Page 53 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
She was still kissing him when a door closed downstairs. Holly jumped up and went to the window. “Oh, thank goodness,” she sighed. “Dad’s going out to the barn. Maybe he doesn’t know.”
“He knows,” Jace said. “I still think coming clean is the best thing.”
“We’re going to.” Soon. Somehow. “But let’s not do it while reeking of sex and coming out of my bedroom together, all right? I’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you go back up to the cottage and, uh ...”
“Pretend to come in the front door like I didn’t just spend the night holding you after we made love?”
“Yes!” Holly said. “I mean, no! But now’s our only chance. If Dad comes back, we’ll be trapped again. Go, go, go.”
She pushed him out the door of her room, with Jace making only minimal, token protests. “He’s your dad, not your prison guard.”
“I know, but you’ve seen him as a bear. Do you wantthatafter you? Do you know how many places there are on this farm to hide a body? At least let him have coffee and get some yard work out of his system first!”
This argument seemed to convince him, or at least it got him moving. Holly waited until she heard the door close downstairs, then ran into the bathroom, flung her clothes off, and took a very hot shower with lots and lots of body wash.
She knew it was stupid as she did it. Dad definitely knew. (But maybe he didn’t?) And they were adults and had nothing to hide. (But she and Jace were both dependent on Dad’s goodwill for a roof over their heads and food on their plates.)She was a fully grown adult and could get a job. (But what if she couldn’t?)
Hastily brushing her wet hair after the shower, she frowned at herself in the steamy mirror. What was that, some dirt on her neck? Leaning closer, she flushed when she realized that at some point last night, he’d given her a hickey. Amazing. Just like a couple of teenagers.
She realized she was grinning stupidly. That had beenfun.
The aftermath would be considerably less so.
Poking her head out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her, she heard the sound of someone moving around downstairs. That better be Dad and not Jace. She tiptoed back to her room, leaving the bathroom door open to fill the house with sweet-smelling steam and indicate that nothing more untoward was going on up here than a shower, no sir. (And if it covered up incriminating smells in the bedroom, so much the better.) After getting dressed and brushing her damp hair properly, she put on a little perfume, decided that was too much since she never wore perfume at home, wiped it off and dropped the tissue in the wastebasket on top of last night’s incriminating evidence.
“Get a grip, Holly,” she muttered to herself. She rearranged her sweater to make sure the hickey was covered up and went downstairs, practicing her cheerful expression the whole way.
SQUEAKA! came from the general vicinity of Rocket’s dog bed, causing her to stumble on the last step.
“Good morning, Cupcake,” Holly muttered, hopping sideways a couple of steps before she got her balance again.
On that note, she made her entrance into the kitchen. “Good morning, Dad!” she said brightly. “I can’t believe you let me sleep in. That was so sweet of you. I can’t wait to get started on the Christmas tree farm. And Noelle’s comingtoday, right? I can drive to the airport and pick her up. Ooh, is this coffee?”
Her dad was sitting at the kitchen island. He had a cup of coffee in front of him, but nothing else. His expression was difficult to read. Holly noticed two more plates on the countertop, each with an empty glass beside it. Clearly he’d been waiting for them to get up for some time.
“This coffee smells great,” she said as she mixed creamer into it. Her bright facade began to crumble. “Dad, is everything—uh. All right?”
Her dad cleared his throat, and said in a tone nearly devoid of expression, but somehow tight, “Anything you want to tell me, kiddo?”
Oh crap. Crap on a pancake. That wasthe Voice. The “you stayed out after curfew” voice. The “you’ll never believe what Mrs. Wozniewski says she saw you and the Ingram kid doing at the Halloween bonfire” voice.
Holly set down the creamer carefully.
“First of all,” she said, turning to face him, “I’m not a kid.”
“I know,” her dad said, and she thought she might have heard a slight hint of a break in the Voice, but just then, the kitchen door opened and Jace came in on a swirl of cold air.
“Good morning,” he said, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes as he took his coat off.
“You,” her dad said, getting up from his stool.
Holly tended to forget how big her dad was. He was not just tall, but wide. To her he was, had always been, simply Dad. But he could also be intimidating as hell, and right now he was radiating intimidating vibes. She saw Jace stop in his tracks, and realized that some of what she felt from Dad right now was actually a shifter thing. Not being a shifter herself, she had never really been able to feel it, but she knew that there was a ....something. Merry used to playfully call it their dad’s Alpha Waves, which had made Ivy (the self-proclaimed know-it-all) insist that alphas weren’t a real thing, in wolf packs or otherwise.
But there was something. It was a presence in the room, like a whole entire other person. And Jace clearly felt it even more than Holly did.
Which was one reason why she put herself between them. She didn’t know if her dad would actually attack Jace, although she hoped not. But she knew he wouldn’t attack her. In all their childhood and teen years, for all the groundings and scoldings and threats of spankings, her dad had never laid a hand on a single one of them.
“Dad,” she said, in a voice that barely sounded like her own. “Backdown.”
