Nobody's Fool (6 page)

“I can't change in the car.”

“Of course you can.” He indicated the thinly spaced traffic now they were out of the city center. “Nobody will see, including me. I have my eyes on the road and I promise not to look, but you should get out of those wet things.”

What a dog; cool as a cucumber, totally in control of this game. He was such a smug son of a bitch. But Holly Partridge never backed down from a challenge.

She whipped off the tank top and tossed it in the back.

The car lurched and swerved.

Holly barked her elbow against the door as she managed to dive into the concealment of the T-shirt.
Gotcha!

“Jesus.” He jerked his head back. “You should warn a guy before you do something like that.”

Holly luxuriated in the warmth of the T-shirt. It was steaming hot outside the car, but the wet fabric of her sweatshirt had seeped into her bones. He was right, though. Hugo Boss did make a rather fine T-shirt. She reached for the button of her jeans.

His eyes slid in her direction.

“Eyes on the road.” She undid the button and slid down the zipper. The sound rippled through the silent car.

It took her longer than anticipated. Wet denim in a bucket seat made for some concerted wriggling. Holly was panting by the time she managed to hurl her sopping jeans after her sweatshirt.

He had excellent powers of concentration.

She didn't bother to check the label on the sweatpants. They were probably worth more than her apartment. Her legs slid easily into them. He had those typically male slim hips, so the sweats did catch on her hips, but she tightened the drawstring anyway. The pants were laughably too long. She hauled off her soggy Converses and rolled up the cuffs.

He was right. She was immediately more comfortable. There was a bottle of water in the bag and she pounced. It was cool and fresh, and Holly kept glugging until there was nothing more to swallow. She lowered the bottle with a sigh of satisfaction.

One side of his mouth turned up as if he was laughing on the inside. “Thirsty?”

“Uh-huh.” Did he have any idea how sexy that look was? Of course he did. He probably practiced it in the mirror. Holly rummaged through the bag again discreetly, under the guise of putting her soaked clothes away. She came away disappointed. Between Josh, her car, and the police, she'd managed to ignore the problem for most of the night, but her stomach was now feeling abandoned.

“You're hungry,” he said, proving that while he had the morals of an alley cat, there were definite advantages to this temporary truce.

He took the off-ramp to the north.

They were almost in Willow Park. Something should be familiar.

The quiet night left the long arterial street virtually deserted. Years ago, prostitutes and dealers had plied their trade down this road. Now the community living on either side had reclaimed it. Tire and service shops flashed past the windows, a couple of motels now serving mostly truckers, a Korean barbeque and . . . indoor golf? Holly turned her head to ask. There. In the near distance, its yellow arches beckoning—McDonald's!

Josh pulled over and she could have kissed him.

Chapter Seven

Josh watched her. He seemed to be doing more of it as the night wore on, but Holly fascinated him.

She ate like a cat: quick, neat, and with the sort of concentrated attention that assured him he would lose a hand if he reached for a fry. The smell of burger filled the car. He never let anyone eat in his car, but she hadn't wanted to stop and he hadn't even put up a fight. He shouldn't have worried.

Nothing got away from Holly; no crumb, no morsel, no trace of two Big Macs, both with fries, and three chocolate chip cookies. To be fair, she did offer him one of the cookies, but only after she'd worked her way through everything else and washed it down with a large latte and another bottle of water.

“Better?”

“You have no idea.” Holly slumped back in her seat. “I was in such a hurry to get here I forgot to eat this morning.”

“Are you going to fill me in on what's up with your sister?” He had to ask because he suspected there was a whole helluva lot more to her story.

“Nope.” A guarded expression slipped over Holly's features, like a curtain descending.
Thanks for watching, that's all folks, have a safe ride home.

He could've seen that one coming. She didn't trust him and she clung stubbornly to the belief she didn't like him. Holly's secrets lay sticky between them, and he wanted to fight his way clear. They'd butted heads constantly in high school, but he sensed a lot more behind
despised
, and he was going to get to the bottom of that, too.

“Okay.”
Slow and easy does it.
“Why don't you tell me what I did in high school that has you bent out of shape?”

“What do you mean?”

There she went again, with the duck and weave.

“What did I do?” Josh leaned over until she had nowhere else to look but right at him. “Why are you pissed at me?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You seriously don't know?”

“I seriously don't know.” She glared at him; he held her gaze. “Tell me.”

“I'd rather not.” She tilted her ski-jump nose and turned her head.

What a ball breaker. Josh laughed to himself.

“What's so funny?”

“Oh, nothing.” She played it cool, but Josh bet she seethed inside, dying to demand if he was laughing at her and nearly killing herself not to.

“We should be looking for Portia,” she said.

“You're a woman; you can look and talk at the same time. Now tell me what I did.”

For a moment, she wavered. “I don't think so.” She shook her head.

“Why not?”

With her pencils sacrificed to the rainstorm, her hair curled and writhed down her back in a tortoiseshell mass. He wanted to touch it to see if it was as alive as it looked.

“We called a truce,” she said in a reasonable tone. “I don't want to get into anything. I want to find Portia and go home.”

“Doesn't a truce mean trusting . . .”

She made a slicing motion with her hand, clearly meant to shut him up. It worked well. “Anyway, like you said earlier, it's long in the past and it doesn't matter anymore.”

Except Josh got the distinct feeling it still did. He parked the car halfway down the main street of Willow Park. “Where do you want to start?”

 

 

Josh had barely finished clipping her seat belt when her head dropped back and her eyes closed. Exhaustion clung to her face in a slack-jawed pallor. They'd combed Willow Park from one side to the other. He'd worked his phone like he was launching the space shuttle, but in the end he drew a blank. It was now well past the witching hour and they'd given up for the night.

Holly hadn't come quietly. There had been one more street and one more person to ask until, finally, the sidewalks rolled up and the good families of the neighborhood went to their beds. Alone on an abandoned street in a dead neighborhood, even Holly was forced to concede defeat.

Joshua slid into the driver's seat.

In sleep, her face relaxed. The delicate bone structure made her fascinating, as opposed to classically beautiful.

It was the sort of face that grew on you. Not a pretty face, but a smooth oval that owed its charm to glorious skin and a sinful mouth. Her mouth was made for kisses and laughter and sliding over skin. The way she compressed those soft, generous lips into a grim line was a crying shame.

A woman like Holly snuck up on you. You started out thinking she was passably attractive. Then you watched the play of intelligence, humor, and life march across her features and she transcended to fascinating. Until, one day, you couldn't remember a time she didn't knock you on your ass. As a teenager, renowned for only dating the prettiest girls, his interest in her had confused him. As a man, he could see she had the sort of looks to keep a man entranced.

She got under his skin. Folded into the seat of his car, she resembled a shapeless bundle of sweats, but Josh had spent most of the night watching the sway of her ass. She moved like a set of steel drums laid down a smooth reggae beat in her head. A fluid glide to a silent rhythm rocked her hips from side to side and drew his eyes like a lodestone. His sweats hung tantalizingly low on her hips. He wanted to run his tongue along the line of the waistband and dip beneath. He wanted to bury his face between her thighs and draw in the unique scent of her.

“Oh, shit.” Now he had wood and the timing was so off, it made his head hurt. He banged his head against the headrest to shake some of those dog thoughts out.

She snuffled in her sleep, deepening the creases between her eyebrows. She frowned too much. Holly carried a heavy load.

He wanted to lighten it for her, not make things worse by hitting on an exhausted, worried woman.

What was the deal with the sister? There was a lot here he didn't know, and it made him determined to find out. He'd been tangled up in enough needy women to recognize the yawning pit of Portia. There wasn't enough love, nurturing, or tenderness to fill the endless cavern of need.

Holly, on the other hand, kept everyone at arm's length. If there had been any way to avoid accepting his help, she would have jumped at it. As it was, she'd gone along grudgingly, bitching and taking shots at him all the way.

“I didn't sleep with your sister,” he'd said earlier tonight. Josh wasn't sure she believed him.

She'd posed the question and turned away with a speculative gleam in her molasses eyes when he gave her the answer.

He wasn't sure what was happening behind those dark-as-sin eyes. And he really wanted to know. He wanted her trust and he'd spent the night trying to earn it.

Her head slipped and he carefully rearranged it so her neck wouldn't get stiff.

Why was he making this his problem again?

He let his fingers linger on the warm velvet of her skin for a moment.

Idiot.
He slipped the car into gear and eased onto the deserted streets. The tires made a silky hiss against the road. Some misguided sense of chivalry had him in this up to his neck. And yet—and this was the real shocker—he didn't mind.

Life had lacked a certain purpose lately anyway, and what better distraction than a feisty, pint-sized burr of attitude, full to choking with repressed emotion and secrets. It should have been enough to have him running screaming into the hills.

He couldn't say he had a type. He did know what he didn't want. He didn't want a ball breaker, a reactionary basket case with so much baggage it clattered along behind her like the chains of Jacob Marley.

Laura. Another face he hadn't seen in years, though it was never far from his thoughts. Another damsel who needed rescuing. Only he'd fucked that one up six ways to Sunday.

Holly made another of those soft snorts.

Except here he was and, apparently, quite happy to stay for a while. He'd do better this time.

He checked his watch. It was almost four a.m. and the highway reverted to raccoons and litter. As he eased over the bridge, the traffic got busier. Even at this time, there were still some hearty party animals on the go, but it had quieted down substantially. The car's engine echoed loudly in the concrete tomb of the parking garage.

His passenger didn't stir.

Josh stuffed her wet things into the gym bag and tossed it over his arm. He walked around the car and eased open the passenger door.

She was curled into a tight ball that made him smile. Man, she was a bite-sized bundle of tangled-up trouble. And still, he reached in and carefully hoisted her into his arms.

She was surprisingly solid for such a small woman. It must be the weight of the massive chip on her shoulder.

He eased into the lobby, where Philip counted down the last few hours of his graveyard shift.

Philip hit the elevator button for him and smiled at Josh's passenger like an elderly uncle.

“Good night,” the old doorman whispered as the elevator doors swished shut.

Josh put her down to open the door to his condo.

And Holly woke up.

Being Holly, she went from sleep to full alert in under point two of a second and came up swinging. “What the hell are you doing?”

The pit of his stomach dropped.

Her cheeks flushed and she braced her arms akimbo. Her hair was flattened against her head on one side, making up for it by springing free and wild over the rest of her head. She looked certifiable. She looked like she was going to hand his balls to him.

“I'm not doing anything.” Exhaustion slammed him. From the other side of the door, his bed called. “You fell asleep in the car and I carried you up here.”

“You should have woken me. You had no right to put your hands on me.” She twitched like an angry cat.

“You were fast asleep. I was trying to be nice.” He reached for his last scrap of patience.

“I'm not some helpless, frail female who needs a big strong man to sweep her into his arms and make her problems disappear.”

Josh leaned back and straightened the crick in his back. Big strong men also got sore backs from carrying ungrateful women up several floors in the middle of the night. Enough with this crap. He was being a goddamned gentleman here, and a little appreciation would be nice.

“You know what, Holly? Fuck it.”

Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened.

He'd shocked her. Good. He opened the door to his apartment and strode in, leaving it open for her. He would grab a couple of hours sleep before he got up to train. After that, she could get back to giving him crap.

“What does that mean?” She trailed him into the condo, still looking bellicose.

Josh shrugged and didn't look at her. If he did, he might give in to temptation and wring her neck. If he could work up the energy, he might actually feel taken advantage of. He had given up his night to take her where she wanted to go, followed her around like an obedient serf, and asked how high when she said jump. He'd been insulted, mocked, and challenged every step of the way. She'd even called his XK-E a penis. He loved his car. It had taken him months and months to find it and even longer to have it restored.

“It means what it says. Fuck it.” He hauled two bottles of water out of the fridge, slapped one on the counter for her, and downed his in almost one gulp.

“Close the door,” he said over his shoulder as he strode down the corridor. Just fuck it. “Towels are under the basin in the bathroom and the sheets on the bed are clean. Knock yourself out.”

 

 

Holly winced as the door slammed behind him.
Oops
.

Perhaps the last bit had been rather rude? Okay. She hadn't behaved well at the end there. Actually, bitchy might come closer to the truth. And while she indulged a brief masochistic foray toward truth, she would have to concede her behavior for most of the night might, possibly, be judged as less than stellar.

He'd been rather wonderful tonight. Patient, understanding, and compassionate, and the thrust and parry of their verbal sparring had been a welcome distraction. Other than those first few moments in the bar, Josh Hunter had been nothing like the arrogant jerk she'd gone to school with. To be fair, she hadn't made much effort all those years ago to get to know him. The Josh Hunter who had given up his night to help out an old school adversary was the sort of man it was hard to keep at arm's length.

He'd completely taken her by surprise with the carrying thing.

She'd been asleep. For the first time in more years than she could name, Holly had been safe and warm and cherished. It had been such a sublime feeling, like floating on a happy cloud. She'd woken to find herself engulfed in unadulterated Josh. For a moment, she'd wallowed in the flood of sensations.

Hard on the heels of reveling came the sensory overload of the warm, citrus smell of him, the luxurious press of soft fabric over hard muscle beneath her cheek and the sure embrace of a pair of powerful arms. At which point she'd panicked.

She was really mad at herself. She wasn't supposed to want to curl up like a kitten and have Josh make her purr. In her imaginary world, her meeting with him had gone differently. She'd been poised and calm, having concluded a multibillion-dollar deal or received a Nobel Prize for her groundbreaking work in economics. In her scenario she was cool, aloof, and cutting. Also, in her world, Josh was sixty pounds heavier and losing his hair.

What didn't happen in Holly land was the emotional roller coaster she'd been on for almost twenty-four hours now. In her little fantasy, she was not fluctuating rapidly between arousal and distrust, gratitude and suspicion, and like and despise. It was rather exhausting, and she might have overreacted.