Flipped! (Spinning Hills Romance 1) (16 page)

“You look nice,” he said. The tiny compliment made her pulse race. She was being way too pathetic.

“You know, you didn’t have to walk me home tonight. I’m a big girl and Johnny already knows we’re good.”

“I’m walking you home because I’m heading in the same direction.”

“Do you like spending time with me?” she asked when they reached Star Springs Park, knowing it would get his hackles up. Maybe she could even get him to insult her again. It would be better for her than his current behavior. “Because I’m beginning to think you like spending time with me.”

“Do you know what snow that’s not too wet and not too dry is good for?” he asked.

She eyed him. “Don’t you dare.”

He scooped up some snow, and Holly quickly found cover behind a nearby tree, stooping to grab some snow and try and pack it as fast as she could. She waited. His footsteps stopped on the other side of the tree. She giggled and clapped her free hand over her mouth. It had been years since she’d giggled.

The sound of a boot crunching on the snow spurred her into action. She stepped away from the tree and hurled her snowball without looking. It landed on his face. She backed up and tried to get away, but he grabbed her arms and held her close, “Surrender or eat snow,” he sputtered.

Looking for a way to distract him, she focused on his warm breath. “I bet you taste like barley and hops.”

Stunned, he looked at her mouth. Her breathing picked up, and heat spread from her chest to her limbs. “I’m kidding. I only said that to distract you.”

“So you’d rather eat snow?” He lowered his head, his lips hovering over hers. Beer had never smelled so enticing.

She took a step back, afraid of how her senses were spinning out of control. “If you kiss me again, I swear I’ll tell anyone who wants to buy the Craftsman that a triple murder took place in it, and that the killer, who’s obsessed with the house, has never been found.”

“I’m not going to kiss you. We agreed that was crazy. I wanted to distract you, too, and man, did it work.” Next thing she knew, she had a snowball smashed into her mouth.

He turned and she lunged at his back. Hormonal teenage behavior quickly sank to grade school behavior. Holly hadn’t laughed so hard in years.

 

The laughter ceased as soon as they reached her door. They were cold, wet, and trembling. “Do you have milk at Johnny’s?” she asked. Neither of them seemed domestic enough to have anything but beer and bread at home.

“No.”

“Do you have soup or anything to warm you up?”

“No.”

“Men,” she muttered under her breath. “Would you like to come in for some chicken soup?”

“Sounds good, I’m freezing. Someone stuffed a snowball down my shirt.” He followed her inside and took his coat off, throwing it over a chair. She lowered some bowls and reheated leftover soup.

“Does your dad still live in Miami?” He picked up a framed picture of Holly and Crystal.

“Yes, he got remarried last year.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, putting the picture down.

“Don’t be, she’s great.”

“No, I’m sorry about Crystal. I mean, I apologized for what I said, but I’ve never offered you my condolences,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Losing her must’ve been hard.”

The ache she normally felt when people expressed their sympathy wasn’t there. As isolated and lonely as her mother’s death had left her, her mom would never have chosen to leave her. “She had cervical cancer and they didn’t catch it in time.” She picked up the picture and traced her mom’s face. “That last year was sad and beautiful and strange.”

“Were you ever angry?” he asked when she set a tray with two steaming bowls of soup on the coffee table in front of him.

“Yes. Sad and confused and very, very angry.”

“How come I never saw you when you were growing up? I saw you when you were a baby, but you never visited afterward.”

Holly put a spoonful of soup to her lips, but it was still too hot. “I always wanted to come up, but Mom didn’t like it here, and both my mom and dad felt Ruby wasn’t the best influence on me. They were all about academics and Ruby’s all about dreams. Plus, it was easier for Grandma to come to us, wherever we were, then for all of us to visit her.”

“How’d you end up here?” he asked.

She stirred her soup and avoided his gaze. “That’s a long story. But I love it here. My mom was great and I adored her, of course, but she and I didn’t see eye to eye on some things. And she and Grandma didn’t see eye to eye on
anything
.” She smiled a little, remembering their arguments, knowing they’d loved each other deeply anyway. “Mom wasn’t crazy about the whole gypsy connection, and she didn’t like it that Grandma flouted it so much. She absolutely
hated
that Grandma had named her Crystal.”

Dan smiled at that. “Your dad was in the military, right?” he asked next.

Holly nodded. “She only stayed here when I was born ’cause Dad was deployed. Did she really babysit you?”

“Your mom and Marianne were good friends, and Marianne would leave me with her all the time.”

Holly put her spoon down and looked at him. “Were you really kidding when you said she messed you up? I mean, I know my mom would never purposefully hurt anyone, but she wasn’t a warm and cuddly kind of person, either. I honestly can’t even picture her babysitting.”

Dan shrugged. “She wasn’t into hugging and stuff, which was more than fine with me, but she was very good to me.”

“Tell me the truth, please. Grandma Ruby said my mom once told her she regretted being taken in by Marianne and, well, when you said that, I wondered.”

Dan hesitated, but she was looking at him with such a worried expression in her eyes that he found he wanted to erase any anxiety she might feel. He didn’t want her having doubts about her mom. He blew out a breath. “After you were born, Marianne warned your mom not to leave me alone with you because she’d caught me pinching Johnny. It wasn’t true, Sam had been the one pinching Johnny and he’d confessed, but your mom watched me closely that day and kept you and me apart. It wasn’t a big deal and she wasn’t mean about it. I only knew ’cause I’d overheard. And I can see where your mom was coming from. She had no way of knowing it wasn’t true and she just wanted to protect you.”

Holly looked like she wanted to cry. “You must’ve felt awful.”

“I didn’t. So don’t,” he ground out.

Holly was unfazed. “Maybe that’s why she regretted her friendship with Marianne. She probably figured her out as she got older and began to look back. She did a lot of that that last year.”

They were quiet for a moment and Dan, not knowing what to say, began sipping his soup.

“I hope my mom comes down to haunt Marianne and makes her fall flat on her ass in front of a crowd or something,” Holly said.

He barked a laugh and almost spit his soup.

“Well, she doesn’t like me, as I’m sure you know. She thinks Johnny has a thing for me, too, and is as opposed to me as you are,” she explained.

Dan put his hand around her shoulder. “Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I think you’d be good for Johnny and I’d be more than happy to tell Marianne.”

Holly laughed. “I’m sure you would, but it would have nothing to do with me.”

“Well, her not liking you also has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with me.”

She turned inquisitive eyes on him.

“She can’t imagine anything worse for one of her sons than to have to bring up someone else’s child,” he explained. Holly’s eyes widened and her hand flew to her chest.

He didn’t want her feeling bad for him again because it would end up pissing him off and they’d have another argument. He wasn’t in the mood, so he changed the subject. “This is good, I feel warmer already. My dad used to give us a bit of bourbon to warm us up when we came in from the cold.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to offer you alcohol. I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea.”

“Is that why you came next door with Ella today?”

“Hey, you brought Johnny.”

“Johnny invited himself.”

Silence. They were sitting side by side, not looking at each other. Holly stared at her socks. “So, you really wouldn’t mind if Johnny and I ended up together?”

He snapped to attention, surprised and angry at the instant jealousy her question provoked. “Why?”

“Just trying to see if you’re being honest.” She shrugged.

“I am. But I don’t want to see you guys together. ”

There was a beat of silence. “Why?” Holly asked, not looking at him.

“It would be pretty damn awkward to have a sister-in-law who has the hots for me, don’t you think?”

“Excuse me?” She shot up. Her eyes flashed. “Who says I’ve got the hots for you? Who do—”

“That’s more like it,” he interrupted. A second later, he was on top of her, kissing her without preamble. She punched him once before grabbing his shirt and pulling him even closer. Her lips parted, he tasted her, and soon they were breathing too hard and exploring too much to be comfortable on the sofa. They parted and their eyes met and held. “We agreed we wouldn’t do this again,” she whispered, her brow furrowed.

 

Holly’s insides were tied up in knots. Did she want this? Her heart was pumping blood too quickly and making her too dizzy to think.

“Just one last kiss,” he whispered back, eyes blazing. He lowered his head, slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, and her heart almost stopped from delicious anticipation. His lips touched hers, feather-soft, and she sighed into the slow, sensual kiss.

It wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Fireworks weren’t going off in her belly and shooting to her limbs. Instead, a throbbing, aching warmth swelled and spread.

This kiss had meaning and she was starved for it. She put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him back, just as softly. He responded by drawing out every movement. Tears welled up in her eyes. It was as if his very being seeped into hers, melding with her feelings, making her feel more whole and more alive. She didn’t understand it, but she couldn’t push him away.

Finally, they came up for air. He pulled back to look into her eyes, but she looked away. “You’re crying,” he observed.

“Because your fingers were digging into me,” she lied.

“What are we doing, Holly?” he asked, lightly tracing her tears with his fingertips.

Holly brushed his hand away and with a gentle shove said, “It’s our noses. They detect we’d produce healthy offspring.”

“Wha—” He was off her in an instant.

Holly smothered a laugh with the back of her hand. They were back to reality.

Dan tossed a pillow at her. “You can ask a guy to leave, you know. You don’t have to scare him by tossing around words like ‘offspring’.”

“You asked a question and I answered it.” She tried to keep a straight face. “It’s science, not a scare tactic.”

Dan shot her a look.

Holly crossed her arms. “It
is
science, and it’s based on the well-known smelly T-shirt study.”

“Go on.”

Holly took a deep breath to get her amusement under control. “Okay. So a group of researchers recruited a variety of men and asked them each to wear the same T-shirt for a couple of days. Women were then asked to smell the shirts and choose the ones they were most sexually attracted to. Their answers were analyzed and it turned out women found the T-shirts worn by men whose genes were different from their own a hell of a lot sexier than the T-shirts worn by men whose genes were too similar to their own. The more different two people’s genes are, the healthier their offspring will be. Are you following me here?”

Dan nodded, his eyes sparkling, his lips suppressing a smile. “Yeah. Half the town knows Ella wants a little brother or sister. You’re saying you want to have my babies. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not ready to be a father—”

Holly smothered his next words with the pillow he’d thrown at her. “You forget the attraction is mutual. I’m saying we can’t help it. What we can help is caving in to it.” She let the pillow drop, stood up, and waited for Dan to stop laughing.

It took a while. When he finally stopped, he looked up at her, eyes still aglow. “Hey, you’re the one with the overly evolved sense of smell. Your nose obviously knows what it wants. Mine is clueless. I had no idea where this was leading, but now that I do . . .” He got up.

Holly rolled her eyes. “You have nothing to worry about. I don’t want to have your babies, Dan. They’d have a good chance of being healthy, but they’d have zero chance of having a sensitive, mature, and humble father.”

Dan grinned and pulled her to him. She refused to unfold her arms. When he reached out to smooth a stray hair behind her ear, she looked up. His eyes were serious. “Hey, I hear you loud and clear. We’re attracted to each other, but I’m not looking to get serious, and you’re definitely not fling material.”

She looked into his eyes. “I’m not. And even if you were ready to get serious, we wouldn’t be a good fit,” she said. “But I’m sure somebody out there wants your babies.”

“A life of celibacy, it is.”

“Celibacy?” She snorted.

“It’s gotta be easier than all this talking.” He winked, kissed her cheek, grabbed his coat, and left.

Holly stared at the door. Stanley stood at her feet, wagging his tail. When she sank down beside him, he settled his head on her lap and looked up at her as if she could do no wrong, a balm for her unsettled soul.

Holly picked him up, went around to the front of the house, and rang the doorbell.

“Hey, what are you doing out here without a coat? Come in.” Emily opened the door wide.

“Hey, again, Holly,” Leo called.

“Leo’s back from Huffy’s?” Holly peered into the room. “And you’re watching
The Notebook
... I’ll leave you two alone.”