happened the one time he’d even tried . . .
    So maybe it was better.
    Maybe it was better that the air around them seemed to drop by about thirty degrees and she’d gone from sliding him those quick little glances, to barely looking at him at all.
    None of that kept him sitting there next to her, thankful that the table was a barrier that kept anybody from seeing the evidence of just how much Ressa Bliss affected him.
    Yeah. Maybe this was better . . .
    But damned if he could really get himself to believe that.
    *   *   *
    “You really do need to think about taking that off,” Max said as they headed down the hall to their rooms.
    Since he didn’t, at all, want to talk about it, Trey played dumb. “Take what off?” Inside his pocket, he rubbed his thumb across his wedding ring.
    “Son, you know damn good and well what. That ring. The one you use like a shield to keep women from getting too close. The one you wear to pretend that maybe Aliesha isn’t really dead, isn’t really gone.” Max stopped outside his door and looked back at him. “It’s like as long as you wear that ring, you don’t have to let her go. You can