"I'm not making that assumption. I just don't want—" She muttered a curse. "Why do you assume I'm eager to be married? Because I'm a woman? Because little girls grow up expecting to be nothing but wives and mothers? Or do you think you're so incredible I won't be able to tell you no?"
"I'm not assuming anything. I knew from the moment I decided to marry you that I—"
Her sweet smile didn't waver one bit as she kicked him under the table. The shoe he'd admired as insubstantial back at the in sent a substantial shock of pain though his shin. Grinding his teeth behind a smile as phony as hers, he bent to rub the ache while rephrasing his statement. "I knew from the moment I decided I wanted to marry you that it wasn't going to be easy. You are stubborn. You don't seek out emotional entanglements. You seem quite happy living the way you do."
"I am. So why would I mess with what makes me happy?"
"Because I can make you happier." The answer popped out before he'd given it any thought. It surprised him as much as her, maybe even more. He wasn't looking to take on the responsibility for someone else's happiness. Unless she wanted money, prestige, or power, he didn't have a clue to how to go about making Holly happy—well, excluding sex.
But then, even the best sex in the world couldn't make a person happy. If it could, both he and Holly would have been the cheeriest people on the damned planet.
The awkward silence that settled between them was broken when Kate brought their meals. After she had gone, he breathed deeply. "Listen, Holly, if you and I get—"
She gave him a look as sharp as the steak knife she pointed in his direction. "Don't say it. I don't want to hear the in word or any version thereof one more time tonight. As I understand it, a date is supposed to be fun. So far, I haven't had any fun. If you expect me to ever agree to another of these little rituals, you'd better start entertaining me now."
"All right. So what do we do besides eat?"
"You can start by telling me why your cell phone hasn't rung even once. This must be some kind of record."
"I left it at the inn. I didn't want to be disturbed."
She stared at him, wide-eyed, open-mouthed.
"It's not like it's a lifeline. I do leave it at home on occasion."
"Name one," she challenged.
"Saturday. When we went to the dance." He smiled smugly.
"Name another," she shot back.
He tried to but couldn't.
She studied him for a moment, then grinned. "I suspected it from the moment you made your indecent proposal. Now I know for sure—you're an impostor. The real Tom Flynn wouldn't think any more highly of marriage than I do, and he certainly would never leave his phone home while he went out. He has a closer relationship with that phone than with the women in his life."
"Woman," he corrected. "There's never been more than one at a time. And I'm doing my damnedest to change that—the relationship part. Not the one-woman part."
"So you're monogamous in your promiscuity. And I suppose you expect the same of me."
He thought of walking away from her at the end of the evening with nothing more than a kiss at her door, and then thought of her with another man who wouldn't stop at her door, or with a kiss. "I do," he said harshly. Damned if he was going to suffer the torment of abstention alone.
"You remind me of a man who divorces his wife, then tries to put stipulations on what she can do and who she can see. He doesn't want her for himself, but he doesn't want anyone else to have her, either."
He studied her over the rim of his glass as he took a drink. Her full lower lip was extended in a pout. He wanted to reach across the table and smooth his thumb over it, to feel the incredible softness that he'd already tasted enough times to remember, to slide around and sit beside her and taste her again. Only the fact that they were in a public place and the dull throb in his shin kept him in place.
But that didn't stop him from smiling his smuggest, most arrogant smile and confidently assuring her, "The difference is, I can't divorce you until I m—" Remembering her ban on the m word, he shrugged to finish the sentence. "And I want you, Holly." Just saying it out loud made him hard and hot. "Oh, man, do I want you. And I don't want anyone else to have you. But trust me, darlin', it'll be worth the wait."
* * *
Chapter 10
« ^ »
With empty dessert dishes between them, Holly sat back and indulged in a silent sigh. She wasn't about to admit it to Tom, but she'd enjoyed the evening. Once she'd put an end to the marriage talk, she'd had a nice time, and had learned a few things. He had a sense of humor. He was amazingly appealing for a man who seemed so arrogant. And there was a certain unfamiliar comfort in knowing that he expected nothing more from her than she'd already given.
Though she didn't like the way Tom had phrased it, her flings had boiled down to one of two things—trading services, or selling her own. And she had sold herself cheap. Wasn't she worth more than any restaurant dinner, a million concerts, or a year's worth of first-class weekends in the city? She would have liked to think so.
But she wasn't sure.
Because that admission made her feel uncertain and fragile, she pushed it away and focused on him. "Tell me about your family."
He laid down the fork he'd been toying with and shook his head. "There's nothing to tell. My mother died just before my sixteenth birthday, and I never met my father. Her family was disappointed in her for getting pregnant before she finished high school, so we hardly ever saw them, and when we did, things tended to get unpleasant. As for my father, he never wanted to be a father, so he disappeared when she told him the news."
"That was a tough way to grow up."
"It wasn't so bad."
"I meant for her." She couldn't imagine being seventeen or so, pregnant, and abandoned by her family as well as her baby's father. The thought of having complete responsibility for another life was enough to make her shudder.
"Yeah, I guess it was tough on her. But she always said she'd never regretted it. She was a good mother. I—" He looked away and murmured, "I missed her when she was gone."
Holly felt a flush of… Guilt? Envy? Resentment? Though she doubted Tom would ever admit it, he'd loved his mother, while the best way she could describe her relationship with her own mother was "forced tolerance." She couldn't honestly say she'd missed Margery even once in the fifteen years since she'd moved away, couldn't honestly claim that she would miss her when she was dead. It wasn't fair that he'd lost the mother he'd loved—probably the only person he'd ever loved—while she couldn't keep enough distance between herself and her mother.
Especially since Margery was still at the inn.
"I'm surprised that once you and Ross began raking in the millions, you didn't have family popping out of the woodwork," she remarked.
"I'm not known for my sentimentality or my generosity," he said with a sardonic tone she didn't quite understand. "I don't value family for its own sake. If my father or my mother's family wanted special treatment from me, then they should have treated her better."
And if Margery wanted something from her… "But people make mistakes," some devil made her say. "They do things when they're young that they regret as they grow older. If they apologize, if they're sincerely sorry and want to atone for those mistakes, shouldn't they have that chance?"
"How do you atone for throwing a pregnant seventeen-year-old out on the streets? For having nothing to do with her for the next sixteen years? How do you atone for humiliating your daughter in front of her friends not once but twice?"
Holly's cheeks burned hot. "I wasn't talking about—"
"Yes, you were. We both have the misfortune to have some worthless people in our lives—or, in my case, not in my life. If your mother wants forgiveness and you want to give it to her, fine. That's a decision that only you can make, because you have to live with it. But it's not a decision I'll ever make. My mother's family was never sorry for what they did to her. My father, to the best of my knowledge, nev
er regretted it either. If they ever do, it will be too late." His smile was thin and unforgiving. "It's been too late for forty years."
She watched that smile, watched it disappear as his features settled in a stony set. Coldhearted snake. That was what Maggie had called him until she'd stopped blaming him for Ross's shortcomings. The snake part might be true, especially in his business dealings, but coldhearted? She suspected Tom had more layers of emotion inside him than he realized. How would it feel to be the person who tapped in to all that emotion? Who thawed him out, loosened him up, and brought out not only the passion but the tenderness, the joy, the sorrow, the regret, the gentleness, the love?
She wasn't looking to do any tapping in. She would be perfectly satisfied with the passion, thank you. But for some lucky woman, Tom Flynn the man—the flawed, strong, powerful, fallible, entirely human man—would be a sight to behold.
He glanced around, then said, "Looks like they're getting ready to close."
She looked, too. Kate was pushing a sweeper under distant tables, and her mother was washing down tabletops while her sister refilled the condiments. "My town," she said with a smile. "The only thing open after nine o'clock are the bars, but the quality of their clientele goes down significantly. Shall we go?"
He paid the bill, then helped her with her coat. The silence between them was almost companionable until he turned into the long drive that led to the inn. In a few moments, he intended to tell her good night and leave her alone. She intended to change his mind.
"Front door or around back?" he asked.
"The front's fine." It wasn't as if her employees didn't know she was out with Tom. Coming in with him wouldn't cause any more gossip than—probably not as much as—coming in through her own apartment.
He parked in the nearly empty lot, and they made their way across gravel and frozen ground to the inn's entrance. The lobby was brightly lit and welcoming, everything her guests expected it to be. Though there was no fire in the hearth, the open space was comfortably warm and smelled of mulberry and fresh flowers. It was her single biggest extravagance—fresh flowers delivered weekly from Melissa Thomas's nursery. Holly had neither a green thumb nor the desire to learn to cultivate her own flowers, but she loved the arrangements all the same.
She greeted Peggy, who suddenly found some reason to disappear behind the desk into the office Holly shared with Emilie. Alone with Tom, she slipped her coat off, folded it over her hands, and gave him a practiced smile. "Can I interest you in a nightcap? I imagine we can have the library to ourselves again."
"What do you have that's nonalcoholic?"
"Soft drinks, coffee, milk, juice, mulled cider, tea. You forget, we're a full-service restaurant, too."
"How about cider?"
"Not a problem. Why don't you build a fire in the library, turn on the music, turn down the lights, and—"
Grinning, he took hold of her elbow and turned her down the hall. "Better yet, why don't I go with you to the kitchen, and we can drink it there."
Holly didn't protest. The kitchen was that much closer to her apartment—literally just steps from her bedroom. With Bree now settled in her own room and Margery upstairs in a guest room, she didn't think it would be hard at all to coax him into her apartment. One of my employees is sleeping next door, she could innocently say, so why don't we go to my apartment so we won't disturb her?
A dim light burned in the kitchen. She turned on only the lights she needed, leaving much of the room in shadow, then handed her coat and bag to Tom and gestured toward the corner table. "Have a seat."
Mulled cider was one of the inn's specialties, available anytime night or day with a minimum of fuss. Gallon jars of cider lined the shelves in the pantry, with the additional ingredients—brown sugar and spices—premeasured and stored in small plastic bags, one bag per half gallon. Even Holly, whose kitchen abilities didn't extend far beyond sandwich making, couldn't mess up.
Once she had everything simmering in a pan on the stove, she turned to find Tom leaning against the opposite counter. He'd set down their coats, removed his jacket, and loosened his tie. With his dark hair in its perpetually mussed state and his rugged features looking even more rugged in the shadows, he looked … incredible. And tired, she added as he hid a yawn. "What great catastrophe took you out of here before sunrise yesterday?"
"There was an explosion and fire at one of our factories. It happened around four, they'd tracked me down by five, and I was in the Gulfstream on my way there by six."
"Was it bad?"
"One man dead, several others injured. The plant was destroyed."
She stirred the cider, half-surprised that he'd ranked the human toll above the business loss. It was a common conception that people didn't mean much to Tom. Even she had always assumed that people were more or less interchangeable with him. If he got tired of one blonde, he simply traded her for another. If an employee annoyed him, he fired him and hired another. It was said that he didn't bother to learn people's names because they were disposable. Soon enough others would take their places.
Apparently, that was a common misconception.
"So what do you do now?"
"We're in the process of deciding. We'd just bought the plant. If we take the insurance settlement and walk away, we take a substantial loss. If we add to the insurance settlement and rebuild, we take an even bigger loss in the short term. But if we don't rebuild, it will devastate the town. The plant was the biggest employer in the county, with more than seventy percent of the jobs. Virtually every business in town will go under without the factory employees' dollars."
Opening a cabinet, she bypassed delicate china cups for sturdy porcelain mugs. "Which action are you voting for?"
When he didn't answer, she glanced over her shoulder. He looked chagrined, a bit embarrassed. Because he wanted to take the money and run? It made good business sense, but there was no denying that it was coldhearted. Or did he want to rebuild and help save some little blue-collar burg from extinction? Not the best action for the bottom line, but the decent thing to do, if the company could afford it. And McKinney Industries certainly could.
She ladled the hot cider into the mugs, offered one to him, then turned and leaned against the counter. While waiting for his answer, she blew carefully on her cider, creating ripples in the amber liquid, sending fragrant wisps of steam into the air.
"Whatever we do, a loss these days isn't necessarily a bad thing," he said at last. "With our profits climbing steadily, we could use a tax break. And if we don't rebuild, all we have is the insurance money. If we do rebuild, sure, it'll cost us more up-front, but in return, we get the potential for greater future earnings. The factory was self-sufficient and made a product we needed. That's why we bought it. We still need the product, and there's no reason the plant can't be self-sufficient again in a few years."
"So you're voting to save the town."
He looked stiff and uncomfortable. "I'm voting to take the action that seems wisest in the long run."
"Which just happens to include saving the town." She grinned. "You must be an impostor. I heard the real Tom Flynn would sell his soul for a profit if—"
"If he had one," he said dryly. "I'm not concerned about the town. I'm just looking at where we'll stand in five or ten years if we rebuild, and if we don't."
"It's okay, Tom. I'm not going to tell anyone that way down deep inside, you have a tiny streak of sentimentality and generosity." Then she teasingly added, "Not that anyone would believe me if I did tell."
They finished their cider pretty much in silence. By the time Tom's cup was empty, he was dead on his feet. She thought about bringing him wide awake and seducing him anyway, then decided to take pity on him. She still wanted to sleep with him—and she didn't expect that to change until after she'd succeeded—but she wanted him wide awake, with all his wits, his inventiveness, and his creativity at peak performance. He'd promised her it would be worth the wait, and she intended to hold him to it.
He blinked, but the drowsiness didn't fade from his dark eyes. "That's it? No kisses? No sultry invitations? No promises of soul-deep pleasure?"
"If you had a soul," she said with a faint smile. "No. No seduction. I want you, but I want you awake, alert, and energetic. Otherwise…" She lowered her voice and damn near purred, "You just might not survive."
He took hold of his coat and caught her hands, too, pulling her near. Without touching her anywhere else, he gave her a sweet, chaste, innocent kiss. "Good night, Holly," he murmured, then he slipped past her and was gone.
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she remained where she was for a long time. She swore she could still feel the incredible softness of the cashmere on her fingertips, still smell the exotic-spice scent of his aftershave, still feel the gentleness of his mouth against hers. No man had ever made her feel so fragile, so special. No man had ever made her tremble with such a nothing kiss, or brought tears to her eyes by doing nothing more than walking away.
Finally, she opened her eyes, shut off the lights, and started to her apartment. She stopped for a moment, though, at the dining table, where she gazed out the window at the stars. Was it too late, she wondered, to change her wish?
But what would she change it to? Don't wish for me at all?
Or, Wish for us to have it all?
She didn't have a clue.
* * *
Wednesday was the first of Bree's two days off. She celebrated by sleeping late, then was on her way out the front door when an imperious voice commanded her to stop. Slowly she turned to face Margery McBride. "Where are you going?" the woman demanded.
"T-to town. This is my day off."
"Where in town?"
Bree shrugged. "The bank, the drugstore, the grocery store."
FIRST KISS Page 13
