Chapter Ten #2
“It’s amazing.” The trash tossed, Holly moved the pizzas to the refrigerator and stowed the plates and cups. She leaned in to kiss Sue’s cheek. “We’re gone, but I’ll call you tomorrow about Thanksgiving.”
“You do that.” Smiling, Sue patted her hair. Colt stared. What the holy hell?
Next came his turn to hug and kiss his mama and promise to call. Then Holly called Polo and Ralph — the little shit was more obedient for her than he was for Colt — and they trooped through the laundry room to the garage, cold air stinging Colt’s nose and ears.
He locked the side door behind them and jerked a thumb toward the house. “What the hell have you done with my real mother?”
Unlocking her SUV to usher both dogs into her back seat, Holly gave him a pointed look over her shoulder. “Don’t be mean about Sue.”
“I’m realistic about Sue.” He rested his hands at his hips, so slain by the evening’s events he wasn’t prepared to argue about her loading up his dog. Pizza and paper plates and Solo cups. Lord. He gestured toward the house again. “That is . . . how’d you pull that off, anyway?”
She took a step closer, with that self-satisfied smile he always wanted to kiss off her lips. “Magic.”
“You’re funny.”
“No, seriously.” She tilted her head up to look at him, close enough now to touch him although she kept her hands to herself. “I know you love her, but it’s a complicated, tangled up kind of love between you two. I just get to love her, so she can relax.”
His head went back like he dodged a punch. “I’m the problem?”
“Did I say that, Colton? No.” Lips pursed, she shook her head.
“She and Lenora have some serious similarities. Your mama wants everything safe and perfect when her life has been anything but. She lives with the worst loss every single day. You’re her child.
She wants everything safe and perfect for you—”
A hard snort hurt his nose, earning him a withering look.
“And you want everything good and perfect for her. It gets all tangled up, so neither one of you can relax.” Her mouth twisted into knowing line. “And D gets caught in the middle.”
“Uh, no. D is solidly with Sue.” If nothing else, the solidity of his daddy’s love for his mama was a certainty in his life. The man was nothing if not devoted to her. That reality let him breathe because Sue would always be loved as she should be. “Right where he should be.”
“I was not casting aspersions on him as a father, Colt. He’s an excellent husband and father.”
“Damn straight.” He relaxed the line of his shoulders. D expected a lot out of him, but that was as it should be, too.
Amusement glimmered in her eyes. “He’s a good model for you.”
A band constricted about his lungs, but he forced himself to breathe. “You proposing to me, Hols?”
“Tonight? No, but I do have a proposal for you.” Her hand curved about his waist, she lifted her face to brush her lips against his. “I thought I might stay over.”
“Really.” He bumped his nose against hers, and she smiled. “Like a slumber party.”
She landed a light pinch above his belt. “Now you’re getting the idea.”
He lifted his head, trailing a finger along her spine. “I mean, there is a second bedroom.”
That bright grin lit her face, fizzing joy through him like a bottled Coke bubbling up around perfect salted peanuts. “Or the couch.”
“There you go.” One corner of his mouth hitched up. “I have an extra quilt you can borrow.”
A gleam of something, challenge maybe, in her blue eyes, she whispered her lips over his. “The dogs and I will meet you at home.”
“See you there.” He popped the left cheek of her ass and strode to his truck, waiting for her to back out of the drive before following, eying her taillights ahead of him.
She was so damned impulsive, still wearing her scrubs and planning to spend the night at his place.
The disinfectant smell always prickled his nose, not in a bad way because he associated the sharp scent with her, but a shudder worked over him at the idea of putting those scrubs back on the next morning.
Hell, he could loan her a t-shirt to sleep in.
At the cabin, she opened the rear door to let the dogs out once he’d put the Ford in park. Ralph raced circles around his feet like the maniac he was, like they’d been parted for years.
Colt bent to scratch his ears. “What is wrong with you?”
“It’s the Jack Russell in him.” Polo followed Holly up the steps at a more sedate pace. “He’s excitable.”
“No kidding.” He crouched to corral his incorrigible canine and clean his paws while she punched in the lock code. He gave Polo’s paws a swipe for good measure.
“I need to shower.” She dropped her bag on the same chair as always and stepped out of her rubber clogs. “Want to join me?”
“The word is slow, Holly.”
Stripping off her navy scrub top she wore with a snug long-sleeved white tee underneath, she slanted a pointed glance at the couch. Yeah, yeah, he’d made her come twice last night, but that was different.
With a roll of those gorgeous eyes, she sauntered toward his room, not the guest room. “I’m borrowing your washer-dryer, too. And one of your shirts.”
“Help yourself.” If she thought he was giving in, even with that sweet strip of skin showing as she pulled her tee up to strip it off, too, she had another think coming. He wasn’t impulsive, not anymore.
Guess he’d use the guest room shower.
The shower in his bathroom already ran while he grabbed clothes. The door stood open so he heard her rustling around with the washer. So she was naked in there . . . okay, he was tempted, but nope.
Giving into temptation never ended well.
Joggers and a T-shirt in a tight grip, he made a hasty retreat for the other shower. He didn’t bother trying a cold shower — they’d end up all wrapped together and him hot and bothered at some point anyway, so why torment himself?
When he emerged, Polo and Ralph snoozed in a tight huddle on the rug in front of the fireplace.
In his bathroom, the glass shower door clanged with its characteristic thud, and he moved her bag to flop into the recliner.
Plastic clattered on the marble vanity, and moments later his closet door opened with the quiet creak of a hinge.
Okay, having someone else in his space was weird. Andy laughed at him for being a hermit, called him Thoreau, but until he was here, listening to her moving about his room, Colt hadn’t recognized how true the jokes might be. He liked having her around, but he was not used to this.
Plus, he remained on edge since they hadn’t talked about her lunch with Barlow yet.
Although, with her naked in his room and planning to spend the night, things sure didn’t feel like he was about to get dumped.
“I’m making a cup of coffee. Want one?” Wearing his best white shirt, partially buttoned and the sleeves cuffed, she strolled through to the kitchen, toned muscles flexing in her calves and her thighs not covered by fine cotton. And if the washer was running, his shirt was all she wore.
Holy . . . he wanted something for sure.
He cleared his throat and pushed out of the chair, drawn by a power that scared the hell out of him. “Yeah.”
In the kitchen, she puttered about barefoot. She’d undone her braid, hair a shining sheet of loose waves from being bound. She was the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.
He hitched a shoulder against the doorframe. “That shirt’s kinda a cliche.”
Her head bent over measuring out coffee, a pleased smile played about her lips. “Know why it’s a cliche?”
“Because it’s sexy as sin.” She wore it well.
Tyler had tried this once – the world didn’t hold enough money for him to let Holly know that had been in the same shirt – and the entire enterprise had left him cold.
They’d had a flaming fight that night, or rather Tyler had had a flaming screaming fit because damn if he was going to get into an argument with her yelling at him.
He’d shut his mouth and kept it that way, let her have her say until she ran out of steam and reasons why he was the worst boyfriend ever.
They hadn’t lasted long after that.
He watched her hands while she slotted the filter into the machine. “How’d your lunch go?”
“It was . . .” She rolled a shoulder, wrinkling her nose while she powered on the brew cycle. “Productive. We agreed that in order to be friends, we each have a right to our own lives without the other person’s opinion or input.”
What that meant was she’d told Barlow to keep his thoughts about Colt to himself. The realization settled a low burn of irritation under his heart. He ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth. “Huh.”
Her hands fell to the counter, and a frustrated sigh vibrated through her whole body before she turned to face him. “I find that response incredibly annoying.”
He resisted an urge to take a full step back, instead folding his arms over his chest. Imagine something he did being found wanting. That was novel because he was always doing everything right.
“You do that when you have an emotional response to something and don’t think it’s okay to say anything.” She leaned on the counter. “I want you to feel like you can talk to me.”
“What is there to say?” He didn’t relax his arms. “He has a problem with you being with me. I don’t blame him.”
She tilted her head to one side, an inquisitive watchfulness on her face. Tension gathered at the base of his spine. He knew that look. “And your problem is what exactly?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have one.”
The statement was basically true. He didn’t have a problem with Barlow so much as Barlow despised him, looking at him like he was lower than dirt every time they ran across one another. The animosity went all the way back to Colt’s own actions, so why let it under his skin?
Her brows dipped, and he swallowed a groan. He knew that look, too, from every time he’d put forth some stupid claim in Mr. Davis’s class and then she’d taken him apart.