Page 29 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
Holly shook her head and rolled up her sleeves before plunging her hands into the sudsy sink. Her dad was stowing the leftovers in a covered dish.
“I know that look,” he remarked. “You got something on your mind, Holly hon?”
“Just you and Jace at dinner. I’ve never seen you go that easy on—” She stopped, because what she had automaticallystarted to say wasone of the guys I brought home. But Jace absolutely wasn’t that. And she didn’t want to compare Jace and Rob, even in her head. “Someone in his position, I guess,” she said. But that wasn’t right either.
“You thinking about that no-goodnik Rob, aren’t you, hon?” her dad said gently.
“Maybe a little,” Holly admitted. “You couldn’t stand him.”
“No, I couldn’t,” he said easily. “Because he was no good for you. I’m glad you finally figured that out.”
Holly pressed her lips together for a moment. “No good at all,” she said softly. “How did you know?”
Her dad looked like he was choosing his words carefully.
“There’s a difference between a man who won’t work because he wants other people to do the work for him, and one who needs a hand getting back on his feet,” he said finally. “Can’t abide the first kind, man or woman. Rob had every advantage in the world, with that banker dad of his, and all that talent in high school, and he threw it away because he can’t follow through on anything he’s ever tried.” He cleared his throat. “But a lot of folks like Jace have the world stacked against them from the get-go. I don’t know too much about him, but I can see he’s a hard worker. If the man wants to do a solid day’s work and I can help him with that, I’ll help.”
Holly blew out her breath and reached for the potato dish. “And Rob’s the other kind.”
“Always was, kid.”
When the kitchen was clean, she excused herself and went upstairs to strip her bed completely, changing to clean sheets with no potential hint of Rob. She glanced at the doll, then shivered and went and put it in the sewing room, formerly Merry’s room, for now. She would clean and fix it later.
Maybe Jace is right. Maybe I should have called the police. Butfor now, she was serious about wanting to handle it on her own. She had blocked Rob’s number again after sending him her text, and so far he didn’t seem to have tried to circumvent the block. And she would have her dad downstairs in the house at night. There was nothing to worry about.
As she stuffed the sheets and pillowcases into the washing machine, she heard Jace come in with the dogs, the low tenor of his voice and her dad’s lower rumble as they talked. Then the door closed again, and Jace called softly, “Holly, are you here?”
“In the laundry room,” she called back.
She came out to find Jace looking at the decorations in the living room. They were very sparse, compared to how it used to be when Mom was alive and the other girls were living at home, but Jace gazed at the lights and holly on the mantel of the unused fireplace with a look of wonder, as if it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Then he turned to her, and that look didn’t change. Holly was abruptly self-conscious.
Jace seemed to shake himself out of it. “Your dad’s out at the barn. I said I was going up to ...” He coughed a little. “... Mistletoe Manor in a few minutes. But I don’t like leaving you alone in the house. Not with that Rob shitstain out there.”
She was used to soldiers, but still, the profanity on her behalf startled her a little. “I’d be able to hear him drive into the yard,” she pointed out. “And Dad will be back from the barn soon. He’s an early-to-bed kind of guy.”
“Are you?” Jace asked softly, moving forward. She hadn’t realized that they had gravitated toward each other as they were talking, but suddenly he was up in her space, looking down at her with that faint gold ring back in his eyes.
“Am I—am I what?”
She could have moved away. She didn’t.
“An early to bed kind of girl.”
“Around here, you have to be.” Holly grinned. “Reveille is at oh six hundred sharp.”
She could have leaned forward, close enough to feel his broad chest against her, to brush his lips with her own?—
Instead, she stepped away swiftly, resetting their boundaries. Jace jerked a little.
“You should go back to the cottage for the night,” she said, turning away. “I’m just going to read and do a little paperwork. It’ll be boring. And Dad will be back from the barn soon.”
Jace took a slight step back, and she felt the tension defuse, leaving a melancholy-tinged emptiness in the air between them. He was still looking at her with the same intensity, but his eyes were all brown again. Maybe it was just the light.
“All right, but—let me give you this.” He took out his phone, unlocked it with a swipe of his thumb, and opened a blank text, then handed it to her. “Put in your number. So you’ll have mine if you need it, okay?”
“Uh, okay.”
