“EXCUSE ME? I COULDNT have heard that right. You told her what?”
Holden grinned, having already figured that it wouldn’t take long for Taylor to respond to his last statement. And she hadn’t immediately smacked him one across the face and stomped back to the condo to pack her bags. He had to consider that a plus. “I told her she caught us celebrating our engagement. Don’t look at me like that—it was the only thing I could think of on such short notice. After all, she did find us in a rather, um, compromising position, so I had to protect you.”
“Rather compromising? Holden, don’t pretty it up on my account. I know what we were doing. We were about to go at each other like crazed rabbits. And you had to protect me? Well, isn’t that so wonderfully old-world of you. Who said chivalry was dead? They certainly haven’t met Holden Masters, have they?”
She was onto him. Well, he’d always known she wasn’t stupid. “All right, all right,” he confessed quickly, “so I was also thinking of what Amanda might babble to the press about why you’re here. I admit it. Amanda is a lot of things—one of them isn’t smart, if you were wondering—but she knows a million people and has a remarkably big mouth. But I was worried about your reputation. That was the first thing I thought of, honest.” He tried for a smile as he pretended to ward off a physical attack. “You can thank me any way you wish.”
“Really? Okay. How about with a hot poker down your shorts?” Taylor suggested, leaping to her feet in one fluid, graceful motion and setting off down the beach.
Holden watched in admiration for a few moments, then went after her because he really did like her. He really did care what she thought about him. And he really, really wanted to explore that “crazed rabbit” attraction Amanda had so rudely interrupted.
“Look, Taylor, it’s no big deal. I already called Sid in Maui, and he’s going to fax some trumped-up story out to the media. Holden Masters, siblings in tow, is vacationing at an undisclosed New Jersey resort with his loving fiancée. I’m protected from any more rumors on my physical condition. You’re protected from Amanda’s flapping tongue. It’ll all blow over in a couple of days. All right, maybe in a couple of weeks. By the time I sign my new contract tops.”
“And, as an added bonus, you get rid of Amanda the Beautiful just as her customary six months are up. You forgot to mention that,” Taylor added sarcastically, making him wince as her verbal arrow struck home. “So I guess—as we’re doing time lines here—this also means our bogus engagement will be history by, oh, Christmas? At least I have something to look forward to, I suppose. I wonder if my parents will be equally as thrilled?”
“Your parents?” Holden winced again. “I hadn’t thought about your parents, Taylor. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she responded, still walking and with enough built-up energy radiating from her tall, slim body that she probably could make it all the way up the coast to Atlantic City without breathing hard. “I’ll call them later and explain everything, listen to yet another lecture on why I should never have left Allentown for a return to the big city of Manhattan and then promise to call them next week. What about your mother?”
“Miranda?” Holden hadn’t given his mother’s reaction a second thought—even a first one. “I don’t know. She’ll probably beg me not to make her a grandmother yet, then send us something from Bloomingdale’s. You like ostentatious crystal bowls?”
“Don’t pretend to be dense, Holden. It doesn’t become you.”
He reached out and took her hand, pulling her to a stop at the water’s edge, as she had made a sharp right turn as if intending to walk into the ocean and swim to England. “Look, Taylor,” he said seriously, swinging her around to face him, “I don’t like this any better than you do. But it was all I could think of, honestly. I only think fast on my feet when a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound defensive end is bearing down on me.”
“Oh, sure, expect me to believe that. I’m not Amanda Price, remember,” Taylor countered, pulling her hand free of his. “You graduated top of your class in media communications, bucko, so don’t act like you can’t add two and two.”
Holden grinned. “Did your research on me, huh? I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be,” she said, picking up a clamshell and sending it out over the breaking waves before turning away from the water. “So—how long do we have until ‘The Nose’ finds us?”
“Then you’re going to go along with it?” Holden asked in impossible-to-hide relief, following her again and feeling like a puppy who’d messed the new carpet and was now trying to make up for his mistake by being extremely lovable. “Sid did say it was the perfect press release to get me back in the news in a favorable light, get me out of this stupid role of secrecy he put me into and still keep the negotiations on the front burner. So it’s working out all around. I get my therapy, you get a small vacation—because I am getting much better, don’t you think?—and everything ends happily. I can’t thank you enough, Taylor. Honestly.”
“First Tiffany, and now you and Uncle Sid,” Taylor said, finally smiling, so that he could begin to relax. “By the time this summer is over, you’re all going to owe me a small fortune in favors.”
THEY OWED HER a small fortune in favors before supper that night as it turned out, simply because she didn’t kill Holden Masters, star quarterback, loving brother and chivalrous idiot extraordinaire.
Because, when Taylor and Holden finally left the beach and turned the corner at the end of the row of beachfront condos, it was to see two huge news vans parked outside the lime stucco building and the pavement littered with miles of electrical wire, cameras and a half-dozen television newsmen and print reporters.
Above them, a red-faced Thelma Helper danced around on the upper living-room deck, waving a broom in the air as she yelled at them all to go away before she poured boiling water on them, the way she would drown ants.
“That agent of mine is too much. He must have gotten on the wire the minute the two of us hung up,” Holden complained, squeezing Taylor’s hand as she slipped it into his, probably not realizing what she was doing—not that he minded. “Just smile pretty and let me do the talking, all right?”
“I already tried that once today, Holden, and ended up engaged to you,” she reminded him sharply. “Much more talking on your end and I’ll find myself the clandestine mother of triplets. Please, forgive me if I’m lacking some confidence in my bigmouthed fiancé right now.”
“Good point. Triplets, huh? That’s too much, even for me. Okay, what else do you suggest? We camp out on the beach all night, hoping they give up and go away? They won’t, you know, and the sand flies can get pretty hungry after dark.”
Anything Taylor might have suggested meant nothing as one of the reporters shouted out, “There they are!” and Holden gave her hand another squeeze before leading her across the street and straight into contact with the wing-flapping media vultures.
“This the lucky lady, Holden?”
“Where did you meet?”
“What happened to the mustache? You were hiding, weren’t you?”
“Tell me about the accident, Holden. Is it true you were drunk?”
“Turn this way, Ms. Angel.”
“Over here, Taylor, baby. Give us a big smile for the camera!”
“Should I call the police, Mr. Masters? Maybe they’ll hit ‘em all with billy clubs or something. I’d give up my soap to watch that!”
Holden held up a hand, asking everyone to be silent for a moment as he had an announcement. “Those cameras on?” he asked, wishing Thelma, who was now shouting 911 at the top of her lungs, would just shut up and go back inside the condo.
“Now,” he said, smiling as the reporters stepped back a pace, acting only slightly less like piranhas than they had a moment earlier. A boom mike almost got away from one of the technicians, nearly taking off the top of Holden’s head. Finally, order was restored—sort of.
“You’ve got me, guys, so I might as well talk, huh? Here it is, the whole truth. I’m fine. My shoulder is fine—I was dented a little in the accident, but the Ferrari got the worst of it. I’m just a man in love, that’s all. Taylor and I tried to get away from the limelight for a little while—get to know each other better—but as long as you’re here, I’m happy to announce that, yes, Taylor and I are engaged to be married. We—”
“Nancy Marsh here, local stringer for AP. These guys can talk all the football they want later. Let’s just cut to the chase now, okay? That her real name, Holden? Angel? Yeah, like anyone’s gonna believe that one! Who is she, really? Where did you two meet? What does she do? And what about Amanda Price? She’s registered at the Regency right down the street, you know. Isn’t that just a little too cozy?”
Holden looked at the ambitious woman who had rattled off this list of questions, smiling even as he wondered who in hell she was. “Amanda Price has always been a good friend,” he said evenly.
“Uh-huh, sure, feed me that same tired line. I’ll bite,” the reporter answered archly, scribbling on a steno pad. “Now, Ms. Angel—how do you feel about Holden’s good friend Amanda?”
“Well, for one, Nancy, I think she’s much more well-mannered than you,” Taylor responded, smiling directly into one of the television cameras.
“Easy, Taylor,” Holden whispered. “Not nice to poke sticks in reporters’ cages. Even the baby ones have big teeth.”
“Maybe it’s not,” Taylor answered, also in a whisper, and also while still smiling, “but it’s fun. What’s she going to do, tell her readers I said she was rude?”
“You’ll wish that was all she writes,” he said against Taylor’s ear, hearing the click of the cameras as the photographers snapped pictures of the two lovebirds as if they were whispering sweet nothings to each other. “All right, guys,” he said then, as the questions started all over again, “if you want anything else, you’ll have to go through Sid. He knows everything. For now, how about you give us a little break and a little privacy?”
Just as Holden was guiding Taylor past the line of cameras, thinking they had come away from their first confrontation with the press relatively unscathed, a car pulled to a screeching halt at the curb and Rich “The Nose” Newsome hopped out, as welcome as a plague in May—or any other time.
“So what did you do, Rich?” Holden asked, looking at his longtime nemesis, the sports columnist who had taken an instant dislike to Holden—why, he’d never know—the minute he’d signed with the Philadelphia team eleven years ago. “Rent a helicopter?”
“Ha-ha, Masters. You’re a funny man,” New-some responded nastily, bounding over the curb and across the grass to stick a miniature tape recorder right up under Holden’s nose. “Before you go scurrying back to your love nest, how about you explain why Ms. Taylor Angel is listed in the New York City telephone directory as a professional masseuse?”
“Who is this guy?” Taylor snapped, and Holden felt the first small ground-shakings of rapidly impending doom. “Look, buddy,” she said before he could stop her, pointing a finger at Rich Newsome, “that’s licensed physical therapist and licensed massage therapist, and that’s what it says both in the Manhattan phone book and on my licenses. Get your facts straight, okay?”
“Massage therapist, huh?” Newsome countered, his grin so oily Holden was surprised it didn’t slide right off his face. “From Manhattan, too, just where I found your name when I did a little quick research. So, tell me again, off the record, of course—what block of Forty-second Street do you work on, honey? I might want you to run those pretty hands over me someday. How much? Fifty bucks cover an hour alone with the lovely Ms. Angel?”
TAYLOR KEPT MASSAGING Holden’s right hand, gently pulling on his fingers one at a time, working the soreness out of his knuckles. “You shouldn’t have hit him, you know. That was really dumb, dumber than my dig at that Nancy woman. And it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten angry in the first place. After all, I’m used to snide remarks from jerks when my profession is mentioned.”
Holden pulled his hand away from hers and fell back against the couch, looking so sweet and vulnerable that she longed to kiss him. Which was a dangerously stupid reaction. “He as good as called you some sort of hooker, Taylor. And not even a high-priced one. What did you expect me to do—give him a cookie?”
She reached up to begin working out the knots in his right shoulder, although he hadn’t complained about any soreness. She just knew his body now, knew it probably better than he did himself, and although he’ had delivered a remarkably fine right across to Rich “The Nose” Newsome’s kisser, his arm still wasn’t in any shape for such heroic displays. “It’s too late for a cookie. Although you might want to send him a three-pound, raw porterhouse steak. His eye was already beginning to swell up before he hit the pavement.”
Holden closed his eyes and chuckled. “He’s been asking for that for years. And every wonderful bit of it got caught on camera. I guess that will put the kibosh to all that talk about my arm. Sid will be on the phone from Maui pretty soon, screaming that I just threw a million-dollar punch and raking me over the coals for blowing the lid off his little scheme to keep the owners in the dark about what I’m doing.”
“Boy, Masters,” Taylor said, shaking her head, “when you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Uncle Sid called while you were in the shower. He says your price just went up, and that three other teams have already called, wanting to join the bidding. And there’s more, Holden. Fast on his feet, Uncle Sid is. He also wants you to put your arm in a sling, then blame Newsome for your new injury.”
Holden jackknifed to the edge of the couch. “He said what? I don’t believe that guy! I’m just lucky if The Nose doesn’t decide to press charges.”
“Don’t worry. I talked uncle Sid out of it. And Newsome isn’t going to press charges. He’s going to crucify you in his column, just like he always does—or so Uncle Sid says. Now,” Taylor said, rising from the couch and walking over to lean her hip against the massage table, “how do we call off this so-called engagement? I mean, we don’t need this charade anymore, do we?”
He looked at her for long moments, moments during which she was grateful the massage table was there to support her suddenly shaky legs. “Can’t do it, Taylor. Not yet. Newsome let everyone know your occupation, remember? If we tell the truth now, the whole world will be jumping down our throats, knowing I was trying to hide this injury. Damn Sid and his big ideas!” He dropped his head into his hands, stabbing his fingers through his dark hair. “Why do I feel like we’re in a bad sitcom?”
“Because we are, I suppose,” Taylor told him sympathetically, forgetting for a moment just how angry she should be with him. “However, if you think we have to keep up this charade until the beginning of August, you’d better have a small talk with Thelma. She’s not buying a word of the story Sid put out to the press. She said, and I quote, “I know how many beds I’m making up each morning.’“
“Beds? What do beds have to do with—oh.” Holden grinned. “And I thought our dear, sweet Mrs. Helper was a proper chain-smoking old lady who wouldn’t have such thoughts.”
“She watches daytime soaps, Holden,” Taylor replied, feeling her own mood beginning to lighten. “There’s nothing Thelma doesn’t think about. Oh, and she wants a raise, retroactive to her first day on the job. She said Sam would expect her to ask for one, and she wants the money for some new clothing and to get her hair done, just in case the cameras come back. So how does it feel to be blackmailed by one of the senior set?”
And that, Taylor would remember later, was probably the moment she fell unwittingly, carelessly, unreservedly in love with Holden Masters. Because he listened to what she had to say about Thelma and then collapsed against the back of the couch, his long, straight legs splayed out in front of him, and laughed until tears rolled down his face.
HOLDEN WAS SITTING on the rooftop deck looking up at the stars, listening to the waves crashing on the beach a half block away—and wondering how a nice guy like him ever got caught up in a mess like this—when Woody found him around ten o’clock that night.
His stepbrother looked like a character out of some cartoon, only his whiter-than-white teeth, blond-streaked hair, the whites of his eyes and the glowing green face of his wristwatch visible in the pale light coming from the street lamp as he sat down on the cool roof, his legs crossed, his elbows on his knees. “Had yourself a real beaut of a day, didn’t you? Tiff and I just got home—she wouldn’t leave the arcade until she beat my score on this great simulated racecourse—but we met Thelma on her way home to feed Killer. Man, is she ever on a roll—talking a mile a minute, even giving instant replays of the big hit. Sam boxed in the navy, you know. We really missed the fun, didn’t we?”
“Be happy, Woody,” Holden told him, lifting a lit cigar to his mouth and clamping it between his teeth. He only smoked cigars, only occasionally and only in the off-season, but this seemed like a good time for indulging in some sort of vice. At least it kept him from going down to Taylor’s room and making a total ass out of himself—as if he could possibly top this afternoon’s performance. “You may even want to have a T-shirt made up, saying, ‘I survived the Holden Masters punch-out.’ Although you might want to head back downstairs pretty soon and catch the news, as I’m pretty sure this is one of those ‘film at eleven’ stories.”
“That’s okay. When you’ve seen as many clips of old Peter flinging guitars and fists as I have, you get sorta jaded, you know? Tiff’s in heaven, by the way. She’s downstairs with Taylor, talking wedding gowns. Seems she saw a picture of some dame who wore a flesh-colored skintight leather leotard under a big white net cage and thinks Taylor would look great in it. I don’t think Taylor was impressed. You know, I thought there was something going on between you two. I mean, all that time alone on the beach and with you on the massage table?”
“We run on the beach every day to keep my legs in shape, and I’m on that massage table to get my muscles loose.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. So when’s the wedding? You think Peter and the guys will play at the reception? Man, you’re going to have to rent Madison Square Garden for all the people and press.”
“There isn’t going to be—” Holden began, then quickly shut his mouth. Woody was a good kid, but a secret was no safer with him than it would be with Tiffany or Rich Newsome. “That is, Taylor and I don’t want a big show, Woody. We want to keep it private, you know. Maybe even fly to Vegas some weekend and do it there. So don’t go planning anything, all right? And for God’s sake, tell Tiffany to take a breath and step back. Hasn’t she been through enough weddings with Daddykins and Maw-maw to have lost the enthusiasm for another one?”
Woody shrugged his shoulders, then pulled a stick of beef jerky out of his shorts pocket and began gnawing on it. “There’s something fishy here, Holden,” he said after a moment, causing his stepbrother to look at him warily. “I mean, aren’t you supposed to be all happy and sappy? I mean, like you just got engaged. And where’s the ring? Peter gave the child bride a three-carat diamond she could use as a paperweight. It’s not like you to be a cheapskate, Holden. Or was this just so quick you didn’t have time to do it right?”
A ring. Holden shut his eyes, feeling the six-story drop just in front of his make-it-up-as-you-go-along plan becoming more like he was about to take a swan dive off the Empire State Building. He hadn’t thought about a ring. He hadn’t thought about much of anything, when you got right down to it, other than how good Taylor had felt in his arms after two weeks of the most incredible physical attraction he’d ever encountered, how right. And how he could ever possibly get her back there again without leading her to believe this mock engagement might actually have a future. Which it didn’t, of course.
Because he was not, never was, never would be the marrying kind, not with the evidence of Peter’s and Miranda’s combined track records to scare him off the idea. Not that marrying Taylor Angel was even within the realm of possibility, even if he did decide to settle down one day—at least a decade from now—succumbing to some as yet unfelt need for a couple of kids of his own.
But he’d bet she’d make great kids if they were anything like their mother.
Now cut that out! he screamed silently, nearly biting the end off his two-dollar cigar.
All right. So Taylor was beautiful. And funny. And intelligent. And gutsy. And not a bit afraid of or impressed by him, his reputation or his money. That didn’t mean anything. Wanting her in his bed meant something—but that something wasn’t love. It was desire, pure and simple. The gut-wrenching pain he’d unexpectedly felt earlier, when she suggested that they put an end to the sham and she leave Ocean City, leave him—well, that had just been some stupid aberration, a fleeting fear that he’d have to deal with explaining her departure to the press.
That’s all.
Taylor Angel was no more than a fairly enjoyable moment in time, a temporary attraction he’d overcome the minute he was back in circulation, a beautiful pain in the neck who used a little Yanni, a little scented oil, a little blood-heating massage to drive him out of his mind, then filling that same mind with thoughts that would make even Thelma Helper blush.
“So? You getting her a ring or what?” Woody persisted when his stepbrother didn’t answer him.
“Yeah, Woody. I’ll get her a ring,” Holden said fatalistically, making up his mind. “My cover’s blown anyway, so I guess we can all drive up to Atlantic City tomorrow. We’re bound to find a suitable paperweight in one of the casino jewelry stores.”
“The casinos! All right!” Woody leaped to his feet “Of course, Tiffany isn’t old enough to get in to gamble, you know. But she’ll want to go to the shops. Then we can have dinner at one of the steak houses—they do have steak houses, don’t they? Man, you know what, Holden? This is gonna be neat. Really neat. Taylor’s so, like, well, normal—not like Peter’s wives. I don’t think Tiff and I really ever had that. We can actually do things together with Taylor—play gin, do jigsaw puzzles, eat dinner together, talk about stuff. Just like a real family, you know?”
Holden took a deep pull on his cigar, blew out a thin stream of blue smoke. “Yeah, Woody, just like a real family.” He closed his eyes on Woody’s youthful, hopeful smile, deciding he had a problem on hishands. Yeah. He had a real problem….