Holly leaned back in the chair. Everything was spinning out of control, and she had to get it back to normal. Maybe Cole really hadn’t known her last name. Maybe he was innocent of any wrongdoing. So why did she still feel so betrayed and angry at him?
THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER SPENDING an hour with the banker handling the house sale, Holly exited the shelter of the bank building to find herself smack in the middle of the beginning of a blizzard, the wind whipping big, white snowflakes around her. Holly hun kered down in her long, black coat, her best black suit far from adequate cover even with knee-high boots. She was lucky she’d thrown it in her bag at all. It had been a last-minute whim. Old habits were hard to break. A suit was still familiar territory she clung to like a security blanket. Too bad she hadn’t chosen a pair of dress pants. But then, she hadn’t figured she’d really need the darned thing at all.
She slid into her car and quickly flipped on the heater, her hands shaking. She tried to tell herself it was from the cold. Frozen and for what? Nothing. No. That was wrong. She now had the peace of mind of knowing her parents were not in financial distress, and she wasn’t sitting at home wishing Cole would call so she could yell at him. She wanted to hit him. She also wanted to kiss him. She dropped her head to the steering wheel. How did everything get so out of control?
Cole had the control. He was about to take ownership of her home in Haven. And he had her heart. She felt completely vulnerable. And the wall all this had erected between her and Cole felt as if it reached clear to the sky. She felt her choices had been taken from her. If she wanted to come home, if she wanted her family home, she had to be with Cole. And didn’t she want to be with Cole? She did. She wanted it as readily as she did her next breath.
“So what’s the problem, Holly?” she murmured. “What’s the problem?” Her stomach rolled with the answer. She was scared, she realized. And the longer she went without talking to Cole, the more frightened she became about the control he held over her life. And the more certain she was that she couldn’t give someone that kind of power over her.
Holly started driving, determined to get a grip on herself and everything happening around her. Cole didn’t dictate her actions, her future. He could own her house, but he didn’t own her. Whatever happened, whatever choices she made, they were hers. She would take back control.
That resolve lasted all of ten minutes, until the weather and her car proved she was nowhere near having any control. One minute her hands were steady on the wheel, the next her tire blew, and she was wildly trying to steer the car in a straight path with no hope of actually doing so. Her car skidded and landed with two tires in a ditch. She sat there, in the middle of a storm, and burst into tears.
SITTING BEHIND THE WHEEL OF his truck, Cole drove toward town, the radio announcer talking about yet more early-season bad weather. He didn’t give a damn if a blizzard had rolled in. Let it snow. Let it sleet. He was going to get hammered. Absolutely flipping hammered, like he hadn’t been in a damned decade. After damned near twenty-four hours, it was clear that Holly showing up to apologize was about as likely to happen as a heat wave in Alaska. Evidently, he’d been a fool for thinking she’d figure out he’d done nothing wrong and show up to kiss away the pain of her attack. He sniffed. Fool, he thought. Nothing but a fool.
With a grimace, Cole turned the corner leading to the main road and squinted past the windshield wipers. There was a car in the ditch to his left, and his heart froze.
“Fuck!” That was Holly’s car. How long had she been there? Oh God. Had she been coming to see him the night before and gotten trapped? The worst-case scenarios flashed in his mind. She was injured, bleeding, freezing to death.
Feeling as if his heart would explode from his chest, he accelerated and U-turned near her location. He had his door open before the gear was fully in park, the wind gusting against him as he charged toward Holly and wrenched open her door.
She gasped. “Cole?”
He bent down, framed her face with his hands, checked for injuries.
“Are you hurt? Are you okay?” She stared up at him, silent, a look of shock registering in her face. “Damn it, Holly. Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said. “No. My tire blew. I’m fine.” Abruptly, she pushed him away, her eyes colder than the wind beating at his back. “I’m fine, Cole. Let go.”
Grinding his teeth, he let her go, and leaned back on his heels. Now he had confirmation of where they stood. In the sewer. He pushed to his feet.
“Are your parents on the way?”