And she could do much better than being with a guy who now chose to feel nothing at all.
Nine
Holly watched through the open wall of the hut as Adam poked at the flames. He wore multiple layers, including his down jacket, so she could only imagine the muscles of his back bunching and working, but her heart still skipped a beat, anyway.
Ridiculous. She’d given away far too much of herself to this man. Then. Now.
No more.
She sat up, arms clasped around her knees, concentrating on breathing evenly. Was he going to sleep out there? Then he’d be the cold one, and she wouldn’t be able to relax worrying about him.
Holly, Holly, Holly, she chided herself. You’re not worried about him being cold so much as him not coming back in here.
As if sensing her gaze, he rose and turned to her. It was snowing again, she realized, as he stepped under the dubious protection of their shelter, approaching in his usual silent way.
There’d been a time when just watching him had upped her pulse rate, when one look from him could melt her clothes away. Remembering that, what they’d had, yearnings assaulted her, no matter that she didn’t want to feel them. He had a back-off demeanor now, which contrasted with the way he touched her as if she meant something to him. It confused her.
Hurt her.
And worse, she had no one but herself to blame. His words, when he’d chosen to give her any, had made things clear. He had no interest in a relationship of any kind. This was about finding her father.
That was all.
The fire’s glow reflected off the fine sheen of melting snow covering his hair, face, and arms. The light played off the angles of his face as he came to a stop at the foot of their “bed.” He unzipped his jacket, spreading it out on his pack to dry overnight. Next, he pulled off his sweatshirt. Beneath, he wore a thin long-sleeved shirt that clung to his every muscle. Using those muscles, he bent and untied his boots.
A sound involuntarily escaped her, and he glanced up.
She shook her head. Nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, she was just sitting here…
He kicked off the boots and rose. She wondered if he was going to lose anything else. Her body voted for the jeans, and at just the thought, she shivered.
“Cold?” he asked.
No. She was actually having quite the hot flash—not something she planned on admitting.
Adam checked on Milo, curled up by their packs. He stroked and praised the dog, then dropped to his knees at Holly’s side. Little droplets of melted snow flew off of him, a few hitting her, sizzling on her heated skin.
“Sorry, I’m all wet,” he said.
Yeah. And he wasn’t the only one, she thought wildly as the fragrance of damp Adam drifted over her.
Heaven.
He stretched out on his side of the bedding, and when he came too close to the boundary of the United States of Holly, she adjusted the folded jacket.
He slid her a look.
She didn’t care. She was taking no chances with herself. She would never survive a sexual encounter with him. And there would be a sexual encounter if they touched in the night. She could feel it. She—
A sound escaped him, one that seemed to be a low laugh. Startled, her gaze jerked up to his.
Yeah, he was definitely laughing, the bastard, chuckling low in his throat. Momentarily stunned at the smile on his face, the kind that included his eyes and affected her heart rate, she blinked.
“You’re thinking so loud I smell something burning,” he said.
“This really isn’t very funny.”
“You’re right.” He sat up in the middle of his designated area and folded up his discarded sweatshirt. Flashing her another rare smile, he placed it down as his pillow, and lay on his back, feet casually crossed, arms up behind his head. His shirt molded to every line of sinew on him.
She stared at him, eaten up with jealousy once again, this time over his “pillow.”
“Problem?” he asked.
Oh, hell no would she admit that she wanted to share his pillow. “Not as long as you stay on your side.”
He turned to face her, propping up his head with a hand. “You’re such a liar.” He was still smiling when he leaned over her, bracing his other hand on the ground at her far hip to give her a quick, hot kiss on the lips.
She gaped up at him in shock. Actually, she nearly moaned. “What was that?”
Still holding himself over her, he’d gone still, staring at her mouth as he slowly shook his head.
“Adam—”
“Shh a second,” he said, and just looked at her. Then he lowered his head again. He started with small, brushing kisses, but it wasn’t enough and she opened her mouth, touching her tongue to his lower lip.
A low sound escaped deep in his throat and he kissed her until her toes curled in her boots.
She had one hand in his hair, the other on his chest. Beneath her fingers, she could feel his heart pumping. The realization that she had every bit as much power over him as he had on her was heady. Closing her eyes, she let herself live in the moment, soaking up his taste, his touch, his scent, the heat that radiated off his body, all combining to rob her of the ability to think, to do anything but feel. And oh boy, the things she was feeling. He was deliciously hard, everywhere, and her hands were roaming south when he broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. After a minute, he lifted his head, shaking it as if befuddled.
Then he kissed the tip of her nose and…lay down.
While she continued to stare at him, he made himself comfortable, flat on his back again, all long-limbed, easy grace. And then he closed his eyes, his breathing immediately slowing and evening out, his body relaxed.
She stared at him, boring holes into him with her eyes. Because how could he relax? She couldn’t relax, not with her body humming with a tension she didn’t want to name, and her heart flapping ineffectively against her ribs. And then there were the other reactions, the ones she hadn’t had in mixed company in a very long time.
Adam’s hands were clasped on his flat stomach, his feet crossed. And if he breathed any slower, she’d have to check him for a pulse. He was clearly already deeply asleep, and this was as irritating as everything else about him.
“Lie down,” he said, a quiet demand that had her nearly leaping out of her own skin.
She rolled her eyes at him, which was a waste because his eyes were still closed, but she did lie down. She tried flat on her back, but there was a rock beneath her butt. And she was cold. She wished she hadn’t been so adamant about the barrier. In hindsight, that might have been cutting her own nose off to spite her face.
Not to mention proving that she was every bit as stubborn as he thought.
Frustrated, she flopped onto her right side, facing away from him. But that rock that had bit into her butt was now hurting her hip. She flopped over to her left side and—
Adam reached out, yanked the jacket out from between them, slid a muscled arm around her waist and hauled her in so that she was spooned to him, her back to his front.
Heat infused her. His heat, which radiated out from his body to hers. “This isn’t okay,” she said.
“You still cold?”
Her head was pillowed on his bicep. His arm was wrapped around her, holding her closely, his hand opened wide and sitting disturbingly low on her belly. The backs of her thighs were plastered to the front of his and…and all their other parts were perfectly lined up. This made her parts very happy. And that wasn’t all. She could feel that his parts were happy, too.
“Holly.”
“No,” she managed. “I’m not still cold.” She was on fire…
“Good. Go to sleep.”
Was he kidding? How was she supposed to sleep when all she wanted to do was turn over and…No. Don’t go there. She sighed and regrouped, thinking about…mmm, if she wriggled just a little bit she could feel his muscles go all taut. Goodness, the man was locked and loaded. She squeezed h
er eyes shut and wracked her brain for a new train of thought in order to keep from rolling over and jumping his bones.
Her dad was still missing.
Yes, that did it. That swiped the sexual thoughts from her more effectively than a bucket of ice water would have. They were doing all they could to find him. Adam was doing all he could. And he’d made sure she was safe and fed and warm while he was at it.
It had been a long time since she’d let anyone take care of her, and she’d have thought it would be unsettling and uncomfortable. And while she’d like to think she could have handled this by herself, she knew she couldn’t have.
Adam had come through for her, and he’d done so without any hesitation at all. In fact, the whole day had gone by and he’d only asked her one thing. It had been a question, a personal one, too personal to answer at the time. “Pride,” she whispered.
Adam stirred slightly. “What?”
“Earlier you asked why I didn’t tell anyone about my marriage falling apart. It was pride. Stupid pride.”
He let out a surprised breath, disturbing the hair at her temple. “Why are you telling me this now?”
Good question. “I guess I just want you to understand. I didn’t run off and get married to get back at you. I did it for even more stupid reasons than that.”
“The pride thing,” he said.
“Yeah.” She sighed and admitted the rest. “My dad and Grif didn’t want me to get married in the first place, so I couldn’t tell them when it went bad. It was easy enough to keep it to myself, seeing as I lived so far away. But then, before I knew it, it’d become this huge secret.”
“They didn’t want you to get married for a good reason,” Adam said. The arm he had wrapped around her tightened. “He was your college professor. Someone should’ve kicked his ass for even looking at you that way.”
So he knew more of her past than she’d thought. “I was his teaching assistant, not his student, not technically. And to be honest, I wasn’t really even an official teaching assistant. I was an errand girl, nothing more. As for why I let him in, he was very different from the men I’d known.”
“No shit. He needed an AARP card.”
She choked out a laugh. Derek was only eight years older than she. “Stop it.”
“He had no business touching you.”
They both left off the fact that at one time, most of Sunshine would have felt the same way about Adam touching her.
“And what do you mean he was different from the men you’d known?” he asked.
“The men I knew were all big and rugged and…tough. Alpha. Always so freaking alpha. Derek wasn’t. He was…well, to be honest, he was sweet and gentle and approachable.” At least at first. “He listened to me. He liked the things I liked. Reading. Going to art galleries and museums.”
Adam didn’t say a word to this, but she felt his censure just the same. “He was a whole new world,” she said.
“Yeah? Then what went wrong?”
Why had she started this again? She couldn’t remember. All she knew was that she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut and gone to sleep.
Adam waited, but it was pretty clear that Holly was taking a page from his own book and not planning on answering. It was a good strategy, but she had him curious now. “Holly.”
“He was so different,” she repeated softly. “And I…wasn’t really prepared.”
Okay, he wasn’t going to like this story, he could tell. Wasn’t prepared for what? “What did he do?”
“Just about everything that my father and Grif warned me about.” She was twisting and untwisting her fingers together and he lifted his hand from her belly to settle it over both of hers.
“It’s nothing you haven’t heard before,” she said. “It’s a classic cliché, really. Apparently, old habits are hard to break, and he was still very attached to his students. Especially the female ones.”
Son of a bitch. He’d cheated on her. Fucking idiot. “Ah, Holly.”
“I know, pathetic, right? I just honestly believed that I was the only one, that I was special. But it’s okay. It was a long time ago. I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve grown up.”
“And yet,” Adam said, coming back to the one point that was bugging the shit out of him about this whole thing, “you didn’t tell anyone. You didn’t seek help from your family or…” Me.
And why should she have come to him? He’d dumped her cruelly. But he couldn’t help but wonder whether, despite her confession, she was holding back on just exactly how hellish her marriage had been.
“Are you kidding?” she asked with a mirthless laugh. “I couldn’t ask for help. My dad and Grif had been so dead set against me getting married so young and then living so far away. I couldn’t go to them. I had to handle it alone.”
“You were nineteen.”
“A grown-up,” she insisted. “I’d gotten myself into that mess. I got myself out. I didn’t need help, not from anyone. Especially my hotheaded brother and father.”
Adam knew exactly how pissed off Grif had been about Holly rushing into marriage. He also knew Grif and Donald had flown out to New York several times to try to talk her out of it. And he’d known then—and now—that talking Holly out of anything she wanted to do never worked.
“They even tried to pay Derek off,” Holly said. “That was probably my dad’s idea. I don’t know why Derek didn’t go for that deal.” She shook her head. “But you can see why I couldn’t tell Grif or my dad when, a year later, I caught Derek in our condo with his colleague’s TA, testing the stability of our foyer table.”
Adam winced. “Tell me you then tested out the stability of your boot to his family jewels.”
She snorted out a soft laugh. “I threw his laptop out the window.”
“Not bad.”
“It was a third-story window,” she said. “And it hit his precious car.”
Adam felt a grin split his face. “Not bad at all.”
She lifted her shoulder. “It was good, solid anger therapy.”
Adam had gone through anger therapy, both officially and unofficially. Official anger therapy had taken place in his therapist’s office in Coeur d’Alene, where he’d been given tools with which to work through his issues. They’d helped some. Maybe even a lot. But unofficial anger therapy had been a bigger help. Unofficial therapy had been Dell taking Adam to the top of Fallen Lakes, where they’d taken turns screaming at the top of their lungs into the canyon below.
Adam gave that therapy a big thumbs-up. He was feeling a little bit like he could use a visit out to Fallen Lakes right about now, in fact. “And neither Grif nor your dad ever suspected your marriage was in trouble?”
“Grif kept asking me if Derek had done anything he needed to get beaten up over,” Holly said. “But…” She shook her head.
And he got it. They’d backed her into a corner, to a place she couldn’t get out of without eating her own pride. She was lucky she hadn’t choked on it. He buried his face in her hair, wishing he’d been there for her.
“So you see, right? I got myself into that situation, and—”
“And Reids don’t quit,” he finished for her. “Your father always says that.”
She nodded.
“I get all of that,” he said. “But Jesus, Holly, I don’t think he meant for you to take it to heart in that context. You do realize that you don’t have to be as stubborn as he is.”
“I’m not. I’m not at all like him.”
This wrenched a soft laugh from him. Because Holly and Donald? Two peas in a pod. Grif was the third pea. But Adam was smart enough not to admit that to a single one of them.
“I’m not,” she repeated, sounding insulted as hell. “He’s ornery, and when he thinks he’s right, he won’t budge an inch. He’s ridiculously opinionated and always knows best. That’s not me.”