‘Shocked,’ he said, folding his arms.
‘Of course. You took me completely by surprise.’
‘You’re telling me that if a stranger comes along, scares you senseless, then grabs you and kisses you, shock will make you kiss him back?’
‘No! Certainly not.’ Holly glared up at him. ‘I mean, as soon as you kissed me, I knew you weren’t a strange…’ She stopped and cleared her throat. ‘Look, you’re twisting this thing around to suit yourself. All I’m saying is that you can’t compare a man forcing a woman to kiss him to what happened just now.’
Nick gave an evil chuckle. Oh, hell. Holly had all she could do to keep from slugging him again. He’d set her up, and she’d gone for it. She’d walked right into that one.
‘Okay,’ she said coldly, ‘your lip’s stopped bleeding. It’s time to say goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ he said, and opened the freezer.
‘Dammit, Nick—’
‘We’ve only dealt with one wife-inflicted wound. There’s still another to go.’
‘Ex-wife, if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t mind at all.’ Nick slammed the freezer door shut. ‘There’s no ice.’
‘There’s plenty outside,’ Holly said sweetly.
He touched his hand to his head, hissing when his fingers came in contact with his scalp.
‘What’d you hit me with, anyway? A brick?’
‘Did I hit you really hard?’
‘Did you…?’ Nick gave a sharp laugh. ‘No, of course not. I just rolled up my eyes and passed out for kicks.’
Holly felt a tiny twinge of guilt.
‘Let me see your head,’ she said.
‘Why? So you can check the damage and cheer?’ He took a step back as she lifted a hand towards him. ‘Don’t bother. I don’t need—’
‘Don’t be such a coward, Nick. Bend down and—’
‘I wasn’t a coward.’ His hand clamped down on her wrist; his tone was chill and hard. ‘It wasn’t me who was afraid of change.’
‘It wasn’t change,’ Holly said quietly, ‘it was destruction.’
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long minute, and then Nick’s hand fell from hers.
‘Forget the bump,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
Holly clucked her tongue. ‘Stop being a baby and let me see it.’
‘I am not a baby. I am a sensible man who knows better than to offer my skull to the woman who just whacked it.’
‘You are a baby.’ She rose on her toes. Her fingers moved lightly in his hair, and he held his breath, wondering how in hell the impersonal touch of a woman he hadn’t seen in years could be sending chills down his spine. ‘Or did you hope I’d forgotten the time you got that tetanus shot and passed out?’
Nick rolled his eyes.
‘I don’t believe this! A woman takes a couple of isolated incidents, puts her own spin on them and wham, she comes up with her own version of the truth. I was working on that old house—’
‘The Shelby place.’
‘Yes. And I managed to put a rusty tenpenny nail through my hand.’
‘Because you were careless.’
‘Because I had the damned flu, and a fever.’
‘All the reasons you should have been home, in bed, instead of parading around on a construction site.’
‘Oof.’
‘Does that hurt?’
‘Of course it hurts,’ Nick growled. ‘And I wasn’t “parading around”, dammit, I was working because we needed the money.’
‘You were working because you were too damned stubborn to let me work.’Holly stepped back. ‘You’ll live. Your Everest-sized bump is no bigger than a petit pois.’
‘A what?’
‘A tiny pea. And the point of my story was that you went out like a light when you got to the emergency room and they gave you that shot.’
‘I passed out because of the shock. And the fever. The doctor said so. And because when you came flying into the emergency room you looked as if—’
‘As if what?’
As if you couldn’t bear it, if something happened to me. As if you really did love me as much as I loved you…
‘As if you were afraid you’d barf at the sight of blood,’ he said briskly, ‘and who could blame you? Well, thanks for the first aid. You’re right. I’ll be fine.’
‘You know, maybe you should put some ice on—’
‘I will. I’ll follow your advice.’ Nick forced a smile to his lips. ‘I’ll dump some snow on my head, when I get outside.’
‘Oh.’ Holly nodded. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. ‘Well, then…’
‘Yeah.’ Nick cleared his throat. ‘Well…’ Merry Christmas. That was the thing people said, this time of year. But he hadn’t said those words in six years, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to say them now. ‘Take care of yourself, Holly.’
‘You, too.’
They stood in the darkened kitchen, looking at each other, and then Nick cleared his throat again.
‘It was good seeing you.’
Holly nodded. That was all she seemed capable of doing. She wasn’t about to risk speaking, not when her throat suddenly felt tight.
Nick raised his hand, as if he might touch her, and then drew it back.
‘It’s been…interesting.’
‘Interesting?’ she said, in a croak.
‘Uh-huh.’ His smile tilted, and he lifted his hand first to his lip, then to his head. ‘For lack of a better word.’
‘Oh.’ Holly gave a quick little laugh. ‘I, ah, I’m sorry about that, but—’
‘No. No, that’s all right, I understand. There you were, figuring you were tucked in bed, safe and sound…’ His gaze drifted over her, then returned to her face. ‘You were in bed, weren’t you? When I came in?’
‘Yes. Yes, I was.’
‘Yeah, well, as I said, it’s understandable.’
They stared at each other for another few seconds and then Nick drew a breath.
‘Well…’
‘Well,’ Holly said.
‘Goodbye.’
He turned and started towards the door. She followed him in silence, watching as the man she had once loved, the man who had once been her husband, collected the stuff that lay scattered all over the floor and then put his hand on the doorknob.
No, she thought desperately, oh, no…
‘Nick!’
He swung around quickly, his eyes on hers.
‘Yes?’
The space between them seemed to hum. Holly swallowed dryly; Nick took a step forward.
‘Nick,’ she said again, this time in a whisper. ‘It’s—it’s late. And the road must be awful. Where…where will you go? How will you find a place to stay? What will you do…?’
Her words trailed away. Nick’s eyes burned into hers, and he answered the only question that mattered, the only one she hadn’t asked.
‘Are you asking me to stay?’ he said softly.
Holly stared at him. There was no point in pretending she didn’t know what he meant. The kisses they’d shared just a little while ago, the flame that had ignited when he’d taken her in his arms… The memories held within these walls made pretence impossible.
‘Holly?’
Nick’s voice was husky. Holly could feel the heat of it burning through her skin.
‘No,’ she said, after a minute. She blinked her eyes against a sudden sting of tears and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘No,’she repeated, very softly. ‘I’m not.’
He nodded. Then he turned, opened the door, and stepped out into the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE moon had risen. It sailed the dark sky like a ghost ship playing hide-and-seek with the clouds.
The wind had died down, leaving the snow in fanciful drifts. The mountain lay cocooned in silent, white radiance.
It was a beautiful scene but a dangerous one. And that, Nick figured, was just as well. It was a lot better to devote
his attention to making it down the driveway to the road than to think about whatever it was that had happened back in the cabin. The way he’d felt, seeing Holly. The hunger in the kiss they’d shared, and the question he’d asked her, before he could stop himself from asking it.
He really didn’t want to think about any of it. Not tonight.
The snow was deep. Eighteen inches, at least. But the Explorer had four-wheel drive and, by some minor miracle, the wind had almost scoured the driveway clean. Still, it was slow going.
At last, he reached the end of the narrow gravel drive. Ahead, he could see the road that would take him down North Mountain.
The hair rose on the back of his neck.
‘Bloody damn,’ he whispered.
The road, tortuous on a nice day, was a treacherous white ribbon now. One wrong move, and he’d end up in the yawning blackness of the valley.
Nick cursed and eased to a gentle stop.
What was the matter with him, thinking he could get down this mountain tonight?
He wasn’t thinking, dammit. That was the problem. Seeing Holly again must have fried his brain.
He glowered out of his windshield. He’d come looking for closure, not for the opportunity to become a statistic.
‘Damn,’ he whispered, and then he blew out his breath, folded his arms over the steering wheel and laid his forehead against them.
He was behaving like a fool, doing things that made no sense, and all because of an unexpected encounter with a woman who’d ceased to mean anything to him a lifetime ago. It was late. The temperature was probably someplace around zero, there were snowdrifts the size of igloos all around, and what had he been doing?
Heading for a joy ride down Suicide Mountain, for Pete’s sake. And Holly had been so glad to get rid of him that she’d never even considered that it might be the last ride he ever took. Nick sat up straight, shifted into reverse, backed to a handkerchief-sized space that constituted a wide spot on the roller-coaster of a road, made a careful U-turn and headed back the way he’d come.
The cabin was his. Even if there’d been a screw-up, even if it had been at his end, what did it matter? Not even Scrooge would send Tiny Tim out on a night like this.
His grip tightened on the steering wheel.
On the other hand, Scrooge had never been faced with spending the night in a cabin built for two with his ex. His gorgeous, sexy, desirable ex. The tension between them, those last couple of minutes, the way Holly had looked at him…
If he’d gone to her then, taken her in his arms, they’d have ended up in bed.
Nick squirmed uncomfortably in the leather seat. Well, so what? All that proved was that the old physical thing was still there, the same as when they were kids. She’d been eighteen, he’d been twenty. They’d met at a shopping mall. Not ‘met’, really; they’d bumped into each other, and almost the second they’d looked into each other’s eyes the attraction had been…
Attraction? Nick snorted. They’d been hot for each other’s bodies, that was what they’d been, so hot that nothing else had mattered, and because they’d been young and naïve, they’d ended up convincing themselves it was love.
But it hadn’t been. Holly had come to her senses, just as her old man had said she would. She’d realized that sex wasn’t, couldn’t ever be, love, which was fine with Nick because he’d realized that only a spoiled little rich girl could think that a run-down apartment and second-hand furniture and a mountain of unpaid bills added up to domestic bliss. Twelve months later, they’d done the civilized thing and agreed to a divorce.
End of story.
He’d kissed her tonight. Well, so what? He’d been so damn surprised to see her and yeah, she was still a good-looking woman.
A beautiful woman. But the world, as he’d spent the past years discovering, was filled with beautiful women. Holly was hardly unique. Yes, the old appeal was still there, but they were both adults. They’d have no trouble sharing the cabin for the night. Then, tomorrow, after the sun came up and the snowplow did its job, he’d do the gentlemanly thing and split. And it would be easy to do. He’d come for closure, and now he had it. In spades.
Nick frowned. There was just one thing.
Why had Holly come to the mountain?
She’d said something about needing a few weeks of peace and quiet, but from what? What could be stressful about the life of a rich woman who had everything she wanted? Unless…
His mouth became a thin line.
Unless it had to do with some guy. Unless she was getting over some guy. He couldn’t think of any other reason for a woman like Holly to deliberately hide herself away in such an isolated place, where there wouldn’t be a servant within calling distance.
Or—or maybe she wasn’t going to be alone, all those weeks. For all he knew, a lover could be joining her.
Or a husband.
Nick’s hands tightened even more on the steering wheel. Why not a husband? There was no reason Holly wouldn’t have married again. She was still young, still beautiful, still everything any man could possibly want.
A muscle bunched in his jaw as he pulled up outside the cabin. He’d made such a fast exit that he hadn’t asked any questions. Now, he would.
Gingerly, he touched his mouth and then his head. Damn right, he would.
She at least owed him an explanation.
* * *
Holly sat in the middle of the bed, snug under layers of blankets. Her knees were up, her arms were wrapped around them, and she was warm. Well, warm enough. And safe.
Nick was neither. How could she have let him drive that road on a night like this? The snow. The ice. The wind, and the dark.
She shuddered.
Nick was a good driver, sure. He’d been into motorcycle racing when they’d first met but sending him out into a snowstorm, on North Mountain…
‘Are you asking me to stay?’ he’d asked.
She sighed. If only he hadn’t asked it the way he had, in that low voice she remembered all too well, with desire for her etched into every hard plane of his face. She could have said yes, she wanted him to stay, that he could sleep on the sofa because it would be foolhardy for him to risk his neck on the road.
And that would have been all she meant…
Wouldn’t it?
She sighed, closed her eyes, and let her head droop against her upraised knees.
Absolutely. The invitation would have been an act of kindness, nothing more. They were adults, and adults could surely share three rooms and a bath for one night, especially when whatever it was that had drawn them together years ago was long since dead…
She groaned and fell back against the pillows.
Who was she kidding? She knew exactly what it was that had drawn them together. Sex. Sex, plain and simple. She’d been almost painfully young, and incredibly naïve. No boy had ever done more than kiss her goodnight, before Nick. But, with him, kisses weren’t enough. Touching wasn’t enough. She’d wanted him, begged him to take her…
It was still embarrassing to remember her abandon. No wonder she’d convinced herself that what she felt for Nick was love, not lust. Nick, in his faded jeans and his black leather motorcycle jacket, with that look of defiance on his gorgeous face…
Holly drew a ragged breath.
The Nick who’d shown up tonight was a different man. The custom-made suit, the pricey trench coat… She smiled to herself. He’d found what he’d always wanted, and it certainly hadn’t been her.
Nick had figured that out first. He’d been out in the world. He’d realized that they’d been wrong for each other, and they’d parted like two civilized people. No accusations, no fights, no regrets, only the bittersweet realization that sex hadn’t been enough.
But it was still there. The heat. The excitement. The desire.
Holly shivered, and burrowed deeper into the blankets.
It was probably a good thing he’d left. What was there to worry about? He’d make it down the mountain just f
ine. Besides, if he’d had any doubts about the road, he’d never have…
What was that?
Holly’s head came up sharply. She’d heard something. The throaty growl of an engine.
‘Nick?’ she said.
She tossed aside the blankets and leaped from the bed. The wind and the cold had rimed the window with snow but…
Yes. Oh, yes. It was Nick.
Had he come back for her?
She put her hand over her breast. Her heart was thumping so hard it felt as if it were going to ram against her ribs.
Nick rummaged inside the Explorer, took out his carry-on bag. When he straightened up, she could see his face clearly in the moonlight. Her heart thumped again. He was so handsome. Big, and masculine, with those hazel eyes that never seemed quite certain if they were green or brown, that proud nose, that wonderful, sexy mouth.
He looked up. Holly knew he couldn’t see her but she fell back against the wall anyway. Her breathing quickened. Would he knock? Or—
He used his key. She heard the door open, then slam shut. Heard his footsteps on the stairs.
Holly’s knees felt rubbery. Nick was in the house, and he was coming for her. In seconds, he’d be standing before her. There’d be no decisions to make, no weighing of right and wrong. Nick would open the bedroom door, look at her as he had a little while ago, the way he’d always looked at her, and she would run to him, go into his arms.
Footsteps sounded on the steps. Holly trembled. Waited.
The door swung open.
‘Nick,’ she whispered, ‘you came back.’
‘Damn right, I came back.’ He dropped his carryon bag to the floor and folded his arms over his chest. ‘Get this straight,’ he growled. ‘No way in hell am I going to drive that road tonight.’
She blinked. ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’ He unbuttoned his trench coat, slipped it off and tossed it on a chair. ‘I’m no happier about this arrangement than you are. You, me, this cabin… Believe me, this is not my idea of a good time.’
‘No.’ She cleared her throat. ‘No, it’s not mine, either. But you’re right.’
‘And before you put up a fuss…’ Nick frowned. ‘I am?’
The Millionaire's Snowbound Seduction Page 4
