So About the Money (39 page)

“I’m sorry I hurt you. Sorry it ended like that. But you hurt me too. I don’t think you’ve ever admitted you weren’t blameless. You broke my heart. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. I was too angry at the time to see that. And then it was too late.”
 

His words tore at her defenses. How had they managed to screw up so completely? Thrown away something so precious? “Why? Why was it too late? If you’d come after me. If you’d talked to me the way you are now…”

“I did come after you.”

Her hands covered her mouth. He
had
followed her that night. Stumbling. Half-naked. Zipping his jeans. At the time, it had only made her more furious. She’d run away, so hurt, so angry. Nothing he could have said then would’ve made it any better.
 

 
“When you wouldn’t talk to me…” He shook his head. “I was young and stupid. My pride wanted
you
to come back, to make the first move. By the time I’d cooled down enough to realize I was making the biggest mistake of my life, Meredith presented me with a bigger one.”

Her gaze snapped up to meet his. “What?”

“She told me she was pregnant.”
 

Hormones she didn’t know she possessed flooded her senses. With a creaking, groaning lurch, her long-dormant baby clock started a countdown. Jealousy burned through her veins.
 

Meredith the home wrecker—had his child?
 

Chapter Thirty-seven

“She was pregnant?” Holly swallowed the watermelon-sized lump lodged in her throat. Even saying the words was torture.
 

What was wrong with her? She’d never wanted children.
 

Never
admitted
she wanted children.
 

“You have a child?”

JC’s head twitched. A spasm rather than a shake. “No.”

Relief roared through her, followed by a spark of insight. “That’s why you married her.”

“It was the right thing to do.” He slumped against the scaffold, looking defeated. “She miscarried the next month. The marriage was a disaster from day one. I wanted an annulment. She wanted to hang in there, with me as her meal ticket.”
 

“Is that how—?”

“That’s not how I see all women. Just her.”
 

It sure explained some of his attitude toward women, though. “You never remarried?”
 

“I…” His face shut down. His expression shouted he’d already revealed too much.
 

The doorbell sputtered.
 

Holly ignored it. She’d rather hear what JC would say next.
 

“Are you expecting someone?”
 

“Yeah, I am.”
Dammit, Laurie, have I told you lately your timing sucks?

JC released another deep breath. He crossed the room and jerked open the front door.

She really, really wanted to remind him to look to see who it was. But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
 

Laurie stood on the porch. She rocked back on her crutches with a startled, “Oh. Am I interrupting?”

“No,” JC said at the same time Holly said, “Yes.”

“Glad we cleared that up.” Laurie rolled her eyes.

JC brushed past Laurie and shot one last, indecipherable look over his shoulder. “I’ll see you later. Lock the door after me.”

Frustration roared inside her.
This conversation is
so
not over
.

Laurie stared at his departing back, then turned to Holly with assessing eyes. “Well, well. This has the potential to be very interesting.”
 

“Don’t start with me. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You never do.” Laurie awkwardly poled her way into the living room. “Too bad I didn’t get here sooner. Apparently, I missed an enlightening show.”

Holly stormed across the room and turned the latch on the deadbolt. There. Dammit, JC, I hope you’re happy
.
“I didn’t know he planned to stop by. I don’t know what’s up with him.”
 

She retrieved her brush, noticed her hands were shaking, and dropped the brush into the paint can.
 

“You have any place to sit beside the floor?” Laurie glanced around.

Holly squinted her face and eyes into a
Really?
expression. “Picky, picky. How did you get here? I thought Gwen was bringing you.”

“She had other plans.”

“Gwen had plans?” She waved her hands around, blowing off her own question. “And you drove? With that cast?”

“It wasn’t that hard. Now quit stalling. Break out the pizza and tell me what was going on in here with JC.”

“I thought you were bringing the pizza.”

“Round Table delivers. Start talking.”

 
“Nothing is going on.” Holly grabbed her cell and called the pizza shop.

“Bull,” Laurie said the minute she finished placing the order. “The tension in here was off the Richter scale. Tell me, is this huge wall you put up to keep JC away related to him personally or is it because he’s a cop? ’Cause if it’s just the cop thing, you’re the dumbest smart woman I ever met.”

Holly stomped into the laundry room and returned with a folding chair and a handful of magazines. “Here. Improve your mind while I finish painting. But you know I have a completely valid reason not to like cops, so get off my case.”
 

“That asshole in Seattle? That guy just pissed you off.”

“Yeah, well. JC pisses me off too.”

“I’d say he turns you on. In a major way. In fact, I’d say if I got here thirty seconds later, you two would’ve been doing the nasty right here on the floorboards.”
 

Holly ignored her, and instead concentrated on climbing back onto the scaffold. She’d already cycled through angry and hurt before ending up completely confused about everything related to JC.

Laurie propped her crutches against the wall, squirmed around on the folding chair and thumbed through a magazine. “Oh, look. A dating guide. Should we take some quizzes and figure out what your problem is?”

“I’m not the problem.” Holly picked up the brush and smoothed paint onto the wall.

Long silent minutes followed.
 

“This is ridiculous.” Laurie tossed the magazine on the floor. “Okay, how’s this for a relationship assessment? You and JC were both young back then.
Too
young. You were completely in love, but you screwed up and it fell apart.”
 

“He screwed up,” Holly muttered. But did JC have a point? Had her actions pushed him into Meredith’s arms? Okay. Maybe. Yeah, they had a huge fight. But would he have gone there if he really loved her?

“Sweetie, it’s time to deal with whatever that asshole in Seattle did to you. And we definitely need to talk about your feelings for JC.” Laurie smiled, a Cheshire cat grin. “Those could be quite interesting.”

“Well, Ms. Sigmund Freud-ette. You’re wrong. I’m not interested in JC.”
 

Liar, liar, pants on fire
.
 

Shut up
, she grumped at the nagging voice in her head. It wasn’t her friggin’ pants that were on fire.

“Could’ve fooled me. There was some seriously interesting chemistry in the air.”

“Yeah, it’s called fury.”

“I really don’t understand you sometimes.”
 

Holly glanced over her shoulder, then turned.
 

Lips pursed, Laurie regarded her seriously. “You’ve got a second chance with the man who turns you on mentally as well as physically, but son of a bitch, he’s a cop.” She brushed her hands in a dismissive move. “So you’re going to use that excuse to ignore him. Instead of dealing with what broke you apart the first time, you’re going to walk away from him. Again.”

Holly stared at her best friend. “I cannot believe you said that.”

The doorbell sputtered.
 

Talk about
saved by the bell
. Holly dropped the brush into the paint can and awkwardly climbed off the scaffold.
 

“We aren’t finished,” Laurie warned.

“Hush.” Holly grabbed her wallet, crossed the foyer and peeked out the side window. Rather than a deranged assailant, a teenager holding a pizza box stood on the porch.
 

She opened the door. On the street, behind the teenager, a car slowed to a crawl. Not just any car—a Richland police cruiser.
 

“Everything okay here?” the officer called.
 

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Holly blurted. Fury clenched her fists, squinted her eyes, and sent blood surging through her face to her head.

“What?” The pizza kid took a step back. His head swiveled between Holly and the cop, flight written all over his face.

“Not you,” Holly waved the hand clutching the cash. “Here.”

The kid grabbed the money and bolted for his car. The police officer threw a casual salute and continued up the road.
 

Holly slammed the door, stormed into the kitchen, and threw the pizza box onto the counter.
 

“What’s the matter?” Laurie trailed behind her.
 

“I cannot believe he did that without telling me. He had
no right
.”

“Who did what?”

“JC. That’s
exactly
where things went to hell with Frank.” She stomped a circuit around the kitchen.

“Slow down. Start at the beginning.” Laurie propped her crutches against the wall and sat on one of the counter stools.
 

“The beginning…” Holly opened the refrigerator and grabbed a couple of beers. “Which beginning? Frank? What happened in Seattle?”

“Either one. Both.”

A cascade of memories swamped her anger.
 

“Frank.”
 

The name was still bitter in her mouth. She opened the bottles and pulled glasses from the cabinet. With a sigh, she rounded the counter, plopped onto the seat beside Laurie, and handed her a beer. “The beginning with Frank was pretty normal. He seemed fun, intelligent. I was working a lot, so for the first few months, we only went out occasionally. But gradually he started getting possessive and making comments like he was planning our future. I told him to slow down and claimed I was busy the next time he called. The coffee thing was already creeping me out—”

“The coffee thing?” Laurie asked.
 

Holly slumped against the counter stool and explained about the controlling coffee breaks. “He was already trying to make decisions for me—for both of us—in too many areas.”

“I’m hearing annoying, but not scary.” Laurie poured her beer into her glass.
 

“There’s more. I went to the drugstore late one night. He called while I was
in the store
. What was I doing shopping so late?” Holly mimed staring at a cell phone clutched in her upturned hand. “I thought WTF? How did he even know I was out?”

“Okay, that’s stepping over the line. What did you do?” Laurie asked.

Holly’s hand waved in a brushing motion. “He had an excuse, said he’d had a call for service in the area and swung by to see if I was awake and wanted to get coffee or food and saw me leave. He did this whole ‘I’m concerned’ thing. There’d been some ‘incidents’ in the area, yada yada, so I didn’t yell at him about it then, even though it really bothered me. Seeing me leave is different than following me to the store. And it kept getting worse. Every time I went somewhere other than the office, he’d call. What was I doing? Where was I going? With who? I don’t like that person. I’d rather you didn’t hang out with them. He pushed and pushed to put me in a box. Control what I did and who I saw.”

“You did the right thing, breaking up with him.”
 

Holly fiddled with her beer, slowly turning the glass. “I tried. I told him in no uncertain terms that I would go wherever I wanted. That no one told me what to do.” She dropped her gaze to the pizza box, hating to even remember those days in Seattle. “It was the first time he really scared me. I honestly thought he might hit me. I backed away and he got it under control, but instead of leaving me alone, it got worse. Every time I turned around, he was right there. I changed grocery stores, coffee shops.”