“Will’s right,” she said brightly, forcing herself to meet Alex’s eyes with a cheerful smile. “A rainy weekend will be the perfect chance to concentrate on your finances.”
The smile wavered a little at Alex’s expression. He was leaning back in his chair, his head cocked to one side, his blue eyes speculative.
“Okay, it’s time for me to get going,” she added, her mind working quickly. Dinner tonight might not be a great idea. “I’m meeting some friends after work, so go ahead and have dinner without me. I’ll be home late. I probably won’t see you till tomorrow morning. We can start talking about your investment portfolio then.”
Alex frowned. “I don’t have an investment portfolio.”
“Not yet, you don’t. That’s all about to change.”
Alex shook his head at her and she grinned at him, delighted that things seemed to be back to normal. See? She didn’t need Will around to keep her from making a pass at Alex. She could rely on her maturity and good judgment.
She held on to that thought all day at work, and later during dinner at her desk with a paperback for company, and still later as she drove home. By the time she pulled into Alex’s driveway, she was actually starting to believe it.
Holly turned off her engine and sat in the warmth of her car for a few minutes, listening to the rain drum against the windows. It sure was coming down. She hoped that Will and Tom and David were warm and dry in their tent.
Of course she’d left too quickly this morning to stop and think about grabbing a raincoat or umbrella. It had been all right earlier, when it was just starting to drizzle, but now it was pouring, Alex’s driveway wasn’t all that close to his front door, and she was going to get drenched.
She sighed. At least if she came into the house wet and cold, she’d have an excuse to go straight up to her room if Alex happened to be downstairs.
Holly took a breath, ducked her head and opened the door. A blast of rain hit her and she ran for the house. She’d almost made it when something tripped her up and she went down, sprawling, in the flower bed beside the front walkway.
“Great,” she muttered, preparing to get muddily to her feet, when a soft, sad bark halted her movement.
Her own woebegone state forgotten, Holly peered around to see where the sound had come from.
A pair of big, sad dog eyes looked at her from underneath the porch.
“Come on out of there, sweetheart,” she coaxed, kneeling down despite the pelting rain and the further damage to her beige wool pantsuit.
Another soft bark. It was a young dog, maybe a puppy.
“Come on out, baby. We’ve got raccoons under there who’d eat a little pup like you for breakfast. Come out and we’ll—”
“Who are you talking to? And why are you crawling around in the mud?”
It was Alex, standing on the front porch.
“I heard a dog barking,” she said defensively, raising her voice to be heard over the wind and the rain. “He’s under the porch. I’m just trying to get him out so we can take him inside.”
“And we want to take him inside because…?”
“He’ll be the first animal we take on board when we build our ark,” she said, glaring at him. “Why do you think? It’s storming out here, in case you hadn’t noticed. No one should be out on a night like this, especially not a puppy. He’s lost and he sounds scared. Show some compassion.”
Alex sighed in resignation. “Food will probably lure him out. I’ll go get something.”
While Alex was gone Holly spoke softly to the dog, getting him used to the sound of her voice. Then Alex was there, crouching down beside her in the rain, holding out some leftover chicken and talking almost as gently as she was.
“It’s okay, buddy. You lucked out. This woman is a sucker for a sob story. We’ll fill your tummy with leftovers if you come on inside with us.”
Slowly, the owner of the eyes emerged, revealing what appeared to be a Labrador puppy, all black, shivering with the cold and wet and eyeing Alex hopefully.
“Food inside,” he said, standing up and backing away toward the house. When the puppy came forward, tail wagging, Holly gathered him into her arms and followed Alex up the stairs.
“There,” she said triumphantly as Alex closed the door behind them. “See how easy that was?”
“Sure,” he said as he dripped on the hall floor. He shook his head, but he was smiling at her and the dog she held tightly against her chest. “I’ll go get some towels. Try to keep our new friend in this general area, will you? And check to see if he’s wearing a collar.”
He was.
“It says Johnny Peterson, 43 Linden Rd,” Holly told him a few minutes later as they were toweling off the puppy and themselves. Johnny seemed to appreciate the attention, as well as the big bowl of chicken scraps Alex put down in front of him. “That’s the lady next door, right? The nice one who lent me the jeans.”
“Yep. Her name’s Anna. I’ll give her a call.” He looked at her. “Why are you always in my house looking like a disaster victim? Maybe you should go change into something a little less muddy.”
Holly made a face at him but followed his suggestion, running upstairs to put on jeans and a sweatshirt and a pair of sneakers. When she came back down Alex was wrestling with Johnny in the hall.
“She’s home, she’s frantic, she’s been looking everywhere, she can’t thank us enough. I’m going to drive over there right now.”
“I’d like to come, too.”
“But you’re actually clean and dry now. Why don’t you stay here? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Holly shook her head. “I like Johnny. And who’s going to snuggle him while you drive? I’m coming.”
“He could probably last two minutes in the car without dying of snuggle deprivation,” Alex said, but he handed her a raincoat and the two of them headed out the door, with Johnny a warm, happy, wriggling bundle in Holly’s arms.
Anna really couldn’t thank them enough. She was in her fifties, the last of an old Scandinavian farming family, and Holly was so charmed by her she might have stayed an hour if Alex hadn’t stood up to go. “We should probably head back so we can change into dry clothes,” he said, and Anna instantly agreed.
“Of course, of course. You’ll have to come for dinner some night this week. Homemade chicken pot pie.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Holly said. She got down on one knee to say goodbye to Johnny, who covered her face in enthusiastic dog kisses until she was laughing so hard she fell over backward.
“Holly may ask for visitation rights,” he told Anna. “I think she’s attached to your dog.”
“Well, Johnny seems attached to her,” Anna said, smiling up at him. “She seems like an easy person to get attached to.”
Alex reached out a hand to help Holly to her feet. “She has her moments,” he admitted.
The rain was coming down in sheets as the two of them ran from Anna’s front door to Alex’s car. The wind was starting to pick up, too. In the five seconds it took to make it into the front seat, they were soaked.
It was even worse when they pulled into Alex’s driveway. As soon as Holly stepped out of the car the wind snatched her hood and blew it back off her head, exposing her to the full fury of the storm.
Holly laughed out loud, suddenly exhilarated. She held out her arms and spun around, almost dancing, her face turned up to the sky and her eyes squeezed shut. She was one with the storm, with the rain, with the wind. It was glorious.
Alex made it to the porch and turned to see what had become of Holly. She was standing out there in the storm, looking up into the wild black sky with her arms outstretched, laughing as the rain lashed against her. With her long red hair streaming out behind her and every inch of her soaked, she looked like a water witch out of some seafaring folktale.
“Hey there, crazy lady, get the heck inside!” Alex shouted over the rising wind and thundering rain. She flashed a grin at him and ran for the door he was hol
ding open. The two of them practically fell into the front hallway, panting and dripping and shivering, and Alex slammed the door shut behind them.
He flicked on the light switch, and the old-fashioned chandelier shed its dim, crystalline light over Holly, her face glowing from the wet and the cold. She stood there breathing hard and deeply, her green eyes enormous and filled with laughter. She let her dripping raincoat slide to the floor and shook her head like a dog shedding water, giggling when Alex got a spray of droplets in his face.
She was so beautiful. In his whole life he’d never seen anything to equal her. She was like that woman in the story, the one with the seven veils. Just when you thought you’d seen every side of her, you realized you hadn’t even begun.
She was twisting her hair now to wring out the rain-water, and she looked like a mermaid. Alex was the sailor watching her, knowing he could never have her, knowing she lived in a world he would never be allowed to enter.
Except she wasn’t some unattainable nymph out of a fairy tale. She was flesh and blood, and he wanted her. Everything in him was distilled into that wanting, the desire to make love to her until she forgot everything but the fire that burned between them.
He took two quick strides until he was close enough to touch her, and Holly looked up in surprise.
Alex was beside her so suddenly Holly was startled, and then the expression on his face froze her where she stood. Her heart began to pound. When he began to walk forward, slowly and deliberately, she found herself backing up until she was pressed up against the inside of the front door.
The electricity between them seemed to crackle in the air, an echo of the storm outside.
“How do you do that?” he asked her, his voice low.
“Do what? What are you talking about?” Holly’s eyes were wide as she stared at him, knowing now, when it was too late, that she’d been a fool to think she could bury her attraction to this man.
“This,” he said, looking at her, at the water that clung to her hair, her lips, her lashes. “You play it safe and I go along with it, because I think that’s what you want, and then you dance out in that storm like…” He paused, searching for the words he wanted. “There’s something elemental about you, Holly. It’s hidden most of the time, but it’s there. You let it out once in a while, and then you cover it right back up. Something primal. Untamed.”
Holly didn’t like the sound of that. “I like to think of myself as very tame,” she objected, trying for a light tone. “Polished and refined.”
Alex shook his head. “I know you do. That’s what’s so funny. You wear these conservative outfits and you think you’re fooling everyone. Even yourself. Hell, it probably works most of the time. But I’ve never been fooled. Even back in high school I wasn’t fooled, and I still let you lie to me and to yourself, over and over again, and never did a damn thing about it.”
It was getting harder to breathe. Desire was making her tremble, and if she didn’t get away right now, Alex would know.
“I think I’ll go and—” she started to say, taking a step sideways, but in a flash Alex’s arms had trapped her, his hands flat against the door.
“Not until we finish this conversation,” he said.
“What conversation? This isn’t a conversation. This is—”
“This is me finally telling you the truth and you finally listening.”
His blue eyes had never been more intense as they bored into hers, unyielding in their challenge. The planes of his face looked harsh and dangerous and his rain-soaked hair made him seem… What was the word he’d used before?
Elemental.
“Stop it,” she whispered.
“Make me,” he said roughly. “You know you can if you want to. Push me away. Better yet, just tell me you’re not attracted to me. If you can do that, I’ll walk away.” He pulled back a little. “Can you do that?”
She could. She had to. Because if she gave in to these feelings, her life would never be the same again.
She opened her mouth to say the words, but nothing came out.
He pushed away from the door, backing off a few paces, but his eyes never left hers.
“You can’t do it. But you can’t reach out for what you want, either.” He took a step back toward her. “You’re scared. And you’re letting fear make your decisions for you.”
Another step. “I’ve been scared, too. I’ve been scared since the night we kissed. But I’m damned if I’m going to let either of us run away again. Not without a fight, anyway. So go ahead, Holly. Give me all you’ve got. All the reasons why we can’t do this.”
One more step, and he was so close she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see anything but him. He leaned in until his mouth was at her ear, and when he spoke his breath sent shivers down her spine.
“Come on, Holly. I’m sure you can think of just one reason.”
At last she found her voice. “Stop it, Alex! I can’t think when you’re…when you’re like this. You’re too close. It’s not a fair fight!” Even as she said the words she heard their absurdity, but Alex just smiled grimly.
“A fair fight is exactly what it is. What we’ve always had. We’ve been fighting each other from the moment we met, and you’d think we’d have figured out by now that neither one of us is going to win. Why the hell can’t you see that? What are you so afraid of?”
There was something in his eyes Holly recognized. He was daring her, damn him, just like he’d done back in high school.
He shook his head. “I guess you really are too much of a coward to go after what you want.”
He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was different, calmer and somehow more dangerous. “Unless it’s in your dreams, right, Holly? Because you do dream about me. I heard you last week, through your door. I went in and you were asleep, calling out my name again and again. And from the tone of your voice, I’d say whatever was happening in that dream, you were enjoying it.”
Holly was so furious and so embarrassed that she finally found the strength to push past him, turning so he was between her and the door and she could face him with a little breathing room.
“How could you do something like that?” she spat out, her cheeks burning. “Come into my bedroom, listen to me talking in my sleep. How could you invade my privacy like that?”
Alex didn’t give any ground. “Why not?” he asked. “You’ve invaded mine. You’ve invaded every part of me. Every nerve, every cell in my body. You think I don’t dream about you?”
He walked toward her again, but this time Holly didn’t back up. She knew this was her last stand. She held her head high, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring, and her eyes flashed as they met his.
“I want you, Holly,” he said, and for the first time she saw the yearning behind his passion. “I want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. And you want me. But the only time you let us be together is when you’re alone in your bed at night. Do you think about me then? What it would be like if I put my hands on you the way I want to?”
And suddenly Holly realized something.
He hadn’t put his hands on her. Not tonight. He was battering at her defenses, but he hadn’t used the one weapon she couldn’t have resisted. If he’d grabbed her and kissed her like he had after Will’s game, she would have surrendered without a fight. She would have been his for the taking.
But he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to take.
Holly closed her eyes. She felt something surging through her, an electricity so bright and fierce it made everything else fall away.
Alex was still talking, but she didn’t care. She’d thought of one sure way to shut him up.
Alex never finished his last sentence. Holly put her hands on his chest and pushed, and he was so surprised he lost his balance, stumbling backward until he crashed up against the front door. Before he could recover she was there, against him, and then her mouth was pressed to his, fierce and desperate and clumsy.
Fo
r a second Alex was stunned into immobility. Then he was kissing her back, and he was so crazy for her and so terrified she would change her mind that he lifted her up and spun them so their positions were reversed, trapping her between the door and his body, shuddering when she wrapped her legs around his waist, and never for one second taking his mouth away from hers.
She tasted like rain, like heat, like Holly. His hunger was making him savage, his mouth crushing hers, but she was kissing him back just as fiercely. If the door hadn’t been there to hold them up Alex would have fallen to his knees.
She was so raw, so passionate, this woman he’d dreamed about for so long and never, never thought he’d have. Now he was tasting her, feeling her, the heat between them so intense it seemed to burn through the layers of wet denim that separated them.
He broke the kiss and pressed his lips to her throat, right at her pulse point. She gasped and let her head fall back, her fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to bruise.
He had to be inside her. Now. But they couldn’t go upstairs to one of the beds. Alex was afraid to take the time, afraid she’d slip away from him somehow, change her mind, push him away. He’d wanted her for so long and now she was his, for as long as he could hold her—and he wasn’t going to let her go.
He lowered them to the floor right where they were, pulling away only long enough to tug off his still-damp sweatshirt.
Then he turned back to her. His heart was pounding so hard the rush of blood in his ears drowned out the storm outside. With shaking hands he pulled her wet top over her torso and arms until she was free, and the only thing in his way was her cotton bra.
They reached for the front clasp at the same time. Their hands bumped, and their mutual clumsiness made them laugh in surprise. “Let me,” Alex whispered, his eyes on hers, and somehow he managed to unhook the tiny piece of metal so the thin barrier fell away, and then his hands were cupped around her perfect breasts, her nipples pebbled against his palms.
Holly gasped, arching her back, and Alex lowered his head. He grazed his teeth across one nipple and flicked the other back and forth with his thumb until Holly writhed against him, her hands fisting in his hair as she moaned his name.
Winning the Right Brother Page 12
