by Jill Shalvis
hurting the puppies when Lilah picked that very moment to poke her head in. “Dell, I’ve brought you a rescue—Awww.” Dropping to her knees between them, she hugged the puppies into her.
“Saved by the princess,” Dell murmured to Adam with amusement.
Lilah divided a look between them. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Adam said.
“Adam disagrees that Holly is his cave,” Dell said.
Lilah rolled her eyes. “She’s totally your cave.”
Dell sent Adam an I-told-you-so look, which Adam had to ignore because he couldn’t very well kill his brother with Lilah sitting right there as a material witness.
“So cute,” Lilah said as Adam hugged a puppy.
“They’re getting big,” he agreed.
Lilah took the puppy from him, set it in its puppy box, and then wrapped her arms around Adam, snuggling her face into his neck as she snorted with laughter. “I meant you, silly. You’re both so adorable, sitting on the floor playing with puppies.”
Adam tried to untangle himself from her but she held on, laughing at him. “We are not adorable,” he said.
“Speak for yourself,” Dell said. “I’m adorable as hell.” He slid Adam a long look. “And Holly must think you are, too, because somehow you convinced her to spend the night with you.”
Lilah nodded her agreement.
There was no use wondering how everyone knew. Not a single one of them could mind their own business to save their lives. But they were smiling at him, all happy and proud of him, and he had to shake his head. “Maybe she made the first move,” he said. “Maybe it was her idea to come over and spend the night seducing me. You ever think of that?”
Dell and Lilah looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“It really was her idea,” Adam muttered, and they only laughed harder.
“Let me get this straight,” Dell said when he got control of himself. “You telling me you can’t get away from her?”
Yes. Exactly. She was taking his classes, showing up at his place…He couldn’t get away from her. And the scariest part? He wasn’t even sure when he’d stopped wanting to.
That night Adam was upstairs on his laptop working when his computer beeped an incoming IM from Grif: Open Skype so I can call you.
Adam clicked on the program and waited for the call. When it came, Grif was wearing desert fatigues and a frown. “Hey,” Adam said. “You look like shit.”
Grif shoved his sunglasses to the top of his head. “Man, what are you doing?”
“Want to be more specific?” Adam asked.
“Sure. My sister. You’re doing my sister?”
Adam stared at Grif for a full five seconds. There’d been a time in his life where nothing could have taken him by surprise. Not a sucker punch, not an IED, nothing.
But then Holly Reid had come along and rocked his world.
The Reids were batting a thousand.
Grif leaned a little closer to his screen, distorting his frown. “Hello?”
Adam was trying to figure out how the hell to tell Grif that, yeah, he was doing his sister, when someone knocked at the door.
Grif narrowed his eyes. “That’d better not be her.”
“Just…wait there.” Adam moved to the front door, passing a dozing Milo. “Nice heads-up.”
Milo lifted his head. “Woof.”
“You’re so fired.” Adam opened the front door and stared in disbelief at Holly.
“Bad time?” she asked.
“Yes.” He moved to block her path, and hopefully also Grif’s view of the front door.
Holly went up on tiptoes to see in past him. He rose to his full height to barricade her, but she merely ducked beneath his arm and let herself in.
Adam had held his own through so many back-alley fights he couldn’t remember them all, through military training that was as close to torture as a man could get. He sparred with Dell at least once a week, and his skills were excellent. And yet all that went out the open door as he was bested by 120 pounds of nosy, sexy, annoying-as-hell woman.
“Don’t worry,” she said, laughing at him over her shoulder. “I’m not packing whiskey and condoms tonight.”
Shit. “Holly—”
“This isn’t where you try to fight me off again and then beg me to stay, is it?”
Jesus.
“Holly,” Grif said from the desk.
Adam now had two problems, big ones, but Holly was a pro at alpha males. With a wide smile at the sound of her brother’s voice, she rushed to the computer. “Hey, you! Looking good.”
Grif sent Adam a long look over Holly’s shoulder. “So are you.”
“Thanks,” Holly said. “So what were you guys talking about?” She glanced back at Adam, and her smile dimmed. When she looked at her brother again, the rest of her good humor had faded away. “Okay, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Adam said.
“Oh, it’s something,” Holly said, dividing a gaze between the two of them. “Someone spit it out.”
“Actually,” Grif said, “Adam was just going to tell me what’s going on.”
Adam really didn’t want to do this now. He knew what it was like to be right there, right where Grif was, far from home, exhausted beyond reason, tense enough to shatter.
A bad frame of mind…
Anything that came out of Adam’s mouth right now would only make things worse. And making it worse was fucking dangerous. So Adam exercised his constitutional right to keep it zipped.
Holly gave him a look of disbelief, accompanied by a little push. “Would you stop being all big and macho and stupid and stoic for once? It’s infuriating.”
Grif smiled at that—until Holly put a finger in his face. “Oh no, don’t you do that, look all smug and superior. You’re just as big and macho and stupid as he is.”
“What, I don’t get the stoic label?” Grif asked.
“Stoic would be you being quiet,” she said. “And I’m not hearing a lot of quiet out of you. Now what the hell were you two talking about?”
Grif gave Adam a look. “I’d just asked Adam what the fuck he thought he was doing with you.”
“Well, Grif,” Holly said in a far-too-polite tone that was the equivalent of a tornado siren warning. “As you might have noticed, I showed up here uninvited. So, really, you should be asking me what I’m doing with Adam.”
“So you two are—”
“None of your business,” she said, standing in front of Adam as if to protect him.
“It is his business,” Adam said. “You’re his business.”
Grif pinched the bridge of his nose and drew a deep breath. Then he dropped his hand and gave Holly a long look. “Get out of his way. Let the fucker speak for himself.”
Adam gently pushed Holly out of his way and stepped up to the screen. “I know the shithole you’re standing in,” he told Grif, “so I’m going to give you a pass.”
“I don’t want a pass.”
No, he wanted a fight. Adam could see that. But now wasn’t the time to give him one. “When you come home, I’ll give you a free shot at me.”
“Oh my God,” Holly said, trying to get in front of Adam again, but he kept her behind him.
“So it’s already done, then,” Grif said. “You’ve already slept with her. You slept with my sister.”
Pain erupted in Adam’s shoulder and he clamped a hand to it, twisting to stare at Holly. “Did you just…bite me?”
She sent him a smug glance before speaking to her brother. “Sorry, Grif, but you’re way off base here. I’m the one who seduced Adam. In fact, I made him sleep with me. So if you want to take a swing at me when you come home for taking advantage of your friend, go for it. But I promise you, I’ll swing back.” She started to shut the computer, then ducked down a little and added, “love you” before letting it close.
Then she turned to Adam. He was still holding his shoulder, which was burning like fire. “Christ,”
he said. “You bite hard. And you hung up on your brother. He was just looking out for you.”
“I don’t need looking out for!” She gave him a little push, and when he didn’t budge, she tossed up her hands. “You keep doing this!”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly!”
He stared at her. “Are you speaking English?”
She stormed away, toward the front door. There she stopped, muttering something to herself that might have been a slander on the entire male race before whirling back to him. “You know what I think, Adam? I think you’re trying to scare me off.”
“Hell yes, I’m trying to scare you off!”
She shook her head. “I let you do it once, but there’s no way I’m letting it happen again.”
She punctuated these words with the removal of her clothing. She kicked first one boot off and then the other. And then her jacket. And her leggings. Her sweater went next, sailing across the room, leaving her in just a black silky bra and a matching pair of barely there string-bikini panties. She was hands on hips, fully pissed off, eyes flashing, chest heaving.
Gorgeous.
“Well?” she asked. “You going to say anything?”
He shook his head, unable to tear his eyes off of her.
She blew out a breath. “I’m really going to need you to speak.”
“Can’t. You took your clothes off and my brain shut down.” He strode to her, bent enough to scoop her up, and tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. Hand on her ass, he turned to his bed.
“I’m trying to talk to you!” she said, squirming.
He gave her a light smack on her very sweet ass and she squeaked in surprise. “Hey!”
He tossed her down to the bed, and before she’d even bounced once, he was on her, pinning her to the mattress.
Not that she was struggling anymore. Well, she was struggling, he realized, struggling to get closer, to rip his clothes off.
“If you can’t think,” she panted, working open his jeans, shoving them down, “does that mean we’re going to…”
“Only if you ask real nice,” he said.
Which she did. She asked, begged, pleaded, demanded…and in the end, she took. She took everything he had, right along with his heart.
Twenty-three
Holly had been rising early in the mornings, taking the dogs out for her father. She’d been doing this ever since she and Adam had brought her dad home. So it was a surprise when a week later, she walked into the large ranch kitchen after a two-mile sunrise walk and found him waiting for her.
He was standing at the kitchen counter drinking coffee and staring at a big bouquet of fresh roses on the table.
“Wow, Dad. You got flowers?”
“No,” he said. “You did. No card. I snooped.”
Holly stared at the exquisite bouquet. She’d nearly forgotten about her other nameless delivery. “Huh.”
“Adam?” her dad asked.
She’d thought so the first time she’d gotten flowers. Not only had she been wrong, she’d embarrassed herself asking him about it. But she’d seen the regret in Adam’s eyes when he’d had to tell her that he hadn’t sent them.
So had he sent these? It was possible, especially after the last few nights, which she’d spent in his bed, in his arms.
Panting his name…
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
Her father shook his head. “So all of the Reids suck in the romance department.” He looked stronger today but still had shadows of unhappiness beneath his eyes. He’d had lots of company, but he still was missing Deanna.
“And you keep stealing my dogs,” he said.
“I’ve been walking them for you.”
“And taking them to obedience training.”
“Which, by the way,” she said, “they’re failing.”
“Only owners fail.”
She did her best not to roll her eyes. “Dad, I’m just trying to help you out here.”
“By treating me like an invalid? I can handle my own affairs.”
“You pay me to handle your affairs for you.”
“Business affairs, yes,” he said. “Personal, no. So knock it off.”
She let out a low, disbelieving laugh. “You firing me as your daughter, Dad?”
“No. Just as my nanny.” He took in the look on her face and sighed. “Listen, I love having you here.”
“Good. Because I love being here.”
“But…”
She arched a brow. “But…?”
Her dad poured her a cup of coffee, handed it over, and then in a rare show of affection, slung an arm around her neck. “But you need to be spending less time taking care of me and more time living your own life.”
She looked at the flowers and couldn’t help but feel a small ray of hope that they were from Adam. “I’m working on it.”
“Work faster.”
She looked at him. “Work faster? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He grimaced and scrubbed a hand over his jaw.
“Dad.”
“More coffee?”
“No. Tell me,” she said.
“Derek called me.”
Her heart dropped. “What? Why?”
“He said he’d been trying to communicate with you, but you haven’t responded.”
“He’s called once or twice.” She shrugged. “Texted.”
Her dad nodded. “That’s what he said.”
“We’re divorced. There’s no reason for me to talk to him. Or for you to, either.”
“Agreed,” her dad said. “But he said he’d been trying to communicate with you and you hadn’t responded. He played the concerned ex-husband card pretty good.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
He smiled. “I think he wanted me to talk you into going back to him in New York.”
Holly stared at him. “He wanted you to talk me into going back to him? Is he crazy?”
“That’s what I asked him. I said I was glad you were rid of his sorry, crib-stealing, gold-digging ass—”
“Dad.”
“And that you’d already moved on. With a better man.”
“Oh my God. Dad, you didn’t.”
“What? Adam is the better man. In every way.”