tall, dark and better than any male model she’d sketched in her university Live Art class, Eric motioned toward a black Corvette. “Certainly. We still haven’t finalized the repayment of your substantial bid.”
A smug smile twitched the corners of his mouth. Holly rolled her eyes. “Go ahead and gloat. I know you’re dying to.”
He smiled and looked so much like the guy she’d had a crush on in her teens that it sucked the breath from her lungs. “I’ve never been happier to waste fifteen thousand dollars.”
She snorted. “You guys and your egos. I should have let Prissy have you.”
His smile vanished, and she wondered if having his ex-fiancée join in the bidding had surprised him as much as it had her. Or maybe he’d wanted her to let Prissy win him?
“Thank you for outbidding her.”
Holly tried to gauge his sincerity, but couldn’t. Had he loved Priscilla Wilson? Had his heart been broken when she’d dumped him so cruelly? Or was his sister right? Juliana swore her brother couldn’t squeeze a drop of emotion out of his calculator heart with a juicer. “I promised and, good or bad, I always keep my promises.”
He opened the passenger door and cupped Holly’s elbow as she lowered herself into the leather seat. She wished he’d quit touching her. Each time he did, something tightened and twisted inside her.
She directed him toward her house and twenty minutes later he parked beside the white picket fence surrounding her home. She climbed from the car before Eric could open her door, and a chorus of barks reached them.
“It’s okay guys. It’s just me,” she yelled through cupped hands, and the barks turned from warning to welcoming.
Eric stood with his hands on his hips, appraising the farmhouse. Because she lived alone, Holly had installed several area lights to keep the yard well-lit. The scent of gardenias, honeysuckle and moon flowers saturated the humid night air.
“Not the ramshackle hovel you expected?”
His gaze landed on hers. “It’s nice.”
Pride filled her chest. Her maternal grandfather had built the house for his bride back in the 1930s. Since moving to the farm seven years ago, Holly had steadily made upgrades both inside and out as money permitted. She’d turned the barn where cows and horses used to take shelter into kennels with dog runs and converted the carport behind the house into her work studio. A local farmer leased all but ten of the five hundred acres and kept her supplied with all the corn, cucumbers and tomatoes she could eat.
She paused beside Eric at the base of the stairs leading to the wraparound porch. “I know what they say behind my back, you know. That I live out here in disgrace, exiled to my grandparents’ farm because I don’t know how to behave in polite society.”
Moonlight played off the sharp planes of Eric’s face, casting shadows beneath his cheekbones. “This doesn’t look like exile.”
“It isn’t. It’s home. C’mon in.” She climbed the steps and unlocked the front door.
She’d had men in her house before, but usually they were misfits like her. Eric, according to his sister, lived in a professionally decorated place in an upscale Wilmington waterfront community. Holly had learned from the wealthy housewives who’d taken her stained glass classes that even her extensive renovations couldn’t bring this old house up to yacht club neighborhood standards. But she loved her home, her refuge.
The front door opened into a miniscule foyer with stairs leading to the unfinished attic space directly ahead. When her grandparents had built the house, they’d intended to finish off the upstairs as the children and the need for additional bedrooms arrived, but they’d only had one child, Holly’s mother, so the expansion had never happened. Holly’s living room lay to the left and her bedroom immediately to the right. “Would you like coffee or something while I change?”
“No thanks.”
The sound of canine nails clicking on hardwood floors approached from the kitchen and then the mutts surrounded them. “Down, Seurat and Monet.”
“You named your dogs after painters?” Eric bent to scratch each dog’s scruff.
“Yes. Seurat is dotted and Monet’s colors blend with no defined lines. They’re staying inside while recovering from surgery. They need homes if you know anyone who’d love a mutt.” Fat chance of that. Eric’s contemporaries preferred purebreds.
“And you have them because…?”
“I live in the country. People dump their unwanted pets out here all the time, and then, of course, others have heard that I’ll foster unwanted animals, so…” She shrugged. “I have the vet check them over and neuter them and then I try to find someone to adopt them.” She gestured to the sofa and chairs. “Have a seat in the den. Give me a minute to get into some dry clothes and then we can work out the date details.”
Holly stepped into her bedroom, leaving Eric to find the den on his own, and pushed the door almost closed. She peeled off her damp, clingy dress and then draped it over the corner of her grandmother’s cheval mirror. The ceiling fan overhead stirred the air, causing chill bumps to rise on every inch of her body. She scrubbed her upper arms while she debated whether or not she had anything clean to wear. When had she done laundry last?
“I have to confess, Eric, that until the MC described your auction package I didn’t even know what your dates would be.” She raised her voice to be heard through the quarter-inch door gap as she bent over her T-shirt drawer. With her booming, un-ladylike voice—a curse, according to her parents—Eric would be able to hear her from the den.
And then she heard a familiar creaking hinge and straightened abruptly. Her gaze darted to the mirror. Seurat had pushed open her bedroom door, and Eric was not in her living room. Instead, he stood exactly where she’d left him, and right now he was getting an eyeful of her naked backside and a clear view of her front side reflected in the mirror.
Holly snatched the wet dress from the mirror, clutched it to her chest and spun around. But the wet fabric bunched and stuck and refused to cover what needed covering. Eric, damn him, didn’t look away. In fact, his dark gaze raked over every exposed inch of her skin.
Her heart stuttered like a jackhammer. “Excuse me.”
Holly lunged forward, shut the door, forcing it past the sticking upper corner and leaned against it. That hadn’t been revulsion in Eric’s eyes. Worse, the heat swirling in her stomach like a water spout didn’t remotely resemble shame or disgust.
The only thing worse than getting involved with another needy man would be getting involved with a man who came from a world where she’d been a complete failure, a world to which she’d have to crawl back amidst a chorus of “I told you so’s” if she couldn’t locate the ex-lover who’d suckered her into borrowing against her trust fund and loaning him money.
Oh, man, why hadn’t she broken her promise to buy Eric and bolted when she’d had the chance?
Promises were the pits.
Eric’s sister stormed through the office door early Monday morning without bothering to knock. “What are you doing?”
“Good
