Bachelor On The Prowl (11 page)

“Thanks. It’s humble, but it’s home,” Holly said, still fishing in her huge purse for her keys, which she’d thrown in there while gathering up her ton of luggage. “My home. You’re not invited.”

He ignored her bad humor, rather enjoyed it as a matter of fact, becaus
e she tried so hard to be unrea
sonable. Teasing her out of her bad moods could become his life’s work, as a matter of fact. “Yes, I rather sensed that. But do you tip? Two dollars a bag is customary.”

“In your dreams,” Holly responded, finally locating the key ring and opening the front door. She turned, looked at him. “Oh, come on. Don’t just stand there like some stray dog expecting to be fed. It’s disgusting.”

She turned on a few fights from the switch beside the front door, then dropped her two pieces of luggage on the small tiled area that served as a foyer. “Just leave them there for now. I’m too tired to even think about unpacking tonight.”

He gratefully dropped the bags—what had she packed in them anyway? Cannonballs?—and followed her into the spacious living room.

He’d spent the last three years living in the Majestic
Enterprises corporate apartment. Formal. Fancy. Almost rigid. This room was anything but rigid. The walls were painted a deep, forest-green, the berber carpet was nearly white. The tables were big, which they had to be, to hold all the family photographs Holly had piled on them. The couches, both of them, were covered in some sort of country-type print splashed all over with colorful flowers, then nearly smothered with pillows.

There was an
old-fashioned rocker in one corn
er, occupied by three plush teddy bears. The lamps on either side of the larger couch had Tiffany shades, so that jewel colors reflected on the ce
il
ing when she turned them on. A small aquarium stood on its own stand near the front window, bubbling merrily, stocked with colorful goldfish Holly was now feeding.

There were art prints on the walls, about a dozen plants scattered here and there—all of them good fakes, he was pretty sure, because Holly would hate to kill anything, even a philodendron, and she was often away from home—and a half-dozen thick ivory candles on the coffee table.

And, lastly, there was a popcorn machine in the corner of the L-shaped area that served as a dining room. An honest-to-God, commercial-size popcorn maker.

“
It’s perfect,
”
he said, shaking his head as he walked over to inspect the bright red-and-yellow machine. “Everything is exactly what I would have said you’d have in your home. Although the popcorn maker is probably a stretch. I’ll admit it, I might have missed that one.”

“My brother—Herb, not Harry—is a projectionist at one of the local multiplexes. They were replacing the popcorn machine, and he grabbed it for me. It was a Christmas present
.
”

“Of course it was,” Colin said, heading for the kitchen, which he could see from the dining room.

“He was batting a thousand with me, too,” she continued, closing the top on the fish food and following after him. “Until he gave me the aquarium for my birthday. What do I want with goldfish? I hate having a pet. I don’t need the responsibility.”

Colin raised one eyebrow at this statement. For a girl surrounded by a loving family, she sure went out of her way to avoid any sort of emotional involvement.

Who was she trying to fool? She craved emotional involvement. It was being hurt that she did her damnedest to avoid. Even flushing a goldfish would probably break her heart—and he’d bet she’d hold a small funeral, hum taps, the whole nine yards. “The phone’s in here?”

Holly nodded, pointing to the unit on the wall beside the refrigerator. “Why? You need to make a call? Maybe to Information, for the name of the nearest motel? Hey, be my guest.”

“Actually,” he said, lifting the receiver and pushing a single button, “I’m calling for pizza. I had a feeling you’d have the number for one already listed on your speed dial. Plain or pepperoni?”

She narrowed her eyelids for a moment and glared at him, then relented. “Plain, extra cheese. Only because I forgot to eat dinner. And I don’t like you. I don’t like you one little bit.”

“I know,” Colin said. “Isn’t this fun?”

She raised both hands, closed them into fists, then sort of growled before turning on her heels and leaving the kitchen.

Six

T
his
wasn’t going well. Holly was finding it more and more difficult to act like a jerk, even if she still felt like a jerk. She’d been rude, she’d told him she didn’t like him.

Nothing fazed him. He just kept coming back for more, smiling, being so darn
nice,
and e
ven as she re
doubled her efforts to stay in a bad mood, she just couldn’t seem to maintain her frown in the face of his smile. That in itself was an accomplishment she couldn’t understand. Nobody had
ever
been able to snap her out of one of her bad moods but herself. Yet Colin was doing it, with ease.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to carry your luggage into your bedroom?” Colin asked now, having returned to the living room after phoning for the pizza delivery.

“Oh, all right,” she said, trying to sound as if his polite offer annoyed her past all endurance. “I might as
well put you to work, as long as you’re here. And why are you here, anyway?”

“I couldn’t help m
yself,” Colin said with an eye-
brow-waggling grin. He picked up the same two bags he’d carried into the apartment as she grabbed the other two, then followed her down the hall toward the larger of the two bedrooms in the apartment. But he stopped in front of the open door to the smaller bedroom. “What’s this? A home office?”

“No, it’s not a home office. I’m at the office enough, thank you, without bringing it home with me. Come on, my bedroom is this way.”

“Oh, is that ever a line a man could get used to hearing,” he said, and she hid a reluctant smile and started off again, then stopped, because she sensed that he wasn’t following her.

“Hey!” she said, truly angry now, because he’d put down the luggage and had stepped inside the smaller bedroom, flipped on the wall switch that turned on the overhead light. “That’s off limits.”

She was about to retrace her steps down the hall when he emerged from the room, holding her acoustic guitar. “You play?” he asked, rather carelessly holding the guitar by the neck, making her wince.

“Give me that,” she commanded, dropping her bags and aiming herself toward the guitar. Colin quickly raised his arm above his head, effectively putting the guitar out of her reach. “Very funny,” she growled at him.
“
And, no, I am
not
going to jump up and down like some idiot, trying to grab the guitar. I stopped doing that years ago, when I figured out it doesn’t work. So I’ll give you to the count of three, then do what I
did to my brothers and anyone else who ever tried this trick on me—I’ll kick you square in the shins.”

He grinned at her. “Figures. Women rarely play
fair.”

“Play fair?” Holly pointed up at the guitar, still held above his head. “You call what you’re doing playing
fair?"

“Point taken.” He lowered the guitar, which she immediately grabbed out of his hand. “So, do you play?”

“No,” she grumbled, carrying the guitar back into the room, replacing it in the co
rn
er, “I just keep it around because that way nosy people can go poking around my apartment, uninvited, and
ask
me if I play.” She stomped back down the hall, picked up the small suitcase and garment bag, and completed her trip into her bedroom, Colin once more close behind her. “There,” she said, pointing toward the empty space beneath the-window. “Put them there
…
please.”

“Nice room,” he said as he deposited the bags, then put his hands on his hips, looking around the room as if he contemplated moving in—which would happen only in his dreams, or hers. “Where’s the st
e
pladder so you can get into that bed?”

Holly felt herself blushing. “It’s called a rice bed,” she said, looking at th
e huge, queen-size cherry four-
poster, complete with canopy. “I’ve always wanted one, but it didn’t occur to me how
high
it would be when topped with a good box spring and a pillow-top mattress. I have a matching step stool for it, on the other side of the bed.”

“So when you say you climb into bed at night, you literally do
climb
into bed at night,” Colin said, that
same wonderful smile attacking her again, making her very aware that the two of them were standing in her bedroom.

“Sometimes,” Holly admitted, trying to keep the conversation light until she could somehow get past Colin and head back toward the living room. “Sometimes I just get a running start and jump up on it.”

“I’d like to see that,” Colin said. “Although I suppose you’ve never tried it with a pole vault? That could be fun.”

“Nope. I’ve never, and you won’t.” Holly took a breath, tried to make herself even smaller, skinnier, and quickly brushed past him, heading for the safety of the living room. She flopped down on the smaller of the matching couches, and curled her legs up under her, then tossed a pile of pillows onto the other cushion, so that Colin couldn’t sit down beside her.

“Good,” he said as he entered the living room. “You stay there, put your feet up, rest. I’ll scrounge around in the kitchen, find us glasses, plates, napkins. The pizza should be here soon.”

Holly scrambled off the couch and raced ahead of him, into the kitchen. “No need,” she said, knowing she looked silly, standing, arms spread wide, in front of the cabinets. It was just that he was invading every corner of her life. Her living room, her bedroom—and she had to draw a line somewhere or else have to move out of the apartment once he was gone, to banish the memory of him in it. “You just go sit down, and I’ll get everything. Do you want crushed hot peppers? Garlic powder?”

“Definitely not garlic powder, unless you’re planning
on some,” he told her, once more setting her emotions off on a roller-coaster ride to confusion. “Ah, there goes the doorbell. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait! I
…
I’ll pay for the pizza,” Holly said, remembering that he was a guest—uninvited, but still a guest—in her home.

“You can pay me back,” Colin said, already heading toward the front door. “But I warn you, I’m a big tipper.”

Holly grumbled under her breath and went about assembling plates, knives and forks—in case he was one of those weirdos, who thought pizza should be eaten that way. Her favorite pizza cutter, because the pizzas never were cut all the way through. Napkins were already on the small round table in the dining room. She grabbed condiments from the slim closet next to the stove, snared two cans of cola from the fridge and met Colin in the dining room.

He set the cardboard box in the middle of the table and flipped it open. “Oh, would you look at that. A thing of beauty and a joy until it’s gone. You wouldn’t want Parisian pizza, Holly.” He deftly employed the pizza slicer, using swift, economical motions of his hand to roll the cutter through the pie as he deftly turned the box. A real pro. “Personally I think the guy who invented no sauce pizza, broccoli pizza and all those other nonpizzas, should be banned from ever being within fifty yards of a pizza shop.”

Holly agreed. “And what’s with all these new kinds of pizza, anyway?
”
she asked, holding up her plate so that Colin could slide a slice onto it. “Cheese in the crust? Two crusts? Upside-down pizza, or whatever?
Me, if I can’t fold a slice in half and watch while oil drips off it onto the plate, it
ain’t
pizza.”

“Ah, a woman after my own heart. I’ll bet that’s upsetting the hell out of you, that we have so much in common. But it’s decision time, Holly. Crushed peppers?” Colin asked, holding up the small glass jar. “Garlic powder?” he asked, holding that jar in his other hand.

Holly looked at both containers, knowing defeat when she stared it in the face, then quickly reached for the crushed peppers.

“Yes, progress,” Colin said rather smugly as he slid a slice onto his own plate, then sat down. “Would you like me to tell you about the two summers I spent as head dough thrower at a pizza parlor in Ocean City?”

“New Jersey or Maryland?” Holly asked him, trying not to sound too interested.

“The Jersey shore,” he said, sprinkling a generous amount of crushed red pepper on top of the bubbled cheese. “I attended college at Princeton, so the shore was a natural place to spend my summers, considering Mom and Dad were off somewhere, digging up pots and hooking prize trout.”

“Wasn’t that difficult? Not seeing your parents, I mean?” Holly surprised herself with that question, considering the fact that she certainly had been heard to complain that her own family sometimes smothered her with attention.

“Oh, I saw them. Just not at the same time, and not at home—if I could remember where we were living at the time. Mom came to lecture at Princeton a couple of times, and Dad entered a few sport fishing contests, then
dropped by to see how his boy was doing. And I had Max’s parents, Max, plenty of friends. I got along.”

Holly reached for a second slice, sprinkled it with peppers. “I can’t imagine it, being on my own so much. Oh, I mean, sure, I’m on my own. Figuratively. I have my job, I have this apartment, but I know I’m only fifteen minutes or a local phone call away from my family.”

“Family’s important to you?”

She chewed on a mouthful of pizza as she chewed on his question. “Yes, it is. I complain, I wish they’d keep their noses out of my business, but I can’t imagine
not
having them around. The nieces and nephews dropping in unannounced, my sister calling to ask me to go along with her to the mall. Cookouts at my brothers’ houses in the summer, renting videos and popping popcorn for a living room full of Hollises in the winter time. My dad stopping by to replace the washer in my kitchen sink, my mom calling to ask about my love—well, never mind.”

“I see. So, dropping everything and going to, say, Paris for three years, wouldn’t appeal to you?”

Holly looked down at her plate, amazed to realize she’d suddenly lost her appetite. “No,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “That wouldn’t appeal to me. Not at all. I would have
thought
it would, but now that I really think about it? I’d never want to be more than about two hours or so away from my family. Gee,” she ended, propping her chin on her hand as she balanced her elbow on the edge of the table, “that’s depressing, isn’t it? I always thought I wanted to be a world traveler.”

“I have to go back to Paris next weekend,” Colin
told her, then took a long drink from his can of cola. “I doubt I’ll be back in the States again until Christmas.”

“Really?” Holly said, avoiding his intense, intent gaze. “But that’s all right for you, isn’t it. I mean, it hasn’t bothered you so far, or you wouldn’t be doing it, right?”

“Right,” Colin said, flipping the pizza box shut and carrying it into the kitchen, sliding it into the refrigerator. “It never bothered me before.”

Before?
Before what? Holly wondered. Before he’d come back to the States, realized he’d missed American food? Before he’d met her? Before she’d lost her tiny little mind?

He returned to the dining room and Holly quickly stood up, began gathering plates and napkins before he could do all the cleanup himself. It was definitely time for a change of subject. “Tell me about being head pizza tosser, or whatever it was you said.”

His smile was so sweet, so suddenly boyish, that Holly nearly had to grab on to the back of the chair to keep from throwing herself into his arms. “It was a blast,” he said, helping her clear the table. “The shop was open to the air, right on the boardwalk, and I stood smack in front of the shop, tossing rounds of dough into the air. There’s an art to it, you know, involving medium-level dexterity, and a lot of flour rubbed on your hands and forearms. I worked the four to twelve shift, and usually had a pretty good audience.”

Holly threw the crumpled paper napkins into the trash can kept behind the door of the cabinet beneath the sink, and headed out of the kitchen, picking up her soda can
as she aimed herself toward the couch once more—this time the larger one.

“You really were one of those guys who threw the pizza into the air? We vacationed in Ocean City a few times, when I was still living at home. I can remember spending what seemed like hours, watching guys like you, watching other guys make fudge, or taffy. Although I’m betting a lot of your audience of teenage girls weren’t watching the dough fly into the air.”

“I had my share of admirers,” Colin admitted, that heart-melting smile in evidence once more. “And I’m told that my finesse with the paddles—sliding the pizzas in and out of the brick oven—was poetry in motion. In other words, I had some memorable summers.”

“I got bitten by a jellyfish one summer, and fell asleep on the beach another summer and got burned to a crisp. But the worst was going to the movies with the family, dressed in shorts, no makeup—and being handed a kiddie ticket. That hurts, when you’re seventeen.”

“I wish I could have seen you then,” Colin said, sitting down beside her, the guitar in his hand. How had he done that? How had he slipped down the hall and grabbed her guitar without her noticing?

She pointed to the guitar. “I put that away. There’s a reason I put that away, Colin.”