In the Eye of the Storm (17 page)

Since that lunch that one day where they all questioned her relationship with Stephen and she said that he must not find her attractive, they had all – at different times – almost encouraged her to try and get his attention.  So really, how the office people viewed her was a non-issue, as well.  Sitting at her desk, Holly noticed that Stephen was off the phone and went in to go over his afternoon schedule with him.  She made a mental note to bring up the topic of Thanksgiving with him tonight over dinner and then, if that went well, talk about bringing their relationship out in to the open. 

If that hadn’t been something that he had wanted to happen, Holly didn’t think that Stephen would have truly pursued her.  They went out a bit now – not just spending time at his house or hers – so it wasn’t as if her were truly trying to keep their relationship hidden.  True, Stephen always picked the places that they would go.  Maybe he was doing that to make sure that they wouldn’t run in to any common acquaintances.

Deciding to not go looking for any trouble, Holly walked in to Stephen’s office and went about business as usual. 

The plan for that night was to go to Holly’s.  It was a Wednesday night and the agreement had been to just grab some take out on the way home and enjoy a night in.  She had no reason to change that but felt anxious to be out of the office and to discuss what she had on her mind.  As usual, Holly left the office first and Stephen was to meet up with her at six-thirty; that gave him enough time to finish up his work without any distractions. 

On the drive home, Holly rehearsed in her mind how she was going to approach the subject of their relationship with Stephen.  Actually, she was scared of how he was going to respond.  If he was not ready to go public with their dating, what was her response going to be?  Would she make demands on him?  Would she cry?  Pout?  Hell if she knew.

Once at the house, she straightened up and poured herself a glass of wine.  At six o’clock, her phone rang.  Figuring that it was probably Stephen double checking on where to pick up their Chinese food, Holly answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Holly, it’s Derek.  I’m looking for Stephen.  Is he there?”

She momentarily stunned.  So much for thinking that he hadn’t told his friends about the two of them.  “Um…no.  I think he’s still at the office.  Have you tried him there?”  For a brief moment she had wanted to play dumb and ask
why
he thought that Stephen would be at her house but decided against it. 

“Actually, no, I just assumed that he would be there with you.”  He paused and waited for her to say something.  When she didn’t, he continued.  “Do me a favor and tell him that we have a seven a.m. flight on Tuesday out of RDU.  The condo is booked, the caterer is set and that I have seen to the…um…entertainment.”  His words made Holly cringe a little bit.

“You’re not going to be around for Thanksgiving, right?” Derek asked, his tone was sickly smooth and Holly wanted to hang up the phone and not hear another moment’s worth. 

“No,” she replied calmly.  “I’ll be going to visit my family up on Long Island.”

“That’s good,” Derek said, “because it’s been a long time since the boys have prowled together and we’re all looking forward to it.  Stephen deserves this time away and I just wanted to make sure that nothing…gets in the way.”  Holly said nothing.  “I’ve known Stephen a long time and I know when he gets antsy, you know?  Personally, the smartest thing to have happen here is for you to go your way for the holiday and for Stephen to go his.  He’s too nice to bring this up himself, but I figured that you would understand.  Are we on the same page here, Holly?”

She wasn’t sure why he was being this way, but merely nodded her head and then remembering that he couldn’t see her, she said, “Yes, I believe we are.”  He wished her an early happy Thanksgiving and then he was gone.

              What a bizarre conversation!  What in the world had brought that on?  Why hadn’t Stephen mentioned that he had talked to his friends about her?  There shouldn’t be a secret like this between them if they were serious, she thought.  If Stephen were serious about her, he would have gently broken it to her that he had talked to his friends and knowing how she had felt about their last encounter with them, wouldn’t he have left it up to her to see if she was okay with it all?  Why, oh why, hadn’t he mentioned anything?  This put a whole new spin on what she was going to say to him tonight. 

If what Derek had to say was true, could she really bring up the subject of taking their relationship in to the open when he clearly already had, and with these kinds of results?  It all seemed to make sense; the way that he only took her to places of his choosing, the way their whole relationship was kept secretive…Stephen was doing what she feared he would do.  He was not comfortable in this type of a relationship and now he was trapped and didn’t know how to get out of it. 

Numbly, Holly walked in to her den and collapsed on the sofa.  This was so not the way the night was supposed to go.  If she was going to salvage her heart which she knew without a doubt belonged to Stephen Ballinger, she was going to have to be the one to slowly end things – to let him off the hook, so to speak. 

Not much later, Stephen was there; a bag of Chinese food in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other.  Holly hoped that her emotions weren’t showing too much and tried to act as if everything were normal.  They discussed the news, the progress on the Gideon project and after dinner was cleared, when Stephen made a move to try to get her up and in to bed, for the first time in their relationship, Holly faked a headache.

“Are you okay?” he asked, concern written all over his face.  “What can I get you?”

“Nothing,” she lied.  “I think I just need to take some Advil or something and go to sleep, if you don’t mind.”  If she hadn’t talked to Derek earlier and found out how Stephen
really
felt, she’d say that he was genuinely concerned about her.  As he went to walk with her up the stairs, she turned and stopped him.  “If you don’t mind, Stephen, I think it would be best if you went back to your place tonight.  I really am tired and I don’t think I’ll be able to relax fully with you in the bed with me.”

The look on his face was so tortured, so torn, that Holly almost took her words back.  Of course there was a possibility that Derek was wrong but why would he lie?  If anything, Derek was the brutally honest one of the bunch and while he didn’t seem to care if he hurt anyone’s feelings, Holly had never known him to lie.  “You really want me to leave?” he asked softly.

Unable to speak due to the lump in her throat, Holly merely nodded and turned and walked up the steps to her bedroom and closed the door.  Stephen stood on the stairs for a solid ten minutes before he could force himself to move.  When he did, he walked to the den and sat himself down on the sofa wondering what in the hell had just happened. 

He wracked his brain and went over the entire day in his mind and for the life of him, nothing seemed to stand out that would make Holly send him away.  True, it was possible that she just really didn’t feel well, but it just didn’t
feel
right.  Sighing, he gathered up his belongings and locked up the house on his way out.  Sitting in his car out in the driveway, he looked up at Holly’s bedroom window and saw that her light was already off. 

The drive home was long and lonely.  It had been weeks since he’d slept alone and he wasn’t looking forward to it at all.  He liked sleeping with her, even when they just slept.  Tonight he had hoped that they would discuss the possibility of his going up to Long Island with her and meeting her family, but once he’d arrived at her house with dinner, Stephen sensed that something was wrong. 

Once at home and in his own bed, he forced any negative thoughts from his mind.  Hell, Holly was entitled to not feel well and want to be alone.  Tomorrow was another day and once she felt better, Stephen was sure that everything would be all right and they would have their holiday discussion.  That thought made him smile and he finally let himself drift off to sleep.

Unfortunately, things did not get better.  Holly arrived at work Thursday morning and still seemed out of sorts.  When he inquired about their plans for that night while she was in his office going over a new client contract, Holly impersonally told him that she had some plans with friends that night that she hadn’t seen in a while and before he could ask about the next night, she essentially told him that she needed the weekend alone to get ready for her trip to see her family. 

It was on the tip of Stephen’s tongue to demand to know what was going on and talk to Holly about his going with her on her trip.  To hell with respecting whatever she was going through, he wanted answers, dammit!

Holly was placing the last page of the documents on his desk when he grabbed her wrist.  “What’s going on, Holly?  Did I do something wrong?”

She pulled free; Stephen didn’t put up much of a fight.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied. 

“I know you weren’t feeling well last night, but you’re pretty much giving me the brush off and I want to know why?”

“Brush off?  Why?  Because I need some time to myself?” she said a bit snappishly.  “Am I not entitled to some time alone?  I’m here every day and we’re together every night and every weekend!”

He saw red.  He knew what this was; Hell, he’d practically given this speech word-for-word, himself, a time or two before.  Holly was ending things and for the life of him, he didn’t know why.  It was an uncomfortable feeling to be on the receiving end of a relationship ending.  For the briefest of moments, Stephen thought of begging her for to change her mind, to give him another chance…but there was no way he could do it.  A man like him did not beg.  She wanted space?  She could have it.  No relationship was worth all of this. 

Ever since that blasted Friday night his emotions had been all over the place and Stephen found that he did not like it one bit.  Life was simple before and now, since becoming involved with Holly, he felt crazy and out of control.  If she wanted to dump him, then fine.  He would handle it; he would move on and never think of it again.  They’d work together and now that he knew the real Holly, it would be easy to not dream about all that he might have.

If the woman could toss him aside so easily then she wasn’t the woman he thought her to be and he wasn’t going to spend another minute agonizing over the future that he had
thought
  he had wanted with her.  Good riddance!

Friday was even tenser.  Stephen hadn’t slept well, alone for a second night.  His anger had not allowed him to relax.  When he came in to the office the next morning, he treated her just as indifferently as she was treating him.  He avoided asking her for anything except for what was vitally essential to get him through the day. 

He noticed dark circles under her eyes and assumed they were due to Holly being out late with her friends.  The thought almost made him growl.  At five o’clock when Holly came in to the office with a file he requested that had final details on the Gideon project that he would work on over the weekend, she handed him a couple of phone messages.  She didn’t ask him if he needed her for anything else, she simply placed the items on his desk and walked out.

Holly’s spine was stiff and she couldn’t wait to be out of the building and back in her own home where she could begin the process of mending her broken heart.

It was near midnight when Stephen finally rose from behind his office desk.  He was nearly cross-eyed from reading over contracts and travel and installation plans for the Gideon project.  He finally picked up the phone messages that Holly had left on his desk – most of them could wait until Monday – and he noticed one from Derek.

“Plane set for seven a.m Tuesday…,”
Stephen read out loud
.  “Caterer…blah, blah, blah…entertainment taken care of…”

Stephen threw down the message in disgust.  The last damn thing that he wanted to do now was go skiing with Will and Derek.  He’d back out, but at the last moment so he would not have to deal with any bullshit from either one of them.  He’d fake a business emergency or something and just stay behind and work.  Besides, he was due to leave for Texas the Wednesday after Thanksgiving to do an upgrade for a client and then head off to California to begin his work with the Gideon Corporation. 

With a loud, full-body stretch, Stephen turned and looked out the window at the city below.  He really should head off and go home, but the thought of driving home at this hour was completely unappealing.  The sofa would due, again.  Since Holly wasn’t sharing his bed, he found that he didn’t sleep well anyway.  It didn’t matter where he slept now; he didn’t stay asleep for long anyway.  Taking his tie off and kicking off his shoes, Stephen made himself as comfortable as humanly possible on his large leather sofa. 

In order to keep himself from thinking about Holly and what she was doing right now, he forced himself to think about what he was going to need for his travels and how he was going to convince this particular client of doing the upgrade for all of his offices…it didn’t take long to fall asleep.

Holly, on the other hand, went to bed early each night and tossed and turned through most of the night.  The last two days had been hellacious and luckily she knew she’d only have to deal with one more day with Stephen and then they’d both be gone for several days.  She could do one more day, couldn’t she?  Apparently not. 

Deciding early on Saturday morning that she really could not take another day, Holly decided that she was going to change her flight home to Long Island and leave as soon as possible.  She called Judy, the temp who normally took her place whenever she was out of the office sick or away on business with Stephen, and told her of her plans.  It was probably improper protocol and Holly knew that she should just call Stephen and let him know of her change of plans, but decided against it.

Sunday afternoon, Holly was on a plane north, heading home.  With any luck, a full week away from Stephen Ballinger would be enough to ease her pain.