Protecting Holly

by Lynn Bulock

  Holly sighed. “No, Jake. Please, I’m just not ready.”

  He reached for her hand, but Holly moved as far from him as she could on the couch. “Is there anything I can say, or do, to convince you otherwise?” He couldn’t think of anything to say, really, but he wanted this to happen so much.

  “Not yet. It…doesn’t feel right, not tomorrow. I’m just not ready,” she repeated, looking down at the carpet, a troubled expression on her face.

  “Well, how long then? Another couple days? A week? What will it take for you to be ready?” Even though Jake wanted to be patient and understanding, this wasn’t the way he was used to conversations with women going. He had no idea what happened next in a situation like this one, so different from his previous encounters, and so far out of his control.

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell you tonight. I can only ask you to give me more time.”

  “If that’s what you want.” Jake rose, at a loss for anything else to say. “I guess I better leave now. See you in the morning?”

  “Of course. Be careful driving home,” Holly said, walking him to the door.

  As if that matters, Jake felt like saying, but he left silently instead. The joyful Christmas carols that came on the radio when he started the engine seemed like an invasion. “Peace on earth? This is not my idea of peace,” he grumbled under his breath to God, if He was listening. In a swift movement, he switched off the radio so that he could drive home in stony, brooding silence to match his mood.

  Chapter Eleven

  Thursday morning, Holly had to force herself to go into work and face Jake. Once she got there she was sorry she’d made the effort, as instead of Jake being there, all she found was a message on her voice mail. “I’m taking the morning as a personal holiday to try to get things in order here. I probably have enough to do to spend the entire day working from home. I’ll call in later,” his message said in a voice devoid of any emotion.

  “Great. All that stress for nothing,” Holly told the phone, aware that it wouldn’t answer her back. Still, she couldn’t blame Jake for shutting her out. She hadn’t been encouraging last night. Her feelings right now were so mixed up, and she wasn’t sure how to go about sorting them out.

  While she sat at her computer and tried to work through the mail that had accumulated in the week they’d been paying more attention to the trial than to work, she talked to God in a way that was more matter-of-fact than her most usual prayer. “Okay, I need help here,” Holly said softly. There wasn’t anybody to overhear her and worry about her sanity, so she had the conversation out loud. “I really don’t know what to do about everything, Lord. If Jake and I are supposed to be together, then several things have to change. Who do I talk to about this, where do I go?”

  Before she had finished with the pile of mail and messages on the desk, the phone rang. When Holly answered it, Rose was on the other end. “So, what’s up? I didn’t get a chance to catch up with you after dinner last night because we were so busy with the details. Do you want to meet me at the Stagecoach for lunch?”

  Holly knew God was good, but this was incredible, and it made her grin. “Sure,” she told her cousin. “That might be just what I need.”

  Of course the restaurant was busy, between the regulars who hadn’t taken the week between the holidays off, and all the folks who were on vacation of some kind and decided to spend a day downtown in Colorado Springs. Still, she and Rose were led to a more remote booth without too long a wait. Once they’d ordered, Rose leaned over the table, absently playing with the straw in her diet cola. “Okay, so what was going on last night? Why did Jake take you home? Are you still being followed, or was it just concern?”

  “Neither of those, actually.” Now that she had the opportunity to talk about all this with someone who might understand, Holly found herself tongue-tied.

  This time, Rose’s nature as a good attorney and nosy cousin helped Holly. She didn’t let the silence last long. “Oh? So what else is there? Did he offer you a healthy bonus as a reward for all your help during the trial? Or is there more to his appreciation of you than just liking your work? Maybe I’m off base, but I’d say by looking at the two of you, that something besides work went on at the ranch.”

  “A lot went on, and it has me feeling really confused,” Holly told her. “I’ve thought that I was in love with Jake for a long time, but I didn’t expect anything to actually happen with my feelings, because I didn’t think either of us would ever change enough for me to act on my feelings.”

  The server came with their lunch, and Rose looked like she was going to burst waiting for the woman to put the food on the table and leave. “So what happened? And what do you mean by saying you thought you were in love with him?”

  “Man, you’re good. You just don’t miss anything. Do you ever lose any cases?” Rose was making her smile when she’d felt like crying so recently.

  “All too often, but that’s part of the game. And don’t try to weasel out of answering me.” Rose waved a bread stick at her.

  “Okay. Before, I thought I was in love with Jake, but in the last few weeks, I really fell in love with him, and the feelings are different. They’re deeper, but I feel so much more vulnerable. It’s making me very protective, not just of me but of him, too, and I don’t want anything to happen to jeopardize that.”

  “And how does he feel?”

  Holly sighed. “He asked me last night to start seeing him outside of work, and I believe that he’s serious.”

  “You sound like there’s a but there.”

  “Several. I’m not quite ready for that yet. And he got pretty aggravated when I told him that I couldn’t do that on his timetable.”

  “He knows about your past, and he seems pretty accepting of it,” Rose said, startling Holly a little.

  It was definitely a statement by her cousin, not a question, which surprised her. “Has he actually said something like that to you?”

  Rose shook her head. “No. He’s gone out of his way to communicate that he knows about Convy and everything that happened, without discussing it with me in any way that would violate your privacy. But if you have any doubts about his feelings for you, I’m a pretty good judge of those things, and I’d say they’re sincere.”

  “Thanks. That’s a big comfort.” Something dawned on her as she sat at the table. “That’s what you two were talking about here before lunch the other day, wasn’t it?” She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, no. And to think I was worried because I was afraid he was flirting with you.”

  “Sorry, no such thing. He only has eyes for you right now, which is incredible. The old Jake Montgomery would have charmed me out of my socks while we worked together all those hours, but it certainly didn’t happen this time.” Rose put down her fork. “If it were anybody less deserving than you that he was hooked on, I’d complain. I miss the old Jake. He was fun.”

  “For other people. It was less fun thinking I was in love with him and watching him flirt with every attractive woman in sight.”

  “I imagine. So if you’re not worried about his feelings, and you’re pretty sure of your own, what do you do now?”

  “That’s the hard part.” Holly sighed, looking at her half-eaten salad. “I have to find a way to separate our work relationship and our personal relationship. Then I’ll be ready to actually date him, I think.”

  Rose shrugged. “I’d think that would be the easy part. Isn’t there anybody else in your office that would switch places with you? For the short term it would solve the problem. If Jake didn’t agree to the switch, he could always ask you to help find him a new assistant.”

  “That is one possibility,” Holly said. “And you’re right, that would solve the problem in the short run. Thanks, Rose. Now, do you have any problems you want to unload on me in return?”

  “Personal problems? Don’t I wish?” Her cousin rolled her eyes. “This job has me so busy I don’t have enough social life to come up with problems. Maybe that
’s my New Year’s resolution, to get a life.”

  Holly lifted her iced tea in a toast. “I’ll agree to that one.” Her appetite renewed, she went back to the salad. With Rose’s suggestion in her mind, suddenly the café’s dessert cart sounded tempting.

  The half-day rest hadn’t helped put Jake in a better mood. He rode the elevator up to the FBI offices, looking at his reflection in the polished steel sides of the car. He didn’t look as bad as he felt. It shouldn’t be too hard to put on a brave face and pretend that he was doing just fine for Holly. The doors opened and he went down the hall and through the door of the resident agency. It was largely deserted. About half the personnel seemed to be using the last few days of the year to take leave and stay home with their families.

  The door to Holly’s outer office was closed and he stood before it for a minute, took a deep breath and walked into an empty room. So much for his brave front. There wasn’t even a note on the desk saying where she was. Maybe when he called in earlier and copped out, she went home.

  He went into his own office, where piles of mail and stacks of messages sat neatly on the desk. So Holly had spent at least some time in the office being her normal efficient self before she went home, or wherever she’d gone. It aggravated him a bit that she hadn’t left any indication of where she’d gone. What if Barclay’s henchman was still out there? Or what if it was someone from Escalante’s organization?

  Of course if he thought fairly, he hadn’t given her any reason to stick around today. It would have been so much better if he’d just called her last night after leaving her house, or this morning before she left for work, or tried again here to tell her how he felt. He was frustrated that he couldn’t just start some kind of whirlwind courtship now that all the barriers of the trial were gone. Several times in the last few weeks he’d thought that was what she wanted. Now she was pulling back again and he had no idea how to make things right between them.

  Pushing aside his aggravation, he looked at the piles of work on his desk and decided to take out his frustration on all the junk he needed to sort through. Maybe he wouldn’t feel better about his entire life in an hour, but he’d clear this pile off the desk, anyway. That had to count for something.

  An hour later, the pile was mostly diminished. Of course now there was a stack nearly as high as the first one had been of documents with sticky notes attached to them, telling Holly how to deal with the things that needed to be done. And she still wasn’t back in the office. Jake put the stack in the middle of her desk where she couldn’t miss it, and decided to go down the hallway looking for company, or information. Surely somebody else knew where his assistant had gotten to.

  In the second office he checked, he found both company and information. “She and Sara Phelps went out for coffee,” Bob told him. The other special agent professed to be on his way out of the building himself. “Since there wasn’t much for Sara to do around here, and both of you missed the Christmas party, I figured they could spend the afternoon visiting if they wanted.”

  Jake agreed. There was no reason Holly couldn’t do exactly as she liked with her time. Why did it bother him so that she hadn’t told him what she was doing? He thanked Bob for his help and was about to leave when the man called him back. “I keep forgetting to ask you something. Did you borrow my computer a couple weeks ago?”

  “Well, yeah,” Jake admitted, steeling himself for what he expected to come next. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to admit to taking the machine apart, but he wasn’t about to lie to the man either. How do I handle this one, Lord? He really knew without an answer that the way to handle this was truthfully, making whatever apology he needed to.

  “Thanks. I don’t know how you had time in the middle of this case to take a look at it, or what you did to it, but the problem I’d been having with it is gone. That funny whirring noise I told Holly about cleared up, and the software glitch I hadn’t even mentioned vanished, too.”

  “You’re welcome. It actually helped me out as well on something I needed to figure out on the case, so we’re both ahead this time.” Jake cracked a grin for the first time in hours. Bob headed for the elevator and Jake went back to his office. Holly had told him over and over that faith was the answer to most of life’s problems. Why had it taken so long for him to believe it?

  Sitting in the quiet of his office, he pondered over the biggest problem in his life, and mulled over what God would want him to do about it. Just as the little problem with Bob had a simple answer, this one had one as well. It wasn’t one he liked, but the moment it came to him, Jake knew it was right. Bowing his head right there, he started talking to the Lord.

  “Father, You know how I feel about Holly, and how I want this relationship I believe we’re supposed to have to move forward, and fast. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before, and it’s something new for me. But I know that things have to proceed in Your time, not mine. Help me to find peace with that, and to give Holly the space she needs so that our love can grow, if that’s what You have in mind for us.” It was the hardest prayer he’d prayed so far, but it felt the most right. Leaning back in his chair, Jake felt an incredible sense of peace.

  A few minutes later he realized with a start that he’d actually dozed off there, once he heard voices in the outer office. Getting up and going to the doorway, he saw Holly and Sara standing in front of the desk talking. They broke off their conversation when they saw him.

  “Hi, Mr. Montgomery,” Sara said. She smiled at him and tilted her head, making the large, dangly earrings she wore jingle slightly with the tiny bells hanging from them. “Merry Christmas. I didn’t get to tell you that last week. And Happy New Year in case I don’t see you tomorrow.”

  “The same to you, Sara. Have you had a nice holiday season so far?” Jake looked at the girl, knowing that he’d once found her attractive in her own spacey way. Now he wondered how he could have ever felt that way. She was certainly nice enough, but standing next to Holly she just didn’t compare. Nobody did these days, he decided.

  “Yeah, I have,” Sara said. “Thank you for asking.”

  “Do you need me right away?” Holly asked. “If so, I can finish the conversation I was having with Sara later.”

  Jake needed her all right, but in his newfound peace, nothing was urgent. “Take your time,” he said with a smile, trying to reassure her. “Should I make us a fresh pot of coffee, or are you done for the day?”

  “I could stick around for another cup once I walk Sara down the hall,” Holly told him, looking intrigued by either his question or his attitude.

  “Go ahead,” he said, going over and getting the coffeepot. He could hear the two of them giggling slightly as they moved away and he wondered what that was about. Then he got preoccupied with the routine of making coffee. By the time Holly came back a few minutes later, he’d poured himself a cup and was waiting for her.

  “I thought we could move into my office for a few minutes,” he told her. When she nodded, he poured her coffee and set it on the corner of his desk where she sat in the visitor’s chair.

  “Okay, what’s up here? On the phone this morning you sounded the way I expected you to, unhappy and short with me. Now you’re at ease. What’s going on, Jake?”

  He was actually smiling through this conversation. Jake was amazed. “What’s going on is that I seem to be a slow learner in the faith department. A little while ago I did what I should have done before speaking to you last night, and gave the burden of our situation over to God. I’m sorry I wasn’t happy with your answer last night, Holly, and even sorrier that I let it show so badly. Whatever time you need to be ready to change our relationship, you take.”

  Holly’s eyes had widened until they were dark-brown pools during his speech. He was thankful, at least, that she wasn’t in tears. He’d discovered that Holly’s tears were the one thing that he couldn’t handle well. “Whatever time I need? Honestly?”

  He swallowed hard, and then answered her. “Honestl
y. It will be difficult for me to wait if it’s much longer than a few weeks, but I’ll do it.”

  Nothing could have surprised him more than her response. Laughing, she dashed around the desk and hugged him, leaning around the back of his chair to envelop him with her cheek pressed next to his in a warm embrace. “Don’t worry, it won’t be weeks. I can promise you that. Especially if you tell me I can have a little leeway around the office to do what I like. Could you give me that, for a week or so?”

  Jake tried to regain his mental balance. This was so much more than he’d hoped for that now he was the one fighting emotions that didn’t usually rise to the surface. “I think so, at least. I’ll try. No, that’s too unclear.” He took a deep breath. “Yes, Holly, you can have as much leeway around the office as you need to do whatever it is you need to do to be ready to deepen our personal relationship. I’ve got to have faith in you through this process, too, not just God.”

  “Thanks, Jake.” She kissed him on the cheek and released her embrace. “You are the best, you know that?”

  Before he could answer she was out the door, and then popped her head back in. “Now I’m even more excited about getting things started. I’ll start doing what I need to do, and I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

  “It will be more like noon, but don’t think I’m deserting you again,” he told her. “I’ve got to go over to the courthouse for some last stuff with Rose.”

  “I should have remembered that. I took the message,” she said, her smile a little wry. “Guess this conversation got me more mixed up than I thought. Do you want to plan on lunch, or will you be done that early?”

  “Let’s make a tentative plan, and if I’m going to be later, I’ll call from Rose’s office, all right?”

  “That sounds good. See you then.” She went back to her own desk and Jake could hear her humming. It was a wonderful sound, one he hoped he could hear much more of in the future.