Winning the Right Brother(17)
In the sudden dark and quiet, Holly turned to look at him. “You think I’m adorable?”
He looked back at her for a minute, and then got out of the car. If he stayed there one more second he wouldn’t answer for the consequences.
“You said I was adorable,” she reminded him when he opened her door.
“Like a golden retriever puppy,” he said as he helped her out.
“Wait a minute. Now I’m a dog?”
“A really cute dog. Haven’t you ever seen a golden retriever puppy?”
He walked her to her front door. “Good night, Holly,” he said, but it felt like goodbye. He knew he wouldn’t be this close to her again.
“Good night, Alex,” she answered, but she stayed where she was.
Time to go, he reminded himself. Except he couldn’t seem to move.
He reached out to tuck a stray curl behind her ear, and then did what he’d been wanting to all night. He ran his fingers slowly through the lustrous red silk of her hair.
As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t. Now he knew it was even softer than he’d imagined, and that was not going to help him sleep tonight.
“That felt nice,” she said, sounding surprised. She rolled up her sleeve and showed him her arm. “Look! You gave me goose bumps.”
Really time to go.
Only those big green eyes of hers were holding him there, and for once they weren’t narrowed with suspicion or dislike. Her lips were parted slightly as she looked at him, and if she were any other woman, drunk or not, he would have kissed her.
When the moment stretched out a little too long and he felt himself leaning toward her, he reached past her instead and opened the door.
“You should go inside,” he said. “Take some aspirin before you go to sleep.”
“Aspirin? But I feel great!”
“Not tomorrow morning, you won’t. That’s when you’re going to wake up sober and be really, really mad at me. Remember?”
“Right,” she said, nodding. “Only, I can’t remember now why I was so mad at you.”
He smiled crookedly. “Don’t worry—I’m pretty sure it’ll come back to you.”
Chapter Four
Somebody’s head was hurting. Holly felt really bad for whoever it was, because the pain was a kind of throbbing, pounding—
“Mom! Aren’t you awake yet?”
Holly winced. As she’d begun to suspect, the headache belonged to her. “Don’t shout, Will.”
“I’m not shouting. I think you have a hangover.”
Holly groaned and rolled over in bed, keeping her eyes closed.
“You should worry about the example you’re setting for your impressionable son.”
“Have some pity, Will. Your voice is going right through my head. What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Okay, okay. I think you’re supposed to take Vitamin B and drink lots of water. I’ll make you some coffee, too. Wait right here.”
What did he think she was going to do? Hop out of bed and skip down the stairs, whistling a jaunty tune?
She opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling and praying for death. Instead she got Will, back way too soon, carrying not coffee but the cordless phone.
“It’s Coach,” he said, sounding surprised. “He says he wants to talk to you.” He set the phone down on the bed next to her and went back downstairs.
Oh, God.
Memories of last night came flooding back, and she stared at the phone as if it was a snake about to bite her. The knowledge of who was on the other end made her feel ill.
Well, more ill.
She’d done a striptease in his car and he hadn’t even looked at her.
When she thought about the sweater incident she felt hot all over, and not in a good way. When she thought about the conversation in the bar and then on the drive home, she felt worse. And when she thought about how close she’d come to kissing him on her front porch, she pulled the covers over her head and prayed that somehow, some way, she’d be beamed off the planet and onto the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
The only thing that kept her from throwing the phone out the window was the knowledge that if she didn’t answer it, Alex would know exactly why. He’d know she was too embarrassed to talk to him.
Holly threw off the covers, picked up the phone and hit the talk button.
“Why are you calling me at dawn?” she asked as crisply as she could.
She could hear him laughing softly over the phone line. “It’s noon, Holly.”
She glanced at the clock and saw he was right. She groaned, and heard him laugh again.
“Okay, then, why are you calling me at noon?”
“I wanted to see how you were feeling. And I wanted to see if you were still talking to me.”