Unwrapping Holly

***

FIVE MINUTES LATER, HOLLY’S MOTHER sat across from her at Grandma Redding’s kitchen table.

“Is this about money, Mom?” Holly asked. “Has retirement put you in a bad spot?”

“No! ” she said, looking appalled. “Of course not. The house is paid for. We want the money to travel. We want to live a little. And none of you are here. Why should we sit back and let life pass us by? We planned to tell everyone after the holidays. We thought it was best that way.”

Holly pursed her lips. “Because you knew we’d be upset.”

“We hope you’ll all be excited for us. We’re going to see the world, sweetheart. But yes, we worried that one, or all of you, would be upset, and we didn’t want to upset the holiday festivities. We never intended for you to find out the way you did. That had to be a shock.”

Her mom didn’t know the half of it. Finding out that Cole was buying their property shook her in a way her mother couldn’t begin to understand.

“You’re sure this Cole Wiley isn’t pressuring you in some way?”

Her mother laughed at that. “Oh, goodness no. If anything your father is pressuring him to finish up the paperwork.”

Holly leaned back in the chair. Everything was spinning out of control, and she had to get it back to normal. Maybe Cole really hadn’t known her last name. Maybe he was innocent of any wrongdoing. So why did she still feel so betrayed and angry at him?

***

THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER SPENDING an hour with the banker handling the house sale, Holly exited the shelter of the bank building to find herself smack in the middle of the beginning of a blizzard, the wind whipping big, white snowflakes around her. Holly hun kered down in her long, black coat, her best black suit far from adequate cover even with knee-high boots. She was lucky she’d thrown it in her bag at all. It had been a last-minute whim. Old habits were hard to break. A suit was still familiar territory she clung to like a security blanket. Too bad she hadn’t chosen a pair of dress pants. But then, she hadn’t figured she’d really need the darned thing at all.

She slid into her car and quickly flipped on the heater, her hands shaking. She tried to tell herself it was from the cold. Frozen and for what? Nothing. No. That was wrong. She now had the peace of mind of knowing her parents were not in financial distress, and she wasn’t sitting at home wishing Cole would call so she could yell at him. She wanted to hit him. She also wanted to kiss him. She dropped her head to the steering wheel. How did everything get so out of control?

Cole had the control. He was about to take ownership of her home in Haven. And he had her heart. She felt completely vulnerable. And the wall all this had erected between her and Cole felt as if it reached clear to the sky. She felt her choices had been taken from her. If she wanted to come home, if she wanted her family home, she had to be with Cole. And didn’t she want to be with Cole? She did. She wanted it as readily as she did her next breath.

“So what’s the problem, Holly?” she murmured. “What’s the problem?” Her stomach rolled with the answer. She was scared, she realized. And the longer she went without talking to Cole, the more frightened she became about the control he held over her life. And the more certain she was that she couldn’t give someone that kind of power over her.

Holly started driving, determined to get a grip on herself and everything happening around her. Cole didn’t dictate her actions, her future. He could own her house, but he didn’t own her. Whatever happened, whatever choices she made, they were hers. She would take back control.

That resolve lasted all of ten minutes, until the weather and her car proved she was nowhere near having any control. One minute her hands were steady on the wheel, the next her tire blew, and she was wildly trying to steer the car in a straight path with no hope of actually doing so. Her car skidded and landed with two tires in a ditch. She sat there, in the middle of a storm, and burst into tears.

***

SITTING BEHIND THE WHEEL OF his truck, Cole drove toward town, the radio announcer talking about yet more early-season bad weather. He didn’t give a damn if a blizzard had rolled in. Let it snow. Let it sleet. He was going to get hammered. Absolutely flipping hammered, like he hadn’t been in a damned decade. After damned near twenty-four hours, it was clear that Holly showing up to apologize was about as likely to happen as a heat wave in Alaska. Evidently, he’d been a fool for thinking she’d figure out he’d done nothing wrong and show up to kiss away the pain of her attack. He sniffed. Fool, he thought. Nothing but a fool.