Winning the Right Brother(44)

“She’s home, she’s frantic, she’s been looking everywhere, she can’t thank us enough. I’m going to drive over there right now.”

“I’d like to come, too.”

“But you’re actually clean and dry now. Why don’t you stay here? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Holly shook her head. “I like Johnny. And who’s going to snuggle him while you drive? I’m coming.”

“He could probably last two minutes in the car without dying of snuggle deprivation,” Alex said, but he handed her a raincoat and the two of them headed out the door, with Johnny a warm, happy, wriggling bundle in Holly’s arms.

Anna really couldn’t thank them enough. She was in her fifties, the last of an old Scandinavian farming family, and Holly was so charmed by her she might have stayed an hour if Alex hadn’t stood up to go. “We should probably head back so we can change into dry clothes,” he said, and Anna instantly agreed.

“Of course, of course. You’ll have to come for dinner some night this week. Homemade chicken pot pie.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Holly said. She got down on one knee to say goodbye to Johnny, who covered her face in enthusiastic dog kisses until she was laughing so hard she fell over backward.

“Holly may ask for visitation rights,” he told Anna. “I think she’s attached to your dog.”

“Well, Johnny seems attached to her,” Anna said, smiling up at him. “She seems like an easy person to get attached to.”

Alex reached out a hand to help Holly to her feet. “She has her moments,” he admitted.

The rain was coming down in sheets as the two of them ran from Anna’s front door to Alex’s car. The wind was starting to pick up, too. In the five seconds it took to make it into the front seat, they were soaked.

It was even worse when they pulled into Alex’s driveway. As soon as Holly stepped out of the car the wind snatched her hood and blew it back off her head, exposing her to the full fury of the storm.

Holly laughed out loud, suddenly exhilarated. She held out her arms and spun around, almost dancing, her face turned up to the sky and her eyes squeezed shut. She was one with the storm, with the rain, with the wind. It was glorious.



Alex made it to the porch and turned to see what had become of Holly. She was standing out there in the storm, looking up into the wild black sky with her arms outstretched, laughing as the rain lashed against her. With her long red hair streaming out behind her and every inch of her soaked, she looked like a water witch out of some seafaring folktale.

“Hey there, crazy lady, get the heck inside!” Alex shouted over the rising wind and thundering rain. She flashed a grin at him and ran for the door he was holding open. The two of them practically fell into the front hallway, panting and dripping and shivering, and Alex slammed the door shut behind them.

He flicked on the light switch, and the old-fashioned chandelier shed its dim, crystalline light over Holly, her face glowing from the wet and the cold. She stood there breathing hard and deeply, her green eyes enormous and filled with laughter. She let her dripping raincoat slide to the floor and shook her head like a dog shedding water, giggling when Alex got a spray of droplets in his face.

She was so beautiful. In his whole life he’d never seen anything to equal her. She was like that woman in the story, the one with the seven veils. Just when you thought you’d seen every side of her, you realized you hadn’t even begun.

She was twisting her hair now to wring out the rain-water, and she looked like a mermaid. Alex was the sailor watching her, knowing he could never have her, knowing she lived in a world he would never be allowed to enter.

Except she wasn’t some unattainable nymph out of a fairy tale. She was flesh and blood, and he wanted her. Everything in him was distilled into that wanting, the desire to make love to her until she forgot everything but the fire that burned between them.

He took two quick strides until he was close enough to touch her, and Holly looked up in surprise.



Alex was beside her so suddenly Holly was startled, and then the expression on his face froze her where she stood. Her heart began to pound. When he began to walk forward, slowly and deliberately, she found herself backing up until she was pressed up against the inside of the front door.

The electricity between them seemed to crackle in the air, an echo of the storm outside.

“How do you do that?” he asked her, his voice low.

“Do what? What are you talking about?” Holly’s eyes were wide as she stared at him, knowing now, when it was too late, that she’d been a fool to think she could bury her attraction to this man.