Brandon’s face took on that pained expression again. “Yeah, about that. Probably not a good idea right now.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m pretty sure she hates you.”
Chapter 26
Holly closed her eyes and silently counted to ten as her mother and sisters prattled on. Relegated to the couch, she was bullied into remaining quiet and immobile while her immediate family swarmed around her in a frenzy of activity. The women of the McTierney clan cleaned, tidied, shopped, and cooked; the men inspected, repaired, mowed, and trimmed.
That was what they did when faced with adversity. They came together and took over, assuming complete and absolute control under the assumption that whichever family member was facing said adversity was incapable of doing so on his or her own. Holly supposed that some people might have taken comfort in that, but she was not one of them.
Her family meant well, but they were suffocating. It was one of the primary reasons Holly had moved away.
Another: the standard mumblings, spoken in quiet, hushed tones but overheard nonetheless. There were commentaries on the evils of single women living alone, away from their families, out in the middle of nowhere. There was a particularly long-winded discussion on the joys and inherent rightness of settling down with a man and having a family while one was still young enough to do so. And no family intervention would be complete without a thorough lecture on the benefits of having a real job, making real money and real benefits, while awaiting one’s fated Prince Charming.
Prince. Fucking. Charming. Holly laughed out loud at that one, an incongruous cackle amongst the quiet mutterings of her much-loved but uninvited guests, drawing worried looks her way.
Holly caught her mother looking at the clock, no doubt wondering if it was time for her next dose of sleep-inducing narcotics.
She could have told her not to bother. Holly was counting the minutes, longing for the brief hour or two when she could slip back into a dreamless sleep and not think about ... him.
For the hundredth time that day, Holly wished for the impossible. She wished her cell phone had been destroyed in the blast, or at the very least, run over and crushed by one of the fire trucks. She wished she hadn’t been so eager to check her messages when she first awoke this morning. She wished she had stopped after the first one.
Most of all, she wished she had never met Adam Grayson.
Voice message #1: “Holly, this is Adam. Listen, there’s something I need to talk to you about. I’ll explain everything tonight, but until then, just ... be careful, okay? Stay close to home and call me right away if anything weird happens. And Holly? Call me back as soon as you get this ...”
It was a bit mysterious, that message, but nothing worrisome. Therefore, she had continued to voice message #2: “Hi, Holly, Adam again. I planned on coming over right after work, but something’s come up. I might be a little later than expected.”
Also mysterious, but no big deal. Adam had a successful construction business. Sometimes things came up, like delayed deliveries, messed up shipments, scheduling conflicts, zoning delays. It was just the nature of the beast. Whatever it was, it must have been important.
At least, that was what she thought before she heard voice message #3. Though it had been left from Adam’s mobile number, it was not his voice that time. No, voice message #3 had been left by Eve Sanderson.
“Fun’s over, Holly. Adam is back where he belongs ... with me.”
And then there was the killer—voice message #4. The timestamp revealed that it had been left while she was waiting to be released from the hospital, and also from Eve: “Adam knows where you are, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to talk to you. Tell your bitch friend to stop calling already. You lost. Get over it and leave us alone.”
If it had ended there, Holly might have been able to believe that there was some perfectly logical, rational explanation of how Eve had managed to get ahold of Adam’s phone and leave those awful messages, especially since Liz had dropped some vague hints about how cunning and obsessive Eve could be when she set her sights on someone. Until she had a chance to talk to Adam and hear what he had to say, she was not going to fall prey to Eve’s obvious attempts to incite trouble between them.
Which just went to show how love could turn a normally intelligent woman into a complete fucking idiot. Because, while she might be able to rationalize the voice messages, there was absolutely nothing that could explain the pictures.
At least half a dozen of them, all sent via text from Adam’s phone. Selfies of Adam and Eve engaged in various sexual acts. Adam between Eve’s thighs. Eve between his. Eve proudly straddling Adam’s naked body.
It didn’t appear as if Adam was aware the pictures had been taken. In the ones where his face was visible, his eyes were closed, his head thrown back as if in bliss. In contrast, Eve was smiling like the proverbial cat who had just eaten the canary in each and every one.
Maybe she was being naive, but Holly didn’t want to believe that Adam knew the pictures had been taken. She really didn’t want to believe that he knew and approved of Eve sexting them to her. In the end, it didn’t matter. For whatever reason, Adam had hooked up with Eve. That was a bad enough scenario on the best of days, but knowing that it had happened while she had been lying in a hospital bed after being nearly roasted to extra-crispy was especially painful.
If there was anything good about the situation, it was that she had heard and seen those things before her family had started showing up. Thank God Liz had been there. She had gone ballistic.
Holly had felt sorry for Brandon when he brought Max back. Liz had set on him like a junkyard dog. To his credit, Brandon had seemed pretty sick about the whole thing, too.
“Hey, Holls,” her younger brother David called, breaking her away from those morbid mental images as he walked through the front door like he owned the place. It hadn’t taken him long to make himself at home. Of all her siblings, he was probably the one she got along with the best, but she was in such a crappy mood it didn’t matter. It was a good thing he was also the most tolerant.
“Mail’s here,” he said, dropping down beside her on the couch. “This one looks important.”
It was the little things like that that irked her the most. Not the fact that David walked out to the mailbox along the road and got her mail—that was a nice gesture—but the fact that he felt the need to paw through it and analyze each piece.
Out of principle, she leafed through each item, deliberately leaving the one he thought was important until the end. Immature, perhaps, but she was cranky and tired and sick with heartbreak.
The “important-looking” item was a legal-sized envelope stamped with the name Kline, Schweitzer, and Kline, a prestigious local law firm that catered to some of Covendale’s elite. Holly removed the official-looking letterhead and read through the contents not once, but twice.
“Well?” David asked, leaning against the arm of the sofa.
“Fucking-A,” Holly breathed. She handed him the letter and let him read it for himself.
The Covendale Valley Historical Society was trying to take her house away.
ADAM COULDN’T REMEMBER ever feeling so sick, and it wasn’t only because of whatever chemicals were still sloshing around in his system. Even with the rush put on it by his old friend and Chief of Police, Sam Brown, the results of the tox screening analysis would take several days to come back. However, the nurse at the clinic who had drawn his blood had said his symptoms were consistent with the ingestion of some form of benzodiazepines, more commonly known as “date rape” drugs.
That was hard for Adam to accept. He had heard about those kinds of things before, but the news stories usually involved young, naive coeds, not thirty-two-year-old male contractors. According to the nurse, the reality was a lot different than the media-fueled perception.
Benzodiazepines were more prevalent than commonly believed, and went far beyond the Rohypnol, or “roofies,” refer
enced and sometimes glamorized in Hollywood movies, she had told him. Surprisingly, some of the top names in prescription tranquilizers fell into that category.
While those mainstream drugs had legitimate uses and were often prescribed for things like anxiety or panic attacks, they were used illegally for recreational purposes, as well. When combined with alcohol, it was not uncommon for the user to experience anterograde amnesia—loss of memory while under the influence—dizziness, confusion, lack of coordination, and nausea, which pretty accurately described Adam’s last twenty-four hours to a T.
He was drinking water by the gallon in an attempt to dilute and flush as much of the stuff out of his system as possible. With each passing hour, he was feeling more like himself. In another day or two, his physical malaise would be nothing but an unpleasant memory.
Too bad the real damage could not be so easily undone.
When Brandon had told him about the pictures, he didn’t want to believe it. He knew Eve had some major issues, but that? It seemed surreal. Yet, he knew by the heavy, leaden feeling in his gut that it was not some horrible nightmare. Those vague images in his head, of things he hadn’t wanted yet hadn’t been able to stop, were all too real.
All it took was a look back in his phone’s message log to see the proof. He had felt like throwing up again when he had seen those. There was nothing like looking at high-pixel, digital images of your half-naked ass engaged in various non-consensual sexual acts with a crazy, obsessed, psycho ex-lover.
As humiliating as it was for him, he couldn’t even imagine how Holly must have felt. If he had seen pictures like that of her, he would have completely lost his shit.
God, she must fucking hate him. And he didn’t blame her. He had been so stupid to think for one minute that Eve would step aside gracefully and let him get on with his life, but never in a million years would he have ever imagined she would go to those lengths.
He should never have agreed to meet with Eve. He should have followed his gut and gone right to Holly’s after work. He might not have been in time to stop her from getting hurt, but he would have been there for her. By her side. Holding her hand. Ensuring the EMTs and doctors were taking good care of her. And then he would have taken her home and watched over her. There would not have been any hurtful texts or photos, and she would have been safe and warm in his arms.
Instead, he was here, trying to flush God knew what out of his system, and Holly probably never wanted to see him again.
What was that saying? Hindsight is 20/20? Looking back now, it seemed all too easy to see the pattern of obsessive, borderline psychotic behavior. It was the stuff of Hollywood thrillers, and he’d had a starring role. Eve Sanderson needed some serious help.
Those mortifying pictures were now in the hands of the Covendale Police Department. Thankfully, his friend had assured him that the images would be kept private, unless absolutely necessary. Hopefully, that wouldn’t happen.
After Adam had spent an hour or two in Sam’s office with the door closed, the police chief had opened up an official criminal investigation. Not only had Eve’s actions been morally reprehensible, but they were illegal.
Adam was confident the blood test would prove the existence of a foreign substance. He didn’t do drugs; never had. There would be statements taken from character witnesses, interviews with his crew to show that he had been stone-cold sober before leaving work. But Sam had told him quite honestly that, while that might make him look good, it didn’t prove he hadn’t ingested the drugs willingly. Recreational drug abuse was not limited to punk teens and street addicts, especially when widely accepted, white collar stress-busters were involved.
He didn’t like it, but that was the least of his worries. He was more concerned about Holly. As the level of Eve’s obsession became increasingly clear, so did Adam’s certainty that the recent series of unfortunate incidents surrounding Holly was not coincidental.
Sam’s expression had grown progressively grim when Adam had expressed his concerns. The chief had been aware of the fire at Holly’s, but the situation had taken on a whole new perspective when Adam had told him that Eve knew about, and was jealous of, his relationship with Holly. Adam had also told his friend about Holly’s flat tires and Max’s sudden unexpected sickness only a few days earlier.
Those were just the things he knew about. Holly wasn’t the type to openly moan and complain when things went wrong. Had there been other things that she might not have mentioned?
Sam’s advice made the situation even worse. “If all this came about because Eve was jealous of your relationship with Holly,” he’d said, “then, for now at least, the best thing you can do is stay away from your girl. Until we can find something that will hold up in court, let Eve think her little plan worked and that Holly wants nothing more to do with you.”
Adam didn’t like it one bit. However, if it was the only way to keep Holly safe, he would do it.
Chapter 27
Holly’s brother-in-law, Zach, a corporate lawyer based outside of Philadelphia, set the papers down and removed his reading glasses. “Civil suits aren’t really my area of expertise,” he said carefully, “but I have to call bullshit on this.”
As annoying as her loud-mouthed, older sister Vicki was, Holly often wondered what the handsome, soft-spoken attorney had seen in her. Zach was nothing like Vicki. He was so laidback, always seeming to take everything her odd family threw at him in stride. Plus, he was one of the few who didn’t seem to think Holly’s life and career choices were causes for an intervention.
Holly was fond of Zach. Fond of all her sibling’s spouses, as a matter of fact. It was only her blood relatives that she had problems with.
“It’s all fluff and bluster,” Zach continued as the rest of the family listened in.
The moment David had read the letter, he had called everyone in for a family meeting. Now there were McTierneys all over Holly’s modest living room, standing, sitting, and leaning against every available surface. The space had never seemed quite so small.
“What exactly does that mean?” Holly’s mother asked.
“It means, they don’t have a legal leg to stand on. From what you’ve told me, Holly, this cottage and the land it sits on were divested from the original Penn estate a long time ago. It’s been privately-owned and maintained for well over a century, and the Covendale Valley Historical Society has never felt the need to intervene before. I don’t think there’s any question that this is a personal attack on you. Who did you manage to piss off, anyway?”
It was impossible to take offense when Zach’s eyes were filled with amusement and his mouth tilted up in that boyish half-grin. He knew about her fierce independent streak and, unlike the rest of her family, actually seemed to think it was a good thing, which pissed Vicki off to no end, so it was especially appealing.
“Swedish Barbie,” Holly muttered, remembering Eve’s thinly veiled threats that day.
“Excuse me?” That came from Vicki.
“She means Eve Sanderson,” Liz said, breezing into the room with a bag of comfort goodies—ice cream, chocolate, and DVDs—for their planned two-person “fuck-the-world” fest later.
An FTW, as Holly and Liz called it, was a necessary response to a really big WTF moment in one of their lives. It was also a not-so-subtle hint for Holly’s family to be on their way.
“Who?” Holly’s younger sister Shelly asked, her head snapping up guiltily as she pretended she wasn’t reading Holly’s latest manuscript. Holly recognized the look immediately. It was the same look Shelly would get when they were teenagers and she had tried to sneak-read Holly’s secret collection of romantic erotica.
When Holly narrowed her eyes in warning, Shelly’s cheeks went pink, and if anyone was really listening, they would have heard the drawer of Holly’s roll-top desk closing softly.
“Eve Sanderson. Holly’s boyfriend’s ex,” Liz answered. Her mouth had grimaced as if saying the other woman’s name left a bad taste in her mouth
.
Several sets of eyes locked on Holly like heat-seeking missiles.
“Boyfriend?” Holly’s mother said, her interest immediate and absolute due to that one, ill-chosen word.
Holly shot Liz a scathing glance as she squirmed under the pressure. She might just have to smack her BFF upside the head with that half-gallon of Rocky Road later, accompanied by repeated warnings to never, ever make any mention of male interest around her mother.
“He was just a guy I saw a couple times, Mom. No big deal.” The lie burned on her lips, accompanied by an ache in her chest that was still too fresh, too deep. She forced it down, schooling her features into a mask of feigned indifference. She simply could not—would not—discuss Adam with her family, not yet. Maybe never.
“You didn’t mention him.”
“Because, like I just said, it was no big deal. We went out once or twice.” Most of the time, we stayed in and had wild hot monkey sex. Holly almost let the words fly, just for the pure shock factor. It wasn’t worth the inevitable fallout afterward, though.
“But—”
“Drop it, Mom,” Holly warned sharply.
Eyes widened around the room while her mother openly gaped. Then, Colleen McTierney’s eyes began to narrow, and everyone knew that mother and daughter were both gearing up for one of their epic battles.
“Right, then,” Holly’s dad said, standing before his wife could dig her heels in. “I think that’s our cue. It’s getting late and most of us have work in the morning.”
Holly gave her father a look of grateful appreciation. Her father was a great, great man. And so wise.
“But Jack, Holly needs—”
“Peace and quiet,” Jack McTierney finished firmly for his wife, his tone not allowing argument. “Liz is here to take care of anything else, right, Liz?” he asked, shooting a pointed glance Liz’s way.
“Right, Mr. McTierney.”
There were a few grumbles and protests as her father tried to round everyone up and out, but once Jack McTierney had made a decision, it was law. Everyone said their goodbyes and promised—i.e. threatened—to return the following weekend.
Five Minute Man_A Contemporary Love Story Page 14
