12

HOLDEN WAS WHISTLING as he scrubbed potato skins, thinking how great Thelma was and how he could see her in his life—in his and Taylor’s life. In the house they’d buy on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Well, not in the house, maybe. But in one of those carriage-house apartments that big, rambling old houses seemed to have. Yeah, that would do it. Close, but not too close.

And it would have to be a really big house. With room for Woody and Tiffany when they wanted to come East and visit him and Taylor and the kids. With lots of land around it, too, for horses, maybe?

It just kept getting better and better, this rosy future Holden was building as he scrubbed potatoes—until he noticed with surprise that he had washed six of the things. Who did he think he was feeding—an army?

This was going to be good. Really good. Thelma had set the table in the upstairs living room before she left, right down to the candles she’d placed in holders she’d dug up somewhere. The champagne was on ice. The steaks were still marinating. The tomatoes were sliced, arranged on a plate and cooling in the refrigerator. The potatoes were ready for the grill.

And for dessert? Ah…dessert!

Holden grinned.

He knew it was a grin—much more than a smile.

And he knew he probably looked stupid.

And he didn’t care.

“‘Just get me to the church on time!’” he sang as he patted the pocket of his team shorts, feeling the ring that resided there. This was going to work. Oh, yes, it was. A little groveling, a little apologizing—maybe some hangdog looks—and then the ring. This time, for real.

And finally, dessert.

He grinned again.

And then the doorbell rang, and he frowned. The doorbell wasn’t supposed to ring. Taylor had a key, so she couldn’t be ringing it. So who was ringing it? Some reporter? A neighbor asking for an autograph?

Whoever, it is, he told himself as he stepped out onto the small porch and quickly tossed two potatoes into the already-heated propane grill, then raced down the stairs two at a time, they were going to be on their way in two seconds flat, because Taylor would be back from her late-afternoon run on the beach any minute, and the last thing he wanted was any sort of interruption.

It was going to be hard enough to make her stand still and listen to him as he groveled, told her what a jerk he’d been and how much he loved her, really loved her, without having an audience around!

“What?” he barked out as he threw open the door, then pushed his head forward as if he needed a closer look to recognize the man standing there in a wild pink-and-green flowered shirt and baggy shorts that revealed his knobby knees. There was a lei of rather crushed and wilted orchids around his neck. “Sid?”

He stepped back two paces, not knowing whether to be shocked, angry or amused, and watched as the much shorter man walked into the foyer, then repeated, “Sidney? Is that you?”

“Uncle Sidney?” Taylor exclaimed from the doorway—obviously back from her run—then ran inside to fall into the agent’s open arms and give him a huge hug.

“Here’s my girl!” her uncle crowed, returning her embrace. “Taylor, Taylor, my multi-multi-unbe-lievably-multimillion-dollar stroke of genius!” He held her at arm’s length. “Let me look at you. You’ve been wonderful, wonderful!”

“You look wonderful, Uncle Sidney!” Taylor answered, still avoiding Holden’s gaze.

“He looks like he was caught in a freak flower-shop explosion,” Holden grumbled as Sid took the orchid lei from his neck and placed it around Taylor’s, then stood on tiptoe to kiss her on both cheeks. “They let you on an airplane dressed like that? Isn’t there some sort of dress code? You know—nothing that might frighten small children?”

Sidney, never one to stand on ceremony—or be easily insulted—headed for the stairs, Taylor’s hand still in his. “It was a long, long flight, with two layovers I don’t even want to remember, let alone talk about right now. I need a drink, Holden,” he said, hesitating on the first landing for a moment, then unerringly heading for the next level and the carefully set table and the bottle of champagne that sat in a plastic ice bucket on the coffee table.

He pulled the bottle from its icy cocoon and looked around for a corkscrew, which he spied not far from the bucket. “One thing I have to say about you, Holden. You sure do know how to live. And so do I, seeing as how I’m the one who lined all this up for you. Nice place, and that housekeeper I hired must be a treasure, setting you up like this every night. Now, go get another glass, and we’ll toast your new contract.”

“The negotiations are over?” Taylor asked, her voice quiet, her smile replaced by a closed, shuttered look that revealed more than it hid. Holden would have been cheered by her sudden sadness if he didn’t believe his groveling was going to have to be done while Taylor was madly throwing clothing in a suitcase in anticipation of running away from him.

“Over? Honey, it’s just the beginning!” Sidney crowed, puffing out his chest. “Everything we wanted, Holden. Just the way I said it would happen when I talked you into this in the first place. Everything! And a couple of things I didn’t even think to ask for—if you can believe that. And all because of Rich Newsome. That right cross of yours put the seal on it. If you can punch out a creep, you can throw a ball—or words to that effect. That’s what the owners said, anyway. They can’t wait for you to come back to the city and sign on the dotted line so all the other teams will go away. Which we’ll do, right? Tonight okay with you? Holden, for the next five years—five years!—you are safely set in Philadelphia.”

The cork slipped out of the bottle with a small pop, and Sidney wrinkled his nose in pleasure like some psychedelic pixie.

“So? Holden? And you’d be waiting for—what? It’s okay. You can bow down and worship at my feet now.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah—thanks, Sid,” Holden said as Taylor slowly walked from the room, heading for the stairs. “Now do me a favor, Sid, okay?”

“Anything, Holden,” his agent agreed happily. “Just name it.”

“Go away, Sid,” Holden said, following Taylor. “I’ll call you tomorrow. But for now—there’s a bonus in it for you if you’ll just go far, far away.”

WELL, THAT’S THAT, Taylor thought as she walked down the hallway to her bedroom, wishing she didn’t have to blink quite so much to keep the tears at bay. As the superheroes say before flying off, “I’ll be on my way now. My work here is done!”

She strode into the room, leaving the door open behind her, dragged her large duffel bags out of the closet and threw them onto the bed, then walked over to the dresser and opened the top drawer.

“Going somewhere?”

Taylor bit her bottom lip as she looked into the mirror on the wall over the dresser and saw Holden’s reflection in the glass. “Aren’t you? Uncle Sidney said he wanted you to drive back to Philadelphia with him tonight. There’s a limousine waiting outside, you know. I saw it when I got back from the beach.”

A door closed somewhere in the distance. “The sound you just heard was our Don Ho impersonator heading back to New York,” Holden said. He walked into the room to stand behind Taylor, then reached around her to push the drawer shut, leaving his hands pressed on top of the dresser. “I’m not going anywhere.”

If she turned around, just moved her feet a little and turned, she’d be in his arms. Face-to-face. Heartbeat to heartbeat. She remained where she was, closing her eyes so she didn’t have to look at his reflection. “You turned down the contract? Uncle Sidney seemed to think it was a great deal. Well, either way, I don’t see as how it’s any of my business. We haven’t even talked to each other in three days, for crying out loud.”

Without a word, Holden pushed himself away from the dresser and moved to the doorway once more—leaving, she was sure. Sure, Angel, remind him that he’s mad at you. Good job! She let out a shaky breath, part of her wanting him gone, the other part of her wanting to scream at him to stay.

But he didn’t go anywhere. He just stood in the doorway, looking into the mirror, silently daring her to turn around.

“What?” she exclaimed at last, as her nerves, already stretched taut, snapped. “What do you want? A farewell massage? Well, you can just forget it, buster.”

“I was hoping we could have dinner,” he said, sounding as innocent as a choirboy—which was her first clue that something was very, very wrong. Or very, very right? “But I suppose a massage wouldn’t hurt. Come with me?”

“I’d sooner go wading in a snake pit,” she told him, pressing back against the dresser as if the piece of furniture could offer her some sort of protection from her own raging emotions that told her half a loaf was reported to be better than one. Would it really be so bad to be in his arms again just one more time? “And where is everybody anyway?” she asked, searching for something to say that wouldn’t end up with her telling him exactly what was on her mind. “And who set that table upstairs in the living room? We’ve never done that before.”

Holden leaned his tall frame against the doorjamb and rubbed a hand across his mouth—still looking for that nonexistent mustache, Taylor supposed. It was one of his most endearing habits, not that she had noticed. Or kept a mental record of every sweet, endearing thing the man did. She rolled her eyes, calling herself every kind of fool she could imagine.

“What was that for?” Holden asked, obviously referring to her expression. “Or did you just figure out that you and I are alone here in the condo? Did it finally occur to you that Tiffany and Woody and Thelma are gone, and that the table upstairs is set for two, and that, since Sid came and fouled up my plans, I’m going back ten to punt, trying my damnedest to figure out a way to tell you what a jerk I’ve been?”

Taylor stuck out her tongue to wet her suddenly dry lips. “You’ve been a what?”

He pushed himself away from the door, made his way back down the hallway, then turned up the stairs.

She followed, of course. He must have known she’d follow him. How many times did someone get to hear the Master of the Game call himself a jerk?

“I said,” he continued once they were both back in the upper living room and he had handed her a flute of champagne, “I’m a jerk. I’ve been a jerk for so long that it took me a while to figure out just how much of a jerk I’ve been—but I think I’m getting the hang of it now. Want to hear me say it again? I’m a jerk, I’m a jerk, I’m a damn jerk!”

Taylor giggled in spite of herself, then took a sip of champagne.

“Hey—you can stop me anytime, you know,” Holden complained, taking the glass from her hand and placing it on the coffee table. “Humble has never been my most successful play.”

“But you do humble very well, Holden,” she told him. She walked over to the table, picked up the book of matches left there so that she could light the candles. “So, are we having crow for dinner? I could use a serving or two myself.”

“What do you have to apologize about?” he asked, and she turned to him and smiled, for he really, really was a wonderfully handsome, appealing man. And she loved him, so even his clumsy attempts at thanking her for her help before saying goodbye seemed somehow special in her eyes, in her breaking heart.

“Well, according to Woody—nothing,” she began, no longer able to meet Holden’s eyes. “I thought you’d be angry with me because of that newspaper article—because of Geoff—but Woody assured me you wouldn’t be. So,” she said, then hesitated. She cleared her throat. “So I guess I’m apologizing for thinking I should apologize. And for not being quite the sophisticated woman of the world I let you think I was.”

He took three small steps in her direction. “Meaning?” he prompted.

“Mean-ing,” she pronounced carefully, finding she had to clear her throat again, “that I’m not real adult about…about…um…”

“Going to bed with a man and then saying thanks, it’s been fun?” Holden supplied, and Taylor didn’t know whether to kiss him or slug him in the jaw.

“Yeah. That,” she said gruffly.

“Going to bed with a man who is well known for his affairs, his total lack of commitment?”

“That, too.”

“A man who never said a word about love, or marriage, or even if he would be around in the morning?”

“All right, all right! Yes! There’s no reason to draw blueprints on this, is there? I think we both get the point. Can I slink away now?” She looked past him, up the half flight of stairs and to the sliding doors that looked out over the small landing leading to the roof. “Holden? Is the condo on fire?”

“On fire?” He looked at her dumbly for a moment, then whirled around to run up the stairs three at a time. “My potatoes!”

Potatoes? she mouthed silently, watching him tear up the stairs and out to the smoking grill. She could have gone then. Could have tiptoed back down the stairs—or hopped down them carrying lead weights to make more noise, because Holden was already long gone and wouldn’t hear her. But she couldn’t help herself. The look of comic dismay on the man’s face had her melting all over, full of love for him now as she would always be—and liking him so damn much that she was nearly bursting with it.

She followed him up the stairs, stopping off in the kitchen for the tongs Thelma kept in the drawer next to the sink. “Here,” she said moments later, holding the utensil out to Holden, who had lifted the cover of the grill and was now trying to fan away the smoke with his hand. “Try taking the potatoes off the grill and putting them in that sand bucket.”

“Thanks,” he said, his cheeks running with tears from all the smoke. “Damn it, Taylor, would you look what you’ve reduced me to?”

“Crying?” she teased, beginning to think she might just have lost her mind.

“No, damn it—cooking!” He dropped the charred potatoes into the sand bucket and pushed her back inside the condo, sliding the door closed on the worst of the smoke. “I’m going to kill Thelma when she gets home. Her and her bright ideas!”

“It’s the soap opera,” Taylor supplied helpfully. “Thelma’s a born romantic, you know.”

“She’s a born meddler, and so are Tiffany and Woody.” And then he smiled, putting out his hand and running his fingertip down Taylor’s cheek. “I don’t know what I’d do without them. Or without you. Taylor—”

She backed away from him, holding out her hands as if to ward him off. “No, Holden,” she said firmly. “I’m not doing this again. We’re attracted to each other. We have been from the first—as you’ve already said, and as I’ve agreed. We went to bed together. But that’s it. Call it a mistake, call it a one-night stand, or call it two adults who knew what they were doing and did it very well. Isn’t that what you said? But don’t ask me to do it again. I’m just not strong enough.”

His grin was wicked, more than wicked. “You want a celibate marriage?” he asked, reaching into the pocket of his shorts and pulling out the ring she had hidden so well between her mattress and box spring.

Thelma! Taylor thought before she couldn’t think at all, because Holden Masters was down on one knee in front of her—his clothes and face smudged with smoke, his hair falling into his eyes—and he was saying something that sounded an awful lot like, “I love you, Taylor. Please marry me.”