Five's A Crowd (9 page)

Taylor rolled her eyes, knowing she was rapidly going down for the count—getting
way
too involved with Holden and his family. “I think I’m the one who learned a lesson, Tiffany,” she said as Lance held open the door. He probably would have thrown his body down over a mud puddle for them, if there had
been a mud puddle in the casino lobby. “And that lesson is—well, damn. I don’t know what the lesson is.”

Tiffany went up on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Taylor’s cheek. “Thanks, Taylor. Thanks a lot. Holden made a good choice.”

Don’t get involved,
Taylor’s brain screamed at her as she watched Tiffany and Lance go off to the ice-cream parlor for sundaes.
That’s the lesson, Ms. Angel. Don’t get involved. Hearts get broken that way, you know….

T
HERE WAS AMPLE ROOM
in the limousine for Lance, thanks to Amanda’s defection. The woman had met an old friend—with older money—at the baccarat tables and deserted what she, even as dense as she was, could see was a rapidly sinking matrimonial ship. Without so much as a goodbye for Taylor or Thelma—who probably had been happy enough to have missed the woman’s exit—Amanda Price had walked away with her friend and out of Holden’s life.

Holden hadn’t bothered to watch her go.

Amanda Price,
he thought as he and his family rode through the darkness back to Ocean City.
Good name. You always knew she had one. A “price,” that is. All of them did.

Holden sighed, thinking of Amanda, of all the beautiful, ambitious women who had come and gone in his life for the past eleven years, ever since he’d
signed his first pro contract. He barely remembered their names, their faces. All he remembered now was the regret that none of them had been memorable. Different. Unique.

Like Taylor Angel.

He’d never forget her face, her name. He’d never forget how she had coaxed Thelma Helper into joining them for dinner and then listened raptly as the housekeeper had recounted the rollicking weekend she and her Sam had spent at Coney Island a million years ago, riding the coaster and daring each other to take the parachute ride.

He’d never forget how she had talked with Tiffany about Daddykins and Maw-maw, two of the most self-centered, neglectful people this side of fantasyland, and then steered the conversation to Tiffany’s hopes of becoming a genetic engineer. Holden hadn’t known Tiffany had even applied to college, let alone been accepted. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t realized Tiffany didn’t still believe babies were hatched from chicken eggs. No. He wasn’t
that
naive. He’d seen the looks his stepsister was giving Lance.

He’d never forget how Taylor had even drawn Lance out, discovering that the boy’s parents lived in Manhattan, not two blocks from Sidney Feldon’s condo, oddly enough, or that Lance was the son of a New York attorney and had three younger brothers, none of whom had yet to pierce a single body part. His parents obviously had a lot to look forward to.

And Holden would never, ever forget how, all through dinner, Taylor had laughed and made everyone else laugh, and how Woody had looked at her with worshipful eyes and how the young man had confided over dessert that he had been accepted into graduate school, majoring in theater arts.
Woody.
Woodstock LeGrand, he of the surfboards and silly dreams. It was a marvel!

Holden felt humbled, and he felt content. Marvelously content. Nearly domestic. When he wasn’t thinking about how to get Taylor into bed with him.

He sat up so swiftly that Woody immediately asked if something was wrong.

“Did you pull one too many slot-machine handles? Does your shoulder hurt?” Taylor inquired, reaching across the seat of the limousine to run her discerning fingers over his deltoid muscle.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Holden said as the limousine slowed to a stop outside the Ocean City condo. He rubbed a hand over his face, realizing that he had broken out in a sweat. “I just had a small cramp in my leg. It’s gone now. Thelma—it’s nearly midnight. You can come in late tomorrow. I’ll take everyone up on the boardwalk for breakfast. You want to join us—around nine?”

“You don’t hear me complaining, do you?” the housekeeper responded briskly as the others climbed out of the limousine, leaving her room to spread out on the cushioned seat for her solitary ride home. “Do
you think anyone would get mad if I had the driver honk the horn a few times before he pulls up in front of my house? Last time I rode in anything this long, I was in the limo behind Sam’s hearse. I want to show them how much I’ve come up in the world.”

“Go for it, Thelma,” Holden said with a smile, shaking his head at the woman’s obvious glee, then put his hand around Taylor’s wrist, holding her in place beside him, even as he tossed the condo keys to Woody. “We’re going to take a walk. You two go to bed.”

“A walk? At midnight? Well, I suppose so.” Taylor shrugged, then fell into step beside him, and Holden felt a rush of relief and of anticipation. “You want to walk on the beach? There’s a full moon tonight.”

In answer, he slipped his arm around her waist as he guided her across the street, heading for the path through the dunes.

She smiled up at him in the light from a street lamp. “Well, well, Mr. Masters,” she teased, obviously referring to his hand at her waist. “Is this what they call a quarterback sneak?”

Holden grinned back at her, remembering their kiss in the jewelry store. She might have been embarrassed, but she hadn’t pulled away from him. “A proper call, when all that’s needed is short yardage.”

“However, if memory serves,” Taylor answered, “when you’re deep in your own territory, it might be best to drop back ten and punt.”

He took a chance. “Am I, Taylor? Deep in my own territory? Or have I passed the twenty and entered the red zone, with a chance to score?”

Taylor tripped over the curbing and would have fallen if Holden hadn’t grabbed her, holding her close as they searched each other’s face in the dim light. He could feel how tense she was as she leaned into him, hear the tremor in her voice as she murmured quietly, “’Ray, team….”

T
HEY LEFT THEIR SHOES
near the path through the dunes and walked barefoot across the sand, neither of them speaking, Holden’s arm once more around her waist, Taylor’s mind going a million miles a minute.

He was going to make love to her. Either here, on this deserted, moonlit beach, or later, back at the condo. In her room—her ground-floor bedroom. Her secluded, just-in-front-of-the-garage-and-next-to-the-utility-closet bedroom. The room she had chosen because it was so very, very private, cut off from the rest of the condo.

But she hadn’t chosen it so that she could entertain a lover.

Especially a six-months-and-you’re-out, thanks-it’s-been-fun lover.

And so, being a highly sophisticated woman of the world, accustomed to such “I’m man, you’re woman, why not?” situations—not!—Taylor immediately began to babble, speaking faster than she could think.

“How do you
stand
having all those people goggling at you wherever you go? Asking for autographs? Coming up to us in the middle of dinner?
Stopping you on the casino floor to compliment your play, or to tell you how you single-handedly blew the Green Bay game? Which you didn’t, by the way. That loss was all the coach’s fault because he called in the play from the sidelines.”

“Oh? You remember that?”

“Yes. I saw you arguing with him when you immediately called time-out and went roaring toward the sidelines. That’s the beauty of watching games on television—they replay all the good stuff. Even
I
could read your lips! Some
French,
Masters! But then, I never could understand the logic in shoving off the ball to a guy five yards in the backfield when you only need two yards for a first down. He was a sitting duck. Reggie White had that poor guy for lunch!”

“Jamal had two cracked ribs after that play. But it was a clean hit.”

Taylor’s head was spinning. Holden had rolled up his pants legs and opened his shirt collar. He was so big, so close, and he looked so good, smelled so good. And she knew what was beneath that shirt; had smoothed warm oil over those muscles, felt their supple strength.

“Um, yes, but getting back to what I was saying, or trying to say,” she blurted out quickly, wishing her palms weren’t tingling. “I mean, I don’t think I could take all that attention and still keep smiling. And the same with Woody and Tiffany. Because of their father,
they’re always smack in the middle of the spotlight. Do you know that Woody got a kidnap threat last year in college? Of course you do. Well, like I said—I don’t know how you handle it all with such grace, such charm.”

“And the occasional punch to the nose, if you remember Rich Newsome,” Holden said, easing away from her as they neared the shoreline and turned to walk in the shallow water, so that his hand no longer lay on her waist, but held her own hand in a warm, comforting squeeze—as if he had sensed her nervousness and was consciously backing off, giving her room. “But I’m sorry if you were uncomfortable all day.”

“Oh, no—no!” she hastened to explain. “I liked it, I did. It was sort of fun. For a while, at least, with the reporters, those girls goggling at us on the beach. The attention was rather flattering. Almost funny. Nobody ever paid any attention to me before. Why, until today, I probably could have walked stark, staring naked through the Taj Mahal and no one would have noticed me.”

“Now why do I doubt that?” he questioned her, his grin lighting his eyes and making them sparkle like emeralds in the moonlight gliding over the ocean.

Taylor felt her cheeks growing hot and was grateful for the pale, partially concealing light of the moon. “You know what I mean,” she groused, kicking
almost viciously at a wavelet breaking on the cool, wet sand just ahead of her.

“I know you’re having more than a small problem being a part of this charade I so stupidly got you involved with,” he countered. “Which is probably because you’re so damned decent, so damned honest—unlike the way I’ve been for far too long. And I’m not just talking about Sid’s smoke screen about my injury or this damn stupid fake engagement. The way I see it, Taylor, I’ve gotten to be about as real, as genuine, as Tiff’s green hair.”

She stepped in front of him, putting her hands on his arms, so that he had to stop walking. “You’re too hard on yourself, Holden,” she told him honestly—a part of her wondering why she wasn’t taking the out he had handed her and escaping back to the condo and sanity.

“You’re a wonderful person,” she continued, digging the pit beneath her feet even deeper with each word. “Really. I’ve watched how you are with Woody and Tiffany. The way you are with Thelma. Even the way you couldn’t just leave Amanda out there to dangle in front of a blood-hungry press, but took her along to Atlantic City—the way you would have kept including her in your plans until she found a way to make a graceful, face-saving exit. You’re
not
a fake, Holden. You have genuine feelings for people, genuinely like them. Even fans who ask for your autograph
in the middle of the appetizer, then tell you you’re rapidly getting past your prime.”

His hands were on her waist once more. “You’re crazy about me, aren’t you?” he teased, lowering his head to begin nuzzling at the taut skin just below her left ear.

“I think I’m just crazy,” she breathed around the sudden lump in her throat. “I also think what you’re planning next is against the law. At least on a public beach.”

She pushed herself away from him and began walking back toward the path cut into the sand dune, wondering if she was making her escape, or leading him to her bedroom. Either way, she decided she
definitely
had to be crazy.

“Taylor,” he said, catching up to her, taking hold of her arm just above the elbow as he stood in front of her, his face fairly well lit by the moonlight, his expression deadly serious, deadly earnest. “You said something a while ago about the two of us being stopped by Amanda in my bedroom the other day just as we were about to go at each other like crazed rabbits. Remember?”

She lowered her head, refusing to look at him, unable to look at him. “I remember.”

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it? There’s more than just this wild physical attraction. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. I feel it. I think you feel it.”

“Yes, I feel it. I won’t lie to you.”

“No. You’d never do that, would you? Just as I won’t lie to you. The ring on your finger is real, but the reason behind it isn’t. We both know that. You’re only doing Sid and me a favor, and I’m not the marrying kind, if I can sound like a cliché here. I’m just not. Not that we know each other half well enough to even discuss marriage.”

“But you want to make love with me,” Taylor said when Holden stopped speaking, probably because his tongue had tied itself into a knot. She could sympathize with the feeling. “Because of our mutual physical attraction. And because we, well, we
like
each other. But because I’m not like Amanda, like all the sophisticated and woman-of-the-world types you’ve been with, you don’t want me to get hurt. Don’t want me to start thinking showers and rice and babies. Right?”

He leaned his forehead against hers, and she felt tears burning at the back of her eyes. “Yeah. I guess that just about says it. And it sounds ugly. Damn ugly. And particularly selfish on my part.”

Taylor put her hands together and pulled off the ring, then pressed it into Holden’s hand. “There. Now nothing’s between us. No bargains, no promises, no props, no strings. No possible misunderstandings. Just you and me, and a short walk back to my bedroom. Or did you think you’re the only selfish one standing on this beach? I want you, Holden Masters. I really, really want you. I won’t ask anything
else from you, ever. And I won’t let you hurt me.”

F
OR ALL THE STRENGTH
in her hands, for all the athletic ability she showed in their daily jogs along the beach, Taylor Angel was one hundred percent female, one hundred percent soft, gloriously rounded, infinitely mysterious.

Her skin tasted of the same scented oils she used during their massage sessions, smelling exotically of sandalwood or some such perfume—Holden didn’t know which and didn’t much care.

He could only concentrate on tasting her, sliding his hands along her curves, feeling her respond beneath his lips, his questing, slightly nervous fingers.

She gave him all of her and took back in equal measure, her long legs wrapped tightly around his back, holding him to her, giving herself up to him, rocking with him in the ages-old rhythms of lovemaking that somehow seemed so entirely new.

And when it was over, when they lay beside each other on the bedspread there had been no time to turn back, she curled into him like a sleepy kitten seeking warmth—saying nothing, asking nothing. But purring contentedly.

While Holden lay there, stiff and tense, trying to figure out what in hell had just happened to him.

“I should go upstairs,” he said at last, the words tearing a hole in his gut.

“I suppose so,” Taylor answered, running her talented fingers down the middle of his chest, then lower. “Don’t let me keep you.”

“I’ve always thought physical therapists had to have a little of the sadist in them,” Holden breathed, closing his eyes as her fingers sought him, found him—and reminded him that, although some of his fans might not share the opinion, he was still very much in his prime.

Growling deep in his throat, he rolled over onto his stomach, pinning Taylor beneath him. “I thought you said you’d never ask anything from me,” he teased, even as he did a little “quarterback sneaking” of his own, gently pinching her nipples between thumb and forefinger as he rested his elbows on either side of her so she couldn’t move away from him.

“Did I ask? I wasn’t aware of having said a thing.” Taylor’s words seemed slightly slurred as she pushed her head back into the pillows, arching her neck. “Oh, that’s so good. The things I could ask of you right now, Holden Masters. You just don’t know!”

“Tell me,” he whispered, his mouth taking the place of his fingers as he began laving her nipple, feeling it bloom beneath him like a rosebud opening to the sun. “Tell me, Taylor. Do you want me to do this?” He moved his hand between them, slid his fingers into her softness. “This? Maybe this?”

He sought her, found her, found the very center of her, and reveled in her immediate response. She lifted
herself to him, ground herself against his hand even as he looked up at her face, saw how she had drawn her bottom lip between her teeth so she wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t ask for more. Not with words. But she was begging him soundlessly with her body, and he gave himself over to pleasuring her.

Never had he felt this deep desire to please. To go on pleasing. To find his own pleasure in that of his partner.

And when he felt her racking release, sensed her body going boneless beneath him, he slid into her, filling her, and felt her arms go around him, pulling his mouth down to hers so he could plumb her depths with his tongue, with all of him.

And when he left her in the last darkness before the dawn—still without more than a few words spoken between them—to go back to his own bed, he felt the first hurtful pangs of what it truly meant to be alone.

And when he took off his slacks and found the ring in his pocket, held it in his hand, then squeezed it inside his clenched fist, he felt more than alone.

But he didn’t want to know why.