“Will’s not a little boy, you know. He’s a young man.”
“He can still be hurt.”
Gina looked at her thoughtfully. “Are you sure it’s Will you’re really worried about? You can be hurt, too, Holly.”
“I can take care of myself,” she snapped.
Gina raised her eyebrows. “Right, of course. I forgot for a minute who I was talking to. Holly Stanton, the woman who doesn’t need help from anyone.”
Holly frowned at her. “You’re starting to sound like Alex.”
Gina sighed. “Look, Holly, it’s your life. You need to make your own decisions. I just think that you could have some fun with Alex without causing undue devastation in Will’s life or yours. Men can be fun, you know.”
“Not in my experience,” Holly muttered.
“Exactly my point. You need some new experiences. But go ahead, turn your back on some really amazing sex. God forbid you actually let down your guard for two seconds and enjoy yourself.”
“Hey! I enjoy myself plenty. With or without the sex.”
Gina hopped down from her stool. “I give up. You’re hopeless. Let’s go pedal ourselves into oblivion.”
Holly sighed in relief. “Finally a suggestion that makes sense. Lead the way.”
Alex had no idea what to expect when he saw Holly again. He kept busy so he wouldn’t think about it too much, gathering up the cleaning products Holly had brought into the house and taking them upstairs to his bedroom, wanting to bring some of her warmth, her magic, into the one place she hadn’t been yet.
After he did the floors and the furniture he stripped his bed and took the sheets down to the laundry room. Holly had bought a new kind of detergent and a box of dryer sheets. An hour and a half later, pulling his bedding from the dryer, he buried his face in the clean scented warmth and felt an ache starting in his heart and spreading to every part of him.
He was upstairs making his bed when he heard the front door open.
“Alex?” Holly called out, her voice tentative, unsure, and Alex went to the head of the stairs and looked down at her.
“Hey,” he said.
She held up a red-and-white bucket. “I brought chicken,” she said, and he grinned in sudden relief.
“I knew you were my kind of woman,” he said, but without a leer or even an eyebrow wriggle, and she grinned back at him.
“Didn’t you notice that it’s getting dark?” she asked as he came downstairs. “I wasn’t sure you were home when I got back, even though I saw your car. There aren’t any lights on.” She was flicking switches as she spoke, in the hallway and in the living room, where she set the bucket on the coffee table. Alex sat down on the couch, blinking at the pools of mellow light that came on where she went, marveling at the way she illuminated everything she touched.
“Sorry,” he said. “How was your day?” he asked, carefully keeping to his side of the sofa when she sat down on the other end.
“It was good,” she said, laying out paper plates and plastic silverware. Alex waited for a minute, wondering if she was going to say anything else. When she didn’t, he frowned.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m trying to let you set the pace here, but I may need some help with the ground rules. Are we allowed to talk about what happened last night, or—”
“Not yet,” Holly said quickly. “Please? Just give me one more night. We’ll talk tomorrow, I promise. For tonight I was sort of hoping we could eat greasy takeout and watch a movie or something. If that’s okay with you?”
One more night. Well, at least she wasn’t rejecting him. Not yet.
“Of course it’s okay. What do you want to watch?”
“I rented The Replacements.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a football movie.”
“Well, of course. It’s football season.”
“So it is,” Alex said, and settled down to eating chicken and mashed potatoes and keeping his eyes on the television screen instead of Holly’s curves.
All things considered, it wasn’t too hard. They watched the movie together and then, before there was a chance for things to get awkward, they each said good-night and went to their respective corners. Or in this case, their bedrooms.
Now it was hard. In more ways than one, Alex thought wryly, thinking it was a shame that his innuendoes were wasted on the inside of his head.
Was this going to be his life from now on? Lying awake every night thinking about Holly?
Alex sighed. Maybe he’d be better off if he hadn’t seen Holly again, or better yet, had never met her. Now that they’d actually made love it was a thousand times worse. He’d set out to ruin her for all other men and instead she’d ruined him.