Winning the Right Brother (5 page)

Time to go, he reminded himself. Except he couldn’t seem to move.

He reached out to tuck a stray curl behind her ear, and then did what he’d been wanting to all night. He ran his fingers slowly through the lustrous red silk of her hair.

As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t. Now he knew it was even softer than he’d imagined, and that was not going to help him sleep tonight.

“That felt nice,” she said, sounding surprised. She rolled up her sleeve and showed him her arm. “Look! You gave me goose bumps.”

Really time to go.

Only those big green eyes of hers were holding him there, and for once they weren’t narrowed with suspicion or dislike. Her lips were parted slightly as she looked at him, and if she were any other woman, drunk or not, he would have kissed her.

When the moment stretched out a little too long and he felt himself leaning toward her, he reached past her instead and opened the door.

“You should go inside,” he said. “Take some aspirin before you go to sleep.”

“Aspirin? But I feel great!”

“Not tomorrow morning, you won’t. That’s when you’re going to wake up sober and be really, really mad at me. Remember?”

“Right,” she said, nodding. “Only, I can’t remember now why I was so mad at you.”

He smiled crookedly. “Don’t worry—I’m pretty sure it’ll come back to you.”

S
omebody’s head was hurting. Holly felt really bad for whoever it was, because the pain was a kind of throbbing, pounding—

“Mom! Aren’t you awake
yet?
”

Holly winced. As she’d begun to suspect, the headache belonged to her. “Don’t shout, Will.”

“I’m not shouting. I think you have a hangover.”

Holly groaned and rolled over in bed, keeping her eyes closed.

“You should worry about the example you’re setting for your impressionable son.”

“Have some pity, Will. Your voice is going right through my head. What’s left of it, anyway.”

“Okay, okay. I think you’re supposed to take Vitamin B and drink lots of water. I’ll make you some coffee, too. Wait right here.”

What did he think she was going to do? Hop out of bed and skip down the stairs, whistling a jaunty tune?

She opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling and praying for death. Instead she got Will, back way too soon, carrying not coffee but the cordless phone.

“It’s Coach,” he said, sounding surprised. “He says he wants to talk to you.” He set the phone down on the bed next to her and went back downstairs.

Oh, God.

Memories of last night came flooding back, and she stared at the phone as if it was a snake about to bite her. The knowledge of who was on the other end made her feel ill.

Well, more ill.

She’d done a striptease in his car and he hadn’t even looked at her.

When she thought about the sweater incident she felt hot all over, and not in a good way. When she thought about the conversation in the bar and then on the drive home, she felt worse. And when she thought about how close she’d come to kissing him on her front porch, she pulled the covers over her head and prayed that somehow, some way, she’d be beamed off the planet and onto the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

The only thing that kept her from throwing the phone out the window was the knowledge that if she didn’t answer it, Alex would know exactly why. He’d know she was too embarrassed to talk to him.

Holly threw off the covers, picked up the phone and hit the talk button.

“Why are you calling me at dawn?” she asked as crisply as she could.

She could hear him laughing softly over the phone line. “It’s noon, Holly.”

She glanced at the clock and saw he was right. She groaned, and heard him laugh again.

“Okay, then, why are you calling me at noon?”

“I wanted to see how you were feeling. And I wanted to see if you were still talking to me.”

She hesitated. “I feel like crap. Thanks for asking.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” A short pause. “And what about my second question? Are you still talking to me?”

She bit her lip. The simplest thing, she decided, would be to play dumb. If he had any decency at all, he’d go along with her.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked innocently. “Of course I’m still talking to you. I mean, as much as we ever talk to each other.”

There was another pause. “So that’s how you’re going to play it,” he said. “I should have known.”

Her grip on the phone tightened. “What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. You’re going to pretend none of it happened.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that? Why wouldn’t I want to forget last night? I was drunk, Alex. If you were a gentleman, you’d forget about it, too.”

“A gentleman? If I wasn’t a gentleman, I—” He stopped abruptly.

“What?” she asked, daring him to finish the sentence.

“Let’s just say you seemed—receptive.”

“If I seemed receptive, it’s because I was drunk,” she said coldly. “Because I am
not
receptive. Not to you, anyway. And I never will be. You’re pushy and arrogant and you throw women over your shoulder like some
kind of Neanderthal. I could never be interested in someone like you.”

“Right, of course. I obviously don’t meet your high standards for men. Like Brian, the disappearing father. Or Rich, who would have slept with you for a couple of weeks and then dumped you.”

A wave of anger made her sit straight up in bed. “How dare you judge me? I don’t see you in any perfect relationship. In fact, I’ll bet you’ve never been in a relationship.”

“I’ve been in plenty of—”

“I’m not talking about sex. Tell the truth, Alex. Have you ever been with one woman for more than three months? Have you ever gotten to the stage where you left a toothbrush at her place?”

There was a pause. “Just because I haven’t found the right woman yet doesn’t mean I—”

“Oh, come on, Alex. You’re in your thirties. You’re never going to find the right woman. I bet you don’t even want to. You’re perfectly happy playing the field. And hey, it’s a free country. I don’t care what you do in your personal life. But you’ve got no right to judge me, and you had no right to carry me out of that bar last night. I’m a grown woman, and if I want to have some fun with a guy I just met that’s my business. If I want to have a wild affair with him, that’s my business, too.”

There was a longer pause.

“Fine,” Alex said coldly. “Forget I said anything. It’s obviously impossible to do you a favor, so I won’t. Good luck with the wild affair by the way. Of course after a three year sabbatical you might be a little rusty—”

“Okay, that’s it. You know, Alex, in my alcohol-induced fog last night there were actually three or four
minutes where I didn’t feel like killing you. Those minutes are now officially over. Goodbye.”

She hung up without waiting for a response and fumed. After a few minutes she threw off the covers and got out of bed so she could fume while pacing back and forth. Much more satisfying.

“Hey, you’re up,” Will said, coming into the room with a tray that held, thankfully, nothing but a glass of water, a mug of coffee, a vitamin pill and two aspirin.

“What did Coach want?” he asked as he set the tray down.

“Nothing,” Holly said. She downed the vitamin and aspirin with big gulps of water. “Thanks for this, by the way. Did you have breakfast?”

“Sure, I had breakfast.” He frowned suddenly. “That reminds me. When I was down in the kitchen there was this smell—like burning or melting or something. It was pretty faint and I couldn’t tell where it came from. It might have been my cooking, but do you think we should have it checked out? In case it’s something electrical.”

Holly sipped her coffee. “It’s probably the oven. I’ve been meaning to give it a good cleaning. I’ll go down later to check.”

“Okay. Is it all right if I go over to Tom’s house today? We’re working on that social studies project together.”

“Of course. I’ll enjoy a Sunday afternoon without football for once.”

“I’ll see you tonight, then, around nine o’clock. Tom’s parents invited me to stay for dinner if that’s okay.”

“Sure thing. Have fun.”

“I will, Mom. Don’t forget to check out that smell in the kitchen.”

“I won’t.”

But she did forget. She didn’t go near the kitchen at all that day, not feeling hungry in the afternoon and developing a sudden craving for fast food at dinner time, which she decided to indulge. She went to bed early, even before Will got home.

He didn’t stop by the kitchen, either. He’d eaten a huge dinner with Tom’s family and had no appetite for his usual late-night snack. Like his mom he went to bed fairly early, around ten o’clock. So both of them were sound asleep when the fire came through the wall, tongues of flame licking their way into the house, feeding eagerly on the two-hundred-year old woodwork and antique furniture and growing from a whisper to a roar.

The smoke alarms went off, but Holly was sleeping so soundly she didn’t wake up right away. There was so much smoke in her room already that she might easily have never woken up again.

When she did, gasping and then coughing, she realized in one horrified second what was happening.

Will,
she thought frantically. She stumbled out of bed and ran into the hall, her eyes smarting and her lungs desperate for clean air. But over the banister she could see an orange glow, hear the fierce roar—and instinctively, she knew they only had seconds to get out.

She flew into Will’s room and shook him roughly awake.

“What’s going on?” he asked groggily, and then he gasped and coughed just like she had.

“Fire,” she said sharply, going to his window and throwing up the sash and the screen and looking down at the ground below.

“Out,” she ordered, turning to face him. He was standing up now, looking terribly young in his pajamas, but holding his jaw firm and trying to control his fear.

“You first, Mom. I can’t just leave you here!”

“
Now,
Will. I mean it. I’ll be right behind you. The ground slopes up on this side of the house so the drop won’t be so bad, but try to land as softly as you can. When your feet hit the ground, let yourself collapse to absorb the shock.”

Will nodded wordlessly. He went over to the window and sat down awkwardly on the sill, maneuvering his long legs through the opening so they dangled outside, his hands braced on either side of him. He hesitated a moment and then dropped. Holly heard him grunt as he landed.

Holly followed almost immediately. She angled herself to one side, not wanting to land right on top of her son, and crashed into a rosebush. She hardly felt the pain of the deep scratch to her forearm and the one across her face.

For a moment she lay still, fighting to get her breath back. Will had scrambled to his feet and stood looking at the house he had lived in most of his life. It was burning fast, going up like tinder, and the flames were everywhere now. Holly could feel the heat, and a sharp, acrid smell was in her nostrils.

“The fire department,” Holly said. “We’ve got to call the fire department.” Even as the words came out of her mouth they heard sirens in the distance, coming closer.

“I think someone already called them,” Will said. He sounded dazed, and Holly struggled to her feet.

“I want you to go next door to Mrs. Hanneman’s,” she said. “I’ll stay and meet the firemen. I want to make
sure they know we both got out, so they don’t send anyone in there.”

“All right, Mom,” Will said, sounding obedient, like a little boy, and Holly’s heart beat painfully as she watched him walk across the lawn to the neighbor’s house.

Mrs. Hanneman was already outside, standing on her porch in a long flannel nightgown, staring at the Stanton home in obvious horror. She went running down the steps when she saw Will coming toward her and threw her arms around him.

Holly walked slowly away from the burning house, toward the street, noticing when she got there that several of the neighbors were in their front yards or on their porches, watching the disaster unfold in their midst with their hands pressed to their mouths, frozen with shock.

The first fire truck came screaming to a stop in front of the house. Holly forced her legs to move faster, to meet the firemen who came pouring out onto the sidewalk. “There’s no one inside,” she shouted to the first one she came to.

He looked down at her. “Is it your house, ma’am?” he asked loudly, over the roar of the fire and the wailing of the sirens.

“Yes. It’s just me and my son, and we both got out safely. We don’t have any pets. Please don’t send any of your men in there!”

The fireman nodded. “Make sure you stay clear, ma’am. When the paramedics come, you and your son should both be checked out, just in case.”

“Okay,” she said faintly, but the fireman, faceless in his uniform, was already gone, running to help with the heavy hose.

I should go check on Will,
Holly thought, her mind working in slow motion and her body numb. She started to walk but she couldn’t feel her legs. The horrible sounds all around her—the greedy flames, the screaming sirens, the shouts of the firemen—seemed to recede.

There had been beautiful glass in her grandmother’s home. The stained glass above the front door, the chandelier in the dining room, the diamond-shaped panes in the bathroom windows upstairs. Holly walked past Mrs. Hanneman’s without stopping, making a wide circuit around the neighbor’s house until she reached the big backyard.

It was oddly private back there. No horrified neighbors, no firemen. Holly stood watching the blaze, blinking, and then suddenly her legs gave way and she was crouching on the ground, retching, her whole body racked with the force of her dry heaves.

Alex couldn’t sleep. He’d called Rich to apologize about the night before, and to make his feelings known on the subject of his ever going out with Holly, but the sportscaster just laughed.

“Are you kidding? As soon as you tossed her over your shoulder I knew she was off the market. I bet you’ve never done anything like that in your life. You’ve got it bad, huh? I guess she’s the reason you haven’t been in Cincinnati much lately.”

Alex frowned at the phone. “Holly and I are not a couple. I just don’t want you going after her. She’s not like the girls you usually pick up. She’s…different.”

“Sure she’s different. Because you’ve got a thing for her.”

“I don’t have a thing for her.”

“Uh-huh. Well, it was nice knowing you, buddy. Invite me to the wedding, okay? I always get lucky with bridesmaids.”

A few hours later Alex lay in bed, restless and edgy, as far from sleep as he’d ever been in his life. Finally he gave up the fight and turned on his bedside lamp, reaching for his current issue of
Sports Illustrated.
He hadn’t read more than a paragraph when the phone rang. He grabbed the receiver off the cradle.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Coach! It’s Tom Washington.”

Alex glanced at the clock in surprise. “It’s almost midnight, Tom. What’s going on?”

“It’s about Will,” he said, and Alex tensed. “His house, actually. You know my dad’s a fireman, right? He just got called out to a fire—at the Stantons. A bad one.”

A chill ran through Alex’s body. “Do you know if they’re okay?”

“I don’t know anything yet except that it’s bad. Coach, can you pick me up and take me over there? My mom’s working the night shift at the hospital and I—”

“I’ll be there in five minutes. Wait for me out front.”