by Kim Lawrence
Holly had never had a man announce he’d fight the world and his brother on her behalf. She felt decidedly surplus to requirements and, for some ridiculous reason, perilously close to tears in the midst of this mutual admiration.
Where was the vitriol, where was the tension? This matiness just wasn’t normal. How could you stay friends with someone you’d once been married to? Surely the feelings of betrayal and anger couldn’t just disappear overnight? She was pretty certain she couldn’t be so civilised if she found herself in the same position, but they seemed to agree on everything. So why, she wondered, had they ever broken up?
Tara misted up prettily and she bit her quivering lip. ‘You’ve been so good after all I did,’ she said huskily. ‘I’m so happy to see you’ve finally found someone of your own. It’s positively mystical.’ Tara’s warm mellow purr dropped to a wondering whisper.
‘Mystical?’ Niall queried warily.
Holly stared. If I’d said anything with half as much mockery potential, he’d have ripped me to shreds with that nasty tongue of his, she thought, studying his tolerant expression with disbelief.
‘It’s spooky. My astrologer told me the other day that this was going to happen to one of my dearest friends—I didn’t know at the time she was talking about you two.’
‘Astrologer?’ Holly echoed. Nice but nutty, she concluded, correcting her mental profile of the beautiful woman.
‘Yes, she’s incredible. I never make any major decisions without consulting her, do I, Niall?’
‘Indeed you don’t,’ Niall confirmed drily.
‘She only takes clients by recommendation, but I could introduce you if you like, Holly. She was incredibly helpful when we were splitting up…Not that I’m suggesting you two are going to…’
‘No thanks,’ Holly responded hastily. ‘I like to think I control my own fate.’
‘Oh I can see you’re a sceptic like Niall.’ She threw her ex-husband a tolerant smile. ‘Tell me, Holly, what do you think of Thomas? Isn’t he just the greatest kid?’
‘I…I haven’t met him yet.’ Holly crossed her fingers and hoped that she wasn’t contradicting anything Niall had said.
‘Really?’
Holly wasn’t surprised by Tara’s amazement. If Niall ever did remarry it sounded to her very much like his son, closely followed by his beautiful ex-wife, would have the final say. If the child gave the thumbs-down, then it was goodbye lover! She pitied the woman who would find herself in this situation.
‘How could she?’ Niall put in smoothly. ‘You know the boy’s been staying with Chris and Jude in Maine for the past four weeks. It was you who persuaded me to let him go, remember.’
‘Well, he and little Daniel get on so well, I thought it…’ She stopped, an arrested expression drifting over her flawless features. ‘You mean you’ve only known one another for a few weeks? I had the impression…Do your parents know, Niall?’
‘Only you know, Tara, and we’d like it to stay that way.’
Holly shot him a look of alarm. It better had, the explanations could get embarrassing if this ever got out.
‘Even though I’ve known Holly since she was a kid with braces, all this is new…’ He caught one of Holly’s hands between both of his and brought the tips of her fingers up to his mouth.
He had that part right, Holly reflected grimly. ‘Very new,’ she agreed drily, tucking the hand he’d released neatly under the table.
There was warning glitter in the blue eyes that rested on her face. ‘We’ve hardly got used to the idea ourselves,’ he told Tara frankly. ‘And don’t start with any horror stories about my parents. Holly is already scared stiff at the idea of meeting them, aren’t you, darling?’ He gazed lovingly into her eyes. The rat had missed his true vocation in life. What an actor! He recovered the hand which lay protectively in her lap and covered it with his before lifting it to softly brush the inside of her wrist against his lips.
Despite the fact that all her wary barriers were firmly in place, the soft contact sent a neat electrical current zinging through her body.
‘No,’ she contradicted firmly. She might be playing a part but there were limits. If he expected her to flutter her eyelashes and cling to his strong hand, he could think again! Scared, indeed! Wasn’t it fear of another kind that was making her heart pound? She pushed aside this inconvenient thought.
‘A little natural apprehension, possibly,’ she conceded firmly, trying to inconspicuously free the hand which Niall had appropriated.
Before Holly could give her order to the hovering drinks waiter, Niall spoke up for her—she so hated it when men did that!
‘Holly will have a mineral water, won’t you, darling?’ His malicious smile dared her to contradict him.
Holly’s nostrils flared and her dark eyes were filled with contempt, but she smiled back in a suitably besotted manner. ‘Whatever you say, sweetheart.’ It would seem that Tara watching this tender interchange, couldn’t detect sarcasm—even when it was ladled on with a trowel.
When the waiter had gone, Holly soon discovered just what the overimaginative Tara had been detecting from his overbearing manner and her meek submission.
‘You’re pregnant!’ She clapped her hands. ‘I should have guessed. This is marvellous,’ she enthused.
Holly looked at her blankly. Great, not only do I have his ex-wife’s blessing to marry him, I have her approval to reproduce, too. Is this situation off the scale of weird or is it just me?
Tara smiled warmly at Holly’s stunned face. ‘She’s got a definite glow about her, hasn’t she, Niall?’
Holly didn’t know about a glow but she did feel as though she might spontaneously combust any second from pure mortification. She sent a glance of desperate appeal to Niall, who seemed to be taking this suggestion in his stride. To add insult to injury, as he looked with interest at her pink cheeks and horrified eyes, he even seemed slightly amused.
‘I think Holly’s radiance lights up any room she walks into, but I’m a trifle biased. Sorry to disappoint you, Tara, but she’s not pregnant. There are other reasons for a person to request a soft drink.’ His voice dropped a sexy octave as he continued huskily, ‘And other reasons for a person to get married, too.’ At the last moment, he turned his riveting eyes, filled with lots of reasons—all erotic—directly towards Holly, reducing her to a frozen state of open-mouthed bemusement.
She bit her lower lip in an effort to tear her glance away from that callous, calculating seduction. She didn’t doubt for a second that he expected her, like every other female, to be reduced to a gibbering idiot. He knew all right about the power his blue eyes had over the opposite sex.
‘No…’ She cleared her throat and turned her attention to Tara. ‘He thinks I’ve got a drink problem,’ she confided with a gusty sigh.
Tara obviously didn’t know whether to take Holly’s words seriously or not. Uncertainly, she looked from Holly to a frozen-faced Niall and back again.
‘You’re joking…Right?’
‘Yes Tara, she’s joking.’ Finally, she’d pierced his sardonic cool. ‘Holly has a very warped sense of humour.’
Holly heard the controlled warning in his voice and stifled a grin. ‘I thought, darling—’ she raised her eyes guilelessly to his ‘—that you loved everything about me.’
At that moment, the waiter enquired if they were ready to give their order.
‘You order for me, darling.’ Holly produced her best helpless little woman look and received a murderous glare for her troubles. ‘I’m so hopeless at that sort of thing.’
‘Don’t squabble!’ Tara pleaded. ‘I can see you two enjoy it, but I just hate it!’
Holly shot the older woman a startled glance. They were enjoying it? Where did she get that crazy idea? She looked sideways and discovered that Niall was looking at her with an expression that suggested he was just as startled as she was by this preposterous notion.
‘Tell me, Holly, what do you do?’
�
��Drives me to distraction, mostly,’ Niall forestalled her reply.
Obviously, she brooded darkly, he had concluded that whatever she did for a living wouldn’t be good enough for the prospective wife of a powerful and influential figure like himself. As it happened, a junior doctor who didn’t have a minute to call her own probably was about as unsuitable as you could get.
‘Did I mention that Holly is Rowena Parish’s sister?’
‘Really, I’d never have guessed! You know, Niall,’ Tara mused thoughtfully, ‘I thought that if you ever married again it would be Rowena. Actually, Holly,’ she added in a wry aside, ‘when we were first married I was rather jealous of your sister and all their blood-brother pals act. If you know what I mean.’
Holly, who could identify completely with this comment, nodded.
‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’ Tara laughed.
‘You never told me that!’ Niall exclaimed in a shocked voice. There was a dark band of colour across the slanting sweep of his high cheekbones.
Guilty conscience? Holly wondered uncharitably. Well, she couldn’t see a single reason why she should give Niall the benefit of the doubt.
‘Well, I wouldn’t, would I, silly.’
The loud sound of a chair being pushed over made them and every other diner in the restaurant turn around.
‘Oh, help, please, someone!’ An attractive woman was down on her knees beside the figure of a prone middle-aged man. ‘I don’t think he’s breathing!’ she wailed.
Holly wasn’t very far behind Niall as he moved towards the traumatised woman. He was feeling the man’s neck for a pulse when she dropped down on her knees.
‘Nothing,’ he said shaking his head. He started to loosen the tie around the portly man’s neck and the anxious companion began to wail in earnest, throwing herself bodily on top of the man.
‘Let me…’ Holly began.
‘Will you look after the woman?’ Niall curtly cut her off. ‘Has someone called an ambulance?’
‘I have, sir,’ the maître d’ confirmed, materialising at their side. He took the distraught woman by the arm and pulled her to one side. He looked on doubtfully as Niall struck the man sharply on the chest and tilted his head back in readiness to begin mouth-to-mouth. ‘Don’t you think, sir, we should wait until a doctor arrives?’
CHAPTER THREE
‘I AM a doctor,’ Holly said, sparing him a brief glance before she began chest compressions. ‘One, two…’ She began to count out loud.
Briefly her eyes met Niall’s. ‘Game, set and match, you witch,’ he conceded.
‘Save your breath,’ Holly advised. ‘He needs it.’
The man had, much to her relief, started breathing before the paramedics had arrived. Holly was glad to see a familiar face. She gave a brief concise history to the big hunky paramedic, who listened and nodded as he gave the patient a quick assessment.
‘Just can’t keep away from me, can you, Doc Parish?’ He winked broadly at her. ‘Nice one,’ he added approvingly, nodding toward the figure on the stretcher. ‘We’ll take over now.’
‘Thank you, Paul.’
‘No, thank you, my sweet.’ He smiled warmly over his shoulder as they whisked the man off to the waiting ambulance. ‘We miss you already, Holly!’
Niall had watched this interchange through narrowed eyes and wondered if he looked as much of a fool as he felt—probably not. He felt extremely foolish!
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded.
Holly inclined her head up towards the tall, grim-faced figure beside her. ‘Why didn’t you ask?’
Several people called out congratulatory comments as she made her way back to the table, where a shaken-looking Tara was drinking a large brandy. Tara got to her feet and enfolded Holly in a warm fragrant embrace.
‘You were so marvellous! Wasn’t she, Niall? I don’t know how you stayed so calm. I’m shaking like a leaf.’ She released Holly and held out a hand to demonstrate. ‘Well, now I know what you do.’
Holly, whose nails were kept conveniently short, envied the beautifully polished perfect set of nails the other woman had.
‘I shake, too—inside, at least.’
‘It must be marvellous knowing you can help people.’
‘It’s lucky she doesn’t live in a litigious country where she has to think twice about helping someone,’ Niall contributed wryly.
Thinking of Tara’s breathless sentiments, Holly nodded a little selfconsciously. With her friends and colleagues, she might have responded with a facetious remark which would have had them all laughing. Perhaps one day she’d develop the veneer of cynicism that many of her colleagues had, but deep down she agreed with Tara: she was lucky to be doing something she enjoyed so much.
‘It’s also extremely tiring,’ she responded lightly. ‘The hours are not exactly conducive to a social life either.’
‘I can imagine,’ Tara, who knew all about long gruelling hours, agreed.
Holly’s eyes twinkled as she gave a naughty smile. ‘But there are fringe benefits. Did you notice him…?’ she asked, her tongue firmly inserted in her cheek.
‘He was hard to miss,’ Tara responded immediately. ‘There’s something about a man in uniform…’ she mused with a twinkle.
‘Isn’t there just,’ Holly agreed with lascivious fervour.
‘Shall I leave?’ Despite his languid tone, Holly had the impression Niall wasn’t over the moon about their conversation.
‘Don’t tell me a bit of girlie talk is making you of all people feel insecure, Niall?’ Tara teased.
‘I wouldn’t like to be responsible for cramping your style, ladies.’
‘You won’t,’ Holly promised with a sweetly malicious smile.
‘Seriously, Holly, I know it’s hard to juggle a career and a marriage, but with a supportive partner anything’s possible.’ Tara, sitting beside her ex-partner, seemed genuinely unaware of any irony in her statement.
‘There aren’t many partners that supportive,’ Holly responded cynically. She’d seen marriages stretched to the limit break under the strain.
‘Well, you don’t have to look, do you? Because you’ve found one.’ She looked across the table at Niall and smiled warmly. ‘You know I’m so glad he’s marrying you and not Rowena. I’m sure she’s a very nice person,’ she added anxiously as Holly shot her a quizzical look. ‘But you two look sort of right together. And just look how well you worked together just now.’
There hadn’t been time to wonder during the panic, but now a disturbed and squirming Holly could recall how, bizzarely, Niall had seemed to know what she wanted him to do before she asked him when they had worked in unison to save the man’s life. If he anticipated a woman’s—or, more specifically, her—needs that well in other, more pleasurable, situations, it would be quite something, she reflected.
For several dreamy seconds, she let her mind dwell speculatively on the steamy sensual images that floated into her head.
‘Sure, we’re soul mates from way back.’
The blistering sarcasm in his voice made Tara look at him with shocked disapproval and woke Holly from the erotic permutations she’d been spinning around the general bedroom theme. Her eyes opened wide with dismay as a horrified fractured sigh emerged from her dry lips.
‘You’re tired,’ Niall observed, noticing her sigh, but fortunately not knowing the cause.
He sounded concerned, if a little cross, as though she’d got tired just to irritate him, but the tender lover was all part of the act, she reminded herself, burying her nose in a balloon of brandy that Tara had pushed into her hands to avoid looking directly at him.
All this talk of supportive, understanding partners was making her feel all soft and sentimental, not to mention just a mite wistful. Then she’d made the criminally stupid mistake of imagining what sort of lover Niall would make.
Pretending that she didn’t find him wildly attractive wasn’t going to get her anywhere, she told herself with stern pragmatism.
What she had to do was keep her imagination on a strict rein. She was grown up; she didn’t have to go broadcasting the fact she was privately lusting after his body. And it is just his body, it’s that superficial, she told herself firmly. I don’t even like the man, for goodness’ sake!
She knew there were a lot of women in Niall Wesley’s life and, even if he had displayed any interest in her, Holly had no wish to join the ranks of his mistresses. There seemed to be two very important women his life—Niall’s beautiful ex-wife and her own sister. A wise woman knew when not to compete. No, her relationship with Niall was going to stay safely in the realms of make-believe!
Holly was relieved when Niall made their excuses early. Sitting in the taxi on the journey home, he didn’t seem inclined to talk. When he did, the sound of his deep voice made her jump.
‘I suppose a boyfriend didn’t give you the black eye, either?’ There was resigned certainty in his voice. ‘In the line of duty…?’
Holly nodded and continued to pretend a great interest in the traffic that was crawling past in the next lane. ‘A drunk with a head wound got a bit out of hand. Actually, it was Paul, the paramedic you saw earlier, who pulled him off.’
‘A versatile guy.’ For a muscle-bound freak.
‘He’s a very nice person.’ It was bad enough to be on the receiving end of Niall’s sneers without having her friends coming in for the same treatment.
‘Don’t they have any sort of security in these places?’ Niall wondered disapprovingly.
‘Of course they have security.’
‘It just doesn’t work very well.’
Her shoulders lifted in concession. ‘Not always.’
‘Why did you let me drone on and on?’
‘Because you seem to like the sound of your own voice…’ With a rueful little smile she broke off and, clasping both her palms together, rested her lips against the peak of her fingertips. ‘Actually, I was mad as hell because you’d thought I could be the sort of woman who would tolerate an abusive relationship. You were being intolerably patronising, condescending and sanctimonious.’